This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Apache Authentication Modules
This section describes three authentication modules bundled with Apache: mod_auth, mod_auth_dbm, and mod_auth_digest. A fourth module, mod_auth_anon, is also mentioned. You can refer to Hour 18, "Extending Apache," for details on how to enable these modules.
Common Functionality
Apache provides the basic framework and directives to perform authentication and access control. The authentication modules provide support for validating passwords against a specific backend. Users can optionally be organized in groups, easing management of access control rules.
Apache provides three built-in directives related to authentication that will be used with any of the authentication modules: AuthName, AuthType, and Require.
AuthName accepts a string argument, the name for the authentication realm. A realm is a logical area of the Web server that you are asking the password for. It will be displayed in the browser pop-up window.
AuthType specifies the type of browser authentication: basic or digest.
Require enables you to specify a list of users or groups that will be allowed access. The syntax is Require user followed by one or more usernames, or Require group followed by one or more group names. For example:
Require user joe bob
or
Require group employee contractor
If you want to grant access to anyone who provides a valid username and password, you can do so with
Require valid-user
With the preceding directives, you can control who has access to specific virtual hosts, directories, files, and so on. Although authentication and authorization are separate concepts, in practice they are tied together in Apache. Access is granted based on specific user identity or group membership. Some third-party modules, such as certain LDAP-based modules, allow for clearer separation between authentication and authorization.
NOTE
Apache 1.3 offers file-owner and group-owner arguments for the Require directive. In those cases, the username or group must be valid and be the same as the file being accessed in order to gain access to it.
Module Functionality
The authentication modules included with Apache provide
Backend storage: Provide text or database files containing the username and groups information
User management: Supply tools for creating and managing users and groups in the backend storage
Authoritative information: Specify whether the results of the module are authoritative
NOTE
Sometimes a user will not be allowed access because it is not found in the user database provided by the module or because no authentication rules matched it. In that case, one of two situations will occur:
-
If the module specifies its results as authoritative, the user will be denied access and Apache will return an error.
-
If the module specifies its results as not authoritative, other modules can have a chance of authenticating the user.
This enables you to have a main authorization module that knows about most users, and to be able to have additional modules that can authenticate the rest of the users.
File-Based Authentication
The mod_auth Apache module provides basic authentication via text files containing usernames and passwords, similar to how traditional Unix authentication works with the /etc/passwd and /etc/groups files.
Backend Storage
You need to specify the file containing the list of usernames and passwords and, optionally, the file containing the list of groups.
The users file is a Unix-style password file, containing names of users and encrypted passwords. The entries look like the following, on Unix, using the crypt algorithm:
admin:iFrlxqg0Q6RQ6
and on Windows, using the MD5 algorithm:
admin:$apr1$Ug3.....$jVTedbQWBKTfXsn5jK6UX/
The groups file contains a list of groups and the users that belong to each one of them, separated by spaces, such as in the following entry:
web: admin joe daniel
The AuthUserFile and the AuthGroupFile directives take a path argument, pointing to the users file and the groups file. The groups file is optional.
User Management
Apache includes the htpasswd utility on Unix and htpasswd.exe on Windows; they are designed to help you manage user password files. Both versions are functionally identical, but the Windows version uses a different method to encrypt the password. The encryption is transparent to the user and administrator. The first time you add a user, you need to type the following:
htpasswd -c file userid
where file is the password file that will contain the list of usernames and passwords, and userid is the username you want to add. You will be prompted for a password and the file will be created. For example:
htpasswd -c /usr/local/apache2/conf/htusers admin
will create the password file /usr/local/apache2/conf/htusers and add the admin user.
The -c command-line option tells htpasswd that it should create the file. When you want to add users to an existing password file, do not use the -c option or the file will be overwritten.
It is important that you store the password file outside the document root and thus make it inaccessible via a Web browser. Otherwise, an attacker could download the file and get a list of your usernames and passwords. Although the passwords are encrypted, once you have the file, it is possible to perform a brute force or dictionary attack to try to guess them.
Authoritative
The AuthAuthoritative directive takes a value of on or off. By default it is on, meaning that the module authentication results are authoritative. That is, if the user is not found or does not match any rules, access will be denied.
Using mod_auth
Listing 7.1 shows a sample configuration, restricting access to the private directory in the document root to authenticated users present in the htusers password file. Note that the optional AuthGroupFile directive is not present.
Listing 7.1 File-Based Authentication Example
1: <directory /usr/local/apache2/htdocs/private> 2: AuthType Basic 3: AuthName "Private Area" 4: AuthUserFile /usr/local/apache2/conf/htusers 5: AuthAuthoritative on 6: Require valid-user 7: </directory>
Database File-Based Access Control
Storing usernames and passwords in plain text files is convenient, but it does not scale well. Apache needs to open and read the file sequentially to look for a particular user. When the number of users grows, this becomes a very time-consuming operation. The mod_auth_dbm module enables you to replace the text-based files with indexed database files, which can handle a much greater number of users without performance degradation. mod_auth_dbm is included with Apache, but is not enabled by default.
Backend Storage
The mod_auth_dbm module provides two directives, AuthDBMUserFile and AuthDBMGroupFile, that point to the database files containing the usernames and groups. Unlike plain text files, both directives can point to the same file, which combines both users and groups.
User Management
Apache provides a Perl script (dbmmanage on Unix and dbmmanage.pl on Windows) that allows you to create and manage users and groups stored in a database file. Under Unix, you might need to edit the first line of the script to point to the location of the Perl interpreter in your system. If you do not have Perl installed, Hour 6, "Serving Dynamic Content with CGI," covers Perl installation on both Unix and Windows. On Windows, you need to install the additional MD5 password package. If you are using ActiveState Perl, start the Perl package manager and type
install Crypt-PasswdMD5
To add a user to a database on Unix, type
./dbmmanage dbfile adduser userid
On Windows, type
perl ./dbmmanage.pl dbfile adduser userid
You will be prompted for the password, and the user will be added to the existing database file or a new file will be created if one does not exist.
When adding a user, you can optionally specify the groups it belongs to as comma- separated arguments. The following command adds the user daniel to the database file /usr/local/apache2/conf/dbmusers and makes it a member of the groups employee and engineering:
dbmmanage /usr/local/apache2/conf/dbmusers adduser daniel employee,engineering
If you ever need to delete the user daniel, you can issue the following command:
dbmmanage dbfile delete daniel
The dbmmanage program supports additional options. You can get complete syntax information in the dbmmanage manual page or by invoking dbmmanage without any arguments.
NOTE
Recent versions of Apache 2.0 provide an additional utility, htdbm, that does not depend on Perl and provides all the functionality that dbmmanage does.
Authoritative
The AuthDBMAuthoritative directive takes an argument of on or off. By default it is on, meaning that the module authentication results are authoritative and if the user is not found or does not match any rules, access will be denied.
Using mod_auth_dbm
Listing 7.2 shows a sample configuration, restricting access to Unix home directories to members of the student and faculty groups. As you can see, both users and groups are stored in the same database file.
Listing 7.2 Database File-Based Authentication Example
1: <directory /home/*/public_html> 2: AuthType Basic 3: AuthName "Private Area" 4: AuthDBMUserFile /usr/local/apache2/conf/dbmusers 5: AuthDBMGroupFile /usr/local/apache2/conf/dbmusers 6: AuthDBMAuthoritative on 7: Require group student faculty 8: </directory>
Digest-Based Authentication
The mod_auth_digest Apache module is an experimental module that provides support for digest authentication. Only part of its functionality is implemented.
Backend Storage
The mod_auth_digest module provides two directives, AuthDigestFile and AuthDigestGroupFile that point to the files containing the usernames and groups.
User Management
Apache provides a utility, htdigest on Unix and htdigest.exe on Windows, which provides equivalent functionality to that of htpasswd, but with an additional argument: the realm to which the user belongs.
Authoritative
The AuthDigestAuthoritative directive takes a value of on or off. By default it is on, meaning that the module authentication results are authoritative and if the user is not found or does not match any rules, access will be denied.
Additional Directives
AuthDigestDomain takes a list of URLs that share the same realm and username password protection. This directive is not mandatory, but it helps speed up the internal working of mod_auth_digest. The URLs can be absolute (indicating scheme, port, and so on) or relative.
The mod_auth_digest module is considered experimental code. This means it is still in development and some of the functionality is not implemented, at least at the time this book was written. The missing functionality deals with the inner workings of the protocol and is not required for normal operation.
Using mod_auth_digest
Listing 7.3 shows an example similar in purpose to Listing 7.1, this time using digest authentication. This example uses a <Location> container, the value of the AuthType directive is Digest, and the optional AuthDigestDomain directive is present, specifying additional URLs.
Listing 7.3 Database File-Based Authentication Example
1: <Location /private> 2: AuthType Digest 3: AuthName "Private Area" 4: AuthDigestFile /usr/local/apache2/conf/digestusers 5: AuthDigestDomain /private /private2 /private3 6: AuthDigestAuthoritative on 7: Require valid-user 8: </Location>
Additional Authentication Modules
Apache provides an additional authentication module, mod_auth_anon, that allows anonymous user logins. The user provides his e-mail address as authentication credentials. This does not provide any security, but allows a convenient user tracking mechanism.