Middleware, Ten Years In: Vapority into Reality into Virtuality

Dr. Ken Klingenstein,Senior Director, Middleware and Security, Internet2

Technologist, University of Colorado at Boulder

kjk@internet2.edu

Topics

• Middleware, Ten Years In• From Vapor to Reality• Some of the successes• Some of the failures

• Middleware, Ten Years Forward• From Reality to Virtuality

• Organizations• Resources• Communities

• From Virtuality back to Reality

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Before there was middleware

apps

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First Vapors

• When end-user PKI was months away…

• When the big application houses didn’t care about middleware

• We knew it was something about authentication and authorization

• We couldn’t agree about much – payloads or protocols or spelling

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In the beginning

Directories Authentication

apps

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Dealing with the apps

Directories Authentication

apps

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Filling out the portfolio

DirectoriesAuthentication

Groups

Privileges

Authorization

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Federation

AuthenticationDirectories

Authentication

Directories

Directories

Federation

F

ederation

Federation

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COmanage

AuthenticationDirectories

Authentication

Directories

Directories

Federation

F

ederation

Federation

Federation

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Vapors become Reality

• When end-user PKI was months away…

• When the big application houses care so much they have to own it• Middleware as the new lock-in point

• Federation as identity infrastructure and attributes as the payloads

• IdM not a local industry anymore

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Some of the successes

• Building a fundamental new layer of Internet infrastructure

• Engaging a broad and growing international group of expertise

• Crafting a larger world that works for the R&E needs• Proving that security and privacy can work together

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More successes

• Focusing on the schema early on• Coming together around SAML, and getting the

rest of the world to come along…• Working towards scaling (rough consensus and

running code)• Seeing parts of other worlds

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Some of the failures

• The directory of directories…

• End-to-end end-user PKI

• Establish resources to support the infrastructure

• Diagnostics

• The rest of the middleware stack

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Middleware, Ten Years Forward

• Working on Attributes and Federation• Growing our federations• Interfederation and Soup• The Attribute Ecosystem• Learning the Tao of Attributes

• Building and Managing the Virtual

• Integration, Integration, Integration

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Growing our Federations

• Deciding on the services• Core services – identity/attributes for access controls• Value added services – content aggregation, roaming,

PKI and SSL services, collaboration platforms, Silver

• Finding the business models• Finding the governance structures• Making a marketplace

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Interfederation and Soup

• Interfederation essential to scale• Across vertical sectors• Internationally• To the consumer marketplace

• Confederation and Overlays will also exist• Soup• Institutional groups that cut across segments – geography,

shared business purpose, etc• Mix of special purpose and infrastructure federations

tangled

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Attribute ecosystem use cases…

Obtaining student consent for information release

FEMA needing first responders attributes and qualifications dynamically

High-confidence attributes

Access-ability use cases

AAMC step-up authentication possibilities

Public input processes

Grid relying parties aggregating VO and campus

The “IEEE” problem

The “over legal age” and the difference in legal ages use cases

Self-asserted attributes – friend, interests, preferences, etc

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Attribute Ecosystem Key Issues

• Attribute Aggregation• Attribute Metadata• Sources of authority and delegation• Schema management, mapping, etc• User interface• Privacy and legal issues

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Attribute aggregation

• Gathering attributes from multiple sources• From IdP or several IdP• From other sources of authority• From intermediaries such as portals

• Static and dynamic acquisition• Many linking strategies• Will require a variety of standardized mechanisms –

• Bulk feeds, user activated links, triggers

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Attribute metadata• Federated attributes need common meaning• Representation of meaning• At a system level• At a user level

• LOA associated with the value assigned • “Code+data equals programs”• LOA itself faces “re-interpretations”

• Separation of components of LOA• Use of “step-up” authentication

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Sources of authority

• Who gets to assign semantics (and syntax) to an area?

• How can they delegate assignment of value?

• What needs to be retained for audit/diagnostic

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Schema management, mappings

• Registries for schema

• Role of national level schema

• How to avoid mappings

• How to handle mappings

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User Interface

• “It’s the attributes, urn:mace:incommon:entitlement:clue:zero”, deprecated…

• Needs include translation of oid to english, to inform of the consequences of release decision, recording consent and getting the defaults right so that this is seldom used

• Metaphors such as Infocard are useful, but will need extensions and utiization

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Privacy management

• Two approaches emerging• uApprove

• http://www.switch.ch/aai/support/tools/uApprove.html

• InfoCard/Higgins

• Who sets attribute release policies? Who overrides the settings? What logs are kept?

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GSA Workshop: 属性之道The Tao of Attributes

• Begin exploring the attribute issues• Using federal use cases, including• Citizenship, voting residency• Access-abilities• First responder capabilities• PI-person

• Motivate the larger requirements, drive privacy policies• Explore rich query languages, etc.• All-star cast at the end of September at NIH

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Virtuality

• Virtual Communities

• Virtual Machine Appliances

• Virtual Services

• Internet protocols with trust and identity

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Virtual Communities

• A virtual enterprise that wants to play real well with real enterprises.

• Needs coordinated identity management for collaboration and domain tools

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Virtual Machine Appliances

• Allows clueless groups and other VO’s to handle collaborations

• Brilliant way to handle peak load requirements• Vexing issues of application updates,

coordination of configuration among apps, etc.• Must fit fully in the attribute ecosystem and

reshape themselves on need

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Virtual Services

• Clouds as low-start-up, largely scalable cyber infrastructure• Cycles, storage, collaboration• Fits into the domestication paradigm

• Clouds as legally tangled, non-standard,confusion• Location and ownership of data• Ability to adapt to new protocols• Proprietary cloud internals

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Integration, Integration and Integration

• Of types of Internet identity

• Of identity with protocols

• Domestication of applications

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Internet identity

• Federated identity• Enterprise centric, exponentially growing, privacy

preserving, rich attribute mechanisms• Requires lawyers, infrastructure, etc

• User centric identity• P2P, rapidly growing, light-weight• Marketplace is fractured; products are getting heavier to

deal with privacy, attributes, etc.

• Unifying layers emerging – Cardspace, Higgins, OAuth

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Integration

• Different forms of Internet identity will exist, serving different purposes, arising from different constituencies

• The trick is the intelligent integration of the technologies, at user and application level

• Cross-overs are happening• Shib and Openid• SAML and high assurance PKI – holder of key• Infocard/Higgins as an overarching user experience• Federation and portal integration

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Integration of identity and protocols

• Trust, Identity and the Internet - ISOC initiative to introduce trust and identity-leveraged capabilities to many RFC’s and protocols

• Acknowledges the assumptions of the original protocols about the fine nature of our friends on the Internet and the subsequent realities

• http://www.isoc.org/isoc/mission/initiative/trust.shtml• First target area is DKIM; subsequent targets include

federated calendaring and sharing, firewall traversal

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Domestication of Applications

• Identity, groups, roles, privileges

• What else to integrate?

• At what layers to specify the integration?

• How to integrate across the layered domestication specifications

• How much domestication is too much?

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Virtuality back into Reality

• Our use cases continue to lead the corporate sector• Our needs are more urgent than they are

different• Our students become the new consumers

• The shared vision is more powerful than the individuals who share it

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We’ve Lost Some Along the Way…

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We’ve Picked Up Some New Ones…

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Final Thoughts

• Important, if somewhat invisible, work has been done

• There are significant opportunities ahead

• Its been a ride