[jira] [Updated] (CASSANDRA-10956) Enable authentication of native protocol users via client certificates

["Sam Tunnicliffe (JIRA)" <ji...@apache.org>]

     [ https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/CASSANDRA-10956?page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:all-tabpanel ]

Sam Tunnicliffe updated CASSANDRA-10956:
----------------------------------------
    Resolution: Won't Fix
        Status: Resolved  (was: Patch Available)

I've opened CASSANDRA-11471 to add SASL mechanism negotiation to the native protocol. As per the comments, we can re-open this later should we need to.

> Enable authentication of native protocol users via client certificates
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>                 Key: CASSANDRA-10956
>                 URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/CASSANDRA-10956
>             Project: Cassandra
>          Issue Type: New Feature
>            Reporter: Samuel Klock
>            Assignee: Samuel Klock
>         Attachments: 10956.patch
>
>
> Currently, the native protocol only supports user authentication via SASL.  While this is adequate for many use cases, it may be superfluous in scenarios where clients are required to present an SSL certificate to connect to the server.  If the certificate presented by a client is sufficient by itself to specify a user, then an additional (series of) authentication step(s) via SASL merely add overhead.  Worse, for uses wherein it's desirable to obtain the identity from the client's certificate, it's necessary to implement a custom SASL mechanism to do so, which increases the effort required to maintain both client and server and which also duplicates functionality already provided via SSL/TLS.
> Cassandra should provide a means of using certificates for user authentication in the native protocol without any effort above configuring SSL on the client and server.  Here's a possible strategy:
> * Add a new authenticator interface that returns {{AuthenticatedUser}} objects based on the certificate chain presented by the client.
> * If this interface is in use, the user is authenticated immediately after the server receives the {{STARTUP}} message.  It then responds with a {{READY}} message.
> * Otherwise, the existing flow of control is used (i.e., if the authenticator requires authentication, then an {{AUTHENTICATE}} message is sent to the client).
> One advantage of this strategy is that it is backwards-compatible with existing schemes; current users of SASL/{{IAuthenticator}} are not impacted.  Moreover, it can function as a drop-in replacement for SASL schemes without requiring code changes (or even config changes) on the client side.



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