INTERNET-DRAFT Kurt D. Zeilenga Intended Category: Standard Track OpenLDAP Foundation Expires: 20 December 2002 20 December 2001 LDAP "Who am I?" Operation Status of this Memo This document is an Internet-Draft and is in full conformance with all provisions of Section 10 of RFC2026. This document is intended to be, after appropriate review and revision, submitted to the RFC Editor as a Standard Track document. Distribution of this memo is unlimited. Technical discussion of this document will take place on the IETF LDAP Extension Working Group mailing list . Please send editorial comments directly to the author . Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts. Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as ``work in progress.'' The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at . The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at . Copyright 2001, The Internet Society. All Rights Reserved. Please see the Copyright section near the end of this document for more information. Abstract This specification defines mechanism for Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) clients to obtain the authorization identity which the server has associated with the user or application entity. The mechanism is defined the LDAP "Who am I?" extended operation. Zeilenga LDAP "Who am I?" [Page 1] INTERNET-DRAFT draft-zeilenga-ldap-authzid-01 20 December 2002 Conventions The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in BCP 14 [RFC2119]. 1. Background and Intent of Use This specification describes an extended operation to obtain the authorization identity which an LDAP server has associated with the client. This specification offers an alternative approach to [AUTHCTL] which uses Bind request and response controls to request and return an authzId. However, Bind controls are not protected by the security layers established by the Bind operation which they are transferred as part of. An extended operation sent after a Bind operation is protected by the security layers established by the Bind operation. There are also cases where it is desirable to request the authzId which server associated with the client separately from the Bind operation. In particular, the "Who am I?" extended operation can be augmented with a proxy authorization control [PROXYCTL] to determine the authzid to which the server associates with the identity asserted in the proxy control. The "Who am I?" extended operation can also be used to determine the authorization identity associated with a proxy group [PROXYGRP]. The LDAP "Who am I?" operation is named after the UNIX command of the same name. The UNIX whoami(1) command displays the effective user id. 2. The "Who am I?" Operation The "Who am I?" operation is defined as a LDAPv3 Extended Operation [RFC2251, Section 4.12] identified by the whoamiOID Object Identifier (OID). This section details the syntax of the operation's whoami request and response messages. whoamiOID ::= "T.B.D" ;; To be determined 2.1. The whoami Request The whoami request is an ExtendedRequest with the requestName field containing whoamiOID OID and a requestValue field is absent. Zeilenga LDAP "Who am I?" [Page 2] INTERNET-DRAFT draft-zeilenga-ldap-authzid-01 20 December 2002 2.2. The whoami Response The whoami response is an ExtendedResponse where the responseName is absent and the response field, if present, is empty or an authzId [RFC2829]. 3. Operational Semantics The function of the "Who am I?" operation is to request that the server return the authorization identity it currently associates with the client. The client requests this authorization identity by issuing a whoami Request. The server responds to this request with an whoami Response. If the server is willing and able to provide the authorization identity it associates with the client, the server returns whoami Response with a success resultCode. If the server is treating the client as an anonymous entity, the server response field SHALL be empty. Otherwise the server SHALL provide the authzId [RFC2829] representing the authorization identity it currently associates with the client. If the server is unwilling or unable to provide the authorization identity it associates with the client, the server SHALL return an whoami Response with a non-success resultCode and an absent response field. 4. Extending the "Who am I?" operation with controls Future specifications MAY extend the "Who am I?" operation using the control mechanism. When extended by control, the "Who am I?" operation returns the authorization identity associated to the client in a particular context as defined by the control's specification. 5. Security Considerations Identities associated with users may be sensitive information. When so, security layers [RFC2829][RFC2830] SHOULD be established to protect this information. This mechanism is specifically designed to allow security layers established by a Bind operation to protect the integrity and/or confidentiality of the authorization identity. As with any other extended operations, general LDAP considerations apply. These are detailed in [RFC2251], [RFC2829], and [RFC2830]. Zeilenga LDAP "Who am I?" [Page 3] INTERNET-DRAFT draft-zeilenga-ldap-authzid-01 20 December 2002 5. Acknowledgment This document borrows from prior work in this area including the "Authentication Response Control" [AUTHCTL] by Rob Weltman, Mark Smith and Mark Wahl. 6. Author's Address Kurt D. Zeilenga OpenLDAP Foundation 7. Normative References [RFC2119] S. Bradner, "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels", BCP 14 (also RFC 2119), March 1997. [RFC2251] M. Wahl, T. Howes, S. Kille, "Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (v3)", RFC 2251, December 1997. [RFC2829] M. Wahl, H. Alvestrand, J. Hodges, RL "Bob" Morgan, "Authentication Methods for LDAP", RFC 2829, June 2000. [RFC2830] J. Hodges, R. Morgan, and M. Wahl, "Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (v3): Extension for Transport Layer Security", RFC 2830, May 2000. [PROXYCTL] R. Weltman, "LDAP Proxied Authentication Control", draft- weltman-ldapv3-proxy-xx.txt (a work in progress). [PROXYGRP] K. Zeilenga, "LDAP Proxy Group", draft-zeilenga-ldap- proxygrp-xx.txt (a work in progress). 8. Informative References [AUTHCTL] R. Weltman, M. Smith, M. Wahl, "LDAP Authentication Response Control", draft-weltman-ldapv3-auth-response- xx.txt (a work in progress). Copyright 2001, The Internet Society. All Rights Reserved. This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published and Zeilenga LDAP "Who am I?" [Page 4] INTERNET-DRAFT draft-zeilenga-ldap-authzid-01 20 December 2002 distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any kind, provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are included on all such copies and derivative works. However, this document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of developing Internet standards in which case the procedures for copyrights defined in the Internet Standards process must be followed, or as required to translate it into languages other than English. The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns. This document and the information contained herein is provided on an "AS IS" basis and THE AUTHORS, THE INTERNET SOCIETY, AND THE INTERNET ENGINEERING TASK FORCE DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT THE USE OF THE INFORMATION HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. Zeilenga LDAP "Who am I?" [Page 5]