Authenticating users based on S/MIME certificate - modssl
This is a discussion on Authenticating users based on S/MIME certificate - modssl ; Hi. I am an administrator of a user account at an Apache web server.
Currently the server is running Apache 1.3.37. My hosting provider plans
on switching to new hardware with possibly new software. So I don't know
if my ...
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Authenticating users based on S/MIME certificate
Hi. I am an administrator of a user account at an Apache web server.
Currently the server is running Apache 1.3.37. My hosting provider plans
on switching to new hardware with possibly new software. So I don't know
if my web server will be run on Apache 1.3.37 or Apache 2.0.
My goal is to let visitors of my web site authenticate themselves to my
web server using some certificate, possibly S/MIME certificates.
Now, my current S/MIME certificate for personal e-mail is approved for
the following purposes:
Email Signer Certificate
Email Recipient Certificate
Is it possible to have such a certificate authenticate its user towards
an SSL web server? In any case I want to have a limited crowd of users
seeing a subdirectory of pages without bothering the user with a user
name/password dialog. Just their personal certificate lets them see
pages in a certain subdirectory.
As I understand the documentation for PHP, there is no means whereby PHP
can read and interpret an SSL client certificate. Is that correct?
Gunnar
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Apache Interface to OpenSSL (mod_ssl) www.modssl.org
User Support Mailing List modssl-users@modssl.org
Automated List Manager majordomo@modssl.org
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Re: Authenticating users based on S/MIME certificate
Gunnar Vestergaard wrote:
> My goal is to let visitors of my web site authenticate themselves to
> my web server using some certificate, possibly S/MIME certificates.
> As I understand the documentation for PHP, there is no means whereby
> PHP can read and interpret an SSL client certificate. Is that correct?
It's possible to configure Apache 2 to add the client certificate to a
request header. From one of my configuration files:
RewriteCond ${ESC:%{SSL:SSL_CLIENT_CERT}} \
^.*(-----BEGIN%20(X509%20|TRUSTED%20|)CERTIFICATE-----(%0[Dd])?%0[Aa].*%0[Aa]-----END%20\2CERTIFICATE-----(%0[Dd])?%0[Aa]).*$
RewriteRule ^.*$ - [E=CLIENT_CERT:%1]
RequestHeader unset L-ClientCert
RequestHeader set L-ClientCert %{CLIENT_CERT}e env=CLIENT_CERT
The certificate is %-encoded to avoid problems with newline characters.
Presumably PHP can use the string in the header to match the
certificate against a list of known certificates.
The certificate digest would be less unwieldy than the entire
certificate, but mod_ssl would need some simple changes to make the
digest available and I would be reluctant to use a hosting provider who
allowed customers to use a modified mod_ssl.
Dave Sparks
__________________________________________________ ____________________
Apache Interface to OpenSSL (mod_ssl) www.modssl.org
User Support Mailing List modssl-users@modssl.org
Automated List Manager majordomo@modssl.org
