8.3 GSS Issues

I know I haven't been very active for a while here, but I just got to
testing the October 3 version a bit prior to getting back to the Java
GSS client stuff I promised. There seem to be some funny things there.

The only serious issue is that the server doesn't require the realm
name to match. I haven't looked at how that broke yet, but I know I
was careful of that point in my original patches because it's always
been wrong in the Kerberos 5 auth method.

If I set up a server I might conceivably get connections from:

smith(at)JPL(dot)NASA(dot)GOV
smith(at)STANFORD(dot)EDU
smith(at)ARC(dot)NASA(dot)GOV
smith(at)GSFC(dot)NASA(dot)GOV
smith(at)KSC(dot)NASA(dot)GOV
<same for every other NASA center, HQ, plus a "fake" realm relating
to how NASA set up AD>

Now the only two of those that *might* be the same person are the
first two, and that's only if the Stanford person has a grant to work
on a JPL project and got put in our infrastructure as an affiliate,
*and* the username wasn't already taken.

It appears that you can just put a complete (realm-included) name
into postgres, so that's obviously the way to support gssapi
connections from non-default realms.

In short this is a security hole. IMO it should be fixed prior to
release.

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I notice there are hba options for gss and sspi both. Why?

Is there some windows-only functionality it enables? Shouldn't we be
using Microsoft's advertised GSSAPI/SSPI compatibility? If you build
on Windows then I'm sure you want to link the SSPI libraries rather
than require installation of a separate package, but that shouldn't
change the functionality or the wire protocol AFAIK. In other words
I would expect this to be a build-time option.

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At the risk of diluting my message: I still think it's a mistake to
call it gss instead of something like gss-noprot. I believe this
will cause misunderstandings in the future when we get the security
layer of gssapi implemented.

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There's no way to specify the gssapi library to use. I have three on
my main development Sun: MIT, Sun, and Heimdal. I might have more
than one version of one of those three at some times. Of course
there's no way to specify which kerberos 5 library or openssl library
you want either, so consider this a feature request for future
development.

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The opinions expressed in this message are mine,
not those of Caltech, JPL, NASA, or the US Government.
Henry(dot)B(dot)Hotz(at)jpl(dot)nasa(dot)gov, or hbhotz(at)oxy(dot)edu