SAML2 Authentication

CAS can act as a SAML2 identity provider accepting authentication requests and producing SAML assertions.

If you intend to allow CAS to delegate authentication to an external SAML2 identity provider, you need to review this guide.

SAML Endpoints

The following CAS endpoints respond to supported SAML2 profiles:

• /cas/idp/profile/SAML2/Redirect/SSO
• /cas/idp/profile/SAML2/POST/SSO
• /cas/idp/profile/SAML2/POST/SLO
• /cas/idp/profile/SAML2/Redirect/SLO
• /cas/idp/profile/SAML2/Unsolicited/SSO
• /cas/idp/profile/SAML2/SOAP/ECP

SAML2 IdP Unsolicited/SSO profile supports the following parameters:

IdP Metadata

The following CAS endpoints handle the generation of SAML2 metadata:

• /cas/idp/metadata

This endpoint will display the CAS IdP SAML2 metadata upon receiving a GET request. If metadata is already available and generated, it will be displayed. If metadata is absent, one will be generated automatically. CAS configuration below dictates where metadata files/keys will be generated and stored.

Here is a generated metadata file as an example:

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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<EntityDescriptor  xmlns="urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:metadata" xmlns:ds="http://www.w3.org/2000/09/xmldsig#"
                xmlns:shibmd="urn:mace:shibboleth:metadata:1.0" xmlns:xml="http://www.w3.org/XML/1998/namespace"
                xmlns:mdui="urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:metadata:ui" entityID="ENTITY_ID">
    <IDPSSODescriptor protocolSupportEnumeration="urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:protocol">
        <Extensions>
            <shibmd:Scope regexp="false">SCOPE</shibmd:Scope>
        </Extensions>
        <KeyDescriptor use="signing">
            <ds:KeyInfo>
              <ds:X509Data>
                  <ds:X509Certificate>...</ds:X509Certificate>
              </ds:X509Data>
            </ds:KeyInfo>
        </KeyDescriptor>
        <KeyDescriptor use="encryption">
            <ds:KeyInfo>
              <ds:X509Data>
                  <ds:X509Certificate>...</ds:X509Certificate>
              </ds:X509Data>
            </ds:KeyInfo>
        </KeyDescriptor>

        <NameIDFormat>urn:mace:shibboleth:1.0:nameIdentifier</NameIDFormat>
        <NameIDFormat>urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:nameid-format:transient</NameIDFormat>

        <SingleLogoutService Binding="urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:bindings:HTTP-POST"
                             Location="https://HOST_NAME/cas/idp/profile/SAML2/POST/SLO"/>
        <SingleSignOnService Binding="urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:bindings:HTTP-POST"
                             Location="https://HOST_NAME/cas/idp/profile/SAML2/POST/SSO"/>
        <SingleSignOnService Binding="urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:bindings:HTTP-Redirect"
                             Location="https://HOST_NAME/cas/idp/profile/SAML2/Redirect/SSO"/>
    </IDPSSODescriptor>
</EntityDescriptor>

Server Configuration

Mapping Endpoints

Note that CAS metadata endpoints for various bindings are typically available under /cas/idp/.... If you mean you use an existing metadata file whose binding endpoints begin with /idp/..., you may need to deploy CAS at the root context path so it’s able to respond to those requests. (i.e. https://sso.example.org/cas/login becomes https://sso.example.org/login). Alternatively, you may try to use URL-rewriting route requests from /idp/ to /cas/idp/,etc.

SP Metadata

If the SP you wish to integrate with does not produce SAML metadata, you may be able to use this service to create the metadata, save it in an XML file and then reference and register it with CAS for the SP.

Configuration

Support is enabled by including the following dependency in the WAR overlay:

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<dependency>
  <groupId>org.apereo.cas</groupId>
  <artifactId>cas-server-support-saml-idp</artifactId>
  <version>${cas.version}</version>
</dependency>

You may also need to declare the following Maven repository in your CAS overlay to be able to resolve dependencies:

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<repositories>
    ...
    <repository>
        <id>shibboleth-releases</id>
        <url>https://build.shibboleth.net/nexus/content/repositories/releases</url>
    </repository>
    ...
</repositories>

To see the relevant list of CAS properties, please review this guide.

SAML Services

SAML relying parties and services must be registered within the CAS service registry similar to the following example:

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{
  "@class" : "org.apereo.cas.support.saml.services.SamlRegisteredService",
  "serviceId" : "the-entity-id-of-the-sp",
  "name" : "SAMLService",
  "id" : 10000003,
  "evaluationOrder" : 10,
  "metadataLocation" : "http://www.testshib.org/metadata/testshib-providers.xml"
}

The following fields are available for SAML services:

Metadata Aggregates

CAS services are fundamentally recognized and loaded by service identifiers taught to CAS typically via regular expressions. This allows for common groupings of applications and services by url patterns (i.e. “Everything that belongs to example.org is registered with CAS). With aggregated metadata, CAS essentially does double authorization checks because it will first attempt to find the entity id in its collection of resolved metadata components and then it looks to see if that entity id is authorized via the pattern that is assigned to that service definition. This means you can do one of several things:

1. Open up the pattern to allow everything that is authorized in the metadata.
2. Restrict the pattern to only a select few entity ids found in the metadata. This is essentially the same thing as defining metadata criteria to filter down the list of resolved relying parties and entity ids except that its done after the fact once the metadata is fully loaded and parsed.
3. You can also instruct CAS to filter metadata entities by a defined criteria at resolution time when it reads the metadata itself. This is essentially the same thing as forcing the pattern to match entity ids, except that it’s done while CAS is reading the metadata and thus load times are improved.

Attribute Name Formats

Attribute name formats can be specified per relying party in the service registry.

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{
  "@class": "org.apereo.cas.support.saml.services.SamlRegisteredService",
  "serviceId" : "the-entity-id-of-the-sp",
  "name": "SAML Service",
  "id": 100001,
  "attributeNameFormats":
  {
    "@class": "java.util.HashMap",
    "attributeName": "basic|uri|unspecified|custom-format-etc"
  }
}

You may also have the option to define attributes and their relevant name format globally via CAS properties. To see the relevant list of CAS properties, please review this guide.

Attribute Release

Attribute filtering and release policies are defined per SAML service. See this guide for more info.

A few additional policies specific to SAML services are also provided below.

InCommon Research and Scholarship

A specific attribute release policy is available to release the attribute bundles needed for InCommon’s Research and Scholarship service providers:

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{
  "@class": "org.apereo.cas.support.saml.services.SamlRegisteredService",
  "serviceId": "entity-ids-allowed-via-regex",
  "name": "SAML",
  "id": 10,
  "metadataLocation": "path/to/incommon/metadata.xml",
  "attributeReleasePolicy": {
    "@class": "org.apereo.cas.services.ChainingAttributeReleasePolicy",
    "policies": [ "java.util.ArrayList",
      [
         {"@class": "org.apereo.cas.support.saml.services.InCommonRSAttributeReleasePolicy"}
      ]
    ]
  }
}

Pattern Matching Entity Ids

In the event that an aggregate is defined containing multiple entity ids, the below attribute release policy may be used to release a collection of allowed attributes to entity ids grouped together by a regular expression pattern:

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{
  "@class": "org.apereo.cas.support.saml.services.SamlRegisteredService",
  "serviceId": "entity-ids-allowed-via-regex",
  "name": "SAML",
  "id": 10,
  "metadataLocation": "path/to/incommon/metadata.xml",
  "attributeReleasePolicy": {
    "@class": "org.apereo.cas.support.saml.services.PatternMatchingEntityIdAttributeReleasePolicy",
    "allowedAttributes" : [ "java.util.ArrayList", [ "cn", "mail", "sn" ] ],
    "fullMatch" : "true",
    "entityIds" : "entityId1|entityId2|somewhere.+"
  }
}

Name ID Selection

Each service may specify a required Name ID format. If left undefined, the metadata will be consulted to find the right format. The Name ID value is always simply the authenticated user that is designed to be returned to this service. In other words, if you decide to configure CAS to return a particular attribute as the authenticated user name for this service, that value will then be used to construct the Name ID along with the right format.

Dynamic Metadata

CAS also supports the Dynamic Metadata Query Protocol which is a REST-like API for requesting and receiving arbitrary metadata. In order to configure a CAS SAML service to retrieve its metadata from a Metadata query server, the metadata location must be configured to point to the query server instance. Here is an example:

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{
  "@class" : "org.apereo.cas.support.saml.services.SamlRegisteredService",
  "serviceId" : "the-entity-id-of-the-sp",
  "name" : "SAMLService",
  "id" : 10000003,
  "evaluationOrder" : 10,
  "metadataLocation" : "http://mdq.server.org/entities/{0}"
}

…where {0} serves as an entityID placeholder for which metadata is to be queried.

SP Integrations

A number of SAML2 service provider integrations are provided natively by CAS. To learn more, please review this guide.

Troubleshooting

To enable additional logging, modify the logging configuration file to add the following:

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<AsyncLogger name="org.opensaml" level="debug" additivity="false">
    <AppenderRef ref="console"/>
    <AppenderRef ref="file"/>
</AsyncLogger>