webid-rsa

WebID-RSA authentication library in Go

Install

go get -u github.com/deiu/webid-rsa

Example

package main

import (
	"net/http"
	"github.com/deiu/webid-rsa"
)

func main() {
	handler := http.NewServeMux()

	handler.Handle("/admin", http.HandlerFunc(func(w http.ResponseWriter, req *http.Request) {
		user := ""
		authz := req.Header.Get("Authorization")
		if len(authz) > 0 {
			user, _ = webidrsa.Authenticate(req)
		}
		if len(user) == 0 {
			authn := webidrsa.NewAuthenticateHeader(req)
			w.Header().Set("WWW-Authenticate", authn)
			w.WriteHeader(401)
			return
		}

		w.Write([]byte(user))
		w.WriteHeader(200)
		return
	}))

	http.ListenAndServe(":8888", handler)
}

Protocol details

WebID-RSA is somewhat similar to WebID-TLS, in that a public RSA key is published in the WebID profile, and the user will sign a token with the corresponding private key that matches the public key in the profile.

The client receives a secure token from the server, which it signs and then sends back to the server. The implementation of WebID-RSA is similar to Digest access authentication in HTTP, in that it reuses similar headers.

Here is a step by step example that covers the authentication handshake.

First, a client attempts to access a protected resource at https://example.org/data/.

REQUEST:

GET /data/ HTTP/1.1
Host: example.org

RESPONSE:

HTTP/1.1 401 Unauthorized
WWW-Authenticate: WebID-RSA source="example.org", nonce="somethingSecure"

Next, the client sets the username value to the user's WebID and signs the SHA1 hash of the concatenated value of source + username + nonce before resending the request. The signature must use the PKCS1v15 standard and it must be base64 encoded.

It is important that clients return the proper source value they received from the server, in order to avoid man-in-the-middle attacks on non-HTTPS connections. Also note that the server must send it's own URI (source) together with the token, otherwise a MitM can forward the claim to the client; the server will also expect that clients return the same server URI.

REQUEST:

GET /data/ HTTP/1.1
Host: example.org
Authorization: WebID-RSA source="example.org",
                         username="https://alice.example.org/card#me",
                         nonce="somethingSecure",
                         sig="base64(sig(SHA1(SourceUsernameNonce)))"

RESPONSE:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK