Part 2: SSL Configuration with Oracle Wallet Manager and SSO

In our last post, we introduced the concepts of SSL for Oracle Fusion Middleware with Oracle 10gAS in terms of concepts with how to manage the certificate authority (CA) with SSL and the Oracle Certificate Authority (OCA) server.

Upon a review of support notes from Oracle Metalink, the following notes will come in useful for our in depth analysis and review of how to manage SSL with Oracle 10gAS:


Note: 351341.1 - How To Setup and Configure SSO/OHS for SSL
Note 351340.1 - How To Create SSL Wallet Using Wallet Manager and Oracle Certificate Authority
Note 351365.1 - How To Set up and Configure SSO and OIDDAS to use SSL


I highly recommend that all Oracle DBAs and analysts read and digest these Metalink support notes before you configure SSL for Oracle 10g Application Server so that problems are avoided and success ensured for your SSL administration tasks. By doing so, you will prevent many headaches and avoid potential gotchas. I usually make a point to read the release notes and Metalink notes before I perform a major task for a new environment as it saves me hours of frustration. Since we are using a demo lab based environment, some of these tasks from Metalink will not apply but the key concepts still are valid. Now lets move on from where we left off last time which is to configure the Oracle Wallet Manager (OWM) environment so that we can setup a new set of wallets for our certificates for use with SSL and Oracle 10g Application Server.

Now that we have setup our Oracle Certificate Authority (OCA) to use trusted certificates for SSL connections, we can proceed to configure new wallets with Oracle Wallet Manager (OWM) for Oracle 10g Application Server. In contrast to the OCA administration pages located under https://server:/oca/admin we need to check on the user OCA pages by navigating to the pages for user certificates under https://server:/oca/user as shown below figure example.





This differs from the OCA administrator site that provides maintenance options for certificate management with the Oracle certificate authority (OCA) in that user certificates can be viewed and managed on the user site.




From the user menu sitre we can trust and view the certificates to be authenticated by Oracle 10g Application server.
We can also import the Certificate Revoke Lists (CRL) that we saw earlier.



Now lets try to see if our previous certificate is accepted when we attempt to connect to SSO and OCA via SSL.
We click on the right tab option for User Certificates



We try the option by using our existing certificate



OK, so we have several things that we can do from this screen. We can examine the certificate in further detail as well as update the CRL (Certificate Revocation list), get the certificate, as well as change authentication options.

If we choose to get our certificate we can update options for managing our certificate. Now, we need to configure our server side certificate options. For this task, we need to use the Oracle Wallet Manager (OWM)

Oracle Wallet Manager (OWM)


So at this point you are probably wondering, what exactly does this Oracle Wallet Manager (OWM) do and why do I need it? Well, the Oracle Wallet Manager (OWM) is an integral component of SSL authentication. As such, it performs the following key tasks for Identity Management with Oracle 10g Application Server for SSL:

- generates public/private key pair
- creates certificate request
- installs certificates
- configures trusted certificates
- creates the wallet which is accessed by the Oracle Wallet Manager (OWM)
- uploads contents of wallet to LDAP directory systems such as Oracle Internet Directory (OID)
- imports and exports wallets

The Oracle Wallet Manager tool (OWM) is located under $ORACLE_HOME/bin directory for the Oracle 10gAS Infrastructure environment. New wallets must use a password based on the following standard of minimum 8 characters with at least one alphabetic and numeric or special character. The OWM users trusted and user based certificates. One caveat is that you need to install a trusted certificate first before using a user certificate issued by the certificate authority (CA). Wallets can be exported and imported as well. We also will need to configure our end user web browser to trust the OCA. This varies based on your browser version and configuration. We will provide an example of this shortly.

We also need to enable the Oracle HTTP (Apache 1.3) server (OHS) to use SSL. This will be discussed in the third installment for SSL and Oracle 10gAS. Finally, we need to use the SSL configuration tool to automate changes for securing HTTP. Furthernmore, we need to add user certificates to the Oracle Internet Directory (OID) via the ldapmodify command or via an ldif file.


Since we are using a single web browser for our lab environment and Mozilla Firefox in this case, we need to clear out old certificates before we configure a new wallet for Oracle 10g Application Server. We also need to enable Mozilla Firefox to accept certificates. Under our browser window we need to EDIT->PREFERENCES which brings up the options for certificates.



Make sure to select the option for "Ask Every Time" otherwise errors may occur for our certificate authentication processing.
We also need to clean out old OCA web administrator certificates from previous tasks. To do this, we need to stop and restart our OCA server. We can use the $ORACLE_HOME/oca/bin/ocactl stop then $ORACLE_HOME/oca/bin/ocactl revokecert and then restart OCA server with the $ORACLE_HOME/oca/bin/ocactl start command as shown in the following example.





Now we are all set and ready to create a new wallet! To start the Oracle Wallet Manager (OWM) we simply open another terminal shell command window and execute the owm from $ORACLE_HOME/bin directory



From the main OWM screen, we can perform many tasks such as creating new wallets, importing or exporting wallets just to name a few tasks. Now let's create a new wallet.



Oracle Wallet Manager (OWM) asks us if we wish to create a new default wallet. We choose Yes and it complains that it cannot create a default wallet in the system directory with message of "Unable to create system default wallet directory."



We continue anyways and ignore the error warning message




Now we need to enter a wallet password and choose authentication option




We have a choice between standard wallet type of PKCS11 wallet type that we discussed earlier. Lets keep with standard wallet type for sake of simplicity.



Our wallet is created successfully and OWM asks us if we would like to create a new certificate request to link to the new wallet. Since we need to do this, we enter the following details for our new certificate request. We choose to keep the default key size to 1024 bits.



We confirm our choices for the new certificate request and click the OK button.

Now we can see that the new certificate request has been successfully created by OWM.



We still need to submit the certificate for acceptance to the OCA via the user pages that we saw earlier.
To view and obtain the details for our new certificate created by OWM we can examine the details under the menu tree for Wallet-> Certificate [Requested] as shown in the figure example below:




What we need to do is to clear entries from the web browser so that old certificates do not appear since we want to login to the OCA as a user and not as an administrator.





Also be sure to delete old certificates to avoid problems since in our test environment we have a single web browser and server used. Now we need to return back to our OWM window that had the certificate details from our newly created certificate request. Open a new browser window in tandem with having OWM open and connect to the Oracle Certificate Authority User page via SSL based on https://host_name.:/oca/user

In our case, we connect to SSL port 6600





Now we need to copy the certificate details from our new certificate request from OWM from BEGIN NEW CERTIFICATE REQUEST until END NEW CERTIFICATE REQUEST

Move back to the User OCA page and click on Request a new certificate on the Server/SubCA Certificates tab





Now we need to choose the option "Request A Certificate"

Paste the new certificate request encrypted details from OWM into the main field as shown below






Enter personal information in the fields and click OK to submit the request to the OCA.



Now we need to generate the server certificate. Click the Submit button. We verify that it is accepted by the OCA



Our certificate request has been accepted and stored in the OID server. Now we can exit OWM and need to approve the new certificate request from the OCA Administration page. We can cancel saving the new wallet as that is not required. Now lets take a look at how to approve the new certificate request.

Since we are doing this on same server and web browser we need to shutdown the OCA server, revoke old admin certificates, remove them from our browser and restart the OCA services.




We now see the new certificate details for review to either approve or reject the requests




Lets go ahead and approve the new certificate request by View Details






When we submit approval the OCA prompts us once more to make sure we wish to approve the new certificate request





Our new certificate request is approved status and shown below




Now we can verify that the newly created certificate request is available with OCA




We can also verify the encoded certificate details given in BASE64 format:




We will continue our setup for SSL with Oracle 10g Application server in the next installment as the final steps require us to modify configuration to the OHS (Oracle HTTP Server aka Apache 1.3).

Part 1: How to Configure SSL for Oracle 10g Application Server: Part I- Certificate Authority (OCA)

As a subset of Identity Management for Oracle 10g Application Server with Fusion Middleware, we will provide a brief two part series on how to manage SSL. In this post, we will discuss how to setup, configure and manage the Secure Socket Layer (SSL) security within Oracle 10g Application Server. The first part will be to configure the Oracle Certificate Authority (OCA) for use with certificates and the second part involves how to setup and manage wallets with the Oracle Wallet Manager for certificates with SSL and Oracle 10g Application Server. We will provide a four part series on SSL since it is an extremely complex subject within Identity Management (IdM) for Oracle Fusion Middleware.

Part 1: Concepts for SSL and Oracle Certification Authority (OCA)
Part 2: SSL Configuration with OCA and Oracle Wallet Manager (OWM)
Part 3: OHS (Oracle HTTP Server) Configuration for SSL
Part 4: Additional topics for SSL with OracleAS 10g such as EBS


Concepts for SSL and Oracle 10gAS PKI


The Oracle Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) is the big picture for managing certificates within Oracle Fusion Middleware components. PKI consists of the following items:

- Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)
- Oracle Wallet Manager (OWM), containers and wallets
- the Oracle Internet Directory (OID) and Oracle 10g Application Server Single Sign On (SSO)

We have discussed most of these components already for OID and SSO. However, before we manage to discuss the details for SSL configuration with Oracle 10gAS, we need to first understand how to configure the Oracle Certificate Authority (OCA) and Oracle Wallet Manager (OWM).

Understanding Certificates with Oracle PKI Components for 10gAS


Digital certificates are electronic documents that establish security credentials for transactions within Oracle 10gAS including Oracle 10g Portal, Reports, and Discoverer applications. Each certificate contains the username and digital signature from the issuing certificate authority (CA). We have a few different types of certificates:

- Client based certificates: also known as end-entity certificates which contain personal or user certificates
- Web server certificates contain server side digital signature for secure web communications between servers.
- root authority certificates are self signed certificates which form the base or root of a certificate authority (CA).

What is a certificate authority (CA) ? A certificate authority is a third party such as Verisign that provides the verified credentials for an organization and issues the security certificates used for all SSL connections. This CA performs the authentication of the user's certificate identity so that it is trusted within the 10g Application server environment. Oracle 10gAS provides a utility called the Oracle Certificate Authority (OCA) which administers and manages these certificates. After the certificate is available it needs a storage place for safe keeping and reference during 10gAS processing of transactions. Here is where the Oracle Wallet Manager (OWM) utility comes into play. We have two choices where to store these trusted certificates: in an LDAP directory system or a wallet manager. The Oracle Wallet Manager (OWM) allows us to store these certificates in a repository schema located in the 10gAS Infrastructure database for safe keeping. We can use the PKCS #12 (Personal Information Exchange Syntax) standard if we so wish as part of the certification process. The Oracle Wallet Manager (OWM) allows us to manage the security credentials for clients and servers.

How Does SSL Work?


The SSL process operates in the following series of steps to provide secure communication between the user's client and Oracle 10g Application Server.

1. An end user connects to the 10g Application Server and submits a request on the SSL port via HTTPS protocol.

2. The server verifies the user's identity by signing the certificate and sending it back to the client

3. The client end user will use the server public key to verify that the owner of the certificate is indeed the same user who signed it. If the certificate authority (CA) credentials are unknown, the end user client browser replies that the certificate was issued by an unknown CA.

4. The user manually verifies that the site certificate has been issued by a trusted authority ie) Verisign and generates a encypted token using the server's public key.

5. The certificate is sent back to the server and SSL performs a handshake operation based on the cipher in the public key. If the session keys match, the certificate is accepted and the end user is able to access the Oracle 10g Application server applicatons via SSL.

The Oracle Certificate Authority (OCA) verifies all details of the operations for SSL with the SSO and OID servers during this process. Now that we have provided an introduction to SSL and Oracle PKI security, lets present some hands on examples of how to configure certificates for SSL with the Oracle Certificate Authority (OCA).

Setup and Configuration for Oracle Certificate Authority (OCA)


By default, after installing the Oracle 10gAS infrastructure components for Oracle 10g Application Server, the OCA is not started. As such, we need to start and verify the processes for the OCA.

By default, the OCA configuration files live under the $ORACLE_HOME/oca/conf directory for the 10gAS infrastructure.

We need to startup the OCA by using the ocactl utility located under $ORACLE_HOME/oca/bin. Once we start the OCA processes by executing the ocactl start command, we are ready to configure the certificates for Oracle 10gAS.




To get help on using the ocactl commands, we have the following example:





The oca.xml file contains the main settings for the configuration of the OCA for Oracle 10g Application server as shown in the following example.



You can edit the file with any XML editor utility.
Since OCA relies on wallets to store the various PKI credentials and password storage area for passwords. The OCA requires the certificate authority (CA) signing wallet as well as the CA SSL wallet. The CA signing wallet is created by the Oracle 10gAS installer or can be imported from another CA to setup a custom CA structure. The new wallet along with the signed key and certificate are signed by the new CA. The SSL certificate authority wallet is created by the 10gAS installer when you install 10g Application Server components for the Infrastructure. It contains the SSL certificate and private key for the SSL server that hosts the OCA. This SSL wallet can also be imported from another certificate authority (CA) or managed by the Oracle Wallet Manager (OWM) utility.

To access the OCA interface from within Oracle 10g Application Server, we can navigate to the 10gAS home page for OCA based on https://server:/oca/admin as shown in the following example.



We can also check the details from the main 10gAS application server infrastructure page for OCA operations.



Now lets return to the main OCA interface that we discussed earlier. The first step for configuration after we have started the OCA processes with 10g Application Server is to setup the enrollment process for certificates.




The fields with asterisks are required by OCA. Here we use ocawebadmin as our user with ABC
for the organization. We also have options below to setup the certificate information.




We can set the time period for the certificate from 6months to 5 years. We also have an option to set the certificate key size to either high grade or medium grade based on our security and encryption policy standards. We finalize our setup and click the submit button which will process our new certificate details as shown below.



Now that we have our OCA certificate for administration tasks, we need to import it into our web browser! To do so, we choose the option below to install in browser.



Once we have successfully added the new certificate to our browser, we save the backup copy and return to our main OCA administration page to verify all certificates and their status. Since this was a test certificate that we used previously, OCA rejected our new certificate request. So we will need to revoke all certificates by using the ocactl revokecert command. In the next post, we will cover these tasks in more detail to complete our coverage for SSL with Oracle 10g Application Server. In a nutshell the reason why this failed was because the certificate also needs to exist in the Oracle Wallet Manager (OWM). If the certificate cannot be found by OWM, it will be rejected by the OCA. So we will need to clear out all certificate requests and recreate a new wallet and certificate for SSL to be used by the Oracle 10g Application Server. We conclude this introduction to SSL configuration with a summary display of the main OCA administration page for certificate management.

The first general pages provides us with options to manage and configure certificates and certificate requests.



When we first access the general tab, the certificate will popup to ask us if we trust it or not as confirmation.
We have many options here to configure and publish the certificate with SSL. We can enable or disable SSL and/or SSO authentication for our certificates as well as configure directory settings for the LDAP OID server. We also have a Notification tab to setup our SMTP server for emailing alerts and messages to the OCA administrator.



If we need to change policy settings for managing our certificates, we navigate to the Policy tab for the OCA Administration web console.




We can set policy rules for certificates based on requests, revocations or renewals. Under the Certificate Management tasks menu, we can also update our Certificate Revocation List (CRL).




We have menu options to enter the number of days to keep the certificate revocation list valid in days (CRL Validity)
as well as the Signature Algorithm choice between SHA1 with RSA or MD5 with RSA.




On a final note for our introduction to SSL with Oracle 10gAS, there is an option to customize the certification practice statement issued by the OCA within Oracle 10g Application Server applications. By editing the ocaadmin_cs_practicestmt.html file located under $ORACLE_HOME/j2ee/oca/applications/oca/helpsets/oca_practice_stmt, IT security administrators can have a department message issued by Corporate IT security as part of the messaging system.

We will conclude our discussion of SSL for Oracle 10gAS in our next post by explaining the setup and configuration of the Oracle Wallet Manager (OWM) with the Oracle Certificate Authority (OCA) for SSL.

Single Sign On (SSO) Server Configuration for Oracle 10gAS Application Server

This week, we continue our Fusion Middleware series with a discussion on how to configure and manage Oracle 10gAS Single Sign On (SSO) with Portal. Compared to the complex nature of OID and SSL, Single Sign On is fairly straight forward and simple to configure and administer. We will provide a summary of how SSO works within 10gAS and Portal and then some exercises to configure, administer and monitor its operations with Oracle 10gAS (10.1.2.0.2) on Linux platform.


How Does Single Sign On Work?

Single Sign On (SSO) is part of the Oracle 10gAS identity management (IdM) technology that is stored within the Oracle 10g Application Server database repository called the Infrastructure. The way it works is based on the concept of web browser cookies which are authenticated by the Oracle 10gAS server and reciprocated to partner and external applications on the end user web browser. Partner applications are internal web based applications such as Oracle 10g Portal, Forms and Reports within the Oracle 10gAS application server environment. In other words, users accessing applications within Oracle Application Server must be authenticated by the Oracle 10gAS Single Sign On Server. External applications are third party external web based applications that can be included in the 10gAS environment in terms of authentication via single sign on. Single Sign On (SSO) is based on the mod_osso module of the OHS (Oracle HTTP Server ie: Apache 1.3.x) within the Oracle 10gAS application server. Getting back to the difference between partner applications and external applications in terms of how SSO behaves is that external applications retain their usernames and passwords without delegating responsibility for authentication to the SSO server.

mod_osso and SSO


The mod_osso module is contained within the OHS (Oracle HTTP Server) and transmits simple header values to Oracle 10g Application Server applications as part of user validation and authentication procedures. These header values include the following:
-username
-userid GUID
- language information
- user DN (distinguished name) used with OID (Oracle Internet Directory)

The SSO server issues a challenge to the application and once the user and application have been authenticated, the redirect occurs back to the user browser which sets the SSO cookie in the user's browser with the authorization token. Now that we have given the summary on SSO concepts, lets examine how to setup, configure and administer a basic SSO environment with Oracle 10gAS (10.1.2.0.2) and Portal on Linux (OEL 5.3) platform.

Configure Single Sign On Server (SSO)


Single Sign On server (SSO) is composed of the OHS module mod_osso which provides a database access descriptor (DAD) that is stored as metadata configuration information in the Oracle 10gAS infrastructure database. SSO interfaces with OC4J (Oracle Container for Java) and OHS (Oracle HTTP Server or Oracle's implementation of Apache 1.3) to provide the mechanism for single user and password access to Portal and other Oracle 10g Application Server applications.

Single Sign On Concepts


Single Sign On (SSO) Server provides the mechanism for users to logon to Oracle Portal and Oracle Application Server applications by using a single username and password which is stored in the user's browser via a SSO cookie that has been authenticated against the SSO server. The components of Single Sign On (SSO) for Oracle 10gAS are the mod_osso module based in the OHS (Oracle HTTP Server) which is Oracle's version of the popular Apache 1.3 web server as well as metadata in the Oracle 10gAS infrastructure database.

How to Configure Single Sign On Server (SSO) for Oracle 10g Application Server


Our examples will user Oracle 10gAS (10.1.2.0.2) release on Linux (OEL 5.3) platform.
The following access point in Oracle 10g Application Server allows us to configure the SSO server.






In the below main screen for Oracle 10gAS we can view the main components for Single Sign On (SSO) Server:



Single Sign On Server provides many customization options for both partner and external applications. Partner applications are authenticated directly from within Oracle 10gAS while external applications have their own username and password authentication which are registered to the SSO server. Portal is a partner application for example. Now to view the status of the SSO server within the Oracle 10gAS infrastructure, we can navigate to the SSO server status:



From here we can monitor the status of SSO server operations including tracking any failed user logons authenticated against the Oracle 10gAS environment. Next, lets examine how to configure SSO Server settings for Oracle 10gAS.


This allows us to change settings for Single Sign On session duration as well as an additional session
policy setting that requires us to verify IP addresses for requests made to the SSO server.




For managing applications with Single Sign On (SSO) Server, we can access the link to Partner and External Applications as shown below.

For example, if we wish to modify configuration for exiting Portal applications, we can select the edit Partner application as follows.



Now the following options appear for Partner application configuration with SSO server.






Here we have a plethora of configuration options for our Portal based applications for Oracle 10g Application Server with SSO.
We can configure our URL settings as well as login timeframe details as well as application administrator account information. Now let's examine how to add and manage external applications with Single Sign On Server (SSO) for Oracle 10gAS.





Here we have many options for the URL and additional configuration settings for external applications with SSO.
Of particular interest to us is the login URL, username and password field name as well as the next subheading below
for Authentication Method for SSO with the external application. We have a few options here: POST, GET or BASIC AUTHENTICATION. Let's offer a brief explanation of these three methods below.

-POST allows data to be posted to the Single Sign On (SSO) server and submits login credentials within the body of the application form.

- GET presents the page request to the server and submits the login credentials in the application part of the URL

- BASIC AUTHENTICATION submits the login credentials within the application's
URL protected by HTTP basic authentication.

How to Access SSO Server from Oracle Portal


During installation for a midtier application server instance with Portal, Oracle automatically adds Portal as one of the
new partner applications for SSO. We can access SSO server from Portal as shown below.



Of note is to choose the second main section that shows Edit SSO Server Administration.

Single Sign On is simple to configure and administer. It is easier to manage and setup than the far more complex
items within Oracle Identity Manage such as OID and SSL which require far more steps. To monitor SSO server components from the operating system, we can use the OPMN (Oracle Process Monitor and Notification) facility. The command to obtain a status check for all of the Oracle 10gAS components is to run opmnctl status as shown in the following example.



Here we want to make sure that OC4J_SECURITY, OID, OC4J_Portal, and OID are in Alive status or SSO Server will not function correctly. We will provide future discussions on Oracle Fusion Middleware topics for Troubleshooting Oracle 10gAS, Webcache, Performance tuning and additional topics on Identity Management as well as coverage of the newest member of the Oracle Application Server family: Weblogic. Stay tuned!

Cheers,
Ben