7.4. Authorization policies

The scope authorization provides means to define what should happen if a user proved his identity and authenticated successfully.

Authorization policies take the realm, the user and the client into account.

Technically the authorization policies apply to the Validate endpoints and are checked using Policy Module and Policy Decorators.

The following actions are available in the scope authorization:

7.4.1. tokentype

type: string

Users will only be authorized with this very tokentype. The string can hold a comma separated list of case insensitive tokentypes.

This is checked after the authentication request, so that a valid OTP value is wasted, so that it can not be used, even if the user was not authorized at this request

Note

Combining this with the client IP you can use this to allow remote access to sensitive areas only with one special token type while allowing access to less sensitive areas with other token types.

7.4.2. serial

type: string

Users will only be authorized with the serial number. The string can hold a regular expression as serial number.

This is checked after the authentication request, so that a valid OTP value is wasted, so that it can not be used, even if the user was not authorized at this request

Note

Combining this with the client IP you can use this to allow remote access to sensitive areas only with hardware tokens like the Yubikey, while allowing access to less secure areas also with a Google Authenticator.

7.4.3. setrealm

type: string

This policy is checked before the user authenticates. The realm of the user matching this policy will be set to the realm in this action.

Note

This can be used if the user can not pass his realm when authenticating at a certain client, but the realm needs to be available during authentication since the user is not located in the default realm.

7.4.4. no_detail_on_success

type: bool

Usually an authentication response returns additional information like the serial number of the token that was used to authenticate or the reason why the authentication request failed.

If this action is set and the user authenticated successfully this additional information will not be returned.

7.4.5. no_detail_on_fail

type: bool

Usually an authentication response returns additional information like the serial number of the token that was used to authenticate or the reason why the authentication request failed.

If this action is set and the user fails to authenticate this additional information will not be returned.

7.4.6. api_key_required

type: bool

This policy is checked before the user is validated.

You can create an API key, that needs to be passed to use the validate API. If an API key is required, but no key is passed, the authentication request will not be processed. This is used to avoid denial of service attacks by a rogue user sending arbitrary requests, which could result in the token of a user being locked.

You can also define a policy with certain IP addresses without issuing API keys. This would result in “blocking” those IP addresses from using the validate endpoint.

You can issue API keys like this:

pi-manage api createtoken -r validate

The API key (Authorization token) which is generated is valid for 365 days.

The authorization token has to be used as described in Authentication endpoints.

7.4.7. auth_max_success

type: string

Here you can specify how many successful authentication requests a user is allowed to perform during a given time. If this value is exceeded, the authentication attempt is canceled.

Specify the value like 2/5m meaning 2 successful authentication requests per 5 minutes. If during the last 5 minutes 2 successful authentications were performed the authentication request is discarded. The used OTP value is invalidated.

Allowed time specifiers are s (second), m (minute) and h (hour).

7.4.8. auth_max_fail

type: string

Here you can specify how many failed authentication requests a user is allowed to perform during a given time.

If this value is exceeded, authentication is not possible anymore. The user will have to wait.

If this policy is not defined, the normal behaviour of the failcounter applies. (see Reset Fail Counter)

Specify the value like 2/1m meaning 2 successful authentication requests per minute. If during the last 5 minutes 2 successful authentications were performed the authentication request is discarded. The used OTP value is invalidated.

Allowed time specifiers are s (second), m (minute) and h (hour).

7.4.9. last_auth

type: string

You can define if an authentication should fail, if the token was not successfully used for a certain time.

Specify a value like 12h, 123d or 2y to disallow authentication, if the token was not successfully used for 12 hours, 123 days or 2 years.

The date of the last successful authentication is store in the tokeninfo field of a token and denoted in UTC.