Methods
| StartMechanism | (s: Mechanism) | → | nothing | |
| StartMechanismWithData | (s: Mechanism, ay: Initial_Data) | → | nothing | |
| Respond | (ay: Response_Data) | → | nothing | |
| Accept | () | → | nothing | |
| Abort | (u: Reason, s: Debug_Message) | → | nothing |
Signals
| StatusChanged | (u: Status, s: Reason, a{sv}: Details) | |
| NewChallenge | (ay: Challenge_Data) |
Properties
| AvailableMechanisms | as (SASL_Mechanism_List) | Read only | Immutable | |
| HasInitialData | b | Read only | Immutable | |
| CanTryAgain | b | Read only | Immutable | |
| Secure | b | Read only | Immutable | |
| SASLStatus | u (SASL_Status) | Read only | ||
| SASLError | s (DBus_Error_Name) | Read only | ||
| SASLErrorDetails | a{sv} (String_Variant_Map) | Read only | ||
| AuthorizationIdentity | s | Read only | Immutable | |
| DefaultRealm | s | Read only | Immutable | |
| ExtraContext | a{sv} (String_Variant_Map) | Read only | Immutable |
Types
| SASL_Mechanism | Simple Type | s | |
| SASL_Abort_Reason | Enum | u | |
| SASL_Status | Enum | u |
Description
A channel interface for SASL authentication, as defined by RFC 4422. When this interface appears on a ServerAuthentication.DRAFT2 channel, it represents authentication with the server. In future, it could also be used to authenticate with secondary services, or even to authenticate end-to-end connections with contacts.
In any protocol that requires a password, the connection manager can use this channel to let a user interface carry out a simple SASL-like handshake with it, as a way to get the user's credentials interactively. This can be used to connect to protocols that may require a password, without requiring that the password is saved in the Account.Parameters.
In some protocols, such as XMPP, authentication with the server is also carried out using SASL. In these protocols, a channel with this interface can provide a simple 1:1 mapping of the SASL negotiations taking place in the protocol, allowing more advanced clients to perform authentication via SASL mechanisms not known to the connection manager.
Rationale:
By providing SASL directly when the protocol supports it, we can
use mechanisms like Kerberos or Google's X-GOOGLE-TOKEN
without specific support in the connection manager.
For channels managed by a ChannelDispatcher, only the channel's Handler may call the methods on this interface. Other clients MAY observe the authentication process by watching its signals and properties.
Rationale:
There can only be one Handler, which is a good fit for SASL's 1-1 conversation between a client and a server.
If a channel with this interface is closed with the Close method before authentication has succeeded, this indicates that the Handler has given up its attempts to authenticate or that no Handler is available.
If a ServerAuthentication channel with this interface is closed, the connection manager MAY attempt to authenticate by using any credentials passed to RequestConnection, for instance from the Account.Parameters. If this fails or has already been tried, the Connection will disconnect.
Rationale:
In particular, the ChannelDispatcher will close this channel if it cannot find a handler.
Methods
StartMechanism (s: Mechanism) → nothing
Parameters
- Mechanism — s (SASL_Mechanism)
Start an authentication try using Mechanism, without sending initial data (an "initial response" as defined in RFC 4422).
Rationale:
This method is appropriate for mechanisms where the client
cannot send anything until it receives a challenge from the
server, such as DIGEST-MD5.
Possible Errors
- Not Available
- Network Error
- Not Implemented
StartMechanismWithData (s: Mechanism, ay: Initial_Data) → nothing
Parameters
- Mechanism — s (SASL_Mechanism)
- Initial_Data — ay
Start an authentication try using Mechanism, and send Initial_Data as the "initial response" defined in RFC 4422 §3.3.
If the underlying protocol does not make it possible to send initial data, this method will fail.
Rationale:
This method is appropriate for mechanisms where the client may
send data first, such as PLAIN.
Having two methods allows any mechanism where it makes a difference to distinguish between the absence of an initial response (StartMechanism) and a zero-byte initial response (StartMechanismWithData, with Initial_Data empty).
Possible Errors
- Not Available
- Network Error
- Not Implemented
Respond (ay: Response_Data) → nothing
Parameters
- Response_Data — ay
Send a response to the the last challenge received via NewChallenge.
Possible Errors
- Not Available
- Network Error
Accept () → nothing
If the channel's status is SASL_Status_Server_Succeeded, this method confirms successful authentication and advances the status of the channel to SASL_Status_Succeeded.
If the channel's status is SASL_Status_In_Progress, calling this method indicates that the last NewChallenge signal was in fact additional data sent after a successful SASL negotiation, and declares that from the client's point of view, authentication was successful. This advances the state of the channel to SASL_Status_Client_Accepted.
In mechanisms where the server authenticates itself to the client, calling this method indicates that the client considers this to have been successful.
Possible Errors
- Not Available
- Network Error
Abort (u: Reason, s: Debug_Message) → nothing
Parameters
- Reason — u (SASL_Abort_Reason)
- Debug_Message — s
Abort the current authentication try.
If the current status is SASL_Status_Server_Failed or SASL_Status_Client_Failed, this method returns successfully, but has no further effect. Otherwise, it changes the channel's state to SASL_Status_Client_Failed, with an appropriate error name and reason code.
Signals
StatusChanged (u: Status, s: Reason, a{sv}: Details)
Parameters
- Status — u (SASL_Status)
- Reason — s (DBus_Error_Name)
- Details — a{sv} (String_Variant_Map)
NewChallenge (ay: Challenge_Data)
Parameters
- Challenge_Data — ay
Emitted when a new challenge is received from the server, or when a message indicating successful authentication and containing additional data is received from the server.
When the channel's handler is ready to proceed, it should respond to the challenge by calling Respond, or respond to the additional data by calling Accept. Alternatively, it may call Abort to abort authentication.
Properties
AvailableMechanisms — as (SASL_Mechanism_List)
The SASL mechanisms as offered by the server, plus any
pseudo-SASL mechanisms supported by the connection manager for
credentials transfer. For instance, in a protocol that
natively uses SASL (like XMPP), this might be
[ "X-TELEPATHY-PASSWORD", "PLAIN", "DIGEST-MD5",
"SCRAM-SHA-1" ].
To make it possible to implement a very simple password-querying
user interface without knowledge of any particular SASL mechanism,
implementations of this interface MUST implement the
pseudo-mechanism X-TELEPATHY-PASSWORD.
HasInitialData — b
CanTryAgain — b
If true, StartMechanism and (if supported) StartMechanismWithData can be expected to work when in one of the Failed states. If false, the only thing you can do after failure is to close the channel.
Rationale:
Retrying isn't required to work, although some protocols and implementations allow it.
Secure — b
True if this authentication process occurs over a secure
connection, e.g. one where TLS was previously negotiated.
Clients MAY use this property to decide whether the
PLAIN mechanism is acceptable, for instance.
SASLStatus — u (SASL_Status)
SASLError — s (DBus_Error_Name)
The reason for the SASLStatus, or an empty string if the state is neither Server_Failed nor Client_Failed.
In particular, an ordinary authentication failure (as would be produced for an incorrect password) SHOULD be represented by AuthenticationFailed, cancellation by the user's request SHOULD be represented by Cancelled, and cancellation by a local process due to inconsistent or invalid challenges from the server SHOULD be represented by ServiceConfused.
If this interface appears on a ServerAuthentication.DRAFT2 channel, and connection to the server fails with an authentication failure, this error code SHOULD be copied into the Connection.ConnectionError signal.
SASLErrorDetails — a{sv} (String_Variant_Map)
If SASLError is non-empty, any additional information about the last disconnection; otherwise, the empty map. The keys and values are the same as for the second argument of Connection.ConnectionError.
If this interface appears on a ServerAuthentication.DRAFT2 channel, and connection to the server fails with an authentication failure, these details SHOULD be copied into the Connection.ConnectionError signal.
AuthorizationIdentity — s
The identity for which authorization is being attempted, typically the 'account' from the RequestConnection parameters, normalized and formatted according to the conventions used for SASL in this protocol.
Rationale:
The normalization used for SASL might not be the same normalization used elsewhere: for instance, in a protocol with email-like identifiers such as XMPP or SIP, the user "juliet@example.com" might have to authenticate to the example.com server via SASL PLAIN as "juliet".
This is usually achieved by using the authorization identity for authentication, but an advanced Handler could offer the option to authenticate under a different identity.
The terminology used here is that the authorization identity is who you want to act as, and the authentication identity is used to prove that you may do so. For instance, if Juliet is authorized to access a role account, "sysadmin@example.com", and act on its behalf, it might be possible to authenticate as "juliet@example.com" with her own password, but request to be authorized as "sysadmin@example.com" instead of her own account. See RFC 4422 §3.4.1 for more details.
Rationale:
In SASL the authorization identity is normally guessed from the authentication identity, but the information available to the connection manager is the identity for which authorization is required, such as the desired JID in XMPP, so that's what we signal to UIs; it's up to the UI to choose whether to authenticate as the authorization identity or some other identity.
As a concrete example, the "sysadmin" XMPP account mentioned
above would have { 'account': 'sysadmin@example.com' }
in its Parameters, and this property would also be
'sysadmin@example.com'. A simple Handler would
merely prompt for sysadmin@example.com's password,
and use that JID as both the authorization and authentication
identity, which might result in SASL PLAIN authentication with the
initial response
'\000sysadmin@example.com\000root'.
A more advanced Handler might also ask for an authentication identity, defaulting to 'sysadmin@example.com'; if Juliet provided authentication identity 'juliet@example.com' and password 'romeo', the Handler might perform SASL PLAIN authentication using the initial response 'sysadmin@example.com\000juliet@example.com\000romeo'.
DefaultRealm — s
The default realm (as defined in RFC 2831) to use for authentication, if the server does not supply one.
Rationale:
The server is not required to provide a realm; if it doesn't,
the client is expected to ask the user or provide a sensible
default, typically the requested DNS name of the server.
In some implementations of DIGEST-MD5, the
server does not specify a realm, but expects that the client
will choose a particular default, and authentication will
fail if the client's default is different. Connection
managers for protocols where this occurs are more easily able
to work around these implementations than a generic client
would be.
ExtraContext — a{sv} (String_Variant_Map)
Additional protocol- or mechanism-specific context for the authentication. Only one well-known key is currently defined:
- jabber-stream-id (string)
- The
idattribute of the XMPPstreamelement, as used in the digest mechanism historically used in Jabber.
Types
SASL_Mechanism — s
A SASL mechanism, as defined by
RFC 4422
and registered in
the
IANA registry of SASL mechanisms, or an unregistered
SASL mechanism such as X-GOOGLE-TOKEN used in the
same contexts.
As a special case, pseudo-mechanisms starting with
X-TELEPATHY- are defined by this specification.
Use of these pseudo-mechanisms indicates that the user's credentials
are to be passed to the connection manager, which will then use
them for authentication with the service, either by implementing
the client side of some SASL mechanisms itself or by using a
non-SASL protocol. The only such pseudo-mechanism currently
defined is X-TELEPATHY-PASSWORD.
The X-TELEPATHY-PASSWORD mechanism is extremely
simple:
- The client MUST call StartMechanismWithData, with Initial_Data set to the password encoded in UTF-8. For simplicity, calling StartMechanism followed by calling Respond is not allowed in this mechanism.
- The connection manager uses the password, together with authentication details from the Connection parameters, to authenticate itself to the server.
- When the connection manager finishes its attempt to authenticate to the server, the channel's state changes to either SASL_Status_Server_Succeeded or SASL_Status_Server_Failed as appropriate.
SASL_Abort_Reason — u
A reason why SASL authentication was aborted by the client.
- Invalid_Challenge (0)
- User_Abort (1)
SASL_Status — u
- Not_Started (0)
- In_Progress (1)
- Server_Succeeded (2)
- Client_Accepted (3)
- Succeeded (4)
- Server_Failed (5)
- Client_Failed (6)