Certificate Based Authentication
The CipherTrust Manager authenticates a user's login request by verifying the username and password against its internal database. The CipherTrust Manager can also be configured to authenticate login requests using browser-based web certificates. This section elaborates upon the steps that you need to perform to enable Certificate based Authentication for logging in the CipherTrust Manager.
Step 1: Enable the "Certificate based Login" Option for a User
Log on to CipherTrust Manager as an administrator. Navigate to Keys & Access management > Users.
Enable the "Certificate based Login" option for the user:
Note
For certificate based login to work in any domain for a user, the issuer CA of that user certificate must be added in the domain and
user_authentication
for that CA must be enabled.Note
The CipherTrust Manager supports fields such as Domain Component (DC) and Given Name (GN) in the Distinguished Name for certificate-based login. Local CAs do not support the DC and GN fields, so they cannot issue certificates with these fields. Use external CA for issuing certificates with DC and GN fields.
Example:DC=DomainComponent,C=IN,ST= State,L=Location,O=Thales,OU=CipherTrust,GN=GivenName,CN=CommonName
Specifying a Common Name (CN) is mandatory for this feature to work. The entities must be specified carefully in this field, and separated by commas (,).
For example:O=Thales,OU=CipherTrust,CN=User_1
If Distinguished Name (DN) field contains values that are separated by comma, then those values must be followed by a backslash (\
).Caution
For example:
C=IN,ST=UP,L=Noida,O=CompanyName\,INC,OU=ENC,CN=testAs per RFC 5280, a multivalued RDN (for instance -
OU
) should be arranged in a sorted order (using octet string sort), that is, the values with the shorter lengths should come first followed by a lexicographic sorting.Note
All the certificates created by the CipherTrust Manager follow this arrangement.
For example:
While issuing certificate, if user provides the following subject DN as an input:O=Thales,OU=XipherTrust,OU=X,OU=CipherTrust,CN=User_1
The issued certificate will have the subject DN set as:O=Thales,OU=X,OU=CipherTrust,OU=XipherTrust,CN=User_1
For existing users:
Click the action button for that user, then click Manage.
Click CONFIGURE CERTIFICATE LOGIN. Select Allow user to login using certificate.
Specify Certificate Subject Distinguished Name for the user.
Click Update Certificate Login.
For new users:
Click Create New User. Specify Username and Password for the user.
Select Allow user to login using certificate.
Specify Certificate Subject Distinguished Name for the user.
Click Create.
Step 2: Create and Download the Web Certificate
If using Local CA
Go to CA > Local.
Click Add Local CA.
Enter the Common Name for this certificate.
Note
This common name should be the same common name that was specified while creating the user ("User_1" in previous example).
Select desired algorithm (RSA or ECDSA).
In the Name (comma separated) field, specify the same details that were specified in the Certificate Subject Distinguished Name field while creating the user.
Click Add Local CA.
Under Name, click the link of the newly generated local CA.
Click Issue Certificate.
Enter the Common Name for this certificate.
Note
This common name should be the same common name that you specified while creating the user.
Select the desired algorithm (RSA or ECDSA).
In the Name field, specify the same details that you specified in the
certificate_subject_dn
property of the user.Click Issue Certificate.
Click save private key to download the key.pem file.
Click Issue Certificate. The newly created certificate is displayed in the certificates list.
Download the certificate issued by the local CA and save it at the same location where the private key is saved.
If using External CA
Upload the external CA.
Navigate to Admin Settings > System > Interface. The Interface Configuration page is displayed.
Click the action button on the Web Interface Configuration, select Edit.
Add the new external CA in the External Trusted CAs section. Click Update.
Navigate to Admin Settings > System > Services.
Restart the web service.
Note
Restarting the web service can take few seconds.
Step 3: Create and Install pkcs12 Formatted Certificate
Install OpenSSL on your machine.
Use the following command to convert the key and certificate into a pkcs12 formatted .pfx file:
openssl pkcs12 -export -out example.pfx -inkey key.pem -in certificate.pem
Where:
key.pem is the private key
certificate.pem is the certificate file
example.pfx is the pkcs12 formatted web certificate that will be installed in the web browser
This creates a .pfx certificate (example.pfx in the above command) at the same location.
Go to the web browser's settings.
Import and install the .pfx certificate.
You can now use the web certificate for logging on to CipherTrust Manager. Before logging on, you will be prompted to select the web certificate at the login page.
Note
After performing the above steps, if you are not prompted by the browser to select the certificate at login page, then clear your browser's cookies and try again.
Note
Currently, this feature is applicable to local users only. LDAP users are not supported.
Note
CipherTrust Manager verifies the revocation status of the certificate using the Certificate Revocation List (CRL) method before login. If the certificate is revoked, the CipherTrust Manager returns an unauthorized error message stating "cannot log in the user with a revoked certificate". In case, CRL URL is not reachable, then the CipherTrust Manager logs a message and lets the user login successfully.