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root/ (default content roles, i.e. no roles for anyone)
├── object A (everyone => reader; johndoe => admin)
│ └── │ ├── datastream 1 (johndoe => admin)
│ └── object A (everyone => reader; johndoe => admin)
├── object B (everyone => reader; johndoe => admin)
└── object C
...
- Container Authentication: A user comes into the system. They are assigned one or more principals:
- If they authenticate through some authentication gateway, then their principal may be generated from some of the person's attributes;
- Whether they authenticate or not, the request will be assigned a default "everyone" principal
- Fedora Principal Factory Extensions: Principal factory extensions may bring in more principals after authentication, such as groups, from sources like LDAP.
- Fedora Roles PEP Queries for Assigned Roles on Content: What roles have been assigned?
- The authorization layer queries the requested repository object(s) for any content-assigned roles.
- If none are found locally, then it will query each ancestor in turn until role assignments are found.
- If no role assignments are found in the tree of objects, then a default set of role assignments is used. (see object C above)
- Fedora Roles PEP - Role Resolution: What roles does this request have?
- Assigned roles are compared with the set of principals for the request. Any roles assigned to principals for the request are considered effective.
- At this point we have the effective access roles for this operation
- Fedora Roles PEP - Policy Enforcement: Does this role have permission to perform the requested action?
- Note: The Fedora PEP is an extension point, so enforcement will vary by the chosen implementation. We assume that installations will combine the access roles module with a roles-based PEP.
- The effective roles, assigned to the user on the content, are used to determine if the user has permission to perform the action on a given object.
- Basic Roles PEP implementation does permission checks in java code:
- Permission is determined by evaluating at a minimum the effective roles for the user on the object in question, and the action requested.
- In other roles-based PEP implementations, more factors may also enter into the equation to determine permission.
- The PEP will return a response to ModeShape, which will throw an exception to Fedora if access has been denied.
- Fedora will respond with a 403 if the given REST operation is denied.
- The one exception to this process is the fedoraAdmin container role. if the request has a fedoraAdmin user role (in the container), then no object checks are made. The PEP is not consulted as admins have permission to do everything. Objects will never have the fedoraAdmin role explicitly assigned to them, since it is a container role and not a content role. (e.g. a tomcat user role)
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