2008/11/19

Certificate-based logon to zOS

DCAS (zOS Communications Server's Digital Certificate Access Server) has come to my rescue. From the docs:

The DCAS can be used by providers of logon and single sign-on services where access to z/OS-based applications is needed. The DCAS is a TCP/IP server that enables clients to connect over the network and obtain a passticket and z/OS user ID from RACF.

Clients that connect to DCAS must use the SSL protocol (DCAS supports SSL Version 3). Client authentication is performed.

Clients can request a user ID and passticket for an application. The client sends an x.509 certificate. DCAS converts the x.509 certificate to a valid user ID, which is returned. The x.509 certificate must have been mapped to a valid user ID in RACF
It's the second time in a few months that DCAS is the solution to the problem that I'm working on; unfortunately, I had forgotten about the first time, so it has taken my a while to get rescued. Not a complete waste of time: if learned a few things about PKI and RACF.

The first time it was about a service to generate passtickets (strings that can be used as passwords for a short while). Despite my recommendation, the customer's choice was to not use DCAS and code it from scratch; go figure.

Now it is about authenticating to RACF from a application that uses a smartcard reader. I'm looking forward to code the smartcard-based RACF logon, since working with smartcards has been in my wish list for very long.

And since google and DCAS don't seem to be big friends, I'm posting this.

No hay comentarios: