Project Name:

• Proposed name for the project: Application Authorization Framework
• Proposed name for the repository: AAF

Project description:

• The goal of the project is to provide consistent authentication, authorization and security to various ONAP components. AAF organizes software authorizations so that applications, tools and services can match the access needed to perform job functions.  AAF is designed to cover Fine-Grained Authorization, meaning that the Authorizations provided are able to use an Application's detailed authorizations, such as whether a user may be on a particular page, or has access to a particular Pub-Sub topic controlled within the App. This is a critical function for Cloud environments, as Services need to be able to be installed and running in a very short time, and should not be encumbered with local configurations of Users, Permissions and Passwords. The sister framework CADI ( Code Access Data Identity ) allows Java Applications to utilize Identity Authentication methods as plugins. Certificate Manager delivers X.509 certificates in support of 2 way x509 TLS.

Scope:

The scope of the AAF project is a pluggable and extensible framework that

1. Organizes software authorizations so that applications, tools and services can match the access needed to perform job functions
2. Provides Enterprise Level Authentication and Authorization
3. Provides Role based authorization, including attribute-based authorization elements
4. The frameworks exposure layer should be consumable by any product or technology
5. The frameworks should be highly available with a resilient data store
6. Provides administration functions by GUI and management APIs
7. Provides consistent client plugins to access authentication and authorization frameworks functions
8. Provides support for multi-tenancy
9. Provides support for SSL Certificate management
10. Provides support for OAuth2
11. Support Microservices ( Docker/Kubernetes )
12. Provide hardware security plugin for storing private keys and for performing cryptography operations that require private keys
13. Management of Secrets and Protection of Secrets
    
    

CADI ( Code Access Data Identity) - Addresses the Runtime Elements of Access and Identity.

• Secure code by Reuse

• Defend Access with Authentication and Authorization

• Protect Data by ensuring TLS encryption over the wire

• Ensure Apps protect resources for each Identity

• CADI can handle multiple Authentication Protocols in the same service
• Client Side Caching for Speed and less network access

Certificate Manager :

• Creates certificates.
• Eliminates Expiration Risk with Auto-Renewal

Entities within AAF

Namespaces

A Namespace, in AAF, is the ensemble of Roles, Permissions and Identities. Namespaces are known by domain, example com.onap.dcae or com.onap.appc and they are hierarchically managed.

A Namespace is assigned to an application. A namespace contains one or more roles and one or more permissions. By default, every namespace has an admin role

People in Namespaces

Tasks that the Owner (Responsible) must perform:

• Owners receive by email a notification to Approve. 
• Owners also receive notifications of time based activities
  
  • Periodic Revalidation of Users in Roles in Namespace
  • Periodic Revalidation of Permission in Namespace to Roles

Admin

Admins may

• Create/Delete/Modify Roles in Namespace
• Add/Remove Users from Roles in Namespace
• Create/Delete/Modify Permissions in Namespace
• Grant/Ungrant (i.e. Revoke) Permissions in Namespace to any Role in the company (Cross Company Role Grants are possible, but require approvals from both sides).

Object Model

In AAF, permissions are granted to roles. Roles are assigned to User. A user can be assigned to any number of roles. Roles and permissions are stored centrally but segregated by Application.

For authorization, all that matters is the permissions you are granted.

AAF is an Attribute Based Access Control System.  Permission is the embodiment of the Attribute.  It is broken up into three elements.

• Type - This is the core name of the Permission, and describes its kind. The type is "meta-data" which is a reference to the kind of Resource that is to be protected

• Instance - The object of the interaction. E.g. Database Table.
• Action - What is happening to that object. E.g. read, write, delete, etc.

Interacting with AAF

AAF GUI

The AAF GUI is designed primarily to provide AAF-specific information to users, though it does contain a few management features.

What AAF-specific information can you see in the GUI?

You can see the roles to which you are assigned, the permissions which you have been granted and the Namespaces in which you are an admin or responsible party

What management features are in the GUI?

1. My Approvals
   1. If you are responsible for any namespaces or other resources, this is where you will need to approve or deny requests about those resources.
2. Password Management
   1. This page provides the ability to reset passwords.
3. Permission Granting
   1. If you are an admin or responsible person for a Namespace, you will find a "Grant This Perm" link for each permission in your Namespace details page. You can grant your permission to a role from this page. You can also expose this link to others if you want them to request access to your permission

AAF CUI (Command User Interface)

The CUI provides more management and reporting features to users through a command prompt interface.

Application Authorization Framework Big Picture

Architecture Alignment:

How does this project fit into the rest of the ONAP Architecture?

AAF is used for fined grained authorization of an application. It can authorize DMaaP for pub/sub to a topic. It can authorize access to services registered in Microservices Bus.

• What other ONAP projects does this project depend on?
  • Does not depend on any ONAP project.
• How does this align with external standards/specifications?
  • X.509 Certificates
• Are there dependencies with other open source projects?

  • Cassandra

  • DME ( Direct Messaging Engine, developed by "AT&T Common platform" Team )

Resources:

• Primary Contact Person - Ram Koya(ATT), John Murray(ATT)
  
• Names, gerrit IDs, and company affiliations of the committers
• Names and affiliations of any other contributors
• Project Roles (include RACI chart, if applicable)

Other Information:

• link to seed code: https://github.com/att/AAF
• Vendor Neutral
  • The current seed code has been already scanned (using Fossology and Blackduck) and cleaned up to remove all proprietary trademarks, logos.
  • Subsequent modification to the existing seed code should continue to follow the same scanning and clean-up principles
• Meets Board policy (including IPR)

Key Project Facts

Project Name:

• JIRA project name: Application Authorization Framework
• JIRA project prefix: AAF-

Repo name: org.onap.aaf
Lifecycle State: incubation
Primary Contact: Ram Koya
Project Lead: Ram Koya
mailing list tag [Should match Jira Project Prefix] 
Committers:

Ram Koya  rk541m@att.com 

Jonathan Gathman jg1555@att.com

Contributors:

Varun Gudisena vg411h@att.com

Sai Gandham sg481n@att.com

Sowjanya Vemulapally sv8675@att.com 

Sitharaman T R  tsithara@in.ibm.com

Catherine Lefèvre cl664y@intl.att.com 

*Link to TSC approval: 
Link to approval of additional submitters: