spid-keycloak-provider

Italian SPID authentication provider for Keycloak (https://www.keycloak.org/)

Project details

This custom authentication provider for Keycloak enables easy integration of SPID with existing applications by leveraging Keycloak identity brokering features. Keycloak is a nice product, but still lacking on some aspects of SAML2 compatibility, and the SPID specifications deviate from the SAML2 standard in some key aspects.

Besides the SPID-SAML2 protocol differences, some of the SP behaviors are hardcoded to work with simple IdPs only (i.e. there is no support for generating SP metadata that joins multiple SPs) . Keycloak is slowly improving on this aspect, so over time this plugin will become simpler and targeted on implementing only the specific changes required by SPID.

I have documented a reference configuration for SPID and the workarounds required in the project wiki (https://github.com/italia/spid-keycloak-provider/wiki). Please make sure to read it and understand the config steps and the open issues and limitations before planning your Production environment.

Status

This project is still at an alpha stage. It is currently under development and things may change quickly. It builds and successfully allows login/logout to the SPID Validator test IdP (https://github.com/italia/spid-saml-check) and to the online SPID tester (https://www.spid-validator.it).
As far as I know it has not been used in Production in any environment yet.

Until the project gets to a stable release, it will be targeting the most recent release of Keycloak as published on the website (see property version.keycloak in file pom.xml). Currently the main branch is targeting Keycloak 16.1.1. Do not use the latest release with previous versions of Keycloak, it won't work!

Since this plugin uses some Keycloak internal modules, versions of this plugin are coupled to Keycloak versions. After (major) Keycloak upgrades, you will almost certainly have also to update this provider.

Detailed instructions on how to install and configure this component are available in the project wiki (https://github.com/italia/spid-keycloak-provider/wiki/Installing-the-SPID-provider).

Build requirements

• git
• JDK8+
• Maven

Build

Just run mvn clean package for a full rebuild. The output package will be generated under target/spid-provider.jar.

Deployment

This provider should be deployed as a module, i.e. copied under {$KEYCLOAK_PATH}/standalone/deployments/, with the right permissions. Keycloak will take care of loading the module, no restart needed.

Use this command for reference:

mvn clean package && \
sudo install -C -o keycloak -g keycloak target/spid-provider.jar /opt/keycloak/standalone/deployments/

If successful you will find a new provider type called SPID in the Add Provider drop down list in the Identity Provider configuration screen.

Upgrading from previous versions

Upgrades are usually seamless, just repeat the deployment command.
Sometimes Keycloak caches don't get flushed when a new deployment occurs; in that case you will need to edit the file {$KEYCLOAK_PATH}/standalone/configuration/standalone.xml, find the following section

<theme>
  <staticMaxAge>2592000</staticMaxAge>
  <cacheThemes>true</cacheThemes>
  <cacheTemplates>true</cacheTemplates>
  <dir>${jboss.home.dir}/themes</dir>
</theme>

and change it to:

<theme>
  <staticMaxAge>-1</staticMaxAge>
  <cacheThemes>false</cacheThemes>
  <cacheTemplates>false</cacheTemplates>
  <dir>${jboss.home.dir}/themes</dir>
</theme>

Then restart Keycloak and it will reload the resources from the packages. Make sure you also clear your browser caches or use incognito mode when verifying the correct deployment. After the first reload you can turn back on the caches and restart Keycloak again.

Open issues and limitations

Please read the appropriate page on the project wiki (https://github.com/italia/spid-keycloak-provider/wiki/Open-issues-and-limitations). If your problem is not mentioned there, feel free to open an issue on GitHub.

Related projects

If you are interested in Keycloak plugins for the various Italian national auth systems, you may be interested also in:

• Keycloak SPID Provider - https://github.com/italia/spid-keycloak-provider/
  A Keycloak provider for the SPID federation

• Keycloak CIE ID Provider - https://github.com/lscorcia/keycloak-cieid-provider/
  A Keycloak provider for the CIE ID federation

• Keycloak CNS Authenticator - https://github.com/lscorcia/keycloak-cns-authenticator/
  A Keycloak authenticator to login using CNS tokens and smart cards

Acknowledgements

The basic idea behind this project came from the experimental SPID integration for older Keycloak versions developed by redhat-italy at https://github.com/redhat-italy/keycloak-spid-provider.

This project is released under the Apache License 2.0, same as the main Keycloak package.