GemFire Security Manager Basics: Authentication-Only

John Martin February 3, 2022

VMware GemFire is an in-memory data grid that provides real-time, consistent access to data-intensive applications throughout widely distributed cloud architectures. Starting with GemFire 9.0.0, the SecurityManager interface was introduced to manage the authentication and authorization mechanisms in a single place, simplifying the implementation and interactions with all components in a consistent manner.

In this example, you will go through a basic implementation of a custom SecurityManager for an authentication-only system.

It’s important to note that I am not a security expert. The purpose of this article is to introduce the GemFire SecurityManager. This example is not meant for use in a production environment.

The Security Manager

To secure a GemFire cluster, the user needs to deploy a custom implementation of the SecurityManager interface, so that the authentication logic is entirely encapsulated within the implementation itself.

This example focuses on a basic authentication example, with the goal of understanding how the SecurityManager works on the server and how to connect a Java application to the cluster.

In this example, you will:

Create a BasicSecurityManager implementation that uses the SecurityManager’s authentication method
Start a GemFire cluster with the BasicSecurityManager
Create a Java client application that authenticates against the application and PUTs and GETs data into a region

Implementing the security manager interface

First you will create a basic SecurityManager implementation. The SecurityManager interface requires the authenticate method to be implemented in your custom solution. In the example below, the expected username (“default") and password (“reallyBadPassword”) have been hard-coded for the cluster.

package BasicSecurityManager;

import java.util.Properties;

import org.apache.geode.security.AuthenticationFailedException;
import org.apache.geode.security.SecurityManager;

public class BasicSecurityManager implements SecurityManager {

  @Override

  public Object authenticate(Properties credentials) throws AuthenticationFailedException {

    Boolean isAuthenticated = false;
    String username = credentials.getProperty("security-username");
    String password = credentials.getProperty("security-password");

    if ("default".equals(username) && "reallyBadPassword".equals(password) ) {
      isAuthenticated = true;
    } else{
      throw new AuthenticationFailedException("Wrong username/password");
    }
    return isAuthenticated;
  }

}

The Properties object passed into the authenticate method has two credential properties used for the authenticate method. These properties must be set by the client application when connecting to the GemFire cluster:

security-username
security-password

After evaluating the credentials that are passed into the SecurityManager, a Boolean is returned from the method. If the credentials passed in match, the user is authenticated and can interact with the GemFire cluster. If the credentials don’t match, then the authentication fails, and the user cannot interact with the GemFire cluster and receives an exception with the message “Wrong username/password".

Starting a GemFire cluster with the security manager

Now that you have a BasicSecurityManager implementation, you need to include it when starting the GemFire cluster.

Build the .jar file for the BasicSecurityManager created above. Note the directory and file path that the jar file is created in; it will be used in Step 3.
Start GemFire’s shell (gfsh) by running the gfsh command in a console / terminal.
Start a locator and include the path to the jar file and class name of the BasicSecurityManager. The start locator command will look something like this:
```
  start locator --name=locator1 --J=-Dgemfire.security-manager=BasicSecurityManager.BasicSecurityManager --classpath=[path to your jar file]/BasicSecurityManager-1.0-SNAPSHOT.jar
```
- --J=-Dgemfire.security-manager=BasicSecurityManager.BasicSecurityManager - Defines the package and class for your security manager and allows GemFire to find the class when starting up.
- --classpath=[path to your jar file]/BasicSecurityManager-1.0-SNAPSHOT.jar - Defines the path to the jar file that GemFire should use as the security manager.

Once the locator has started, you will see an output similar to this:

Starting a Geode Locator in [path to where GemFire was started] /locator1...  

.........  

Locator in [path to where GemFire was started]/locator1 on [ip address] [10334] as locator1 is currently online.  
Process ID: 75033  
Uptime: 11 seconds  
Geode Version: 1.15.0-build.0  
Java Version: 1.8.0_292  
...  

Unable to auto-connect (Security Manager may be enabled). Please use "connect --locator=[ip address] [10334] --user --password" to connect Gfsh to the locator.  

Authentication required to connect to the Manager.

There’s a problem though. The locator started, but it says that it was unable to connect.

Once the security manager is included to start the cluster, it is immediately used to authenticate the user. To continue, you must now connect to the cluster (in gfsh) using the username and password defined in the BasicSecurityManager class.

In gfsh, the command would look similar to the following:

    connect --locator= [IP Address that GemFire is running on][10334] --user=default --password=reallyBadPassword

When starting another locator in a cluster with multiple locators, you must either provide a security properties file or include the necessary security properties at startup using the following options: --J=-Dgemfire.security-username= and --J=-Dgemfire.security-password=.

You should now be connected to the locator. Next, you will start a server. This will be very similar to starting the locator. In gfsh, use the start server command, which will include the path to the same BasicSecurityManager .jar file used when starting the locator.

    start server --name=server1 --locators=localhost[10334] --classpath=[path to your security manager]/BasicSecurityManager-1.0-SNAPSHOT.jar --user=default --password=reallyBadPassword

Repeat this step for each server you need to start, but make sure you change the --name= parameter to be unique for each server.

Good work! You now have a GemFire cluster running with your BasicSecurityManager !

Connect a Java client application to a secure GemFire cluster

Before you create the client application, you need to create a Region on the GemFire cluster for the app to interact with.

In the gfsh terminal, run the following command to create a region called helloWorld. This will create a partitioned region in your GemFire cluster that you can PUT and GET data from.

create region --name=helloWorld --type=PARTITION

There are three important steps to connect a client application to the GemFire cluster.

The client application must have a class that implements the AuthInitialize interface. This class is used by GemFire to provide the credentials to the cluster.
The client application must set its credentials composed of two properties, security username and security-password.
The client application must set the security-client-auth-init property, which indicates to GemFire the class that implements the AuthInitialize interface

In this example, you will set the security-username and security-password in the class that implements the AuthInitialize interface. In your organization, these credentials might come from an external source, such as a credentials database, ActiveDirectory, or some other external system. The goal for this article is to keep things as simple as possible to help give a basic understanding of how the security manager works, so you will be hard-coding them into the application.

First, create a class that implements the AuthInitialize interface.

import java.util.Properties;

import org.apache.geode.distributed.DistributedMember;
import org.apache.geode.security.AuthInitialize;
import org.apache.geode.security.AuthenticationFailedException;

public class UserPasswordAuthInit implements AuthInitialize {

@Override
public Properties getCredentials(Properties properties, DistributedMember distributedMember, boolean isPeer) throws AuthenticationFailedException {
      properties.setProperty("security-username", "default"); 
      properties.setProperty("security-password", "reallyBadPassword"); 
      return properties; 
    } 
}

This basic class sets two properties (security-username & security-password) that match the credentials declared in the BasicSecurityManager class.

Next, set the security-client-auth-init property in the Main class and pass it to the ClientCacheFactory.

import java.util.Properties;

import org.apache.geode.cache.Region;
import org.apache.geode.cache.client.ClientCache;
import org.apache.geode.cache.client.ClientCacheFactory;
import org.apache.geode.cache.client.ClientRegionShortcut;

public class Main {

public static void main (String[] args) {

    Properties properties = new Properties(); 
    properties.setProperty("security-client-auth-init", UserPasswordAuthInit.class.getName()); 
 
    ClientCache cache = new ClientCacheFactory(properties).addPoolLocator("localhost", 10334).create(); 
 
    Region<String, String> 
        helloWorldRegion = 
        cache.<String, String>createClientRegionFactory(ClientRegionShortcut.PROXY).create("helloWorld"); 
 
    helloWorldRegion.put("1", "HelloWorldValue"); 
    String value1 = helloWorldRegion.get("1"); 
    System.out.println(value1); 
    cache.close(); 
  }
}

Run the app and you should see an output in your console/terminal like the following:

ERROR StatusLogger Log4j2 could not find a logging implementation. Please add log4j-core to the classpath. Using SimpleLogger to log to the console...

SLF4J: Failed to load class "org.slf4j.impl.StaticLoggerBinder".
SLF4J: Defaulting to no-operation (NOP) logger implementation
SLF4J: See http://www.slf4j.org/codes.html#StaticLoggerBinder for further details.

HelloWorldValue


Process finished with exit code 0

It worked! It prints out the value “HelloWorldValue” you put in for key “1”. Ignore the ERROR for the sake of this example. If your application includes an authentication error though, confirm you have the correct username and password in your AuthInitialize class.

You now have a GemFire system running with security enabled to authenticate all clients trying to connect, and a client application that can connect and interact with the secure GemFire cluster.

However, now everyone and every app can use the same username, password, AND gain the same level of access!

What if you need an operator to be able to create the GemFire clusters but not have access to the data?
What if you need an application developer to be able to interact with the data, without accidentally deleting the cluster?

To grant users different permissions and access levels you will need to implement authentication and authorization. GemFire Security Manager Basics: Authentication/Authorization will walk you through an example of how to implement those two methods for a GemFire cluster and utilize GemFire’s ResourcePermissions to set user permissions.

On This Page

GemFire Security Manager Basics: Authentication-Only

The Security Manager

Implementing the security manager interface

Starting a GemFire cluster with the security manager

Connect a Java client application to a secure GemFire cluster