Authenticating incoming requests with LDAP

Configure a message flow to perform identity authentication using Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP).

Before you begin

Before you can configure a message flow to perform identity authentication using LDAP, you need to check that an appropriate security profile exists, or create a new security profile. See Creating a security profile for LDAP.

About this task

To authenticate the identity of a user or system, the integration node attempts to connect to the LDAP server using the username and password associated with the identity. To do this, the integration node needs the following information:

To resolve the username to an LDAP entry, the integration node needs to know the base distinguished name (base DN) of the accepted login IDs. This is required to enable the integration node to differentiate between different entries with the same name.
If the identities do not all have a common base DN, but can be uniquely resolved from a subtree, the DN can be specified in the integration node configuration. When a subtree search has been specified, the integration node must first connect to the LDAP server and search for the given username in order to obtain the full username distinguished name (DN) to be used for authentication. If your LDAP directory does not permit login of unrecognized IDs, and does not grant search access rights on the subtree, you must set up a separate authorized login ID that the integration node can use for the search. Use the mqsisetdbparms command to specify a username and password. For example:
```
mqsisetdbparms -n ldap::LDAP -u username -p password
```
or
```
mqsisetdbparms -n ldap::<servername> -u username -p password
```
where <servername> is your base LDAP server name, for example, ldap.mydomain.com.

If you specify ldap::LDAP, it creates a default setting for the integration node, which the integration node attempts to use if you have not explicitly used the mqsisetdbparms command to create a login ID for a specific <servername>. All servers that do not have an explicit ldap::servername entry then start using the credentials in the ldap::LDAP entry. This means that any servers that were previously using anonymous bind by default will start using the details in ldap::LDAP.
The username that you specify in the -u parameter must be recognized by the LDAP server as a complete user name. In most cases this means that you need to specify the full DN of the user. Alternatively, by specifying a username to be anonymous, you can force the integration node to bind anonymously to this LDAP server. This might be useful if you have specified a non-anonymous bind as your default (ldap::LDAP). For example:
```
mqsisetdbparms -n ldap::<servername> -u anonymous -p password
```
In this case, the value specified for password is ignored.

Steps for enabling LDAP authentication:

Procedure

To enable an existing message flow to perform identity authentication, use the BAR editor to select a security profile that uses LDAP for authentication.

You can set a security profile on a message flow or on individual input nodes. If no security profile is set for the input nodes, the setting is inherited from the setting on the message flow.

Switch to the Integration Development perspective.
In the Application Development view, right-click the BAR file and then click Open with > BAR Editor.
Click the Manage and Configure tab.
Click the flow or node on which you want to set the security profile.
The properties that you can configure for the message flow or for the node are displayed in the Properties view.
In the Security Profile Name field, select a security profile that uses LDAP for authentication.
Save the BAR file.

What to do next

For a SOAPInput node to use the identity in the WS-Security header (rather than an underlying transport identity) an appropriate policy set and bindings must also be defined and specified. For more information, see Policy sets.

If the message identity does not contain enough information for authentication, the information must be taken from the message body. For example, if a password is required for authentication but the message came from WebSphere® MQ with only a username, the password information must be taken from the message body. For more information, see Configuring the extraction of an identity or security token.