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Gateway. Building Secure Web Portals for Scientific Computing. Marlon Pierce School of Computational Science and Information Technology Florida State University. Overview. Design Goals and Constraints System Architecture Three-tiered system Security Considerations
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Gateway Building Secure Web Portals for Scientific Computing Marlon Pierce School of Computational Science and Information Technology Florida State University
Overview • Design Goals and Constraints • System Architecture • Three-tiered system • Security Considerations • What security do we need? • Three-tiered security system
Project Goals • Provide seamless access to HPC resources from the user’s web browser. • Hide underlying complexities of environment behind a point-and-click interface. • Use platform and language independent tools to build distributed infrastructure. • Java, CORBA, XML
Funding and Deployment • Project funded by DoD Modernization Program (PET). • Deployment targeted for ASC and ARL MSRCs. • Requirement: Compatible with existing security infrastructure • Kerberos and SecurID
Project Design Overview • Three-tiered architecture • Browser-based, dynamic front-end • Scalable, distributed middle-tier • Heterogeneous backend resources • Three major constituents: • Problem Solving Environment for users (OSC) • WebFlow (NPAC) • HPC resources (ASC)
PSE Design Goals • User interface with three toolkits • Problem Description Toolkit • Describe problem in scientific terms • Archive old sessions • Code Toolkit • Assist user in creating job requests • Analysis Toolkit
PSE Decision Containers User Context Marlon’s Chemistry Project Problem Context 30 Particles, Energy, Crystal Structure Session Context Run Gausssian on SP2 with In.dat
WebFlow • CORBA-based distributed components. • Each user has a personal slave server. • Master server acts as a gatekeeper, maintaining proxies of all child objects. • WebFlow provides general methods for managing containers (contexts). • WebFlow can be extended with modules (ContextManager, submitJob, Charon)
WebFlow Context Hierarchy Master Server (Gatekeeper) Slave Server Proxy Slave Server Application Context Module Slave Server T. Haupt User Context
Back-End Resources • High performance computers • Batch queues • Globus schedular • Mass storage devices • Databases (through JDBC) • Chemistry, visualization software • Everything else
Gateway Communication I Apache Tomcat Web Server HPC Resources, Mass Storage, DBs HTTP(S) PSE Browser ORB WebFlow ORB krsh, krcp
CORBA Security Service Overview • Provides generic interfaces to standard security services • Authentication • Integrity and Confidentiality • Delegation • Implementations can be built over specific security mechanisms. • GSS mechanisms like Kerberos • SSL
CORBA Security Services Security Specification API Vendor-Supplied Interface Security Implementation
Gateway Communication II HPC Resources, Mass Storage, DBs Apache Tomcat PSE Browser ORB HTTP WebFlow Servers Charon ORB ORB SECIOP ORB SECIOP krsh, krcp
Secure Gateway Login Process • User gets forwardable Kerberos ticket at beginning of the day with kinit. • User starts personal WebFlow slave server that registers with the master. • Slave runs with user’s id. • User starts Charon Client, which uses his/her TGT to authenticate to the WebFlow master server.
Charon: Client-Server Security • Charon application intercepts all requests to predetermined port on user’s computer. • Requests are wrapped with WebFlow methods and tunneled to web server with SECIOP. • Server masquerades as client’s localhost. • Different browsers on same machine distinguished with session cookies.
Charon II • Charon extracts user’s name from his credentials. • This is used to set a server-side cookie. • PSE servlets use the info in the cookie for access control.
PSE-WebFlow Communication • A WebFlow client ORB runs in a servlet. • Master’s ORB is declared static. • All PSE servlets access WebFlow methods directly. • PSE accesses slave server indirectly through master. WebFlow Client PSE Servlets JVMs Slave WFS
Middle Tier Security • Client does not talk directly to slave. • Indirect invocation through master’s proxy. • Master and slave run with different ids. • Need delegation and mutual authentication. Client Master Slave Proxy Module
Security: WebFlow to HPCs • User requests are passed from master to appropriate slave. • Slave makes external call with krsh, krcp to HPC resources. • The slave is created by the user with forwardable credentials, so external calls use existing security mechanism.
NPAC/FSU/MSU Geoffrey Fox Tomasz Haupt Erol Akarsu Choonhan Youn OSC Ken Flurchick Jan Labanowski Armen Ezekielian Adiron Software Polar Humenn Acknowledgements
Further Information • www.gatewayportal.org (coming soon) • www.osc.edu/~kenf/sciPortal • www.erc.msstate.edu/~haupt/WebFlow