Monday, April 1, 2013

Security, Authentication Methods - Part 3

Dear Readers,

My name is Franz Devantier, creator of this blog.  I am an Oracle Certified Professional (OCP DBA 11g) Security DBA.  I will be sharing with you the basic duties of an Oracle DBA, and also some of the undocumented, and not so well known tasks. 

I will make a deal with you:  If you refer me to a company that needs database support, from a few hours per week to full time, and I am able to sign a contract with them.
Then I will give you 10% of the monthly contract or deal price every month.  When the contract ends, and we re-sign the contract, I will again give you 10% of the monthly contract price.  This will go on until the company no longer employs or contracts me or my agents to look after their databases.
I can do this, because that 10% is my marketing budget.  When we re-sign the contract, in the future, it may depend on you giving the thumbs up again, and that is worth 10% of the monthly contract price, to be given to you as commission.
Contact: Franz

Security, Authentication Methods  -  Part 3
Kerberos Authentication
Kerberos uses a trusted third-party authentication system.  Kerberos is a system that relies on shared secrets.  The assumption is that the third party is secure.  Kerberos provides a single sign-on capability, centralized password storage, database link authentication, and enhanced workstation security.  It all works through a Cybersafe Active trust, which is a commercial Kerberos-based authentication server.  Or it could also work through a Kerberos authentication server.

PKI-Based Authentication
PKI-based authentication does not directly involve an authentication server.  PKI issues digital certificates to user clients, who use them to authenticate directly to servers in the enterprise.

Oracle provides a PKI for public keys and certificates, which consists of the following components:
·         Authentication and secure session key management using the SSL protocol
·         User-specified data is signed using a private key and a certificate, and are enabled through Oracle Call Interface (OCI) and PL/SQL functions
·         Trusted certificates are used to identify third-party entities that are trusted as signers of user certificates when an identity is being validated.  During the validation of the user certificate, the signer is checked by using trust points or a trusted certificate chain of certificate authorities, stored in the validating system.  In the case where there are several levels of trusted certificates in the chain, then a trusted certificate at the lower or lowest level, is trusted, without needing to have all its higher-level certificates re-verified
·         Oracle wallets are data structures that contain the private key of a user, a user certificate, and the set of trust points of a user.  The set of trust points of a user is the trusted certificate authorities
·         OracleAS Certificate Authority is a component of the Oracle Identity Management infrastructure, which provides an integrated solution, and provisions X.509 versiion 3 certificates for individuals, applications, and servers that require certificates for PKI based operations such as authentication, SSL, S/MIME, etc.
·         Oracle Wallet Manager is a standalone Java application used to manage and edit the security credentials in Oracle Wallets.  Oracle Wallet manager performs a number of operations:
o    It protects user keys
o   It manages X509 version 3 certificates on Oracle clients and servers
o   It generates a public-private key pair and creates a certificate request for submission to a dertificate authority
o   It installs a certificate for the entity
o   It configures trusted certificates for the entity
o   It creates wallets
o   It opens wallets to enable access to PKI based services
o   It obtains X.509 version 3 certificates from a trusted entity that signs the certificate, for example a certificate authority
Because the certificate authority is trusted, these certificates certify that the requesting entity’s information is correct, and that the public key on the certificate belongs to the identified entity.  Such a certificate is them loaded into an Oracle Wallet to enable future authentication
Oracle Public Key Infrastructure


·         Authentication with RADIUS:  Oracle supports remote authentication of users through the Remote Authentication Dial-In User Service (RADIUS).  RADIUS is a standard lightweight protocol used for user authentication, authorization, and accounting.

Franz Devantier,
Need a database health check, or a security audit?
devantierf@gmail.com

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