Project Moonshot
TF-MNM
Project Moonshot
Use cases
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Grid computing @ STFC
STFC operates the UK’s National Grid Service
•Existing X.509 authentication is too complex for users
•Goal to simplify authentication across distributed computing Grids
“We aim to streamline access services using Moonshot technology, which will
take the burden of authentication out of the hands of our users.”
Dr Peter Oliver, Group Leader, Science and Technology Facilities Council
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Console access @ Diamond Light Source
The UK’s national synchrotron facility
•Piloting Moonshot within the PANDATA project, which supports
30,000 scientists at 20+ photon and neutron facilities
•Federated access needed to physical and remote (SSH) consoles
“Moonshot has thought beyond websites, and looked at what is really required in
authentication – right down to the point when you open your laptop to begin work.”
Bill Pulford, Head of DASC, Diamond Light Source
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Sharing data @ Cancer Research UK
Cancer Research UK is the world’s leading charity dedicated to beating cancer
through research.
•The institutes form ad hoc relationships to collaborate for research purposes,
but when the need arises to share data and documents, each institute can only
authenticate within their own organisation.
“Moonshot is a valuable enabler for Cancer Research across the UK. It will make
collaboration systems easy to build internally so that we can quickly share large data
sets between institutes, without complicating the management of that system.”
Peter Maccallum, Head of IT & Scientific Computing, CRUK Cambridge Research Institute
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Cloud services @ Janet Brokerage
The Janet Brokerage works with the community and suppliers to provide solutions
based on ‘IT as a service’, facilitating the uptake of data centre, hosted and cloud
services
• Create efficiencies and cost savings
• Accelerate and improve services and add value
• Reduce risk in adopting new services
• Address technical and business questions
• Create a competitive market based on sound technical platforms
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The main challenges from our customers
Extend the use of federated identity to all network-connected
systems, applications and services
Support any deployment model: centralised, distributed & cloud
Enable the use of any kind of authentication credential
Supersize it! Enable this for millions of system entities and users
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Project Moonshot
Technology overview
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Moonshot technologies
Moonshot builds on the eduroam technologies
• EAP (RFC 3748): strong mutual authentication
• RADIUS (RFC 2865): federation between domains
To this, Moonshot adds
• SAML, for rich authorisation semantics
• Integration using operating system security APIs
• SSPI: Windows
• GSS-API (RFC 2078): Other operating systems
• SASL (RFC 4422): Windows and other operating systems
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Deployment requirements
Most Higher Education organisations are nearly Moonshot-ready today
• A connection to eduroam
• A RADIUS server (any modern RADIUS product should support preproduction testing today). There is also an experimental capability to integrate
FreeRADIUS with the Shibboleth IdP
• Moonshot client and server plug-in
• Linux: packaging available for Debian & RHEL; Scientific Linux soon
• Windows: native support using prototype plugin
• Mac: Packaging almost complete for Snow Leopard and Lion
• Moonshot Identity Selector to facilitate the selection of an identity to use,
for GUI environments (Windows, Mac & Linux)
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Architecture
(1) Credentialing
(3) Authentication
(5) Attributes
(6) SSH session
(2) SSH negotiation
SSH client
(4) RADIUS
SSH server
RADIUS server
OpenSSH used as example of application; many others also apply
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Application support
Most modern applications use at least one of the security APIs
supported by Moonshot
Correctly written applications will ‘just work’ without modification
or recompilation
Less correctly written applications may require minor modifications
Project Moonshot is testing applications and sending patches
upstream
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PuTTY  OpenSSH
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IE  Apache
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Outlook 2010  Exchange 2010
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Examples of other tested scenarios
• OpenSSH client  OpenSSH server (GSS)
• OpenLDAP client  OpenLDAP server (SASL)
• OpenLDAP client (GSS)  Windows Active Directory (SSPI)
• Firefox  Apache (GSS)
• Internet Explorer  IIS (SSPI)
• MyProxy client  MyProxy server (SASL)
• Adium  Jabberd (SASL)
• Console authentication using PAM/GSS on Linux and SSPI on Windows
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Standardisation
The architecture is currently being standardised within the IETF’s
‘Abfab’ working group
See https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/abfab for documents
The key documents are
•draft-ietf-abfab-arch describing the high-level architecture
•draft-ietf-abfab-gss-eap describing the core “GSS EAP” technology
•draft-ietf-abfab-aaa-saml describing the use of SAML
Get involved!
The project is Janet-led initiative, with contributions from GÉANT and others
•http://www.project-moonshot.org/using describes installing, configuring and
using Moonshot. An installable Live DVD (Debian-based) is available, in addition
to Debian, CENTOS and Scientific Linux packages
•https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/MOONSHOT-COMMUNITY is our community
mailing list
•We also have a Jabber room at moonshot@groupchat.nordu.net
Project Moonshot
Technology pilot
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Technology pilot goals
1. To test the suitability of the Moonshot technology
for deployment, focusing on e-Research use cases
1. To identity what further work is needed to support
the wider community’s use of the technology
2. To plan, implement or support this additional work
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Current status
• Pilot sites connected to Janet’s eduroam infrastructure
• Software ready for pre-production testing only
• Production-quality environment due Q1 2012
• IETF standardisation approaching completion
• On-going discussions with OS and application vendors
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Project Moonshot
Future plans
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The next six months
The primary activities will be
• Continuation of existing Technology Pilot
• Improvement and refinement of core software
• Out-reach to other stakeholders
• Development the final element needed for a production-ready service
• Completion of standardisation
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Conclusions
Moonshot provides a standardised next-generation identity & trust
technology
Moonshot builds on widely deployed technologies and
infrastructure
Moonshot provides a cross-platform implementation ready for preproduction testing
Moonshot will provide the trust & identity platform for Janet’s
services
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