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Pilot Description


The LIGO Scientific Collaboration (LSC) is a group of scientists focused on the direct detection of gravitational waves, using them to explore the fundamental physics of gravity, and developing the emerging field of gravitational wave science as a tool of astronomical discovery. The LSC works toward this goal through research on, and development of techniques for, gravitational wave detection; and the development, commissioning and exploitation of gravitational wave detectors. The LSC carries out the science of the LIGO Observatories, located in Hanford, Washington and Livingston, Louisiana as well as that of the GEO600 detector in Hannover, Germany. Our collaboration is organised around three general areas of research: analysis of LIGO and GEO data searching for gravitational waves from astrophysical sources, detector operations and characterisation, and development of future large scale gravitational wave detectors. Founded in 1997, the LSC is currently made up of more than 1200 scientists from over 108 institutions and 18 countries worldwide.


Each member of the LSC is assigned an albert.einstein identity and they manage this account and their credentials via the my.ligo.org application. This pilot aims to investigate the infrastructure and organisational changes required to support the use of federated institutional entities alongside existing internal credentials. In particular it will identify technological components and deploy a pilot service to be used for evaluation. It will also work to understand the current limitations of federated identities as applied to the LSC, and recommend alternative approaches where relevant.


SAML proxies are increasingly being used to easily connect all of resources within a collaboration into the eduGAIN federation and this would demonstrate it's application for a large, established collaboration.

Pilot goals

The goal of this AARC project is design and deploy a pilot SAML proxy instance that would allow users to use their Institutional Identities in a federated manner. It will also investigate the limitations of a SAML proxy and recommend alternative solutions to these issues. Finally, we will look at other areas where the SAML proxy can be utilised.

Description

Following discussions within the LSC it was decided that the pilot would deploy SATOSA create a SAML proxy between the eduGAIN institutional identity providers and the LSC's service providers. This would allow LSC and Virgo members to use their institutional credentials to access LSC resources directly. Institutional identifies would be mapped to a user's albert.einstein identity via a internal account linking, and LIGO specific information; in particular group and identity information would be used to annotate the account. SATOSA will act as the central SAML Proxy of the project, while pyFF will be used to aggregate SAML metadata from EduGAIN and the LSC, and also provide the discovery service interface.

Components

ComponentDescriptionTechnologyWhy did we choose it
SAML ProxySAML IdP to SAML SP ProxySATOSAPopular Python based package that includes services for adding attributes from external source
Metadata aggregationAggregate and process SAML metadata from multiple sourcesPyFFPopular Python based package that allows you to customise SAML metadata processing and also supports Metadata Query Service
Discovery ServicePresent list of IdPs to userPyFFPyFF already used to aggregate metadata, and includes a good, theme-able discovery service interface
Attribute StoreSource of additional user attributes and group membershipGrouper + LDAPLSC user group membership and extended attributes already managed and stored in Grouper
Account Linking ServiceLink institutional IdP identity to LSC user identityCOManageCOManage provides workflows for linking accounts and is already used with the GW Astronomy community for collaboration management.


Architecture

Use Cases

Successful Federated Identity Login

StepActionScreenshot
1

Visit SP Website and select Satosa SAML Proxy from the list of IdPs

2Select Home IdP from DS

3Login at Institutional IdP

4Access SP


Link Federated Identity

StepActionScreenshot
1

Visit SP Website and select Satosa SAML Proxy from the list of IdPs

2Select Home IdP from DS

3Login at Institutional IdP

4Account Linking

5Access SP

Results

A Pilot instance has been deployed and has been registered in the eduGAIN metadata and is undergoing testing.

Further information

Following the completion of this pilot the service will be adopted into the LSC Identity and Access Management core services. A fault tolerant service will be maintained in the cloud.

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