WebSphere Portal - Setting up LDAP over SSL with IBM Directory Server

You may wish to configure WAS and WebSphere Portal access to the LDAP directory over SSL to ensure the confidentiality of the data exchanged between WAS, WebSphere Portal, and the LDAP directory. For example, user passwords are sent over the network between LDAP directory and WebSphere Portal. This occurs to set the password if WebSphere Portal user management tools are used to create users and change passwords and also when WAS authenticates any user name and password pair through an LDAP BIND operation. Configuring LDAP over SSL may be important to protect sensitive data. Also, it may be desirable to ensure that user attributes that are retrieved from the directory are not viewed by someone watching packets on the network, if the attributes of a user include sensitive information or privacy is a concern.

To ensure that all this information remains private, it is necessary to configure both WAS and WebSphere Portal to use LDAP over SSL to the LDAP directory. Configuring LDAP over SSL for WAS and WebSphere Portal is a separate operation from configuring the IBM HTTP Server to accept incoming browser requests over HTTPS, or configuring HTTPS between the IBM HTTP Server and WAS in a distributed setup.

A full primer on the configuration of all the LDAP directories and WAS is beyond the scope of this Portal Server documentation. Consult the documentation for the LDAP server to configure the directory for SSL traffic. For IBM Directory Server, see the most current documentation on IBM LDAP Implementation at http://www.ibm.com/software/webservers/appserv/was/support/. For WAS, the redbook IBM WebSphere V5.0 Security, SG24-6573-00 is available, and Appendix B contains instructions for configuring WAS for LDAP over SSL. You may also consult the WAS product documentation.

It is recommended that you first get LDAP (non-SSL) successfully working before setting up LDAP over SSL. This allows you to verify that the directory is responding to LDAP requests before setting it up for SSL.

About keys and certificates

In general, the task of setting up WAS and WebSphere Portal to use LDAP over SSL to the LDAP directory consists of bringing the necessary certificates into key storage files that WAS and WebSphere Portal will use. The necessary certificates mentioned are the signing certificates for the LDAP server certificate. The important point to note is that any certificates required to establish the full certificate signing trust chain must be made available to WAS and WebSphere Portal. For a self-signed certificate, the certificate trust chain consists of only the one self-signed LDAP server certificate. For a certificate signed by a CA, the certificate chain confirming the identity and validity of the signing CA must be included. Either a purchased certificate or a self-generated CA signing certificate may be used. Some configuration setting changes must also be made to tell WAS and WebSphere Portal that LDAP over SSL should be used. Usually, it is only necessary to bring a signing certificate from the LDAP server to the WAS and WebSphere Portal. This step allows the authentication of the server side of the SSL connection. WAS and WebSphere Portal are LDAP clients to the LDAP directory server. The client side is authenticated by doing an LDAP BIND within the SSL connection. The identity used by WAS to perform this BIND is the Bind DN configured on the WAS Security Console.

In some cases, if the LDAP directory is configured to require mutually authenticated SSL for the LDAP connection, meaning that it will request the client-side certificate, then signing certificates for WAS and WebSphere Portal must be moved to the LDAP Server key storage. In this case, WAS and WebSphere Portal will still do LDAP BINDs using the IDs and passwords configured, even though the SSL connection has already performed a mutual authentication.

Set up LDAP over SSL

1. Install WebSphere Portal and WAS

Also refer to Install WebSphere Portal for instructions on how to install WebSphere Portal on an existing instance of WAS that has security enabled.

2. Install and setup the LDAP

See the Install LDAP topic for information on how to install an LDAP server and the Set up LDAP topic for information on how to set up the LDAP server you install.

3. Generate or import certificates as necessary and activate SSL on the directory

It is possible for IBM Directory Server to use either self-signed certificates or signing certificates signed by a CA (Certificate Authority) to enable LDAP over SSL.

IBM Directory Server includes a security key management utility, such as gsk6ikm, which can be used to generate a self-signed certificate or to import purchased certificates into the IBM Directory Server keystore. You should consult the IBM Directory Server documentation for the details of how to import a CA certificate or create a self-signed certificate in a key database file and extract that certificate so that it can be moved to the WAS and WebSphere Portal.

4. Import certificate(s) to WebSphere Portal to enable SSL connection

Moving LDAP server certificates to WAS and WebSphere Portal

Make the signing certificate from IBM Directory Server (either the CA certificate or the self-signed certificate) available to the WAS and WebSphere Portal machine. This can be done by moving the file via a network transfer or removable media. Note that a CA certificate must be in Base64-encodede ASCII data format as a .arm file in order to be imported by the WAS key management utilities. The IBM Directory Server key management utilities (gsk6ikm) can be used to format a CA certificate which is not in the right format.

Importing certificates to a WAS keystore

If the application uses commercial certificate authority certificates (signer or CA certificates), you may be able to use the cacerts keystore (the default trust keystore) with the application. The integrated file system path for cacerts is /QIBM/ProdData/Java400/jdk13/lib/security/cacerts. However, in no case should you attempt to modify the original cacerts keystore. Create a private copy of the cacerts file, and then add or remove certificates to the private copy. The password for cacerts is changeit. Be sure to change the password that protects the private copy of the cacerts file. Also, note that initially, all keystores created using iKeyman contain a number of commercial CA certificates.

You may create the Java keystores in any iSeries integrated file system directory. However, it may be convenient to place them in the same directory as those that are used by the WebSphere instance. This may make it easier to include them in your backup and restore procedure. WAS provides an initial set of Java keystores that are used to secure connections between WebSphere components. These keystores are found in the etc directory of the WebSphere instance. For example, the keystores for the default instance are found in the /QIBM/UserData/WebAS5/Base/default/etc directory.

For an example of how to create a Java keystore, see Use Java keystore files in the WAS for iSeries Information Center.

Importing certificates to a WebSphere Portal keystore

You must also import the certificates to a keystore that can be used by the WebSphere Portal. In this case, WebSphere Portal has no configuration setting to point to a specifically named Java Key Store file. Instead, import the certificates into the default keystore file of the JVM, cacerts. However, in no case should you attempt to modify the cacerts keystore. Rather, create a private copy of the cacerts file, and then add or remove certificates. The configured truststore in the SSL configuration of the CSIv2 Outbound Transport must also be updated.

5. Close down the non-SSL port of the LDAP directory server (optional)

This is an optional step. Closing the non-SSL port of the directory will ensure that traffic exchanged with the directory by WAS, WebSphere Portal, or any other application, is confidential.

You have completed this step. Continue to the next step by choosing one of the following topics:

Setting up LDAP over SSL with IBM Directory Server

Overview