Inside/outside users and identification (re Emory)

[Marc Salomon]

On Apr 5, 11:46, Peter Graham, RUL wrote:
> Subject: Inside/outside users and identification (re Emory)

>
> When Emory people come in from outside Emory using an ISV such as aol,
> how do you identify them as inside-Emory rather than outside-Emory?
> This is becoming a significant issue here.  --pg

Sigh.

Talk about a lack of a seamless knowledge management environment.

The easy part is detecting the presence of the client IP on a known subnet.
 The hard part is deciding how to handle the remaining cases.

The existing standardized authentication schemes are incapable of handling
existing user ID databases with any degree of security, so it is impossible to
reuse a unix /etc/passwd databse over the web at this time (differing crypt
programs abound).  Further, there is no provision in the cgi specification for
programatic handling of authentication although the modular servers can easily
handle this kind of intervention.[1]

One solution is to use a stateful session server application to handle this,
sacrificing password security on the first connection for a dedicated session
associated with each external user.  We have written a C package to handle this
(for our HTTP to Z39.50/Melvyl Medline stateway where authentication is handled
by the Z30.50 server based on passwords distributed by the UC Div of Lib
Automation) and will excise the Z39.50/Medline specific code for a free
distribution of the state package. More on this is available at [2] to be
postered at the WWW5 in May.

-marc
[1] http://www.apache.org/docs/API.html
[2] http://www.ckm.ucsf.edu:666/papers/SSAHS/

-- 
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// Marc Salomon - Software Engineer - Innovative Software Systems Group     \\ 
\\ Library and Center for Knowledge Management - UC, San Francisco          // 
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