The Shibboleth IdP V3 software has reached its End of Life and is no longer supported. This documentation is available for historical purposes only. See the IDP4 wiki space for current documentation on the supported version.

SAML2LogoutConfiguration

File(s): conf/relying-party.xml

Format: Native Spring / Deprecated Custom Schema

Legacy V2 File(s): conf/relying-party.xml

Overview

The SAML2.Logout profile configuration bean enables support for the SAML 2.0 Single Logout profile.

For detailed information on the use of this profile, see LogoutConfiguration.

Configuration

The most typical options used are described in more detail below, but not every obscure option is discussed. See the javadoc for all of the possible configuration options for this profile (note that many of them are inherited from parent classes).

Virtually all the configuration options below can be set via two different properties: a static property that explicitly sets the value to use and a lookup strategy or predicate property that takes a Function or Predicate and returns the value to use. The dynamic property is generally named "propertyNamePredicate" or "propertyNameLookupStrategy" for Boolean- and non-Boolean-valued properties respectively.

The examples shown are not specific to any particular profile configuration.


Common

Options common to most/all profiles:

NameTypeDefaultDescription
securityConfiguration   SecurityConfigurationBean named shibboleth.DefaultSecurityConfigurationAn object containing all of the default security-related objects needed for peer authentication and encryption. See SecurityConfiguration for complete details.
disallowedFeatures 3.3Integer0A bitmask of features to disallow, the mask values being specific to individual profiles

Guidance

Modifying the security configuration is usually done to:

  • specify an alternate signing or decryption key to use
  • control signing or encryption algorithms (but for metadata you control, it's advisable to control algorithms by using an extension to specify supported algorithms).


SAML

Options common to SAML profiles:

NameTypeDefaultDescription
additionalAudiencesForAssertionCollection<String>
Additional values to populate into audience restriction condition of assertions
includeConditionsNotBeforeBooleantrueWhether to include a NotBefore attribute in assertions
assertionLifetimeDurationPT5MLifetime of assertions
signAssertionsPredicate<ProfileRequestContext>falseWhether to sign assertions
signResponsesPredicate<ProfileRequestContext>varies by profileWhether to sign responses
signRequestsPredicate<ProfileRequestContext>falseWhether to sign requests

Guidance

It isn't too common to need any of these options, and they should be changed only with care.

The additionalAudiencesForAssertion and includeConditionsNotBefore settings provide ways to work around bugs in other systems. You should never use these settings without obtaining a commitment from the other system's owner to fix their bugs.

The assertionLifetime setting does not involve control over the session with the relying party, it's only relevant in delegation scenarios.

The signing options have a complex history, which is one reason they are not themselves just boolean-valued. We provide Spring support so you can just set them to "true" or false" as though they are, but they also directly support the more dynamic approach of deriving the value with a bean.

The signResponses default varies by profile, see the notes on the individual profile pages.

If you need to enable the signAssertions option, and you control the SP's metadata, you should generally add the WantAssertionsSigned flag to it in place of using this option.


SAML 2.0

Options common to SAML 2.0 profiles:

NameTypeDefaultDescription
encryptionOptionalBooleanfalseWhether to automatically disable encryption if the relying party does not possess a suitable key
encryptAssertionsPredicate<ProfileRequestContext>varies by profileWhether to encrypt assertions
encryptNameIDsPredicate<ProfileRequestContext>varies by profileWhether to encrypt NameIDs
encryptAttributesPredicate<ProfileRequestContext>falseWhether to encrypt attributes

Guidance

The encryption options are generally set correctly for each different profile; see the notes on the individual profile pages. We provide Spring support so you can just set them to "true" or "false" as though they are boolean-valued, but they also directly support the more dynamic approach of deriving the value with a bean.

Note that when the conditions to encrypt various constructs evaluate to true, the IdP will fail the request if it is unable to perform the encryption, for whatever reason. This is overrideable using the encryptionOptional property, which allows the IdP to encrypt if it can but continue otherwise. If you carefully control your metadata sources, which you should do in any case, you should be able to trust that any SP lacking an encryption key is incapable of encryption anyway, making the property safe to enable.


Artifact

Options common to SAML profiles that may transmit messages via SAML Artifact (a pass by reference instead of value, followed by a callback).

NameTypeDefaultDescription
artifactConfigurationSAMLArtifactConfigurationBean named shibboleth.DefaultArtifactConfigurationCustomizes the use of SAML artifacts

Guidance

You shouldn't really need to modify this, as artifacts are rarely used anymore, and if they are, the default configuration suffices. The main reason you might change it is to switch a SAML 1.1 SSO configuration from Type 1 to Type 2 artifacts, but that's very obscure. If it ever comes up, we will provide an example.

With SAML 2.0, there is a valid case for customizing the configuration on a per-node basis by exposing dedicated resolution endpoints on each node, and making sure a node issues artifacts that will be resolved by that node. This is already exposed for you via the idp.artifact.endpointIndex property.


Profile-Specific

Options specific to the SAML 2.0 Single Logout profile:

NameTypeDefaultDescription
qualifiedNameIDFormats 3.4Collection<String>
See below

Guidance

The qualifiedNameIDFormats option was added to deal with an interoperability issue involving the matching of SAML <NameID> elements between the values issued by the IdP and values received in <LogoutRequest> messages. The two have to "match", and the IdP was imposing a strict rule that required all the various bits of a <NameID> to be equal, which is the conservative approach, but it relies on SPs not modifying the data they receive unnecessarily.

While that's the expected behavior, not all SPs do this correctly, and there are some edge cases in the standard whereby some <NameID> Formats are defined in such a way that the NameQualifier and SPNameQualifier attributes are permitted to "default" to values based on the entityIDs of the IdP and SP at runtime.

The IdP now supports this defaulting during its logout comparisons for the two Formats for which this defaulting is explicitly defined in the standard, namely "persistent" and "transient". The configuration option allows deployers to add additional custom Formats to the set for which this behavior is in effect.

While it is possible to add additional standard Formats to this set, it bears noting that none of them are defined by the standard to be compared in that fashion. They shouldn't even have qualifiers, in fact.

.

Notes

The default values of signRequests and signResponses for this profile are an extended form of the behavior that was referred to in V2 as "conditional". It signs on the front-channel, and on the back-channel only if TLS isn't used (very unusual) or if the receiving port is 443. It assumes that traffic over 443 will be relying on message-based security measures (but see below), whereas traffic to an alternative TLS port like 8443 will be relying on mutual authentication and thus provide a secure channel.

The default value of encryptNameIDs is also conditional on the same basis.