Apache CXF Fediz 1.2.0 tutorial - overview

Apache CXF Fediz 1.2.0 has been released. Fediz is a subproject of the Apache CXF web services stack. It is an implementation of the WS-Federation Passive Requestor Profile for SSO that supports Claims Based Access Control. In laymans terms, Fediz allows you to implement Single Sign On (SSO) for your web application, by redirecting the client browser to an Identity Provider (IdP), where the client is authenticated and redirected back to the application. Fediz consists of a number of container-specific plugins (Tomcat, Jetty, Spring Security, Websphere, etc.) as well as an IdP which bundles the CXF Security Token Service (STS) to issue SAML Tokens.

This is an overview of a planned series of articles on the new features that are available in Fediz 1.2.0, which is a new major release of the project. Subsequent articles will go into more detail on the new features, which are as follows:

• Dependency update to use CXF 3.0.x (3.0.4).
• A new container-independent CXF-based plugin is available.
• Logout Support has been added to the plugins and IdP
• A new REST API is available for configuring the IdP
• Support for authenticating to the IdP using Kerberos has been added
• Support for authenticating to the IdP using a client certificate has been added
• It is now possible to use the IdP as an identity broker with a SAML SSO IdP
• Metadata support has been added for the plugins and IdP