Shibboleth

Shibboleth is an open-source identity and access management system that provides federated identity and Single Sign-On (SSO) capabilities for web applications and services. It is widely used in the academic and research community, as well as in various other sectors, to enable secure authentication and authorization in a federated environment.

Shibboleth is designed to support federated identity management, allowing organizations and institutions to establish trust relationships and share authentication and authorization information across different domains or entities.

Shibboleth offers SSO functionality, enabling users to log in once to an Trusted Identity Provider (IdP)|identity provider (IdP) and then access multiple services and applications without the need to re-enter credentials. Shibboleth places a strong emphasis on security. It uses cryptographic techniques to protect user authentication information and attributes during transmission and provides mechanisms for secure attribute release.

Shibboleth allows identity providers to release specific user attributes or claims to service providers (SPs) based on predefined policies. This attribute-based access control is useful for granting or denying access to resources based on user attributes.

Shibboleth uses the SAML (Security Assertion Markup Language)|Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) as the underlying protocol for exchanging authentication and authorization data between IdPs and SPs. SAML is a widely adopted standard for federated identity systems. Shibboleth is an open-source project, which means that the software is freely available for organizations to download, install, and customize according to their specific needs.

The Shibboleth community consists of developers, organizations, and institutions that contribute to its development and share best practices for implementing federated identity solutions. Shibboleth provides mechanisms for users to have control over the release of their attributes and consent to the sharing of specific information with service providers.

Shibboleth consists of two main components: the Identity Provider (IdP) and the Service Provider (SP). The IdP is responsible for authenticating users and releasing attributes, while the SP consumes these attributes to control access to resources.

Shibboleth relies on the exchange of metadata between participating organizations to establish trust and configure federation settings. Metadata contains information about IdPs, SPs, and encryption certificates.

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Shibboleth is often used in higher education institutions, research organizations, and government agencies, where the need for secure access to resources and collaboration across multiple entities is critical. It allows organizations to streamline authentication and authorization processes while ensuring that users' identities and attributes are protected.