Provided by: dacs_1.4.40-2_amd64 bug

NAME

       dacs_notices - DACS notice presentation and acknowledgement handler

SYNOPSIS

       dacs_notices [dacsoptions[1]]

DESCRIPTION

       This web service is part of the DACS suite.

       Some web service providers have a requirement that users must acknowledge a notice of some
       sort before access can be granted to an associated resource. A user attempting to access
       such a resource is shown a web page containing the notice and asked to acknowledge it or
       accept its conditions, typically by pressing an "I Accept" button on the web page. These
       notices are commonly legal notices, such as copyright notices, licensing notices,
       restricted access notices, and terms-of-use notices. This can also be applied to alert
       users to news (a warning about upcoming system maintenance, for example).

       dacs_acs(8)[2] (the DACS access control service, or ACS) can be configured to invoke
       dacs_notices when access control processing determines that one or more notices have not
       been acknowledged.  dacs_notices acts as both a generic notice presentation handler (it
       retrieves notices, presents them to the user, and requests the user to acknowledge the
       notices) and a matching notice acknowledgement handler (executed to process the user's
       response and take appropriate action). The presentation aspect of the program can be
       customized. It takes steps to defeat attempts to bypass notice presentation.

       In the DACS implementation, a notice (N) is usually some text, identified by a URL. A
       notice is associated with one or more resources (R) such that an attempt to access any of
       these resources requires the user to first explicitly acknowledge the textual material. A
       DACS event handler (H) is responsible for presenting the notice to the user. The basic
       flow of control is roughly as follows:

                   USER                  |  Apache/DACS

             a)    --- Request for R --->|---> (DACS Access Control Service)
             b)    <--- Redirect to H ---|<--

             c)    --- Request for H --->|---> (a notice presentation handler)
             d)        <--- Return N ----|<---

             e)     --- Submit Ack N --->|-->  (a notice acknowledgement handler)
             f)    <--- Redirect to R ---|<--

             g)    --- Request for R --->|---> (DACS access control service)
             h)                <--- R ---|<--

       More than one notice can be associated with a resource, in which case they are effectively
       concatenated for presentation purposes and collectively acknowledged (so N may be N1, N2,
       ..., Nn and Ack N acknowledges all of them).

       Having already acknowledged N in a session, a user should not need to do so again.
       dacs_notices uses a purely client-side approach; cookies are issued to remember that
       resources have been acknowledged. These cookies are called notice acknowledgement tokens
       or NATs. The implementation handles both authenticated and unauthenticated (anonymous)
       users. The cookie name consists of a prefix, the federation name, the jurisdiction name,
       and a unique component; see dacs.conf(5)[3] for a description of configuration directives
       used by this program, including the NOTICES_NAT_NAME_PREFIX[4] directive.

       The program accepts the standard FORMAT argument (see dacs(1)[5]) to select between
       generation of an HTML presentation page intended for display by a browser (the default) or
       XML output intended for middleware. Output customization applies only to the former. When
       generating HTML output, dacs_notices emits instructions, the content of the notices, and
       an HTML form by which the user submits a response.

           Note
           Of course, apart from answering a skill-testing question or the like, there's no way
           of knowing that a user has actually read and understood the notices. It is unclear to
           what extent it is necessary to go in this regard with respect to providing support.
           DACS cannot guarantee that a human user has actually read these notices and indicated
           acceptance of them, but it can guarantee (optionally, using secure mode[6]) that a NAT
           cannot be obtained by a client without the client having received a copy of the
           notices. If the client wants to "trick the system" by not actually presenting the
           notices to the user or soliciting a response it can, and in this event the service
           provider might consider legal recourse.

       In future versions of DACS, the idea of notice/acknowledgement processing may be
       generalized so that an arbitrary condition can be tested for by access control rules,
       remembered through client-side state (for example), and made available via a seamless
       workflow.

   Operation
       Configuring notice acknowledgement processing involves:

       •   Configuring an ACS_ERROR_HANDLER[7] directive to catch ACK_NEEDED (error code 905)
           events and invoke dacs_notices;

       •   Calling the ack[8] predicate from an access control rule to specify the notices that
           must be acknowledged; and

       •   Configuring dacs_notices.

       The following configuration directives are examined by dacs_notices. All of these
       directives are optional. Refer to the individual directives for additional details.

       •   NOTICES_ACK_HANDLER[9]: the URL of the notice acknowledgement handler, if not
           dacs_notices.

       •   NOTICES_ACCEPT_HANDLER[10]: the URL (absolute or relative) to which a user agent will
           be redirected after a positive acknowledgement to a notice has been received (i.e.,
           the notice or notices were "accepted"), if it is not possible to redirect the user
           agent to the request that initiated notice acknowledgement processing (e.g., if that
           request used the POST method).

       •   NOTICES_DECLINE_HANDLER[11]: the URL (absolute or relative) to which a user agent will
           be redirected after a negative acknowledgement to a notice has been received (i.e.,
           the notice or notices were "declined").

           Note
           When determining whether a resource has already been acknowledged, the query component
           of a resource URI is not considered.

       When emitting HTML, the web page generated by dacs_notices can be customized through the
       notices VFS item type. The following items are emitted if they exist:

       •   header: Initial HTML to emit.

       •   prologue: HTML to emit immediately after the header.

       •   instructions: HTML to emit immediately after the prologue and before the notices.

       •   epilogue: HTML to emit immediately after the form that follows the notices.

       •   trailer: Final HTML to emit.

       For example, given the configuration directives:

           VFS "[notices]dacs-fs:${Conf::DACS_HOME}/notices"

       files named header and trailer in the directory ${Conf::DACS_HOME}/notices would be
       expected to contain the initial and final HTML content, respectively. Note that these
       consist of text and HTML markup but are not complete HTML documents.

       Customization of the form is possible using configuration variables:

       •   notices_prompt_text: This label appears immediately before the HTML form. The default
           is something like "Your response to the preceding notices is requested:<p>".

       •   notices_accept_label: This label appears next to the radio button corresponding to the
           "accepted" response. The default is something like "I Accept".

       •   notices_decline_label: This label appears next to the radio button corresponding to
           the "declined" response. The default is something like "I Decline".

       •   notices_submit_label: This label appears in the submit button. The default is
           something like "Send".

       Here are some examples of how these variables might be set to customize the form:

           EVAL ${Conf::notices_prompt_text} = "My &lt;b&gt;custom&lt;/b&gt; prompt:"
           EVAL ${Conf::notices_accept_label} = "I really do accept&lt;br&gt;"
           EVAL ${Conf::notices_submit_label} = "Submit me!"

   Web Service Arguments
       In addition to the standard CGI arguments[12], dacs_notices understands the following CGI
       arguments:

       ACCEPT_LABEL
           The value of this optional parameter is used by the notice presentation handler and
           overrides the value of the ${Conf::notices_accept_label} variable, if any.

       DECLINE_LABEL
           The value of this optional parameter is used by the notice presentation handler and
           overrides the value of the ${Conf::notices_decline_label} variable, if any.

       HMAC
           This value is a secure keyed hash. It is computed by dacs_acs for use by the notice
           presentation handler. A hash is also computed (over different material) by the
           presentation handler and passed to the notice acknowledgement handler with the user's
           response and other information. Its purpose is to make it difficult to obtain a notice
           acknowledgement token directly by side-stepping notice acknowledgement processing. The
           federation-wide HMAC key is used. Please refer to the description of Secure Mode[6].

           Neither this argument nor the TIME[13] argument are used or required if the
           NOTICES_SECURE_HANDLER[14] configuration directive has the value "no".

       NOTICE_URIS
           The value of this argument is a space-separated list of URIs, each of which is invoked
           using the GET method and is expected to return a notice document.

               Note
               The notices are expected to be fragments of HTML text, not complete HTML
               documents; each notice is "pasted" into the presentation page exactly as obtained
               from its URI.

       TIME
           This is the Unix time at which dacs_acs invoked the notice presentation handler for
           this workflow. It is used to limit the lifetime of the workflow so that it cannot
           easily be rerun to obtain notice acknowledgement tokens at will.

       RESOURCE_URIS
           The value of this argument is a space-separated list of URIs, each of which is
           associated with the notice(s).

       RESPONSE
           Passed to the notice acknowledgement handler, this argument is the user's response and
           must either be accepted or declined.

   Middleware Support
       dacs_notices can be asked to emit various flavours of XML in support of middleware or
       thick clients. This is useful when middleware would prefer to prompt the user itself
       (acting as a notice presentation handler) and then invoke a acknowledgement handler (such
       as dacs_notices) to obtain a NAT. Any customizations specified for HTML output are ignored
       when XML is being produced and are not passed to middleware.

       The XML emitted by dacs_notices conforms to the DTD dacs_notices.dtd[15]. When acting as a
       notice presentation handler, it returns a presentation_reply element and when acting as a
       notice acknowledgement handler, it returns a ack_reply element; in either mode of
       operation an error reply is possible (via the common_status element).

       In conjunction with dacs_acs(8)[2], dacs_notices can optionally operate in a "secure"
       mode, where a particular control flow is enforced.

       The simple (non-secure) mode will be described first.

       Simple Mode
           The presentation_reply element lists one or more notices that must be acknowledged by
           the user. It includes a space-separated list of the URIs of the notices and a
           space-separated list of the URIs of resources that require these notices to be
           acknowledged. The text of the notices are base-64 encoded within the notice element,
           as specified by RFC 2045[16] (Section 6.8). The notice's URI is included as an
           attribute.

           The ack_reply element returns the user's response and, optionally, a URI to which the
           user can be redirected (depending on the context, this may be the URI of the request
           that required notices to be acknowledged, the value of the NOTICES_ACCEPT_HANDLER[10]
           directive, or the value of the NOTICES_DECLINE_HANDLER[11] directive). If a NAT is
           issued, it is returned (as an HTTP cookie) by the notice presentation handler.

       Secure Mode
           The secure mode of operation, which may not be necessary in some environments, serves
           two main purposes:

            1. a NAT can be cryptographically protected against forgery and alteration. Refer to
               dacs.nat(5)[17].

            2. DACS can enforce a flow of control so that a client cannot obtain a NAT without
               having received a copy of the notice(s); this is the purpose of the hmac and time
               attributes. That is, DACS can make it necessary for the client to first call
               dacs_acs(8)[2] with -check_only or -check_fail, then call the notice presentation
               handler to get the text of the notices, and then call the notice acknowledgement
               handler to request the NAT. No other control flow is possible (ignoring errors).

           When combined, these protections make it difficult for an attacker or unfriendly user
           to bypass having to acknowledge notices by manufacturing NATs or having DACS simply
           issue arbitrary NATs.

           The value of the NOTICES_SECURE_HANDLER[14] configuration directive determines whether
           the secure mode is disabled; it is enabled by default (see dacs.conf(5)[3]).

           In secure mode, the total duration of the work flow is limited to 120 seconds by
           default. This limit can be set using the NOTICES_WORKFLOW_LIFETIME_SECS[18] directive.

           Regardless of the selected output format, the required flow of control is:

            1. dacs_acs receives a service request

               Access to the requested resource will not be granted by dacs_acs(8)[2] until one
               or more notices have been acknowledged by the user.  dacs_acs either redirects the
               client to the notice presentation handler or returns an XML document
               (dacs_acs.dtd[19]) that describes which notices must be displayed and
               acknowledged; the behaviour depends on the service request. The notice
               presentation handler must be invoked and will expect to be passed the HMAC[20] and
               TIME[13] arguments.

               Provided they are in the same federation, the notice presentation handler may be
               in a different jurisdiction from dacs_acs.

            2. Notice presentation handler is invoked

               The user is expected to be presented with the notices and asked to accept or
               decline them. The handler either returns a web page containing an HTML form or an
               XML document (dacs_notices.dtd[15]). In either case, the handler will verify that
               dacs_acs had been called "recently" (the security-related arguments expire after a
               set amount of time and cannot be reused). Its output will include HMAC[20] and
               TIME[13] arguments, either of which may differ from the values passed into the
               program; the notice acknowledgement handler expects to be passed these arguments.

            3. Notice acknowledgement handler is invoked

               The user's response is directed to the notice acknowledgement handler, which
               verifies that the notice presentation handler has been called. The handler either
               redirects the user appropriately or returns an XML document
               (dacs_notices.dtd[15]). If no error has occurred and the user has accepted the
               notices, a NAT will also be returned.

               Note
               In secure mode, presentation handling and acknowledgement handling are "matched".
               If dacs_notices provides the latter functionality but not the former, presentation
               handling must behave as dacs_notices expects (in its acknowledgement handling
               mode) with respect to security. When secure mode is used with middleware that
               performs its own presentation handling, for example, middleware will likely need
               to invoke dacs_notices in its presentation handling mode solely to obtain security
               parameters to pass to dacs_notices in its acknowledgement handling mode.

               When dacs_notices acts as a notice presentation handler, it will validate its
               arguments (which originate from dacs_acs) and emit values that may be validated by
               the notice acknowledgement handler. When dacs_notices acts as a notice
               acknowledgement handler, it will validate its arguments. Therefore, if the notice
               acknowledgement handler runs in secure mode, the notice presentation handler must
               also run in secure mode.

               The presentation handling mode and the acknowledgement handling mode of
               dacs_notices must agree on the URL of the acknowledgement handler. This means that
               either the identical URL must be used for both modes or both modes must find the
               NOTICES_ACK_HANDLER directive configured to the same value (as when two different
               jurisdictions are involved).

DIAGNOSTICS

       The program exits 0 if everything was fine, 1 if an error occurred.

BUGS

       A client-side approach is used to note that resources have been acknowledged. While this
       is probably the simplest approach that works with both authenticated and unauthenticated
       users, it does not offer much support if one wants acknowledgements by authenticated users
       to be remembered across sessions (i.e., permanently). One possible solution is to allow
       persistent notice acknowledgements to be enabled for authenticated users, suppressing NAT
       cookies and causing a record to be written to a configured VFS item type when an
       authenticated user has accepted a notice. The ack() predicate would be extended so that
       the existence of persistent acknowledgement records could be checked, and some means of
       maintaining the persistent records might be added.

       The method used for generation of custom web pages is clunky and should be reconsidered.

SEE ALSO

       dacs.nat(5)[17], dacs_acs(8)[2]

AUTHOR

       Distributed Systems Software (www.dss.ca[21])

COPYING

       Copyright © 2003-2012 Distributed Systems Software. See the LICENSE[22] file that
       accompanies the distribution for licensing information.

NOTES

        1. dacsoptions
           http://dacs.dss.ca/man/dacs.1.html#dacsoptions

        2. dacs_acs(8)
           http://dacs.dss.ca/man/dacs_acs.8.html

        3. dacs.conf(5)
           http://dacs.dss.ca/man/dacs.conf.5.html

        4. NOTICES_NAT_NAME_PREFIX
           http://dacs.dss.ca/man/dacs.conf.5.html#NOTICES_NAT_NAME_PREFIX

        5. dacs(1)
           http://dacs.dss.ca/man/dacs.1.html

        6. secure mode
           http://dacs.dss.ca/man/#secure_mode

        7. ACS_ERROR_HANDLER
           http://dacs.dss.ca/man/dacs.conf.5.html#ACS_ERROR_HANDLER

        8. ack
           http://dacs.dss.ca/man/dacs.exprs.5.html#ack

        9. NOTICES_ACK_HANDLER
           http://dacs.dss.ca/man/dacs.conf.5.html#NOTICES_ACK_HANDLER

       10. NOTICES_ACCEPT_HANDLER
           http://dacs.dss.ca/man/dacs.conf.5.html#NOTICES_ACCEPT_HANDLER

       11. NOTICES_DECLINE_HANDLER
           http://dacs.dss.ca/man/dacs.conf.5.html#NOTICES_DECLINE_HANDLER

       12. standard CGI arguments
           http://dacs.dss.ca/man/dacs.services.8.html#standard_cgi_args

       13. TIME
           http://dacs.dss.ca/man/#TIME

       14. NOTICES_SECURE_HANDLER
           http://dacs.dss.ca/man/dacs.conf.5.html#NOTICES_SECURE_HANDLER

       15. dacs_notices.dtd
           http://dacs.dss.ca/man/../dtd-xsd/dacs_notices.dtd

       16. RFC 2045
           http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2045.txt

       17. dacs.nat(5)
           http://dacs.dss.ca/man/dacs.nat.5.html

       18. NOTICES_WORKFLOW_LIFETIME_SECS
           http://dacs.dss.ca/man/dacs.conf.5.html#NOTICES_WORKFLOW_LIFETIME_SECS

       19. dacs_acs.dtd
           http://dacs.dss.ca/man/../dtd-xsd/dacs_acs.dtd

       20. HMAC
           http://dacs.dss.ca/man/#HMAC

       21. www.dss.ca
           http://www.dss.ca

       22. LICENSE
           http://dacs.dss.ca/man/../misc/LICENSE