jpam

Overview

JPAM is a Java-PAM bridge. PAM, or Pluggable Authentication Modules, is a standard security architecture used on Unix, Linux and Mac OS X systems.

JPAM permits the use of PAM authentication facilities by Java applications running on those platforms.

These facilities include:

account
auth
password
session

News Highlights

17 November 2004. jpam 0.3 released. Source and binaries for Linux x86, Linux x86_64 and Mac OS X. With this release JPAM is ready for developer use.
17 August 2004. jpam project commenced. See cvs for a 0.1 alpha release which supports Linux

Downloads

Download here.

Documentation

The following documentation is available:

Uses

Jpam provides the integration with PAM. Any Java application that needs to do authentication can potentially use jpam.

Commonly Java application authenticate using one of the following approaches and APIs:

Database username and password tables; JDBC
LDAP, such as Novell NDS, open LDAP or Active Directory; JNDI

However, there are many more approaches than these two. There are hundreds of authentication systems accessible through PAM. See a list fo Linux here. Many of these are installed by default in the Linux distributions. Fedora Core 2 has 54 PAM modules in its /lib/security directory ready for use. Some notable examples of PAM modules are:

Name	Module	Use
SecurId	pam_securid.so	Authenticates SecurId hardware tokens with the RSAACE Server. Available from RSA as a free download. These have been tested with JPAM
Unix	`pam_unix_.so`*	Authenticates using configured Unix scheme. This can be shadow passwords or NIS, depending on how the machine was configured. Tested with JPAM.
RADIUS	`pam_radius.so`	Authenticates using RADIUS servers. Tested with JPAM.
CryptoCard	pam_smxs.so	Authenticates using CryptoCard RB1 hardware tokens and similar
Samba	pam_winbind.so	Authenticates using Windows and Samba servers.
Kerberos	pam_krb5.so	Authenticates with Kerberos/Active Directory
LDAP	pam_ldap.so	Authenticates with LDAP servers (from Java you could also use the JNDI API)
SafeWord	pam_safeword.so	Authenticates SafeWord tokens
DigiPass	pam_radius.so	DigiPass uses the Free Radius PAM module to authenticate DigiPass hardware tokens. DigiPass is from Vasco. These have been tested with JPAM.