requests-kerberos

A Kerberos authentication handler for python-requests

Description

requests Kerberos/GSSAPI authentication library
===============================================

.. image:: https://github.com/requests/requests-kerberos/actions/workflows/ci.yml/badge.svg
    :target: https://github.com/requests/requests-kerberos/actions/workflows/ci.yml

Requests is an HTTP library, written in Python, for human beings. This library
adds optional Kerberos/GSSAPI authentication support and supports mutual
authentication. Basic GET usage:


.. code-block:: python

    >>> import requests
    >>> from requests_kerberos import HTTPKerberosAuth
    >>> r = requests.get("http://example.org", auth=HTTPKerberosAuth())
    ...

The entire ``requests.api`` should be supported.

Setup
-----

Before installing this module, the underlying Kerberos C libraries and Python
development headers need to be installed. An example of how to do this for
some Linux distributions is shown below:

.. code-block:: bash

    # For Debian based distros
    apt-get install gcc python3-dev libkrb5-dev

    # For EL based distros
    dnf install gcc python3-devel krb5-devel

The names of the packages may vary across the distribution so use this as a
general guide. MacOS and Windows users should not need these development
libraries as the underlying Kerberos Python module for those platforms are
provided as a wheel and the C library is already preinstalled.

While it is possible to use Kerberos authentication with an explicit
``principal`` and ``password`` as an arg to ``HTTPKerberosAuth``, it is
recommended to use an existing credential cache to store the credentials
instead. The credential cache can store a Kerberos Ticket-Granting Ticket
(``TGT``) which is then used for authentication when no ``password`` is given
to ``HTTPKerberosAuth``. The credential cache can store a ``TGT`` by using the
``kinit`` command and ``klist`` can be used to view the contents of the cache.
The environment variable ``KRB5CCNAME`` can be used to specify the location of
a custom credential cache.

Authentication Failures
-----------------------

Client authentication failures will be communicated to the caller by returning
the 401 response. A 401 response may also come from an expired Ticket-Granting
Ticket.

Mutual Authentication
---------------------

REQUIRED
^^^^^^^^

By default, ``HTTPKerberosAuth`` will require mutual authentication from the
server, and if a server emits a non-error response which cannot be
authenticated, a ``requests_kerberos.errors.MutualAuthenticationError`` will
be raised. If a server emits an error which cannot be authenticated, it will
be returned to the user but with its contents and headers stripped. If the
response content is more important than the need for mutual auth on errors,
(eg, for certain WinRM calls) the stripping behavior can be suppressed by
setting ``sanitize_mutual_error_response=False``:

.. code-block:: python

    >>> import requests
    >>> from requests_kerberos import HTTPKerberosAuth, REQUIRED
    >>> kerberos_auth = HTTPKerberosAuth(mutual_authentication=REQUIRED, sanitize_mutual_error_response=False)
    >>> r = requests.get("https://windows.example.org/wsman", auth=kerberos_auth)
    ...


OPTIONAL
^^^^^^^^

If you'd prefer to not require mutual authentication, you can set your
preference when constructing your ``HTTPKerberosAuth`` object:

.. code-block:: python

    >>> import requests
    >>> from requests_kerberos import HTTPKerberosAuth, OPTIONAL
    >>> kerberos_auth = HTTPKerberosAuth(mutual_authentication=OPTIONAL)
    >>> r = requests.get("http://example.org", auth=kerberos_auth)
    ...

This will cause ``requests_kerberos`` to attempt mutual authentication if the
server advertises that it supports it, and cause a failure if authentication
fails, but not if the server does not support it at all.

DISABLED
^^^^^^^^

While we don't recommend it, if you'd prefer to never attempt mutual
authentication, you can do that as well:

.. code-block:: python

    >>> import requests
    >>> from requests_kerberos import HTTPKerberosAuth, DISABLED
    >>> kerberos_auth = HTTPKerberosAuth(mutual_authentication=DISABLED)
    >>> r = requests.get("http://example.org", auth=kerberos_auth)
    ...

Preemptive Authentication
-------------------------

``HTTPKerberosAuth`` can be forced to preemptively initiate the Kerberos
GSS exchange and present a Kerberos ticket on the initial request (and all
subsequent). By default, authentication only occurs after a
``401 Unauthorized`` response containing a Kerberos or Negotiate challenge
is received from the origin server. This can cause mutual authentication
failures for hosts that use a persistent connection (eg, Windows/WinRM), as
no Kerberos challenges are sent after the initial auth handshake. This
behavior can be altered by setting  ``force_preemptive=True``:

.. code-block:: python

    >>> import requests
    >>> from requests_kerberos import HTTPKerberosAuth, REQUIRED
    >>> kerberos_auth = HTTPKerberosAuth(mutual_authentication=REQUIRED, force_preemptive=True)
    >>> r = requests.get("https://windows.example.org/wsman", auth=kerberos_auth)
    ...

Hostname Override
-----------------

If communicating with a host whose DNS name doesn't match its
kerberos hostname (eg, behind a content switch or load balancer),
the hostname used for the Kerberos GSS exchange can be overridden by
setting the ``hostname_override`` arg:

.. code-block:: python

    >>> import requests
    >>> from requests_kerberos import HTTPKerberosAuth, REQUIRED
    >>> kerberos_auth = HTTPKerberosAuth(hostname_override="internalhost.local")
    >>> r = requests.get("https://externalhost.example.org/", auth=kerberos_auth)
    ...

Explicit Principal
------------------

``HTTPKerberosAuth`` normally uses the default principal (ie, the user for
whom you last ran ``kinit`` or ``kswitch``, or an SSO credential if
applicable). However, an explicit principal can be specified, which will
cause Kerberos to look for a matching credential cache for the named user.
This feature depends on OS support for collection-type credential caches.
An explicit principal can be specified with the ``principal`` arg:

.. code-block:: python

    >>> import requests
    >>> from requests_kerberos import HTTPKerberosAuth, REQUIRED
    >>> kerberos_auth = HTTPKerberosAuth(principal="user@REALM")
    >>> r = requests.get("http://example.org", auth=kerberos_auth)
    ...

Password Authentication
-----------------------

``HTTPKerberosAuth`` can be used with an explicit principal and password
instead of using a credential stored in the credential cache. An explicit
username and password can be specified with the ``principal`` and ``password``
arg respectively:

.. code-block:: python

    >>> import requests
    >>> from requests_kerberos import HTTPKerberosAuth, REQUIRED
    >>> kerberos_auth = HTTPKerberosAuth(
    ...     principal="user@REALM",
    ...     password="SecretPassword",
    ...)
    >>> r = requests.get("http://example.org", auth=kerberos_auth)

When specifing a custom principal and password, the underlying Kerberos
library will request a TGT from the KDC before using that TGT to retrieve the
service ticket for authentication.

Delegation
----------

``requests_kerberos`` supports credential delegation (``GSS_C_DELEG_FLAG``).
To enable delegation of credentials to a server that requests delegation, pass
``delegate=True`` to ``HTTPKerberosAuth``:

.. code-block:: python

    >>> import requests
    >>> from requests_kerberos import HTTPKerberosAuth
    >>> r = requests.get("http://example.org", auth=HTTPKerberosAuth(delegate=True))
    ...

Be careful to only allow delegation to servers you trust as they will be able
to impersonate you using the delegated credentials.

Logging
-------

This library makes extensive use of Python's logging facilities.

Log messages are logged to the ``requests_kerberos`` and
``requests_kerberos.kerberos_`` named loggers.

If you are having difficulty we suggest you configure logging. Issues with the
underlying kerberos libraries will be made apparent. Additionally, copious debug
information is made available which may assist in troubleshooting if you
increase your log level all the way up to debug.

Channel Binding
---------------

Since ``v0.12.0`` this library automatically attempts to bind the
authentication token with the channel binding data when connecting over a TLS
connection. Channel Binding is also known as Extended Protection for
Authentication (``EPA``) from Microsoft. This should be ignored by servers
which do not implement support for CB but in the rare case this still fails it
can be disabled by setting ``send_cbt=False``.


History
=======

0.15.0: 2024-06-04
------------------

- Make Channel Binding data per-host
- Added support for explicit passwords using the ``password`` kwarg

0.14.0: 2021-12-05
------------------

- Added support for proxy authentication with ``HTTP`` endpoints.
- Support for proxying ``HTTPS`` endpoints is not available due to limitations
  of the underlying requests/urllib3 library.
- Fixed up stray bytes to str conversion.

0.13.0: 2021-11-03
------------------

- Change Kerberos dependencies to pyspnego_ to modernise the underlying
  Kerberos library that is used.
- Removed the ``wrap_winrm`` and ``unwrap_winrm`` functions
- Dropped support for Python 2 and raised minimum Python version to 3.6.
- Renamed the ``context`` attribute to ``_context`` to indicate it's meant for
  internal use only.
- Fix Negotiate header regex pattern to avoid DoS affected patterns

.. _pyspnego: https://github.com/jborean93/pyspnego

0.12.0: 2017-12-20
------------------------

- Add support for channel binding tokens (assumes pykerberos support >= 1.2.1)
- CBT is enabled by default but for older servers which might have
  compatibility issues this can be disabled with ``send_cbt=False``.
- Add support for kerberos message encryption (assumes pykerberos support >= 1.2.1)
- Misc CI/test fixes

0.11.0: 2016-11-02
------------------

- Switch d