SAML Single Sign-On into Joomla using SimpleSAML | SimpleSAML SSO | Login using SimpleSAML

miniOrange Joomla SAML SP SSO plugin helps you to integrate your Joomla site to SimpleSAML using SAML 2.0 protocol. The miniOrange Joomla SAML SP Single Sign-on (SSO) plugin is simple to set up SimpleSAML SSO into Joomla and enable secure login into Joomla. As a result, users can access multiple Joomla applications with one login after authenticating with their SimpleSAML IDP credentials.

Our plugin is compatible with Joomla 3 as well as Joomla 4 with all the SAML 2.0 compliant Identity Providers. Here we will go through a step-by-step guide to configure SAML SSO login between the Joomla site and SimpleSAML by considering SimpleSAML as IDP (Identity Provider) & Joomla as SP (Service Provider).

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Joomla SAML Handbook

This detailed Handbook for the Joomla SAML SP Single Sign On plugin gives an in-depth explanation of the features of the plugin.

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If you want any assistance or support while configuring a plugin or integrating SimpleSAML with Joomla, then click on the Free Configuration Setup button.

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Steps to Integrate SimpleSAML Single Sign-On (SSO) with Joomla SAML SP

1. Download and setup Joomla SAML SP Plugin

• Download the zip file for the miniOrange SAML SP plugin for Joomla from the link here.
• Login into your Joomla site’s Administrator console.
• From left toggle menu, click on System, then under Install section click on Extensions.

• Here click on Browse for file button to locate and install the plugin file downloaded earlier.

• Once Installation of plugin is successful. Now click on Start Using miniOrange SAML SP plugin.

• Then go to the Service Provider Metadata tab, scroll down and copy the SP-EntityID and the ACS URL.

2. Configure SimpleSAML as IdP

• Enabling the Identity Provider functionality
  • The first that must be done is to enable the identity provider functionality. This is done by editing config/config.php (You can find this file in your simplesaml installation directory). The option enable.saml20-idp controls whether SAML 2.0 IdP support is enabled. Enable it by assigning true to them
  • Example: ‘enable.saml20-idp’ => true
• Configuring the authentication module:
  • The exampleauth: UserPass authentication module is part of the exampleauth module. This module isn't enabled by default, so you will have to enable it. This is done by creating a file named enable (file name) in modules/ exampleauth/.
  • On unix, this can be done by running (from the SimpleSAMLphp installation directory):
    
  • The next step is to create an authentication source with this module. An authentication source is an authentication module with a specific configuration. Each authentication source has a name, which is used to refer to this specific configuration in the IdP configuration. Configuration for authentication sources can be found in config/ authsources.php.
  • In this setup, this file should contain a single entry:
    
      <?php     $config = [     'example-userpass' => [     'exampleauth: UserPass',     'student: studentpass' => [     'uid' => ['student'],     'eduPersonAffiliation' => ['member', 'student'],     ],     'employee:employeepass' => [     'uid' => ['employee'],     'eduPersonAffiliation' => ['member', 'employee'],     ],     ],     ];
  • This configuration creates two users - student and employee, with the passwords studentpass and employeepass. The username and password are stored in the array index (student: studentpass for the student-user). The attributes for each user are configured in the array referenced by the index. So for the student user, these are:
    
  [ 'uid' => ['student'], 'eduPersonAffiliation' => ['member', 'student'], ],
  • The attributes will be returned by the IdP when the user logs on.
• Creating a self-signed certificate :-
  The IdP needs a certificate to sign its SAML assertions with. Here is an example of an openssl-command which can be used to generate a new private key key and the corresponding self-signed certificate. The private key and certificate go into the directory defined in the certdir setting (defaults to cert/)
  This key and certificate can be used to sign SAML messages: openssl req -newkey rsa:3072 -new -x509 -days 3652 -nodes -out example.org.crt -keyout example.org.pem The certificate above will be valid for 10 years.
  OR
  You can generate it by using any online Tools and add them in cert directory.
  The extension should be like:
      example.org.crt //(Public Key)    example.org.pem //(Private Key)
  Note:-
  SimpleSAMLphp will only work with RSA certificates. DSA certificates are not supported.
• Configuring the IdP:-
  The SAML 2.0 IdP is configured by the metadata stored in metadata/saml20-idp-hosted.php. This is a minimal configuration:     <?php    $metadata['__DYNAMIC:1__'] = [    /*    * The hostname for this IdP. This makes it possible to run multiple    * IdPs from the same configuration. '__DEFAULT__' means that this one    * should be used by default.    */    'host' => '__DEFAULT__',        /*    * The private key and certificate to use when signing responses.     * These are stored in the cert-directory.    */    'privatekey' => 'example.org.pem',    'certificate' => 'example.org.crt',     /*     * The authentication source which should be used to authenticate the     * user. This must match one of the entries in config/authsources.php.     */    'auth' => '' Example:- 'example-userpass', // You can find this in Step Number 3    ];
• Adding SPs to the IdP:-
  The identity provider you are configuring needs to know about the service providers you are going to connect to it. This is configured by metadata stored in metadata/saml20-sp-remote.php. This is a minimal example of a metadata/saml20-sp-remote.php metadata file for a SimpleSAMLphp SP:
  
  Replace example.com with your Joomla domain name.
      <?php        $metadata['https://example.com/plugins/authentication/miniorangesaml/'] = [         'Assertion Consumer Service' => 'https://example.com/?morequest=acs',         'SingleLogoutService' => 'https://example.com/index.php?option=com_users&task=logout',        'NameIDFormat' => 'urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:1.1:nameid-format:emailAddress',        'simplesaml.nameidattribute' => 'mail',        'simplesaml.attributes' => true,        'attributes' => array('mail', 'givenname', 'sn', 'memberOf'),        ]; Note that the URI in the entityID and the URLs to the Assertion Consumer Service and Single Logout Service endpoints change between different service providers. If you have the metadata of the remote SP as an XML file, you can use the built-in XML to SimpleSAMLphp metadata converter, which by default is available as /admin/metadata-converter.php in your SimpleSAMLphp installation.
  
  • Here, you can also add user attributes you want to send from SimpleSAML to your Service Provider i.e Joomla.
  • Go to SimpleSAMLphp homepage of installation.
    
  The URL of an installation can be e.g.: https://service.example.com/simplesaml/ where service.example.com has to be replaced by your SimpleSAMLphp path.
  • (Note: The installation page URL may differ depending on how SimpleSAML installation has been done)
  • Now go to Federation Tab and click on Show Metadata for SAML 2.0 IdP Metadata.
  
  • You can get the IdP metadata from here which will be required to configure the plugin.

3. Configure SimpleSAML Identity Provider with Joomla SAML Service Provider