authenticate as userA, but get authorization to user userB's account

Jochen Bern Jochen.Bern at binect.de
Wed Oct 25 15:44:26 EEST 2017


On 10/25/2017 12:58 PM, Heiko Schlittermann wrote:
> We could create new "role" users, share the password and create an
> additional account within the mail client (thunderbird) they use. From
> users perspective it is exactly what they want. But I dislike the idea
> of sharing the password.

For what reason exactly? It not being personalized, too easy to leak,
potentially not expiring ever, ... ?

dovecot can take the "username" from a client certificate used in the
connection (default is to use the CN of it). Based on that, you could
give user A (actual wetware using Thunderbird) a client cert with an
appropriately limited validity period and a DN of, say, "CN=userB,
OU=userA, ..." to use for logging in as userB. Within Thunderbird, that
cert+key would be exactly as safe as the cert+key userA uses for S/MIME
- read, "usually considered safe enough". ;-)

I seem to remember that at least some of the userdb backends dovecot
supports allow to have *several different* passwords stored for userB,
too ... (But that would probably imply that you cannot allow userB to
change "the" password themselves.)

(For actual group access rights userA->userB *within* dovecot, I'll have
to refer you to others' replies.)

Kind regards,
-- 
Jochen Bern
Systemingenieur

Fon:    +49 6151 9067-231
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