When you start the
CICS®-MQ
bridge, you can specify the level of authentication. If requested, the bridge monitor checks the
user ID and password extracted from the
IBM® MQ
request message before running the CICS program named in the request message.
When you run the
CICS-MQ
bridge monitor
transaction (for example, CKBR or your transaction name), you can
specify the
AUTH
parameter to select one of the
following levels of authentication:
-
LOCAL
-
This level is the default. The bridge monitor starts the bridge task with the CICS default user ID. CICS user
programs that the bridge task runs have the authority associated with this user ID. The
IBM MQ
request message cannot request higher
authority because any user IDs or passwords in the message are ignored. If the bridge task runs a
CICS program that tries to access protected resources, the
CICS program might fail.
-
IDENTIFY
-
If the message descriptor (MQMD) in the request message specifies
a user ID, the bridge monitor starts the bridge task with that user
ID. CICS user programs that
the bridge task runs have the authority associated with that user
ID. The user ID is treated as trusted; that is, the bridge monitor
does not authenticate the ID by using password or PassTicket information.
If the MQMD does not specify a user ID, the bridge monitor starts
the bridge task with the CICS default
user ID, in the same way as the LOCAL option.
-
VERIFY_UOW
-
The bridge monitor uses the password or PassTicket to authenticate
the user ID if all the following conditions apply:
-
The message descriptor (MQMD) in the request message specifies
a user ID.
-
The request message includes an
IBM MQ
CICS information header (MQCIH).
-
The Authenticator field in the MQCIH contains a password or PassTicket.
If authentication succeeds, the bridge monitor starts the bridge
task with that user ID. If authentication fails, the bridge monitor
fails the request with a MQCRC_SECURITY_ERROR return code.
If any
one of the conditions listed earlier is not met, the bridge monitor
starts the bridge task with the CICS default
user ID, in the same way as the LOCAL option. Only the first request
message in the unit of work is checked; the bridge ignores user ID
and password or PassTicket information in subsequent messages that
are part of the same unit of work.
-
VERIFY_ALL
-
This level is the same as VERIFY_UOW, except that the bridge task
also checks that the user ID is the same in every request message
in the same unit of work, and reauthenticates the user ID for each
request message, using the password or PassTicket that the message
contains.
If you require different levels of authentication for different
applications, use multiple bridge monitors with different transaction
IDs. You can use CICS surrogate
security to restrict the combinations of transaction and user ID that
a bridge monitor transaction and user ID can start.
Table 1
shows the user ID under
which the bridge monitor is started. The user ID depends on the method
that you use to run the bridge monitor transaction, typically CKBR.
-
The
MONUSERID
attribute of the MQMONITOR resource, if security checking is
active for the CICS region (that is, the
SEC
system initialization parameter is
set to YES)
-
User ID that started the MQMONITOR resource, if security checking is disabled for the CICS
region (that is,
SEC
is set to NO)
User IDs and passwords in request messages
When you use the IDENTIFY, VERIFY_UOW, or VERIFY_ALL authentication options, the bridge task and
the CICS programs that it runs are started with the user ID
that is specified in the message descriptor (MQMD) in the request message. With the VERIFY_UOW and
VERIFY_ALL options, the bridge monitor also checks the password specified in the
IBM MQ
CICS information header (MQCIH) in the request message.
To use these levels of authentication, the
IBM MQ
applications must provide a user ID in
the MQMD, and they must provide an MQCIH including the password. You must define these user IDs to
RACF®. To control the user IDs used, the
IBM MQ
applications must open the request
queue for the bridge monitor using open options that include MQOO_SET_IDENTITY_CONTEXT. The
applications must also include a value of MQPMO_SET_IDENTITY_CONTEXT in their put message
options.
If the bridge monitor finds a problem with the user
ID or the password in a request message, it acts as follows:
Table 1.
CICS-MQ
bridge monitor
security
Bridge monitor start method
|
At a signed on terminal
|
User ID for bridge monitor
|