AN AUTHENTICATION AGENT FOR WEB-BASED.pdf

AN AUTHENTICATION AGENT FOR WEB-BASEDSYSTEMWei Huang, Jinhua XuSchool of Computer Science and Technology, Soochow University, Suzhou, Jiangsu, Chinahuangwei@, sujhxu@Abstract Web information systems are now widely used.These systems generally provide specific service inaccordance with users’ identities. To use theseservices, users are required to conduct identityauthentication separately when logging in differentweb applications and systems. For the sake ofsecurity and access control, it is infeasible to use aunique common identifier and password for allsystems. To achieve single sign on, we propose anauthentication agent for web-based system which iscalled AA4WS. AA4WS can be installed in clientside as a plug-in. It gets user’s POST data whenfirst time logging in some web application system,stores the data, interacts with the authenticationagent server through web service, and simulateslogin procedure, therefore eliminating user’smanual identity authorization and achieving unifiedidentity authorization. AA4WS also achievessecurity in information storing, conveying,processing, updating and managing, and obtainsefficiency as well, without adding additionalservice response time. AA4WS communicates withauthentication agent server via web service bySOAP, making the system have characteristics ofexcellent generality.Keywords: authentication; single sign on; accesscontrol; web service; plug in1 IntroductionAt present, web information system is widely used.