Description
OS level PAM security provides great interface for authentication and authorization. For example, sssd provides support for manage Active Directory nested OU by adjusting ldap_group_nesting_level = 5. Knox configuration is configured to interact with LDAP directly, but this has two short cominges. First, hgh volume traffic is likely to make too many queries to AD without cache. Second, complex logic of LDAP queries can not map correctly to UserDnTemplate without adding more ldap specific logic into JndiLdapRealm code and parameters.
Knox can be improved to use PAM to out source complex OS to AD interaction to sssd. It is possible to implement a shiro PAM plugin to reduce the complex LDAP logic that is starting to accumulate in Knox.
Looks like there is a least a start for this here.
https://github.com/plaflamme/shiro-libpam4j
libpam4j is available via Maven and uses an MIT license
http://mvnrepository.com/artifact/org.jvnet.libpam4j/libpam4j/1.4
This might be a great addition to Knox.