mod_pubcookie 3.3.1

mod_pubcookie is an Apache module for Pubcookie web single sign-on.

Pubcookie consists of a standalone login server and modules for common web server platforms like Apache and Microsoft IIS.

Together, these components can turn existing authentication services (like Kerberos, LDAP, or NIS) into a solution for single sign-on authentication to websites throughout an institution.

What is Pubcookie?

Pubcookie is an open-source package for intra-institutional single-sign-on end-user web authentication. More generally, it is an approach to identifying users as they browse to an institutions many websites that require authentication. It helps an institution reuse existing authentication services (like Kerberos, LDAP, or NIS), and it limits the exposure of end-user passwords by ensuring theyre only sent to a trusted login service.

Software Components

Pubcookie currently includes a login server component as well as modules for Apache and Microsoft IIS servers that host content and applications. It also comes with tools for managing and distributing encryption keys.

Project History

Pubcookie was originally developed at the University of Washington in 1998. In 2001, it was bundled up and made available to others in conjunction with efforts at Internet2 to better define web-based initial sign-on (WebISO) systems like Pubcookie itself. Later that same year, developers at Carnegie Mellon, Wisconsin, and elsewhere joined the effort to make Pubcookie more generally useful and this activity moved the project into the realm of the open-source project where it lives on today.