Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML)

Introduction

Authentication Entities

Authentication Process

The information sent from Identity-Provider to User is known as an assertion.

Flow 1 - Service Provider Initiated (SP-Initiated) SSO

  1. the User tries to log in to Service-Provider from a browser
  2. Service-Provider responds by generating a SAML request
  3. the browser redirects the User to an SSO (Single-Sign On) URL, Identity-Provider
  4. Identity-Provider parses the SAML request, authenticates the User (this could be via username and password or even a two-factor authentication; if the User is already authenticated on Identity-Provider, this step will be skipped) and generates a SAML response
  5. Identity-Provider returns the encoded SAML response to the browser
  6. the browser sends the SAML response to Service-Provider for verification
  7. if the verification is successful, the User will be logged in to Service-Provider and granted access to all the various resources
Flow 2 - Identity Provider Initiated (IdP-Initiated) SSO

TODO

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