Apache CXF: miscellaneous: 2013

Tuesday, July 30, 2013

CXF security: integrate PKI to Security Token Service

Introduction

In previous blog CXF security: getting certificates from central PKI we have seen how to use Public Key Infrastructure and XKMS service to locate certificates in message encryption scenario. This blog is continuation of previous one and explains the integration of central PKI into SecurityTokenService (STS) for the authentication.

WS-Trust and SecurityTokenService

In authentication scenarios client generates or obtains security token and sends it to the service for verification inside the message. Security token can be either user name and password, SAML assertion or Kerberos ticket. Generation of security token sometimes is non-trivial task, requires access to external systems and using third party libraries. Therefore it makes a lot of sense to free service participants from implementing any security processing logic on their own. This logic can be delegated to SecurityTokenService (STS) offering functionality to issue, validate, renew or remove Security Tokens.The STS is defined within the OASIS WS-Trust specification.

The communication between client, service and STS is depicted on following figure:

The typical authentication scenario using WS-Trust requires the following steps:

Client obtains credentials and requests security token from STS.
STS verifies credentials using external IDM or other mechanism.
STS generates security token (for instance SAML), signs it with own private key and sends it back to client.
Client injects security token into protocol security header (SOAP or REST HTTP) and sends request message to the service.
Service extracts security token and validates it locally or using remote call to STS. As far as service and STS are in trusted relationship, it is enough just to validate STS signature of the security token.

You can find more details about STS service in CXF WS-Trust documentation and Oli Wulff blog.
Typically STS call is transparent for the client and triggered by appropriate WS-Policy assertion (IssuedToken).

When STS validates user's X509 certificate?

In some scenarios STS receives user certificate and uses it for authentication and for generation of SAML assertion:

Client sends user certificate in STS request as credentials for own authentication. In this case client must additionally sign part of request with private key to proof of possession:   <wsse:Security
    xmlns:wsse="http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-wssecurity-secext-1.0.xsd" xmlns:wsu="http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-wssecurity-utility-1.0.xsd" soap:mustUnderstand="1">
    <wsse:BinarySecurityToken EncodingType="http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-soap-message-security-1.0#Base64Binary"
        ValueType="http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-x509-token-profile-1.0#X509v3"
        wsu:Id="X509-3CBA5F87FE6EAABD0E13661135280161">...</wsse:BinarySecurityToken>
    <wsu:Timestamp wsu:Id="TS-1">
        <wsu:Created>2013-04-16T11:58:48.003Z</wsu:Created>
        <wsu:Expires>2013-04-16T12:03:48.003Z</wsu:Expires>
    </wsu:Timestamp>
    <ds:Signature xmlns:ds="http://www.w3.org/2000/09/xmldsig#"
        Id="SIG-2">
        <ds:SignedInfo>
            ...
            <ds:Reference URI="#TS-1">
                ...
            </ds:Reference>
        </ds:SignedInfo>
        <ds:SignatureValue>...</ds:SignatureValue>
        <ds:KeyInfo Id="KI-3CBA5F87FE6EAABD0E13661135280202">
            <wsse:SecurityTokenReference
                wsu:Id="STR-3CBA5F87FE6EAABD0E13661135280223">
                <wsse:Reference URI="#X509-3CBA5F87FE6EAABD0E13661135280161"
                    ValueType="http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-x509-token-profile-1.0#X509v3" />
            </wsse:SecurityTokenReference>
        </ds:KeyInfo>
    </ds:Signature>
</wsse:Security>
ds:KeyInfo>
</ds:Signature>
...

You can see that BinarySecurityToken has X509 type and contains user certificate. Timestamp is signed with KeyInfo referencing to this certificate URI="#X509-3CBA5F87FE6EAABD0E13661135280161".
Client sends user certificate to be included into SAML token as SubjectConfirmationData/KeyInfo element. This certificate can be referenced and used for validation of XML signatures:

<saml2:Assertion xmlns:saml2="urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:assertion"
    xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    ID="_C5CE27CE46751556E113662938382792" IssueInstant="2013-04-18T14:03:58.279Z"
    Version="2.0" xsi:type="saml2:AssertionType">
    ...
    <saml2:Subject>
        <saml2:NameID
            Format="urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:1.1:nameid-format:unspecified"
            NameQualifier="http://cxf.apache.org/sts">alice@EXAMPLE.COM</saml2:NameID>
        <saml2:SubjectConfirmation
            Method="urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:cm:holder-of-key">
            <saml2:SubjectConfirmationData
                xsi:type="saml2:KeyInfoConfirmationDataType">
                <ds:KeyInfo xmlns:ds="http://www.w3.org/2000/09/xmldsig#">
                    <ds:X509Data>
                        <ds:X509Certificate>...</ds:X509Certificate>
                    </ds:X509Data>
                </ds:KeyInfo>
            </saml2:SubjectConfirmationData>
        </saml2:SubjectConfirmation>
    </saml2:Subject>
</saml2:Assertion>

<ds:Signature xmlns:ds="http://www.w3.org/2000/09/xmldsig#"
    Id="SIG-11">
    <ds:SignedInfo>
    ...
    <ds:KeyInfo Id="KI-CC7D54F0FC1CF34D4913662938383496">
        <ns3:SecurityTokenReference
            xmlns:ns3="http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-wssecurity-secext-1.0.xsd"
            xmlns:wsse11="http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/oasis-wss-wssecurity-secext-1.1.xsd"
            wsse11:TokenType="http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/oasis-wss-saml-token-profile-1.1#SAMLV2.0">
            <ns3:KeyIdentifier
                ValueType="http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/oasis-wss-saml-token-profile-1.1#SAMLID">_C5CE27CE46751556E113662938382792
            </ns3:KeyIdentifier>
        </ns3:SecurityTokenReference>
    </ds:KeyInfo>
</ds:Signature>
...

You can see that KeyIdentifier into Signature references SAML token ID="_C5CE27CE46751556E113662938382792". That means, the certificate from SAML SubjectConfirmation must be used to verify this signature.

In both scenarios STS should validate the user certificate.

User Certificate Validation

Validation through local java keystore

STS validates client certificate using verifyTrust() method of WSS4J Crypto interface. Default implementation of Crypto interface is Merlin. Merlin provider is keystore based, that means, user certificate will be validated using local STS java keystore. Merlin checks first is user certificate itself in STS keystore. If yes, validation is successfully finished. If no, Merlin proves if keystore contains all trusted chain certificates.

The problem in this approach is that STS local java keystore should contain either every client certificate or all certificates from certificate trusted chain. Furthermore, administrator should manage revocation lists for all client certificates in STS keystore.

That is not really acceptable for enterprise environments hosting a lot of clients. One possibility to resolve this issue is using Crypto XKMS implementation accessing central Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) to validate user certificate.

Validation through PKI

Using of XKMS based Crypto implementation is depicted bellow:

You can see that STS uses XKMS based Crypto implementation instead Merlin. XKMS Crypto still gets STS private key from local java keystore, but it uses central PKI to validate user certificates. W3C specifies standard SOAP interface to access and administrate keys remotely: XML Key Management Specification (XKMS 2.0). XKMS Crypto provider invokes XKMS service to validate user certificate. Dependent on XKMS service implementation, it either validates user certificate locally or delegates validation call to remote PKI. Administrator can manage certificates and revocation lists either directly in PKI or through XKMS registration interface (XKRSS). Note, that beginning from CXF 3.0.0, XKMS service and client implementation as well as XKMS Crypto Provider are available in CXF distribution.

Configure STS to use XKMS Crypto Provider

How to say STS that it must use XKMS Crypto Provider instead default keystore based one (Merlin)?

The XKMS Crypto Provider should be instantiated and set as property either in StaticSTSProperties object or in STS jaxws:endpoint. That can be done either programmatic or via Spring/Blueprint configuration.
The finished tutorial source code for STS configured with XKMS crypto provider is prepared on xkms_symmetric_tutorial. It is slightly modified code from Glen Mazza blog.

Sample spring configuration looks like:

jaxws:client is configuration of XKMS client, it is used as constructor argument of xkmsCryptoProviderFactory. Argument "/stsKeystore.properties" of xkmsCryptoProvider is necessary to create default keystore based crypto provider. It is responsible to get STS private key from the local keystore. Lookup and validation of the public keys (X509) will be delegated to XKMS crypto provider and XKMS service.

Alternatively XKMS Crypto Provider can be set directly into STS jaxws:endpoint:

...

<jaxws:endpoint id="transportSTS"
       implementor="#transportSTSProvider"
        address="/SecurityTokenService/Transport"
        wsdlLocation="wsdl/ws-trust-1.4-service.wsdl"
        xmlns:wst="http://docs.oasis-open.org/ws-sx/ws-trust/200512/"
        serviceName="wst:SecurityTokenService"
        endpointName="wst:Transport_Port">
        <jaxws:properties>

...

</jaxws:endpoint>

Using XKMS for STS scenario with Symmetric Key

This feature can be especially useful for STS scenario with SymmetricKey. With this scenario, the STS and the WS consumer negotiate a symmetric key.


STS scenario with SymmetricKey (used from SAP resource)

The WS-Client authenticates himself to STS and contributes material to the creation of symmetric key.
The STS verifies WS-Client authentication and generates symmetric key using material received from WS-Client
The STS encrypts symmetric key using WS-Service public key and inserts the encrypted key together with security token into SAML assertion. The STS signs SAML assertion and sends it together with key material for generation symmetric key to the WS-Client.
The WS-Client generates short-lived symmetric key from own material and the key material from the STS.
The WS-Client inserts the SAML token, into the message header. It encrypts the message texts or/and signs the message with the generated symmetric key. It then sends the user's message to the WS-Service.
The WS-Service checks the signature in the SAML token and uses its private key to decrypt the symmetric key contained in the SAML token.
The WS-Service verifies the signature of the WS-Client (Holder-of-Key) with the decrypted symmetric key. In this way, the STS confirms that the Holder-of-Key is the subject (the user) in the assertion. The WS-Service uses the symmetric key to decrypt the message text.

On the step (3) STS needs the public key (certificate) of target WS-Service. Normally STS servers not only one, but multiple services (restricted by url patterns in TokenServiceProvider). This can be a serious drawback to manage public certificates of all services into STS local keystore.
XKMS Crypto provider provides elegant solution of this using following configuration:

encryptionUsername (in StaticSTSProperties or jaxws:endpoint properties) should be set into special value: useEndpointAsCertAlias (STSConstants.USE_ENDPOINT_AS_CERT_ALIAS)
encryptionCrypto should be set to XKMS Crypto implementation
Service certificates should be saved into XKMS under service endpoint (use Application "urn:apache:cxf:service:endpoint" and service endpoint as identifier)

Spring configuration looks like:

<bean id="xkmsExtensions"
        class="org.apache.cxf.xkms.model.extensions.AdditionalClassesFactory" />

    <jaxws:client xmlns:serviceNamespace="http://www.w3.org/2002/03/xkms#wsdl"
        id="xkmsClient" serviceClass="org.w3._2002._03.xkms_wsdl.XKMSPortType"
        serviceName="serviceNamespace:XKMSService" endpointName="serviceNamespace:XKMSPort"
        address="http://localhost:8080/xkms/XKMS/">
        <jaxws:properties>
            <entry key="jaxb.additionalContextClasses">
                <bean class="java.lang.Object" factory-bean="xkmsExtensions"
                    factory-method="create" />
            </entry>
        </jaxws:properties>
    </jaxws:client>

    <bean id="xkmsCryptoProviderFactory" class="org.apache.cxf.xkms.crypto.impl.XkmsCryptoProviderFactory">
        <constructor-arg ref="xkmsClient"/>
    </bean>

    <bean id="xkmsCryptoProvider" class="org.apache.cxf.xkms.crypto.impl.XkmsCryptoProvider"
          factory-bean="xkmsCryptoProviderFactory"
          factory-method="create">
          <constructor-arg type="java.lang.String" value="/stsKeystore.properties" />
    </bean>
    

    <bean id="mySTSProviderBean"
        class="org.apache.cxf.sts.provider.DefaultSecurityTokenServiceProvider">
        <property name="stsProperties" ref="mySTSProperties" />
        <property name="services" ref="myServiceList" />
    </bean>

    <bean id="myServiceList" class="org.apache.cxf.sts.service.StaticService">
        <property name="endpoints" ref="wspAllowedEndpoints" />
    </bean>

    <util:list id="wspAllowedEndpoints">
        <value>http://localhost:8080/doubleit/services/doubleit.*</value>
    </util:list>

    <bean id="mySTSProperties" class="org.apache.cxf.sts.StaticSTSProperties">
        <property name="signatureUsername" value="mystskey" />
        <property name="callbackHandlerClass" value="sts.PasswordCallbackHandler" />
        <property name="issuer" value="DoubleItSTSIssuer" />
        <property name="encryptionUsername" value="useEndpointAsCertAlias"/>
        <property name="encryptionCrypto" ref="xkmsCryptoProvider" />
        <property name="signatureCrypto" ref="xkmsCryptoProvider" />
    </bean>

    <jaxws:endpoint id="CXFSTS" implementor="#mySTSProviderBean"
        address="/STS" wsdlLocation="/WEB-INF/wsdl/DoubleItSTSService.wsdl"
        xmlns:ns1="http://docs.oasis-open.org/ws-sx/ws-trust/200512/"
        serviceName="ns1:SecurityTokenService" endpointName="ns1:STS_Port">
        <jaxws:properties>
            <entry key="ws-security.callback-handler" value="sts.PasswordCallbackHandler" />
            <entry key="ws-security.signature.properties" value="stsKeystore.properties" />
            <entry key="ws-security.signature.username" value="mystskey" />
            
            <entry key="ws-security.encryption.username" value="useReqSigCert" />
        </jaxws:properties>
    </jaxws:endpoint>

In this case STS recognizes encryptionName constant and will ask XKMS Crypto for the service certificate using AppliesTo endpoint address. XKMS will locate service certificate using this endpoint address.
STS can server multiple WS-Services and doesn't care about services certificates locally - they are stored and managed in central XKMS repository.

Conclusion

In this blog we have discussed use case and possible solution to use central certificates management infrastructure inside Security Token Service (STS) to validate and locate X509 certificates.

Monday, April 1, 2013

CXF security: getting certificates from central PKI

CXF security uses asymmetric algorithms for different purposes: encryption of symmetric keys and payloads, signing security token and messages, SSL transport bindings.

If you look in samples and tutorials, the public keys (in form of X509 certificates) are normally stored in java keystores.

For example, if sender encrypts the message payload sending to the receiver, he should have access to receiver certificate saved in local keystore. The sender uses this certificate for message encryption and receiver decrypts request with corresponded own private key:

Seems to be OK? Imagine now that you have production environment with 100 different clients of this service and service certificate is expired. You should reissue and replace certificate in ALL client keystores! Even more, if keystores are packaged into war files or OSGi bundles – they should be unpackaged and updated. Not really acceptable for enterprise environments.

Therefore large service landscapes have concept of central certificates management. It means that X509 certificates are not stored locally in keystores, but are provided and administrated centrally.

Normally it is a responsibility of PublicKey Infrastructure (PKI) established in organization. PKI is responsible for create, manage, store, distribute, synchronize and revoke public certificates and certification authorities (CAs).

W3C specifies standard SOAP interface to access and administrate keys remotely: XML Key Management Specification (XKMS 2.0). XKMS contains two parts:
a) Key Information Service providing keys locating and validating functionality
b) Key Registration Service responsible for registration, revocation, recovery and reissuing of keys.
Note, that beginning from CXF 3.0.0, XKMS service and client implementation as well as XKMS Crypto Provider (see next chapter) will be available in CXF distribution.

WSS4J Crypto Providers
Fine, assume your organization has established simple PKI infrastructure and provides some kind of remote access to look up and validate the certificates (Rest or SOAP XKMS based).

The question now is the following: how to configure my CXF client and service to use public certificates not from local keystore, but from central PKI? Is there any easy way to do it?

Fortunately yes! CXF uses WSS4J for most of security aspects and WSS4J has own concept of crypto providers (don’t mix them with crypto providers of Java Cryptography Architecture).

WSS4J crypto providers are responsible to obtain X509 certificates and private keys, verify X509 trust chain and construct X509 certificates.

WSS4J crypto providers must implement Crypto interface. WSS4J also provides base abstract class with common functionality CryptoBase and keystore based implementation of crypto provider Merlin.

If you do not configure anything in CXF, WSS4J uses keystore based Merlin crypto provider by default. But, remember, we would like to get our certificates from PKI instead of keystore. Therefore it will be necessary to create own WSS4J crypto provider for this purpose. Interesting for us are two following methods:

java.security.cert.X509Certificate[] getX509Certificates(CryptoType cryptoType)

boolean verifyTrust(java.security.cert.X509Certificate[] certs, boolean enableRevocation)

Frist method looks up and returns X509 certificates based on CryptoType identifier. CryptoType specifies certificate identifier as subject DN, issuer DN and serial number, alias, thumbprint or SKI bytes.

We still obtain private keys from keystore, therefore corresponded methods will be delegated to standard Merlin provider. Skeleton implementation of PKI crypto provider can look like:

public class PKICryptoProvider extends CryptoBase {
    private Crypto defaultCrypto;
    private Properties keystoreProps;

    public PKICryptoProvider() {
        try {
            // load keystore properties and alias for private keys
            // …
            defaultCrypto = CryptoFactory.getInstance(keystoreProps);
        } catch (WSSecurityException e) {
            throw new IllegalStateException(
                    "Cannot instantiate default crypto provider: "
                            + e.getMessage(), e);
        }
    }

    @Override
    public X509Certificate[] getX509Certificates(CryptoType cryptoType)
            throws WSSecurityException {
        CryptoType.TYPE type = cryptoType.getType();
        X509Certificate[] certs = new X509Certificate[0];
        switch (type) {
        case SUBJECT_DN: {
            // get X509 certificate remotely from PKI on the base of subjectDN
            break;
        }
        case ALIAS: {
            // get X509 certificate remotely from PKI on the base of alias
            break;
        }
        case ISSUER_SERIAL: {
            // get X509 certificate remotely from PKI on the base of issuer DN
            // and serial number
            break;
        }
        default: {
            throw new IllegalArgumentException("Not supported cryptoType: "
                    + cryptoType);
        }
        }
        return certs;
    }

    @Override
    public String getX509Identifier(X509Certificate cert) {
        return cert.getSubjectDN().getName();
    }

    @Override
    public PrivateKey getPrivateKey(X509Certificate certificate,
            CallbackHandler callbackHandler) throws WSSecurityException {
        // …
        return defaultCrypto.getPrivateKey(identifier, password);
    }

    @Override
    public PrivateKey getPrivateKey(String identifier, String password)
            throws WSSecurityException {
        // …
        return defaultCrypto.getPrivateKey(identifier, password);
    }

    @Override
    public boolean verifyTrust(X509Certificate[] certs)
            throws WSSecurityException {
        return verifyTrust(certs, false);
    }

    @Override
    public boolean verifyTrust(X509Certificate[] certs, boolean enableRevocation)
            throws WSSecurityException {
        // call PKI remote method to validate certificate trust chain
        return false;
    }

    @Override
    public boolean verifyTrust(PublicKey publicKey) throws WSSecurityException {
        // call PKI remote method to validate certificate trust chain
        return false;
    }
}

As far as crypto provider makes a lot of remote calls, it makes sense to care about certificate caching.

Using PKI Crypto provider our message encryption picture will change in following way:

CXF distributions (starting from version 3.0.0) will contain XKMS based WSS4J Crypto implementation, so you can just reuse it.

Configure custom WSS4J Crypto Providers
How CXF and WSS4J know that they should use our custom crypto provider instead standard Merlin? There are some ways to configure it.

Keystore properties
You can specify own crypto provider in keystore properties file.
clientKeystore.properties:

org.apache.ws.security.crypto.provider=org.company.security.PKICryptoProvider
org.apache.ws.security.crypto.merlin.keystore.type=jks
org.apache.ws.security.crypto.merlin.keystore.password=secret
org.apache.ws.security.crypto.merlin.keystore.private.password=secret
org.apache.ws.security.crypto.merlin.keystore.alias=myclient
org.apache.ws.security.crypto.merlin.keystore.file=./etc/keystores/clientstore.jks

After it you configure keystore properties for CXF client or service as usual. For example in Spring it will be looks like:

<jaxws:client id="MyClient" xmlns:serviceNamespace="http://services.company.org/MyService"
    serviceClass="org.company.services.MyService" serviceName="serviceNamespace:MyServiceProvider"
    endpointName="serviceNamespace:MyServicePort" address="http://localhost:8080/services/MyService">
    <jaxws:properties>
        <entry key="ws-security.encyption.properties" value="clientKeystore.properties" />
        <entry key="ws-security.signature.properties" value="clientKeystore.properties" />
    </jaxws:properties>
</jaxws:client>

ws-security.encryption.properties says CXF that clientKeystore.properties will be used for the encryption. WSS4J will instantiate and call our PKICryptoProvider automatically. The same keystore properties can be specified for signature as well (ws-security.signature.properties).

Crypto provider object in Spring configuration
Sometimes more convenience way is to instantiate custom crypto provider explicitly. For example, if you want to inject proxy to communicate with PKI into PKICryptoProvider or use non-default constructor. For such cases CXF provides ws-security.encryption.crypto and ws-security.signature.crypto properties. You can pass pre-constructed PKICryptoProvider object using these properties.

Spring configuration in this case looks like:

<bean id="pkiCryptoProvider" class="org.company.security.PKICryptoProvider">
<!—-inject proxies, fields here -->
</bean>

<jaxws:client id="MyClient" xmlns:serviceNamespace="http://services.company.org/MyService"
    serviceClass="org.company.services.MyService" serviceName="serviceNamespace:MyServiceProvider"
    endpointName="serviceNamespace:MyServicePort" address="http://localhost:8080/services/MyService">
    <jaxws:properties>
        …
        <entry key="ws-security.encyption.crypto" value-ref=" pkiCryptoProvider " />
        <entry key="ws-security.signature.crypto" value-ref=" pkiCryptoProvider " />
    </jaxws:properties>
</jaxws:client>

Of course you can use the same approach to configure PKICryptoProvider for CXF service (jaxws:endpoint).

Specify Crypto provider object programmatically
Crypto provider object can be also passed programmatically. Client code will look like:

PKICryptoProvider pkiCryptoProvider = new PKICryptoProvider();

SOAPService ss = new SOAPService(wsdlURL, SERVICE_NAME);
Greeter port = ss.getSoapPort();
Map<String , Object> requestContext =
    ((javax.xml.ws.BindingProvider)port).getRequestContext();
    requestContext.put(SecurityConstants.ENCRYPTION_CRYPTO,
    pkiCryptoProvider);
    requestContext.put(SecurityConstants.SIGNATURE_CRYPTO,
    pkiCryptoProvider);

Remember that this code is not thread safe. To use thread safe request context it is necessary to add following property:

((BindingProvider)proxy).getRequestContext().put("thread.local.request.context", "true");

On the service side you can use this code:

…
@Resource
private WebServiceContext wsContext;
public ResponseData businessMethod(requestData) {
    PKICryptoProvider pkiCryptoProvider = new PKICryptoProvider();

    wsContext.getMessageContext().put(SecurityConstants.ENCRYPTION_CRYPTO, pkiCryptoProvider);
    wsContext.getMessageContext().put(SecurityConstants.SIGNATURE_CRYPTO, pkiCryptoProvider);
}

And in interceptor:

public class CustomSecurityInterceptor extends AbstractPhaseInterceptor<Message> {
    public CustomSecurityInterceptor () {
        super(Phase.PRE_LOGICAL);
    }

    @Override
    public void handleMessage(Message message) throws Fault {
       PKICryptoProvider pkiCryptoProvider = new PKICryptoProvider();

       message.put(SecurityConstants.ENCRYPTION_CRYPTO, pkiCryptoProvider);
       message.put(SecurityConstants.SIGNATURE_CRYPTO, pkiCryptoProvider);
}

Conclusion
In this blog we have discussed requirements and use cases to use central certificates management infrastructure, showed how to create custom PKI based crypto provider and configure it in CXF clients/services. PKI crypto provider can be used for communication with Security Token Service (STS) and inside STS to validate X509 certificates as well. But it is topic for the next blog.