Authentication

Authentication

By default, WeBWorK manages how users (students and instructors) authenticate to be allowed access to resources. There are a number of modules that allow WeBWorK to defer to another authentication source, e.g., so that it can use a central login service on a campus. The different implementations of such external authentication resources are indicated below. The remainder of this document describes generally how authentication is managed in WeBWorK, to inform how the existing modules work and provide some background information about how to set up a new one.

Existing Authen Modules

There are currently several WeBWorK authentication modules to allow it to use an external authentication system:

• Authen::Cosign The Authen::Cosign module is designed to allow authentication with a system that manages authentication by way of web-server level configuration. That is, in this case you must be able to tell your apache server that given directories (that is, the course directories) are protected by your authentication system, and then the web server takes care of the redirect that is required for the user to log in. Then if the user ever gets to WeBWorK we know that s/he has authenticated and have only to check that the user is in the correct course roster. This is explained in the course of
• Authen::LDAP This is "similar" to Cosign authentication, but in this case we have to do more work to figure out if the user is valid. This is illustrated in the explanation below.

WeBWorK's Authentication Process

WeBWorK controls authentication to the homework system in the Authen.pm module. The structure of the file is... (this file needs to be completed)