Upgrade considerations introduced in PingFederate 11.x

With PingFederate 11.3, we’ve upgraded the Apache Velocity templating engine from version 1.6 to version 2.3. All out-of-the-box PingFederate HTML templates are backward compatible with this new version of Velocity, but customized templates might require edits to work with version 2.3. For a complete list of changes to the Velocity engine that might require updating customized templates, see Upgrading in the Apache Velocity Engine documentation.

Starting with PingFederate 11.3, the distribution ZIP file no longer contains the hivemodule.xml file. Instead, the distribution contains a new file: service-points.conf in the <pf_install>/pingfederate/server/default/conf/ directory. On first startup, PingFederate processes service-points.conf and generates a default hivemodule.xml.

As of PingFederate 10.2, when you define policies using multi-factor authentication (MFA) adapters, you must select the User ID Authenticated check box in the Incoming User ID popup to allow users to register as a new MFA user. You should only select this check box if the previous authentication source has verified the Incoming User ID. You should not select the check box if the MFA adapter is part of a policy used for password reset or password change. For more information, see Defining authentication policies.

Starting with PingFederate 11.3, the <pf_install>/pingfederate/bin/ldap.properties file includes the new ldap.type field. This mandatory field specifies the LDAP directory server type. If you use LDAP for administrative console or administrative API authentication, ensure you set this field to a valid value.

When upgrading from PingFederate versions later than 11.0.1, if the Authorization Server Settings window was never modified, a default value of 0 shall be set for Refresh Token Rolling Grace Period. If the Authorization Server Settings window was modified, the previously set value shall be retained. For more information, see the Refresh Token Rolling Grace period field in Configuring authorization server settings.

Starting with PingFederate 11.2, PingFederate provides an OAuth authorization server metadata endpoint, /.well-known/oauth-authorization-server. The new endpoint returns configuration information that OAuth clients need to interface with PingFederate using the OAuth 2.0 protocol. You can customize what information the endpoint returns by editing the <pf_install>/pingfederate/server/default/conf/openid-configuration.template.json template file, which also determines what information the OpenID Connect metadata endpoint returns.

Starting with PingFederate 11.2, PingFederate processes policy fragments independently from policies and other fragments. The nodes in a fragment are no longer aware of the exterior policy or fragment invoking it, other than the fragment input values that the input authentication policy contract provides. The inverse is also true. The exterior policy or fragment is no longer aware of the processing that occurred within an interior fragment, only what is mapped to the output authentication policy contract.

Starting with PingFederate 11.2, PingFederate’s integration with AWS CloudHSM now requires the AWS CloudHSM Java Cryptography Extension (JCE) provider for Client SDK 5. There are a number of new limitations around assertion and token decryption with Client SDK 5. For more information on limitations, see the Hardware security modules (HSM) issue section of the Release Notes. In addition, the java.security file in the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) no longer needs to be modified and client files do not need to be copied to the JAVA_HOME/jre/lib/ext directory. For more information on how to upgrade the HSM client, see the updated setup instructions in Integrating with AWS CloudHSM.

Starting with PingFederate 11.2, you can enable verbose logging with the Log Settings window or with the administrative API on nodes that have the updated version of the <pf_install>/pingfederate/server/default/conf/log4j2.xml file. If log4j2.xml was previously modified, PingFederate will migrate the modified file on upgrade and create a backup of the latest file. To take advantage of the new verbose logging capability, you must merge your modifications into the latest version of log4j2.xml.

When using PingDirectory 8.2 or later as the credential store, if a user’s password has expired, the following settings ensure PingFederate doesn’t direct the user to the Change Password form when they enter an invalid password:

Starting with PingFederate 11.1, the user code verification steps of the device authorization flow are API-enabled. Existing API applications will need to be updated to support the new API states. To disable the use of the API for the new states, set enable-authn-api-for-user-code-validation to false in <pf_install>/pingfederate/server/default/config-store/oauth-device-flow.xml. This will cause PingFederate to continue to render these states itself using the Velocity templates.

Starting with PingFederate 11.1, when using Java 17, the following JDKs are supported:

Starting with PingFederate 11.1, when configured for certificate revocation list (CRL) or online certificate status protocol (OCSP) revocation checking, PingFederate now performs these checks in a broader range of flows. In particular, outbound TLS calls to retrieve JSON web key sets (JWKS) now perform revocation checks. Also, outbound TLS calls performed by plugins, such as adapters, now perform revocation checks. To revert to the previous behavior where PingFederate doesn’t perform these new checks, set pf.tls.installRevocationCheckerGlobally to false in the run.properties file.

Starting with PingFederate 11.1, due to the revocation checking enhancements outlined above, a circular initialization dependency can arise if revocation checking is enabled and a custom MasterKeyEncryptor implementation makes API calls to an external service. To avoid this risk, you should disable revocation checking for any API calls made by the master key encryptor. Refer to the SDK documentation for more information on how to disable revocation checking in custom MasterKeyEncryptor implementations.

Starting with PingFederate 11.1, the username.recovery.template.html template no longer includes the $forgotPasswordUrl variable.

In versions preceding PingFederate 11.0, administrators could only define dynamic discovery settings to discover cluster membership in the server/default/conf/tcp.xml file. Now PingFederate provides a new configuration file for these settings, bin/jgroups.properties. This new approach streamlines future upgrade experiences. For new installations, we recommend defining dynamic discovery settings in the jgroups.properties file. While upgraded environments will continue to look for dynamic discovery settings from the tcp.xml file, we recommend performing a one-time migration to ease the upgrade experiences in the future. For more information, see Migrating cluster discovery settings.

Starting with PingFederate 11.0, if any of the default Velocity HTML templates for user-facing windows were modified, the Upgrade Utility migrates them to the new installation and renames the corresponding default templates in the new installation with the following format: <template_name>-default-<PF-version>.<ext>. For more information, see User-facing windows.

Starting with PingFederate 11.0, when the new Retain Previous Keys on Password Change check box on the Manage Domain/Realm window is selected, PingFederate saves the encryption keys associated with the password of the current Kerberos service account. The check box is selected by default.

PingFederate 11.0 and later no longer support the integrated Windows authentication (IWA) IdP adapter. The IWA integration kit for Kerberos has been replaced with a PingFederate adapter for Kerberos. See Migrating from the Integrated Windows Authentication Integration Kit to the PingFederate Kerberos adapter.

When authenticating an OAuth client that uses the private key JSON web token (JWT) authentication scheme, PingFederate now validates that the issuer and subject claims in the JWT have the same value.The following administrative API endpoint exposes the validation on/off switch:

https://{{pf_base_host_port}}/pf-admin-api/v1/configStore/oauth-credentials-validator/issuerMustBeEqualToClientId

{
  "id": "issuerMustBeEqualToClientId",
  "stringValue": "false",
  "type":"STRING"
}

Starting with PingFederate 11.0, the new Restrict Access to Redirectless Mode check box on the Authentication API Applications window lets you restrict which authentication API applications can use redirectless mode. To avoid impacting existing deployments, this check box is not selected on upgrade. However, you should enable this setting. For more information, see Managing authentication applications.

Starting with PingFederate 11.0, if your PingFederate server is running on a Java version prior to 8u252, you must modify your run.sh, run.bat, or PingFederateService.conf script to include the new Jetty agent in PingFederate.

-javaagent:/server/default/lib/jetty-alpn-agent.jar

"$JAVA" $JAVA_OPTS \
$ERROR_FILE \
$HEAP_DUMP \
${GC_FILE:+$GC_FLAG"$GC_FILE"$GC_OPTIONS} \
$ENDORSED_DIRS_FLAG \
 -javaagent:$PF_HOME/server/default/lib/jetty-alpn-agent.jar  \
-Dlog4j2.AsyncQueueFullPolicy=Discard \

"%JAVA%" %PF_JAVA_OPTS% %JAVA_OPTS% %GC_OPTION%  -javaagent:%PF_HOME%/server/default/lib/jetty-alpn-agent.jar  -Dlog4j2.AsyncQueueFullPolicy=Discard

# Java Additional Parameters
wrapper.java.additional.1=-Dlog4j.configurationFile=../../server/default/conf/log4j2.xml

...... (omitted lines 2-13 to save space) ......

wrapper.java.additional.14=-javaagent:../../server/default/lib/jetty-alpn-agent.jar

Starting with PingFederate 11.0, if you have previously specified a value for maxFormContextSize in jetty-runtime.xml, you should now use pf.runtime.http.maxRequestSize in the run.properties file to control the maximum size for inbound runtime requests. For more information, see Configuring PingFederate properties.

As we continue to improve our products and hardware security module (HSM) integrations, you should migrate off of Java 8. We intend to remove Java 8 support from our qualification process in May 2023. For more information, including Java 11 support, see System requirements.

As we continue to improve PingFederate, we intend to remove the following product releases from our qualification process after the release of PingFederate 11.3 in June 2023: