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A Managed Tokens Service for Securely Keeping and Distributing Grid Tokens

Fermilab is transitioning authentication and authorization for grid operations to using bearer tokens based on the WLCG Common JWT (JSON Web Token) Profile. One of the functionalities that Fermilab experimenters rely on is the ability to automate batch job submission, which in turn depends on the ability to securely refresh and distribute the necessary credentials to experiment job submit points. Thus, with the transition to using tokens for grid operations, we needed to create a service that would obtain, refresh, and distribute tokens for experimenters’ use. This service would avoid the need for experimenters to be experts in obtaining their own tokens and would better protect the most sensitive long-lived credentials. Further, the service needed to be widely scalable, as we are currently keeping credentials active for approximately 15 experiments, each with 1-3 different credentials, and distributing those credentials to 2-20 submit points per experiment, with those numbers steadily increasing. To address these issues, we created and deployed a Managed Tokens service. The service is written in Go, taking advantage of that language’s native concurrency primitives to easily be able to scale operations as we onboard experiments. The service uses as its first credentials a set of kerberos keytabs, stored on the same secure machine that the Managed Tokens service runs on. These kerberos credentials allow the service to use htgettoken via condor_vault_storer to store vault tokens in the HTCondor credential managers (credds) that run on the batch system scheduler machines (HTCondor schedds); as well as downloading a local, shorter-lived copy of the vault token. The kerberos credentials are then also used to distribute copies of the locally-stored vault tokens to experiment submit points. When experimenters schedule jobs to be submitted, these distributed vault tokens are used to access a Hashicorp Vault instance (run separately from the Managed Tokens service), and previously-stored refresh tokens there are used to obtain the bearer token that is submitted with the job. We will discuss here the design of the Managed Tokens service, including elaborating on certain choices we made with regards to concurrent operations, configuration, monitoring, and deployment.

Bhat, Shreyas↗

A Managed Tokens Service for Securely Keeping and Distributing Grid Tokens

Fermilab is transitioning authentication and authorization for grid operations to using bearer tokens based on the WLCG Common JWT (JSON Web Token) Profile. One of the functionalities that Fermilab experimenters rely on is the ability to automate batch job submission, which in turn depends on the ability to securely refresh and distribute the necessary credentials to experiment job submit points. Thus, with the transition to using tokens for grid operations, we needed to create a service that would obtain, refresh, and distribute tokens for experimenters' use. This service would avoid the need for experimenters to be experts in obtaining their own tokens and would better protect the most sensitive long-lived credentials. Further, the service needed to be widely scalable, as Fermilab hosts many experiments, each of which would need their own credentials. To address these issues, we created and deployed a Managed Tokens Service. The service is written in Go, taking advantage of that language's native concurrency primitives to easily be able to scale operations as we onboard experiments. The service uses as its first credentials a set of kerberos keytabs, stored on the same secure machine that the Managed Tokens service runs on. These kerberos credentials allow the service to use htgettoken via condor_vault_storer to store vault tokens in the HTCondor credential managers (credds) that run on the batch system scheduler machines (HTCondor schedds); as well as downloading a local, shorter-lived copy of the vault token. The kerberos credentials are then also used to distribute copies of the locally-stored vault tokens to experiment submit points.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗

Fermilab's Transition to Token Authentication

Fermilab is the first High Energy Physics institution to transition from X.509 user certificates to authentication tokens in production systems. All the experiments that Fermilab hosts are now using JSON Web Token (JWT) access tokens in their grid jobs. Many software components have been either updated or created for this transition, and most of the software is available to others as open source. The tokens are defined using the WLCG Common JWT Profile. Token attributes for all the tokens are stored in the Fermilab FERRY system which generates the configuration for the CILogon token issuer. High security-value refresh tokens are stored in Hashicorp Vault configured by htvault-config, and JWT access tokens are requested by the htgettoken client through its integration with HTCondor. The Fermilab job submission system jobsub was redesigned to be a lightweight wrapper around HTCondor. The grid workload management system GlideinWMS which is also based on HTCondor was updated to use tokens for pilot job submission. For automated job submissions a managed tokens service was created to reduce duplication of effort and knowledge of how to securely keep tokens active. The existing Fermilab file transfer tool ifdh was updated to work seamlessly with tokens, as well as the Fermilab POMS (Production Operations Management System) which is used to manage automatic job submission and the RCDS (Rapid Code Distribution System) which is used to distribute analysis code via the CernVM FileSystem. The dCache storage system was reconfigured to accept tokens for authentication in place of X.509 proxy certificates. As some services and sites have not yet implemented token support, proxy certificates are still sent with jobs for backwards compatibility, but some experiments are beginning to transition to stop using them.

Dykstra, Dave [Fermilab] (ORCID:0000000326539015)↗

Fermilab s Transition to Token Authentication

Fermilab is the first High Energy Physics institution to transition from X.509 user certificates to authentication tokens in production systems. All of the experiments that Fermilab hosts are now using JSON Web Token (JWT) access tokens in their grid jobs. Many software components have been either updated or created for this transition, and most of the software is available to others as open source. The tokens are defined using the WLCG Common JWT Profile. Token attributes for all the tokens are stored in the Fermilab FERRY system which generates the configuration for the CILogon token issuer. High security-value refresh tokens are stored in Hashicorp Vault configured by htvault-config, and JWT access tokens are requested by the htgettoken client through its integration with HTCondor. The Fermilab job submission system jobsub was redesigned to be a lightweight wrapper around HTCondor. For automated job submissions a managed tokens service was created to reduce duplication of effort and knowledge of how to securely keep tokens active. The existing Fermilab file transfer tool ifdh was updated to work seamlessly with tokens, as well as the Fermilab POMS (Production Operations Management System) which is used to manage automatic job submission and the RCDS (Rapid Code Distribution System) which is used to distribute analysis code via the CernVM FileSystem. The dCache storage system was reconfigured to accept tokens for authentication in place of X.509 proxy certificates. As some services and sites have not yet implemented token support, proxy certificates are still sent with jobs for backwards compatibility but some experiments are beginning to transition to stop using them. There have been some glitches and learning curve issues but in general the system has been performing well and is being improved as operational problems are addressed.

Dykstra, David↗

CMS Token Transition

Within the LHC community, a momentous transition has been occurring in authorization. For nearly 20 years, services within the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid (WLCG) have authorized based on mapping an identity, derived from an X.509 credential, or a group/role, derived from a VOMS extension issued by the experiment. A fundamental shift is occurring to capabilities: the credential, a bearer token, asserts the authorizations of the bearer, not the identity. By the HL-LHC era, the CMS experiment plans for the transition to tokens, based on the WLCG Common JSON Web Token profile, to be complete. Services in the technology architecture include the INDIGO Identity and Access Management server to issue tokens; a HashiCorp Vault server to store and refresh access tokens for users and jobs; a managed token bastion server to push credentials to the HTCondor CredMon service; and HTCondor to maintain valid tokens in long-running batch jobs. We will describe the transition plans of the experiment, current status, configuration of the central authorization server, lessons learned in commissioning token-based access with sites, and operational experience using tokens for both job submissions and file transfers.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗

Electron-Proton Scattering Event Generation using Structured Tokenization

Recent work such as Omnijet-$\alpha$ has demonstrated that effective tokenization combined with transformer-based architectures can produce effective foundation models for jet physics. While tokenization may help models capture generalizable event characteristics, it also introduces discretization errors that may compromise the precision required for downstream physics analyses. As the number and complexity of the particle features grow, these errors are likely to grow proportionally. In this study, we investigate new tokenization strategies to improve the application of generative transformer models to \textsc{Pythia8} simulations of electron-proton scattering at the Electron-Ion Collider. Specifically, we propose a feature-based structured tokenization approach that utilizes multiple tokens per particle, improving expressivity, while reducing the total number of unique tokens needed. We evaluate this method against grid-based binning, K-means clustering, and vector-quantized variational auto-encoders on the event simulations. Our results show that feature-based structured tokenization reduces discretization error, leading to more accurate generative modeling of particle-level events.

Goldenberg, Steven [Thomas Jefferson National Acce↗

Proof that timing requirements of the FDDI token ring protocol are satisfied

The fiber distributed data interface (FDDI) is an ANSI draft proposed standard for a 100 Mbit/s fiber-optic token ring. The FDDI timed token access protocol provides dynamic adjustment of the load offered to the ring, with the goal of maintaining a specified token rotation time and of providing a guaranteed upper bound on time between successive arrivals of the token at a station. FDDI also provides automatic recovery when errors occur. The bound on time between successive token arrivals is guaranteed only if the token rotates quickly enough to satisfy timer requirements in each station when all ring resources are functioning properly. Otherwise, recovery would be initiated unnecessarily. The purpose of this paper is to prove that FDDI timing requirements are satisfied, i.e., the token rotates quickly enough to prevent initiation of recovery unless there is failure of a physical resource or unless the network management entity within a station initiates the recovery process.

Johnson, Marjory J.↗

Electron-Proton Scattering Event Generation using Structured Tokenization

Recent work such as Omnijet-$\alpha$ has demonstrated that effective tokenization combined with transformer-based architectures can produce effective foundation models for jet physics. While tokenization may help models capture generalizable event characteristics, it also introduces discretization errors that may compromise the precision required for downstream physics analyses. As the number and complexity of the particle features grow, these errors are likely to grow proportionally. In this study, we investigate new tokenization strategies to improve the application of generative transformer models to \textsc{Pythia8} simulations of electron-proton scattering at the Electron-Ion Collider. Specifically, we propose a feature-based structured tokenization approach that utilizes multiple tokens per particle, improving expressivity, while reducing the total number of unique tokens needed. We evaluate this method against grid-based binning, K-means clustering, and vector-quantized variational auto-encoders on the event simulations. Our results show that feature-based structured tokenization reduces discretization error, leading to more accurate generative modeling of particle-level events.

Goldenberg, Steven [Thomas Jefferson National Acce↗

WLCG transition from X.509 to Tokens: Progress and Outlook

Since 2017, the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid (WLCG) has been working towards enabling token-based authentication and authorization throughout its entire middleware stack.Taking guidance from the WLCG Token Transition Timeline, published in 2022, substantial progress has been achieved not only in making middleware compatible with the use of tokens, but also in understanding the limitations of the WLCG Common JWT Profiles, first published in 2019. Significant scalability experience has been gained from Data Challenge 2024, during which millions of files were transferred with tokens used as credentials - a significant percentage of the total transfers completed.Besides describing the state of affairs in the transition to tokens, revisions to the WLCG token profile, and the evolving road maps, this contribution also covers the corresponding transition from VOMS-Admin to INDIGO-IAM services, with continuing improvements in terms of functionality as well as deployment.

Dack, Thomas [Rutherford Appleton Laboratory]↗

Cycle time properties of the FDDI Token Ring Protocol

The FDDI Token Ring Protocol controls communication over fiber optic rings with transmission rates in the range of 100 megabits per second. It is intended to give guaranteed response to time-critical messages by using a 'timed token' protocol, in which noncritical messages may be transmitted only if recent movement of the token among stations has been sufficiently fast relative to a 'target' token rotation line (TTRT). In this paper, two important properties of the protocol are proved. The first is that the average token cycle time is bounded above by the TTRT, and the second is that the maximum token cycle time is at most twice the TTRT. Each property is treated first under the assumption that all overheads are negligible, and second with certain sources of overhead taken into account explicitly. It is found that the proposed standard protocol can be improved for situations of practical interest by a slight modification.

Sevcik, Kenneth C.↗

Analysis of exhaustive limited service for token ring networks

Token ring operation is well-understood in the cases of exhaustive, gated, gated limited, and ordinary cyclic service. There is no current data, however, on queueing models for the exhaustive limited service type. This service type differs from the others in that there is a preset maximum (omega) on the number of packets which may be transmitted per token reception, and packets which arrive after token reception may still be transmitted if the preset packet limit has not been reached. Exhaustive limited service is important since it closely approximates a timed token service discipline (the approximation becomes exact if packet lengths are constant). A method for deriving the z-transforms of the distributions of the number of packets present at both token departure and token arrival for a system using exhaustive limited service is presented. This allows for the derivation of a formula for mean queueing delay and queue lengths. The method is theoretically applicable to any omega. Fortunately, as the value of omega becomes large (typically values on the order of omega = 8 are considered large), the exhaustive limited service discipline closely approximates an exhaustive service discipline.

Peden, Jeffery H.↗

Adoption of a token-based authentication model for the CMS Submission Infrastructure

The CMS Submission Infrastructure (SI) is the main computing resource provisioning system for CMS workloads. A number of HTCondor pools are employed to manage this infrastructure, which aggregates geographically distributed resources from the WLCG and other providers. Historically, the model of authentication among the diverse components of this infrastructure has relied on the Grid Security Infrastructure (GSI), based on identities and X509 certificates. In contrast, commonly used modern authentication standards are based on capabilities and tokens. The WLCG has identified this trend and aims at a transparent replacement of GSI for all its workload management, data transfer and storage access operations, to be completed during the current LHC Run 3. As part of this effort, and within the context of CMS computing, the Submission Infrastructure group is in the process of phasing out the GSI part of its authentication layers, in favor of IDTokens and Scitokens. The use of tokens is already well integrated into the HTCondor Software Suite, which has allowed us to fully migrate the authentication between internal components of SI. Additionally, recent versions of the HTCondor-CE support tokens as well, enabling CMS resource requests to Grid sites employing this CE technology to be granted by means of token exchange. After a rollout campaign to sites, successfully completed by the third quarter of 2022, the totality of HTCondor CEs in use by CMS are already receiving Scitoken-based pilot jobs. On the ARC CE side, a parallel campaign was launched to foster the adoption of the REST interface at CMS sites (required to enable token-based job submission via HTCondor-G), which is nearing completion as well. In this contribution, the newly adopted authentication model will be described. We will then report on the migration status and final steps towards complete GSI phase out in the CMS SI.

Pérez-Calero Yzquierdo, Antonio↗

Transitioning GlideinWMS, a multi domain distributed workload manager, from GSI proxies to tokens and other granular credentials

GlideinWMS is a distributed workload manager that has been used in production for many years to provision resources for experiments like CERN’s CMS, many Neutrino experiments, and the OSG. Its security model was based mainly on GSI (Grid Security Infrastructure), using X.509 certificate proxies and VOMS (Virtual Organization Membership Service) extensions. Even when other credentials, like SSH keys, were used to authenticate with resources, proxies were also added all the time, to establish the identity of the requestor and the associated memberships or privileges. This single credential was used for everything and was, often implicitly, forwarded wherever needed. The addition of identity and access tokens and the phase-out of GSI forced us to reconsider the security model of GlideinWMS, to handle multiple credentials which can differ in type, technology, and functionality. Both identity tokens and access tokens are supported. GSI proxies even if no more mandatory, are still used, together with various JWT (JSON Web Token) based tokens and other certificates. The functionality of the credentials, defined by issuer, audience, and scope, also differ: a credential can allow access to a computing resource, or can protect the GlideinWMS framework from tampering, or can grant read or write access to storage, can provide an identity for accounting or auditing, or can provide a combination of any the formers. Furthermore, the tools in use do not include automatic forwarding and renewal of the new credentials so credential lifetime and renewal requirements became part of the discussion as well. In this paper, we will present how GlideinWMS was able to change its design and code to respond to all these changes.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

WLCG Transition from X.509 to Tokens. Status, Plans, and Timeline

Since 2017, the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid (WLCG) has been working towards enabling token-based authentication and authorization throughout its entire middleware stack. Following the initial publication of the WLCG Token Schema v1.0 in 2019, OAuth2.0 token workflows have been integrated across grid middleware. There are many complex challenges to be addressed before the WLCG can be end-to-end token-based, including not just technical hurdles but also interoperability with the wider authentication and authorization landscape. This paper presents the status of the WLCG coordination and deployment work, and how it relates to software providers and partner communities. The authors also detail how the WLCG token transition timeline has progressed, and how it has changed since its publication.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Guaranteeing synchronous message deadlines with the timed token medium access control protocol

We study the problem of guaranteeing synchronous message deadlines in token ring networks where the timed token medium access control protocol is employed. Synchronous capacity, defined as the maximum time for which a node can transmit its synchronous messages every time it receives the token, is a key parameter in the control of synchronous message transmission. To ensure the transmission of synchronous messages before their deadlines, synchronous capacities must be properly allocated to individual nodes. We address the issue of appropriate allocation of the synchronous capacities. Several synchronous capacity allocation schemes are analyzed in terms of their ability to satisfy deadline constraints of synchronous messages. We show that an inappropriate allocation of the synchronous capacities could cause message deadlines to be missed even if the synchronous traffic is extremely low. We propose a scheme called the normalized proportional allocation scheme which can guarantee the synchronous message deadlines for synchronous traffic of up to 33 percent of available utilization. To date, no other synchronous capacity allocation scheme has been reported to achieve such substantial performance. Another major contribution of this paper is an extension to the previous work on the bounded token rotation time. We prove that the time elapsed between any consecutive visits to a particular node is bounded by upsilon TTRT, where TTRT is the target token rotation time set up at system initialization time. The previous result by Johnson and Sevcik is a special case where upsilon = 2. We use this result in the analysis of various synchronous allocation schemes. It can also be applied in other similar studies.

Agrawal, Gopal↗

Tokenized Data for FORGE Foundation Models

This dataset comprises a vast corpus of 257 billion tokens, accompanied by the corresponding vocabulary file employed in the pre-training of FORGE foundation models. The primary data source for this corpus is scientific documents derived from diverse origins, and they have been tokenized using the Hugging Face BPE tokenizer. Further details about this research can be found in the publication titled FORGE: Pre-Training Open Foundation Models for Science authored by Junqi Yin, Sajal Dash, Feiyi Wang, and Mallikarjun (Arjun) Shankar, presented at SC'23. The data tokenization pipeline and resulting artifacts use CORE data [Ref: Knoth, P., and Zdrahal, Z. (2012). CORE: three access levels to underpin open access. D-Lib Magazine, 18(11/12)]. For use of these data sets for any purpose, please follow the guidelines provided in https://core.ac.uk/terms .

Yin, Junqi↗

Addressing tokens dynamic generation, propagation, storage and renewal to secure the GlideinWMS pilot based jobs and system

GlideinWMS has been one of the first middleware in the WLCG community to transition from X.509 to support also tokens. The first step was to get from the prototype in 2019 to using tokens in production in 2022. This paper will present the challenges introduced by the wider adoption of tokens and the evolution plans for securing the pilot infrastructure of GlideinWMS and supporting the new requirements. In the last couple of years, the GlideinWMS team supported the migration to tokens of experiments and resources. Inadequate support in the current infrastructure, more stringent requirements, and the higher spatial and temporal granularity forced GlideinWMS to revisit once more how credentials are generated, used, and propagated. The new credential modules have been designed to be used in multiple systems (GWMS, HC) and use a model where credentials have type, purpose, and different flows. Credentials are dynamically generated in order to customize the duration and limit the scope to the targeted resource. This allows to enforce the least privilege principle. Finally, we also considered adding credential storage, renewal, and invalidation mechanisms within the GlideinWMS infrastructure to serve better the experiments’ needs.

Mambelli, Marco↗