Please visit https://iabtechlab.com/ads-cert for more information about the ads.cert 2.0 suite of protocols.

Please review the IAB Tech Lab Open Source Initiative Governance guidelines here for contributing to this project.

ads.cert

This is a proof of concept and not meant for use in its current form.

This open-source library implements the Authenticated Connections protocol, published by IAB Tech Lab let advertising industry participants secure programmatic ad buying and selling using industry-standard cryptographic security protocols.

Authenticated Connections Protocol

Authenticated Connections uses a standardized HTTP request header containing a signature that secures:

• URL being invoked
• Body of POST requests
• Timestamp, origin, and destination values

The signature and these factors show that the request came from the originator as claimed and hasn't been tampered with. The request header looks like the following:

X-Ads-Cert-Auth:
from=ssai-serving.tk&from_key=w8f316&invoking=ad-exchange.tk&nonce=u_sDzKMIp0eD&status=0&timestamp=210519T174337&to=exchange-holding-company.ga&to_key=bBvfZU; sigb=t1TupK6wn8pn&sigu=FQ5OQ6TmF2xU

Field	Description
from	The domain of the party sending the request
from_key	The first 6 characters of the sending party’s public key
invoking	The domain for the URL hostname being invoked
nonce	Randomly generated number from the sending party in base64 encoded.
timestamp	The time of generating signature in format: YYMMDDTHHMMSS.  This should be in UTC.
to	The domain of the party receiving the signature
to_key	The first 6 characters of the receiving party’s public key
sigb	The signature over the message and body of the request
sigu	The signature over the message, body, and URL of the request

Architecture

• Signatory`- Main library that handles signing and verification operations.
• Dns Resolver - Discovers TXT records for a domain name (with the appropriate subdomains for policy and key records)
• Domain Store - Stores domain information for invoking and identity domains and the associated keys
• Domain Indexer - Uses the above components to maintain a list of domains used in signing/verification operations, runs background crawls to update domain records, stores private keys, calculates shared secrets for use by the Signatory.

API Usage

The Signatory is available as a standalone GRPC server. See the GRPC/Protobuf interface for the full API details. The main function defintions are below:

• rpc SignAuthenticatedConnection(AuthenticatedConnectionSignatureRequest) returns (AuthenticatedConnectionSignatureResponse) {}
• rpc VerifyAuthenticatedConnection(AuthenticatedConnectionVerificationRequest) returns (AuthenticatedConnectionVerificationResponse) {}

Clients are available for various langauges:

• Golang - GRPC client available here or the Signatory can be use as an in-process Go library directly.
• Java - Coming soon...
• C++ - Coming soon...

Docker

The Signatory can be run from inside a Docker container:

$ make build-grpc-server-container
$ docker run -p 3000:3000 -p 3001:3001 adscert:latest --origin publica-ssai.com --private_key "${ADSCERT_SECRET}"

Examples

Start the verifier

--host_callsign is the domain of the verifying server

In this example we use exchange-holding-company.ga which is leveraged in this insecure example to generate a consistent private key.

Note: The private key generated here should never be used in a production environment. This is for demo purposes only.

Its corresponding public key can be found by looking it up

dig TXT _delivery._adscert.exchange-holding-company.ga
TXT "v=adcrtd k=x25519 h=sha256 p=bBvfZUTPDGIFiOq-WivBoOEYWM5mA1kaEfpDaoYtfHg"

Start the verifying server

go run examples/verifier/server/verifier-server.go --host_callsign=exchange-holding-company.ga --logtostderr

Start the signer

The signer willl periodically send requests to the verifying server.

--origin-callsign is the domain of the signer.

Like above, we use the domain to generate an inconsistent consistent private key for ssai-serving.tk

--url is the full url that we wish to send a signed request too. This gets signed along with the --body in the request.

In this example we use ads.ad-exchange.tk which is not exchange-holding-company.ga. We can see the link between the two based on the TXT records.

dig TXT _adscert.ad-exchange.tk
TXT	"v=adpf a=exchange-holding-company.ga"
dig TXT _delivery._adscert.exchange-holding-company.ga
TXT "v=adcrtd k=x25519 h=sha256 p=bBvfZUTPDGIFiOq-WivBoOEYWM5mA1kaEfpDaoYtfHg"

Start the signing server in a second shell.

go run examples/signer/example-signer.go --frequency 5s --logtostderr --body '{"sample": "request"}' --origin_callsign=ssai-serving.tk --url='http://ads.ad-exchange.tk:8090/request?param1=example&param2=another' --send_requests

The two services will output log to stderr

Sign requests and log to file

Alternatively, you can start the signing server to periodically log the invocating url, signature, hashed url, and hashed request to a log file that can be verified offline.

Start the signing server to log to signature_log_file path.

go run examples/signer/example-signer.go --frequency 1s --logtostderr --body '{"sample": "request"}' --origin_callsign=ssai-serving.tk --url='http://ads.ad-exchange.tk:8090/request?param1=example&param2=another' --signature_log_file=requests.log

Verify log file

The log parser verifier will verify all entries in the log file and output a summary.

go run examples/verifier/log-parser/verifier-parser.go --origin_callsign=ssai-serving.tk --host_callsign=exchange-holding-company.ga --logtostderr --signature_log_file=requests.log

Use logger interface

./pkg/adscert/logger directory holds global logger interface along with a standard_golang_logger implementation which is being used as default logger. Default log level is INFO. Using the SetLoggerImpl() method in ./pkg/adscert/logger/logger.go interface you can implement any custom logger and set it as global logger in your application.

Modify workflows

You can add custom workflows and github actions to .github/workflows folder. Currently go.yml includes the build and release steps including creating and pushing a new tag. A new release and tag only gets created only on main branch and push event. More info.

Contributing

Report bugs, request features and suggest improvements on Github

Or open up a pull request