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Metadata configuration

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<MetadataProvider type="XML" url="https://eduid.at/md/aconet-interfed.xml"
          validate="true" backingFilePath="aconet-metadata.xml" reloadInterval="7200">
    <MetadataFilter type="RequireValidUntil" maxValidityInterval="2419200"/>
    <MetadataFilter type="Signature" certificate="aconet-metadata-signing.crt" verifyBackup="false"/>
    <MetadataFilter type="EntityRole">
        <RetainedRole>md:IDPSSODescriptor</RetainedRole>
        <RetainedRole>md:AttributeAuthorityDescriptor</RetainedRole>
    </MetadataFilter>
    <DiscoveryFilter type="Exclude" matcher="EntityAttributes" trimTags="true"
      attributeName="http://macedir.org/entity-category"
      attributeNameFormat="urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:attrname-format:uri"
      attributeValue="http://refeds.org/category/hide-from-discovery" />
</MetadataProvider>

Metadata filter examples

The Shibboleth SP software has powerful Metadata filtering capabilities which allow to restrict entities known to the SP via SAML metadata to only those matching certain criteria. Below are a couple of examples that are useful in specific situations. For convenience ("copy+paste") these are all self-contained but can be composed and arranged as specified in the documentation.

Campus-internal SPs (Include selected IDPs to remove all others)

Many institutions use Shibboleth and SAML also for internal "campus federation", i.e. with Service Providers not exposed to the eduID.at Federation but only known to the institutions' own IDP. Still these SPs will need trustworthy and current SAML metadata for the institutional IDP. The easiest and most secure way of achieving that is by pointing such SPs to the eduID.at federation Metadata while also adding a metadata Include filter, which effectively removes all other IDPs. E.g. only limiting an SP to the Vienna University SAML IDPs (production and test instances):

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Of course the eduID.at certificate for signature validation needs to be downloaded/configured on these SPs just like on any other SP (i.e., those that are registered with the eduID.at federation) even though the SP itself is not exposed to the federation. That also means the institutional IDP needs a way to register those SPs, but usually a local XML file with SAML metadata managed directly at the IDP is sufficient for this.

Prevent all access from OpenIDP (Exclude selected IDPs)

If deployers of a Service Provider are certain they don't have a current (or future) use for identities provided by e.g. the ACOnet OpenIDP they can filter it out at the metadata level, preventing any logins from that IDP wholesale:

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Note that if you're using the Shibboleth EDS Discovery Service you could chose to only hide an entity in the discovery service, but keep it's metadata available to the Shibboleth SP. This allows continued use of the "hidden" IDP (e.g. for testing purposes) without showing the IDP publicly in the EDS interface. (Of course you'd need to provide other methods or documentation for the ones supposed to use such "hidden" IDPs.)

Hide IDPs that have asked not to be shown (Exclude IDP from Discovery)

Here's a combined example of how to hide two specific IDPs by name from the EDS, as well as hiding all IDPs tagged with the REFEDS Hide-from-Discovery category:

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Attribute Mapping

Persistent NameIDs

By default the Shibboleth SP software will map persistent NameIDs to the internal attribute "persistent-id", whether they come from a NameID from the Subject element of the SAML Assertion, or from a NameID as value of the eduPersonTargetedID SAML Attribute. That's generally fine but sometimes an IDP may send a persistent NameID (ideally the exact some one) in both places at the same time. If that happens the Shibboleth SP will create a multi-valued internal "persistent-id" attribute, with values separated by a semicolon (";") – same as the SP does for all multi-valued attributes. There are several ways to deal with that case:

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