Authentication
Explanation
Authentication is the process XWiki uses to determine who is making a request. A wiki uses one authenticator at a time: the standard one checks the password stored in the user's profile, while others hand that decision over to the Servlet container, an LDAP directory, an OpenID Connect provider, or to code of your own. An authenticator that hands it over brings the provider's own notion of who a user is, so the wiki holds User Profiles and External Identities, which is what makes copying such a wiki to another environment a case of its own.
Authentication Types lists what is available, and Select the Authenticator shows where the choice is made. Three authenticators need server-side setup of their own: Configure Container Authentication, Set Up a Groovy Authenticator in a Wiki Page and Configure Kerberos SSO Authentication.
Whichever authenticator is active, the session is carried by cookies, so a browser that refuses them cannot stay logged in from one page to the next. Their lifetime and protection, and the pages the login flow redirects to, come from the Authentication Parameters.
Two things sit beside authentication rather than inside it. Repeated failed logins can disable an account or demand a CAPTCHA, through strategies configured in the same administration section and documented by the Authentication API extension. And the messages a user receives after requesting a password reset or a forgotten user name are wiki pages, which an administrator can Customize the Authentication Mail Templates.
FAQ
Can several authenticators be active at the same time?
No, a wiki resolves exactly one authenticator. Some of them chain internally — Container Authentication falls back to the standard one when the container authenticated nobody — but two cannot be enabled side by side.
Does authentication decide what a user is allowed to do?
No, that is authorization, which is driven by rights and whose implementation can be replaced through the Authorization API.
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