What options do I have to enforce authentication/authorization in a java web app ?
From my research, there's:
JAAS
JNDI
Spring security
Any others ? Does JEE5 or JEE6 have anything new ?
if you do not want to implement the identity-provider by yourself, you can consider using OpenID. This way, you can use any OpenID provider to provide the authentication/authorization.
In addition, you can consider OAuth2.
Do not mix between the two, there are many posts here that can explain the differences...
See Securing Web Applications chapiter for JEE6. Also you can consider Apache Shiro as alternative for Spring Security. If you already use Spring Framework then just go with Spring Security.
Related
I have a Java Spring MVC application (note that its not spring boot).
We have a requirement to implement SSO for the users of our application. I did some research, the identity provider (IDP) in our case is Azure AD. The service provider would be my application in this case. I am thinking of using SAML protocol for SSO.
Also note - The application is http based (not HTTPS)
What I've done so far -
I've created an Enterprise Application on Azure and configured entityId and replyURL. I also added a user for this application.
Where I'm stuck -
Although I did read the related Spring documentation to achieve this, since I'm a newbie here, I still don't have a clear path as to how can I take this forward in my application. I found some solutions, they seem to be examples for spring boot. Can someone please help me with guides as to how this can be done in Java Spring? Which maven dependency I could use and any sample example to start working with SAML? A step by step explanation would be highly appreciated, thankyou.
Also, any other options than SAML would also be fine.
The Spring Security SAML extension (https://docs.spring.io/spring-security-saml/docs/1.0.0.RELEASE/reference/html/index.html) had an example web app. You may read the referenced doc and apply it to Spring Security SAML. It should not be too much difference.
I’m very glad to register the flow in the event of implementing Azure AD B2C OIDC/OAuth protocol with existing Spring MVC architecture.
Below Spring docs reveal that how was our existing project's spring-security layer being served in the context of filter-chain.
Pre-requisites
Authentication Filter - Form Based Login with Legacy IDP
Authentication Manager – Providing the user details authorities along with http session object
For accomplishing this Azure B2C Integration, we've gone thro' lot of repos but most of them are relying with Java config based but we were interested on Spring namespace with limited code/architectural change.
Then finally we came to the conclusion that how to extend the spring default auth-filter/manager for getting valid session object from security context based on the Azure provided (id/access) token after the successful user authentication.
Customizing Spring-Security
The detailed documentation on how to extend auth-filter/manager is available here with © reserved by terasoluna.org
We customized the spring security in such a manner that auth-filter will carry the token_validation against the given token from Azure and authentication manager will extract user details such as roles/privileges w.r.t to the object-id mapped in our DB's user entity.
Once the Spring security customization is done then we can able to integrate the Authorization-server [Azure in our case] and Resource-server [Existing Spring Application] by following the conventional methods.
everybody!
In my project I use SSO with CAS. But what if the CAS-server is down?
I want a user to be able to login with a simple login/password form when CAS is not available.
Is it possible to configure Spring Security that way?
What should I do to achieve this?
Having said that you use SSO and wanting to use Spring Security as a backup when CAS is down, I am trying to understand how the SSO part will work with spring security. You can certainly implement your own version of single sign on with spring security using oauth2 services or your own implementation. If you did implement something like that, it brings up a question of redundant SSO services, managing them and maintaining them.
CAS, to my understanding, is primarily used for SSO purpose and has its own set of configuration. I am sure, you would have cassified your application for this purpose as well.
Is CAS server being down is an issue, I would suggest setting up a backup or standby for CAS server or building your own single sign on solution. I am trying to say that it is "either or" is more recommended than "having both"
We'd like to add Oauth2 support for a spring mvc and spring security based web application, so the oauth2 security module (http://www.buynfctags.com/nfc-tags/stickers/printed-nfc-sticker-ntag.html) seems a great fit.
But which flows exactly are supported? The docs only list the web-server flwo, but what about client-side and resource owner password flow for example. Will it work out of the box?
All the main OAuth2 flows are supported - authorization-code, implicit, client-credentials and password. There is more information in the github wiki and you might also want to take a look at the authorization-server element in the namespace schema.
The CloudFoundry UAA project is a useful example of using Spring Security OAuth2 in practice.
Does anyone over here has experience integrating TAM with Grails spring security for single sign on. If so can you help me get a quick start or point to any tutorials.
Thanks
You would probably want to use Spring Security's pre authentication feature and examine the header sent from TAM. To do so you would write your own authentication provider which is really simple and just looks for the header. See this for some more information
I'm currently working on a project running on JBoss AS 7 that requires authentication from a variety of sources. I'm trying to get an understanding of the various components that combine to provide authentication.
I have some assumptions / guesses as to how this all fits together, but I need to make sure that my understanding is correct. So below is what I understand to be the authentication process for JBoss AS7.
You have a security realm that defines how users are authenticated. This realm is then exposed to your application in order to secure some or all of it. In AS7 this is configured in the <subsystem xmlns="urn:jboss:domain:security:1.0"> element.
The realm can be configured to authenticate users against a variety of sources using login-modules, such as a database, LDAP, a local file or something else. Multiple login-modules can be defined, and you can specify some combination of login-modules must "succeed" in order for authentication to occur.
The actual username and passwords are passed in via a mechanism defined in the web.xml file (for servlets), defined in the <login-config> element.
Assuming that the above process is correct (and it may not be):
Does this whole authentication process fall under a specification like JAAS, or is JAAS just a small or optional part of this procedure?
Do all types of <auth-methods>'s (i.e. BASIC, DIGEST and FORM) work with all kinds of login-modules? This page would seem to suggest not, but I haven't seen any clear documentation matching <login-module> options <login-config> options.
The username and password flow from a login-config to a login-module seems straight forward enough, but what happens with systems like OpenID or OAuth where there are intermediary steps (like redirection to external login pages)?
How do projects like Seam 3 Security, Apache Shiro and Spring Security fit into this picture?
JavaEE security specification leaves a lot of space to container implementors so I will focus on JBoss implementation to answer.
JBoss security implementation
JBoss relies on JAAS authentication to implement JavaEE security. That way it takes benefits from a stable API and can use existing LoginModule implementations. Login modules are used to authenticate a subject but also to add roles to Subject. JAAS provides mechanisms for authorization, permission checking and JBoss uses it internally.
JAAS LoginModule does not only supports password-based authentication but also token-based authentication.
Token based authentications
A good example of what can be done in JBoss thanks to JAAS is the HTTP Negotiation support for Kerberos SPNEGO: an additional auth-method named SPNEGO is implemented thanks to a Tomcat Authenticator and token validation uses JavaSE standard Kerberos LoginModule.
By the way, the LoginModule API is not a requirement, it may even be too complex for some protocols. For instance, the implementation to support OpenID with PicketLink only uses Servlet API.
Third party security libraries
These libraries often provide security layers to an application running a JavaEE or pure Java context, even if it does not take benefits from JavaEE specifications for authentication or role-based authorization.
Spring Security provides other abstractions than JavaEE security for applications developers to implement authentication and authorization, mainly thanks to ServletFilter when a web application is concerned. A large panel of choices is available to secure his application: it is possible to mix multiple options like: JAAS usage, JavaEE container security usage or Spring Security specific implementations (the case of OpenID and OAuth). There is no dependency to JavaEE either so it may be use almost in any situation when running on JavaSE. Most architect choose to build application security on Spring Security to have the liberty to switch specific implementations in the future.
Apache Shiro is really similar to Spring Security but it is younger and probably easier to set up.
Seam security does not rely on JavaEE security or JBoss but only on Servlet and JSF APIs. It is obviously the easiest option for JSF/Seam-based web application. Behind the scene, it uses PicketLink implementations.
As a conclusion, the question to use third party libraries in addition or in replacement to JavaEE security depends on architectural choices: application complexity, vendor independence and portability, control on implementations for bug fixes or improvements. In your specific context, having multiple authentication sources requires a flexible solution like Spring Security which supports authentication provider chaining (or Shiro).