12345678910111213141516171819202122232425262728293031323334353637383940414243444546474849505152535455565758596061626364656667686970717273747576777879808182838485868788899091929394959697989910010110210310410510610710810911011111211311411511611711811912012112212312412512612712812913013113213313413513613713813914014114214314414514614714814915015115215315415515615715815916016116216316416516616716816917017117217317417517617717817918018118218318418518618718818919019119219319419519619719819920020120220320420520620720820921021121221321421521621721821922022122222322422522622722822923023123223323423523623723823924024124224324424524624724824925025125225325425525625725825926026126226326426526626726826927027127227327427527627727827928028128228328428528628728828929029129229329429529629729829930030130230330430530630730830931031131231331431531631731831932032132232332432532632732832933033133233333433533633733833934034134234334434534634734834935035135235335435535635735835936036136236336436536636736836937037137237337437537637737837938038138238338438538638738838939039139239339439539639739839940040140240340440540640740840941041141241341441541641741841942042142242342442542642742842943043143243343443543643743843944044144244344444544644744844945045145245345445545645745845946046146246346446546646746846947047147247347447547647747847948048148248348448548648748848949049149249349449549649749849950050150250350450550650750850951051151251351451551651751851952052152252352452552652752852953053153253353453553653753853954054154254354454554654754854955055155255355455555655755855956056156256356456556656756856957057157257357457557657757857958058158258358458558658758858959059159259359459559659759859960060160260360460560660760860961061161261361461561661761861962062162262362462562662762862963063163263363463563663763863964064164264364464564664764864965065165265365465565665765865966066166266366466566666766866967067167267367467567667767867968068168268368468568668768868969069169269369469569669769869970070170270370470570670770870971071171271371471571671771871972072172272372472572672772872973073173273373473573673773873974074174274374474574674774874975075175275375475575675775875976076176276376476576676776876977077177277377477577677777877978078178278378478578678778878979079179279379479579679779879980080180280380480580680780880981081181281381481581681781881982082182282382482582682782882983083183283383483583683783883984084184284384484584684784884985085185285385485585685785885986086186286386486586686786886987087187287387487587687787887988088188288388488588688788888989089189289389489589689789889990090190290390490590690790890991091191291391491591691791891992092192292392492592692792892993093193293393493593693793893994094194294394494594694794894995095195295395495595695795895996096196296396496596696796896997097197297397497597697797897998098198298398498598698798898999099199299399499599699799899910001001100210031004100510061007100810091010101110121013101410151016101710181019102010211022102310241025102610271028102910301031103210331034103510361037103810391040104110421043104410451046104710481049105010511052105310541055105610571058105910601061106210631064106510661067106810691070107110721073107410751076107710781079108010811082108310841085108610871088108910901091109210931094109510961097109810991100110111021103110411051106110711081109111011111112111311141115111611171118111911201121112211231124112511261127112811291130113111321133113411351136113711381139114011411142114311441145114611471148114911501151115211531154115511561157115811591160116111621163116411651166116711681169117011711172117311741175117611771178117911801181118211831184118511861187118811891190119111921193119411951196119711981199120012011202120312041205120612071208120912101211121212131214121512161217121812191220122112221223122412251226122712281229123012311232123312341235123612371238123912401241124212431244124512461247124812491250125112521253125412551256125712581259126012611262126312641265126612671268126912701271127212731274127512761277127812791280128112821283128412851286128712881289129012911292129312941295129612971298129913001301130213031304130513061307130813091310131113121313131413151316131713181319132013211322132313241325132613271328132913301331133213331334133513361337133813391340134113421343134413451346134713481349135013511352135313541355135613571358135913601361136213631364136513661367136813691370137113721373137413751376137713781379138013811382138313841385138613871388138913901391139213931394139513961397139813991400140114021403140414051406140714081409141014111412141314141415141614171418141914201421142214231424142514261427142814291430143114321433143414351436143714381439144014411442144314441445144614471448144914501451145214531454145514561457145814591460146114621463146414651466146714681469147014711472147314741475147614771478147914801481148214831484148514861487148814891490149114921493149414951496149714981499150015011502150315041505150615071508150915101511151215131514151515161517151815191520152115221523152415251526152715281529153015311532153315341535153615371538153915401541154215431544154515461547154815491550155115521553155415551556155715581559156015611562156315641565156615671568156915701571157215731574157515761577157815791580158115821583158415851586158715881589159015911592159315941595159615971598159916001601160216031604160516061607160816091610161116121613161416151616161716181619162016211622162316241625162616271628162916301631163216331634163516361637163816391640164116421643164416451646164716481649165016511652165316541655165616571658165916601661166216631664166516661667166816691670167116721673167416751676167716781679168016811682168316841685168616871688168916901691169216931694169516961697169816991700170117021703170417051706170717081709171017111712171317141715171617171718171917201721172217231724172517261727172817291730173117321733173417351736173717381739174017411742174317441745174617471748174917501751175217531754175517561757175817591760176117621763176417651766176717681769177017711772177317741775177617771778177917801781178217831784178517861787178817891790179117921793179417951796179717981799180018011802180318041805180618071808180918101811181218131814181518161817181818191820182118221823182418251826182718281829183018311832183318341835183618371838183918401841184218431844184518461847184818491850185118521853185418551856185718581859186018611862186318641865186618671868186918701871187218731874187518761877187818791880188118821883188418851886188718881889189018911892189318941895189618971898189919001901190219031904190519061907190819091910191119121913191419151916191719181919192019211922192319241925192619271928192919301931193219331934193519361937193819391940194119421943194419451946194719481949195019511952195319541955195619571958195919601961196219631964196519661967196819691970197119721973197419751976197719781979198019811982198319841985198619871988198919901991199219931994199519961997199819992000200120022003200420052006200720082009201020112012201320142015201620172018201920202021202220232024202520262027202820292030203120322033203420352036203720382039204020412042204320442045204620472048204920502051205220532054205520562057205820592060206120622063206420652066206720682069207020712072207320742075207620772078207920802081208220832084208520862087208820892090209120922093209420952096209720982099210021012102210321042105210621072108210921102111211221132114211521162117211821192120212121222123212421252126212721282129213021312132213321342135213621372138213921402141214221432144214521462147214821492150215121522153215421552156215721582159216021612162216321642165216621672168216921702171217221732174217521762177217821792180218121822183218421852186218721882189219021912192219321942195219621972198219922002201220222032204220522062207220822092210221122122213221422152216221722182219222022212222222322242225222622272228222922302231223222332234223522362237223822392240224122422243224422452246224722482249225022512252225322542255225622572258225922602261226222632264226522662267226822692270227122722273227422752276227722782279228022812282228322842285228622872288228922902291229222932294229522962297229822992300230123022303230423052306230723082309231023112312231323142315231623172318231923202321232223232324232523262327232823292330233123322333233423352336233723382339234023412342234323442345234623472348234923502351235223532354235523562357235823592360236123622363236423652366236723682369237023712372237323742375237623772378237923802381238223832384238523862387238823892390239123922393239423952396239723982399240024012402240324042405240624072408240924102411241224132414241524162417241824192420242124222423242424252426242724282429243024312432243324342435243624372438243924402441244224432444244524462447244824492450245124522453245424552456245724582459246024612462246324642465246624672468246924702471247224732474247524762477247824792480248124822483248424852486248724882489249024912492249324942495249624972498249925002501250225032504250525062507250825092510251125122513251425152516251725182519252025212522252325242525252625272528252925302531253225332534253525362537253825392540254125422543254425452546254725482549255025512552255325542555255625572558255925602561256225632564256525662567256825692570257125722573257425752576257725782579258025812582258325842585258625872588258925902591259225932594259525962597259825992600260126022603260426052606260726082609261026112612261326142615261626172618261926202621262226232624262526262627262826292630263126322633263426352636263726382639264026412642264326442645264626472648264926502651265226532654265526562657265826592660266126622663266426652666266726682669267026712672267326742675267626772678267926802681268226832684268526862687268826892690269126922693269426952696269726982699270027012702270327042705270627072708270927102711271227132714271527162717271827192720272127222723272427252726272727282729273027312732273327342735273627372738273927402741274227432744274527462747274827492750275127522753275427552756275727582759276027612762276327642765276627672768276927702771277227732774277527762777277827792780278127822783278427852786278727882789279027912792279327942795279627972798279928002801280228032804280528062807280828092810281128122813281428152816281728182819282028212822282328242825282628272828282928302831283228332834283528362837283828392840284128422843284428452846284728482849285028512852285328542855285628572858285928602861286228632864286528662867286828692870287128722873287428752876287728782879288028812882288328842885288628872888288928902891289228932894289528962897289828992900290129022903290429052906290729082909291029112912291329142915291629172918291929202921292229232924292529262927292829292930293129322933293429352936293729382939294029412942294329442945294629472948294929502951295229532954295529562957295829592960296129622963296429652966296729682969297029712972297329742975297629772978297929802981298229832984298529862987298829892990299129922993299429952996299729982999300030013002300330043005300630073008300930103011301230133014301530163017301830193020302130223023302430253026302730283029303030313032303330343035303630373038303930403041304230433044304530463047304830493050305130523053305430553056305730583059306030613062306330643065306630673068306930703071307230733074307530763077307830793080308130823083308430853086308730883089309030913092309330943095309630973098309931003101310231033104310531063107310831093110311131123113311431153116311731183119312031213122312331243125312631273128312931303131313231333134313531363137313831393140314131423143314431453146314731483149315031513152315331543155315631573158315931603161316231633164316531663167316831693170317131723173317431753176317731783179318031813182318331843185318631873188318931903191319231933194319531963197319831993200320132023203320432053206320732083209321032113212321332143215321632173218321932203221322232233224322532263227322832293230323132323233323432353236323732383239324032413242324332443245324632473248324932503251325232533254325532563257325832593260326132623263326432653266326732683269327032713272327332743275327632773278327932803281328232833284328532863287328832893290329132923293329432953296329732983299330033013302330333043305330633073308330933103311331233133314331533163317331833193320332133223323332433253326332733283329333033313332333333343335333633373338333933403341334233433344334533463347334833493350335133523353335433553356335733583359336033613362336333643365336633673368336933703371337233733374337533763377337833793380338133823383338433853386338733883389339033913392339333943395339633973398339934003401340234033404340534063407340834093410341134123413341434153416341734183419342034213422342334243425342634273428342934303431343234333434343534363437343834393440344134423443344434453446344734483449345034513452345334543455345634573458345934603461346234633464346534663467346834693470347134723473347434753476347734783479348034813482348334843485348634873488348934903491349234933494349534963497349834993500350135023503350435053506350735083509351035113512351335143515351635173518351935203521352235233524352535263527352835293530353135323533353435353536353735383539354035413542354335443545354635473548354935503551355235533554355535563557355835593560356135623563356435653566356735683569357035713572357335743575357635773578357935803581358235833584358535863587358835893590359135923593359435953596359735983599360036013602360336043605360636073608360936103611361236133614361536163617361836193620362136223623362436253626362736283629363036313632363336343635363636373638363936403641364236433644364536463647364836493650365136523653365436553656365736583659366036613662366336643665366636673668366936703671367236733674367536763677367836793680368136823683368436853686368736883689369036913692369336943695369636973698369937003701370237033704370537063707370837093710371137123713371437153716371737183719372037213722372337243725372637273728372937303731373237333734373537363737373837393740374137423743374437453746374737483749375037513752375337543755375637573758375937603761376237633764376537663767376837693770377137723773377437753776377737783779378037813782378337843785378637873788378937903791379237933794379537963797379837993800380138023803380438053806380738083809381038113812381338143815381638173818381938203821382238233824382538263827382838293830383138323833383438353836383738383839384038413842384338443845384638473848384938503851385238533854385538563857385838593860386138623863386438653866386738683869387038713872387338743875387638773878387938803881388238833884388538863887388838893890389138923893389438953896389738983899390039013902390339043905390639073908390939103911391239133914391539163917391839193920392139223923392439253926392739283929393039313932393339343935393639373938393939403941394239433944394539463947394839493950395139523953395439553956395739583959396039613962396339643965396639673968396939703971397239733974397539763977397839793980398139823983398439853986398739883989399039913992399339943995399639973998399940004001400240034004400540064007400840094010401140124013401440154016401740184019402040214022402340244025402640274028402940304031403240334034403540364037403840394040404140424043404440454046404740484049405040514052405340544055405640574058405940604061406240634064406540664067406840694070407140724073407440754076407740784079408040814082408340844085408640874088408940904091409240934094409540964097409840994100410141024103410441054106410741084109411041114112411341144115411641174118411941204121412241234124412541264127412841294130413141324133413441354136413741384139414041414142414341444145414641474148414941504151415241534154415541564157415841594160416141624163416441654166416741684169417041714172417341744175417641774178417941804181418241834184418541864187418841894190419141924193419441954196419741984199420042014202420342044205420642074208420942104211421242134214421542164217421842194220422142224223422442254226422742284229423042314232423342344235423642374238423942404241424242434244424542464247424842494250425142524253425442554256425742584259426042614262426342644265426642674268426942704271427242734274427542764277427842794280428142824283428442854286428742884289429042914292429342944295429642974298429943004301430243034304430543064307430843094310431143124313431443154316431743184319432043214322432343244325432643274328432943304331433243334334433543364337433843394340434143424343434443454346434743484349435043514352435343544355435643574358435943604361436243634364436543664367436843694370437143724373437443754376437743784379438043814382438343844385438643874388438943904391439243934394439543964397439843994400440144024403440444054406440744084409441044114412441344144415441644174418441944204421442244234424442544264427442844294430443144324433443444354436443744384439444044414442444344444445444644474448444944504451445244534454445544564457445844594460446144624463446444654466446744684469447044714472447344744475447644774478447944804481448244834484448544864487448844894490449144924493449444954496449744984499450045014502450345044505450645074508450945104511451245134514451545164517451845194520452145224523452445254526452745284529453045314532453345344535453645374538453945404541454245434544454545464547454845494550455145524553455445554556455745584559456045614562456345644565456645674568456945704571457245734574457545764577457845794580458145824583458445854586458745884589459045914592459345944595459645974598459946004601460246034604460546064607460846094610461146124613461446154616461746184619462046214622462346244625462646274628462946304631463246334634463546364637463846394640464146424643464446454646464746484649465046514652465346544655465646574658465946604661466246634664466546664667466846694670467146724673467446754676467746784679468046814682468346844685468646874688468946904691469246934694469546964697469846994700470147024703470447054706470747084709471047114712471347144715471647174718471947204721472247234724472547264727472847294730473147324733473447354736473747384739474047414742474347444745474647474748474947504751475247534754475547564757475847594760476147624763476447654766476747684769477047714772477347744775477647774778477947804781478247834784478547864787478847894790479147924793479447954796479747984799480048014802480348044805480648074808480948104811481248134814481548164817481848194820482148224823482448254826482748284829483048314832483348344835483648374838483948404841484248434844484548464847484848494850485148524853485448554856485748584859486048614862486348644865486648674868486948704871487248734874487548764877487848794880488148824883488448854886488748884889489048914892489348944895489648974898489949004901490249034904490549064907490849094910491149124913491449154916491749184919492049214922492349244925492649274928492949304931493249334934493549364937493849394940494149424943494449454946494749484949495049514952495349544955495649574958495949604961496249634964496549664967496849694970497149724973497449754976497749784979498049814982498349844985498649874988498949904991499249934994499549964997499849995000500150025003500450055006500750085009501050115012501350145015501650175018501950205021502250235024502550265027502850295030503150325033503450355036503750385039504050415042504350445045504650475048504950505051505250535054505550565057505850595060506150625063506450655066506750685069507050715072507350745075507650775078507950805081508250835084508550865087508850895090509150925093509450955096509750985099510051015102510351045105510651075108510951105111511251135114511551165117511851195120512151225123512451255126512751285129513051315132513351345135513651375138513951405141514251435144514551465147514851495150515151525153515451555156515751585159516051615162516351645165516651675168516951705171 |
- <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
- <!DOCTYPE book PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.2//EN"
- "http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.2/docbookx.dtd">
- <!--
- * ========================================================================
- *
- * Copyright 2004 Acegi Technology Pty Limited
- *
- * Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
- * you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
- * You may obtain a copy of the License at
- *
- * http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
- *
- * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
- * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
- * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
- * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
- * limitations under the License.
- *
- * ========================================================================
- -->
- <book>
- <bookinfo>
- <title>Acegi Security System for Spring</title>
- <subtitle>Reference Documentation</subtitle>
- <releaseinfo>1.0.0</releaseinfo>
- <authorgroup>
- <author>
- <firstname>Ben</firstname>
- <surname>Alex</surname>
- </author>
- </authorgroup>
- </bookinfo>
- <toc></toc>
- <preface id="preface">
- <title>Preface</title>
- <para>This document provides a reference guide to the Acegi Security
- System for Spring, which is a series of classes that deliver
- authentication and authorization services within the Spring
- Framework.</para>
- <para>I would like to acknowledge this reference was prepared using the
- DocBook configuration included with the Spring Framework. The Spring team
- in turn acknowledge Chris Bauer (Hibernate) for his assistance with their
- DocBook.</para>
- </preface>
- <chapter id="security">
- <title>Security</title>
- <sect1 id="security-before-you-begin">
- <title>Before You Begin</title>
- <para>For your security, each official release JAR of Acegi Security has
- been signed by the project leader. This does not in any way alter the
- liability disclaimer contained in the License, but it does ensure you
- are using a properly reviewed, official build of Acegi Security. Please
- refer to the <literal>readme.txt</literal> file in the root of the
- release distribution for instructions on how to validate the JARs are
- correctly signed, and which certificate has been used to sign
- them.</para>
- </sect1>
- <sect1 id="security-introduction">
- <title>Introduction</title>
- <para>The Acegi Security System for Spring provides authentication and
- authorization capabilities for Spring-powered projects, with optional
- integration with popular web containers. The security architecture was
- designed from the ground up using "The Spring Way" of development, which
- includes using bean contexts, interceptors and interface-driven
- programming. As a consequence, the Acegi Security System for Spring is
- useful out-of-the-box for those seeking to secure their Spring-based
- applications, and can be easily adapted to complex customized
- requirements.</para>
- <para>Security involves two distinct operations, authentication and
- authorization. The former relates to resolving whether or not a caller
- is who they claim to be. Authorization on the other hand relates to
- determining whether or not an authenticated caller is permitted to
- perform a given operation.</para>
- <para>Throughout the Acegi Security System for Spring, the user, system
- or agent that needs to be authenticated is referred to as a "principal".
- The security architecture does not have a notion of roles or groups,
- which you may be familiar with from other security implementations,
- although equivalent functionality is fully accommodated by Acegi
- Security.</para>
- <sect2 id="security-introduction-status">
- <title>Current Status</title>
- <para>The Acegi Security System for Spring is widely used by members
- of the Spring Community. The APIs are considered stable and only minor
- changes are expected. Having said that, like many other projects we
- need to strike a balance between backward compatibility and
- improvement. Effective version 0.6.1, Acegi Security uses the Apache
- Portable Runtime Project versioning guidelines, available from
- <literal>http://apr.apache.org/versioning.html</literal>.</para>
- <para>We are now at release 0.9.0, and a lot of effort has been made
- to implement all non-backward compatible changes either in or before
- this release. Some minor improvements are currently intended to the
- 1.0.0 release, although they will in no way modify the project's
- central interfaces or classes. Users of Acegi Security System for
- Spring should therefore be comfortable depending on the current
- version of the project in their applications. Please note that we will
- be changing the package name prefix in the 1.0.0 release, but this
- should be a simple "find and replace" type operation in your
- code.</para>
- </sect2>
- </sect1>
- <sect1 id="security-high-level-design">
- <title>High Level Design</title>
- <sect2 id="security-high-level-design-key-components">
- <title>Key Components</title>
- <para>Most enterprise applications have four basic security
- requirements. First, they need to be able to authenticate a principal.
- Second, they need to be able to secure web requests. Third, enterprise
- applications need to be able to secure services layer methods.
- Finally, quite often an enterprise application will need to secure
- domain object instances. Acegi Security provides a comprehensive
- framework for achieving all of these four common enterprise
- application security requirements.</para>
- <para>The Acegi Security System for Spring essentially comprises eight
- key functional parts:</para>
- <itemizedlist spacing="compact">
- <listitem>
- <para>An <literal>Authentication</literal> object which holds the
- principal, credentials and the authorities granted to the
- principal. The object can also store additional information
- associated with an authentication request, such as the source
- TCP/IP address.</para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para>A <literal>SecurityContextHolder</literal> which holds the
- <literal>Authentication</literal> object in a
- <literal>ThreadLocal</literal>-bound object.</para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para>An <literal>AuthenticationManager</literal> to authenticate
- the <literal>Authentication</literal> object presented via the
- <literal>ContextHolder</literal>.</para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para>An <literal>AccessDecisionManager</literal> to authorize a
- given operation.</para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para>A <literal>RunAsManager</literal> to optionally replace the
- <literal>Authentication</literal> object whilst a given operation
- is being executed.</para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para>A "secure object" interceptor, which coordinates the
- authentication, authorization, run-as replacement, after
- invocation handling and execution of a given operation.</para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para>An <literal>AfterInvocationManager</literal> which can
- modify an <literal>Object</literal> returned from a "secure
- object" invocation, such as removing <literal>Collection</literal>
- elements a principal does not have authority to access.</para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para>An acess control list (ACL) management package, which can be
- used to obtain the ACLs applicable for domain object
- instances.</para>
- </listitem>
- </itemizedlist>
- <para>A "secure object" interceptor executes most of the Acegi
- Security key classes and in doing so delivers the framework's major
- features. Given its importance, Figure 1 shows the key relationships
- and concrete implementations of
- <literal>AbstractSecurityInterceptor</literal>.</para>
- <para><mediaobject>
- <imageobject role="html">
- <imagedata align="center"
- fileref="images/SecurityInterception.gif"
- format="GIF" />
- </imageobject>
- <caption>
- <para>Figure 1: The key "secure object" model</para>
- </caption>
- </mediaobject></para>
- <para>Each "secure object" interceptor (hereinafter called a "security
- interceptor") works with a particular type of "secure object". So,
- what is a secure object? Secure objects refer to any type of object
- that can have security applied to it. A secure object must provide
- some form of callback, so that the security interceptor can
- transparently do its work as required, and callback the object when it
- is time for it to proceed with the requested operation. If secure
- objects cannot provide a native callback approach, a wrapper needs to
- be written so this becomes possible.</para>
- <para>Each secure object has its own package under
- <literal>org.acegisecurity.intercept</literal>. Every other package in
- the security system is secure object independent, in that it can
- support any type of secure object presented.</para>
- <para>Only developers contemplating an entirely new way of
- intercepting and authorizing requests would need to use secure objects
- directly. For example, it would be possible to build a new secure
- object to secure calls to a messaging system that does not use
- <literal>MethodInvocation</literal>s. Most Spring applications will
- simply use the three currently supported secure object types (AOP
- Alliance <literal>MethodInvocation</literal>, AspectJ
- <literal>JoinPoint</literal> and web request
- <literal>FilterInterceptor</literal>) with complete
- transparency.</para>
- <para>Each of the eight key parts of Acegi Security are discussed in
- detail throughout this document.</para>
- </sect2>
- <sect2 id="security-high-level-design-supported-secure-objects">
- <title>Supported Secure Objects</title>
- <para>As shown in the base of Figure 1, the Acegi Security System for
- Spring currently supports three secure objects.</para>
- <para>The first handles an AOP Alliance
- <literal>MethodInvocation</literal>. This is the secure object type
- used to protect Spring beans. Developers will generally use this
- secure object type to secure their business objects. To make a
- standard Spring-hosted bean available as a
- <literal>MethodInvocation</literal>, the bean is simply published
- through a <literal>ProxyFactoryBean</literal> or
- <literal>BeanNameAutoProxyCreator</literal> or
- <literal>DefaultAdvisorAutoProxyCreator</literal>. Most Spring
- developers would already be familiar with these due to their use in
- transactions and other areas of Spring.</para>
- <para>The second type is an AspectJ <literal>JoinPoint</literal>.
- AspectJ has a particular use in securing domain object instances, as
- these are most often managed outside the Spring bean container. By
- using AspectJ, standard constructs such as <literal>new
- Person();</literal> can be used and full security will be applied to
- them by Acegi Security. The
- <literal>AspectJSecurityInterceptor</literal> is still managed by
- Spring, which creates the aspect singleton and wires it with the
- appropriate authentication managers, access decision managers and so
- on.</para>
- <para>The third type is a <literal>FilterInvocation</literal>. This is
- an object included with the Acegi Security System for Spring. It is
- created by an included filter and simply wraps the HTTP
- <literal>ServletRequest</literal>, <literal>ServletResponse</literal>
- and <literal>FilterChain</literal>. The
- <literal>FilterInvocation</literal> enables HTTP resources to be
- secured. Developers do not usually need to understand the mechanics of
- how this works, because they just add the filters to their
- <literal>web.xml</literal> and let the security system do its
- work.</para>
- </sect2>
- <sect2 id="security-high-level-design-configuration-attributes">
- <title>Configuration Attributes</title>
- <para>Every secure object can represent an infinite number of
- individual requests. For example, a
- <literal>MethodInvocation</literal> can represent the invocation of
- any method with any arguments, whilst a
- <literal>FilterInvocation</literal> can represent any HTTP URL.</para>
- <para>The Acegi Security System for Spring needs to record the
- configuration that applies to each of these possible requests. The
- security configuration of a request to
- <literal>BankManager.getBalance(int accountNumber)</literal> needs to
- be very different from the security configuration of a request to
- <literal>BankManager.approveLoan(int applicationNumber)</literal>.
- Similarly, the security configuration of a request to
- <literal>http://some.bank.com/index.htm</literal> needs to be very
- different from the security configuration of
- <literal>http://some.bank.com/manage/timesheet.jsp</literal>.</para>
- <para>To store the various security configurations associated with
- different requests, a configuration attribute is used. At an
- implementation level a configuration attribute is represented by the
- <literal>ConfigAttribute</literal> interface. One concrete
- implementation of <literal>ConfigAttribute</literal> is provided,
- <literal>SecurityConfig</literal>, which simply stores a configuration
- attribute as a <literal>String</literal>.</para>
- <para>The collection of <literal>ConfigAttribute</literal>s associated
- with a particular request is held in a
- <literal>ConfigAttributeDefinition</literal>. This concrete class is
- simply a holder of <literal>ConfigAttribute</literal>s and does
- nothing special.</para>
- <para>When a request is received by the security interceptor, it needs
- to determine which configuration attributes apply. In other words, it
- needs to find the <literal>ConfigAttributeDefinition</literal> which
- applies to the request. This decision is handled by the
- <literal>ObjectDefinitionSource</literal> interface. The main method
- provided by this interface is <literal>public
- ConfigAttributeDefinition getAttributes(Object object)</literal>, with
- the <literal>Object</literal> being the secure object. Recall the
- secure object contains details of the request, so the
- <literal>ObjectDefinitionSource</literal> implementation will be able
- to extract the details it requires to lookup the relevant
- <literal>ConfigAttributeDefinition</literal>.</para>
- </sect2>
- </sect1>
- <sect1 id="security-request-contexts">
- <title>Request Contexts</title>
- <sect2 id="security-contexts-history">
- <title>Historical Approach</title>
- <para>Prior to release 0.9.0, Acegi Security used a
- <literal>ContextHolder</literal> to store a <literal>Context</literal>
- between sessions. A particular subclass of <literal>Context</literal>,
- <literal>SecureContext</literal> defined an interface used for storage
- of the <literal>Authentication</literal> object. The
- <literal>ContextHolder</literal> was a <literal>ThreadLocal</literal>.
- A fuller discussion of the <literal>ThreadLocal</literal> usage with
- Acegi Security follows in this document.
- <literal>ContextHolder</literal> and <literal>SecureContext</literal>
- was removed from 0.9.0 after discussion with other Spring developers
- for the sake of consistency. See for example
- <literal>http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.java.springframework.devel/8290</literal>
- and JIRA task SEC-77. This history is mentioned as the long period
- <literal>ContextHolder</literal> was used will likely mean that
- certain documentation you encounter concerning Acegi Security might
- still refer to <literal>ContextHolder</literal>. Generally you can
- just substitute "<literal>SecurityContextHolder</literal>" for
- "<literal>ContextHolder</literal>", and
- "<literal>SecurityContext</literal>" for
- "<literal>SecureContext</literal>", and you'll have the primary
- meaning of such documentation.</para>
- </sect2>
- <sect2 id="security-contexts-security-context">
- <title>SecurityContext</title>
- <para>The Acegi Security System for Spring uses a
- <literal>SecurityContextHolder</literal> to store the
- <literal>SecurityContext</literal>. The
- <literal>SecurityContext</literal> contains a single getter/setter for
- <literal>Authentication</literal>. All Acegi Security classes query
- the <literal>SecurityContextHolder</literal> for obtaining the current
- <literal>SecurityContext</literal> (and in turn the principal).
- <literal>SecurityContextHolder</literal> is a
- <literal>ThreadLocal</literal>, meaning it is associated with the
- current thread of execution.</para>
- </sect2>
- <sect2 id="security-contexts-storage">
- <title>Context Storage</title>
- <para>Central to Acegi Security's design is that the contents of the
- <literal>SecurityContextHolder</literal> (which is simply a
- <literal>SecurityContext</literal> implementation) can be stored
- between web requests. This is so that a successfully authenticated
- principal can be identified on subsequent requests through the
- <literal>Authentication</literal> stored inside the
- <literal>SecurityContext</literal> obtained from the
- <literal>SecurityContextHolder</literal>. The
- <literal>HttpSessionContextIntegrationFilter</literal> exists to
- automatically copy the contents of a well-defined
- <literal>HttpSession</literal> attribute into the
- <literal>SecurityContextHolder</literal>, then at the end of each
- request, copy the <literal>SecurityContextHolder</literal> contents
- back into the <literal>HttpSession</literal> ready for next
- request.</para>
- <para>It is essential - and an extremely common error of end users -
- that <literal>HttpSessionContextIntegrationFilter</literal> appears
- before any other Acegi Security filter. Acegi Security filters expect
- to be able to modify the <literal>SecurityContextHolder</literal>
- contents as they see fit, and something else (namely
- <literal>HttpSessionContextIntegrationFilter</literal>) will store
- those between requests if necessary. This is why
- <literal>HttpSessionContextIntegrationFilter</literal> must be the
- first filter used.</para>
- <para>You can define a custom <literal>SecurityContext</literal>
- implementation be used in your application by setting the
- <literal>context</literal> property on the
- <literal>HttpSessionContextIntegrationFilter</literal> bean.</para>
- </sect2>
- <sect2 id="security-localization">
- <title>Localization</title>
- <para>From 1.0.0, Acegi Security supports localization of exception
- messages that end users are likely to see. Such exceptions include
- authentication failures and access being denied (authorization
- failures). Exceptions and logging that is focused on developers or
- system deployers (including incorrect attributes, interface contract
- violations, using incorrect constructors, startup time validation,
- debug-level logging) etc are not localized and instead are hard-coded
- in English within Acegi Security's code.</para>
- <para>Shipping in the <literal>acegi-security-xx.jar</literal> inside
- the <literal>org.acegisecurity</literal> package is a
- <literal>messages.properties</literal> file. This should be referred
- to by your <literal>ApplicationContext</literal>, as Acegi Security
- classes implement Spring's <literal>MessageSourceAware</literal>
- interface and expect the message resolver to be dependency injected at
- application context startup time. Usually all you need to do is
- register a bean inside your application context to refer to the
- messages. An example is shown below:</para>
- <para><programlisting><bean id="messageSource" class="org.springframework.context.support.ReloadableResourceBundleMessageSource">
- <property name="basename"><value>org/acegisecurity/messages</value></property>
- </bean></programlisting></para>
- <para>The <literal>messages.properties</literal> is named in
- accordance with standard resource bundles and represents the default
- language supported by Acegi Securtiy messages. This default file is in
- English. If you do not register a message source, Acegi Security will
- still work correctly and fallback to hard-coded English versions of
- the messages.</para>
- <para>If you wish to customize the
- <literal>messages.properties</literal> file, or support other
- languages, you should copy the file, rename it accordingly, and
- register it inside the above bean definition. There are not a large
- number of message keys inside this file, so localization should not be
- considered a major initiative. If you do perform localization of this
- file, please consider sharing your work with the community by logging
- a JIRA task and attaching your appropriately-named localized version
- of <literal>messages.properties</literal>.</para>
- <para>Rounding out the discussion on localization is the Spring
- <literal>ThreadLocal</literal> known as
- <literal>org.springframework.context.i18n.LocaleContextHolder</literal>.
- You should set the <literal>LocaleContextHolder</literal> to represent
- the preferred <literal>Locale</literal> of each user. Acegi Security
- will attempt to locate a message from the message source using the
- <literal>Locale</literal> obtained from this
- <literal>ThreadLocal</literal>. Please refer to Spring documentation
- for further details on using <literal>LocaleContextHolder</literal>
- and the helper classes that can automatically set it for you (eg
- <literal>AcceptHeaderLocaleResolver</literal>,
- <literal>CookieLocaleResolver</literal>,
- <literal>FixedLocaleResolver</literal>,
- <literal>SessionLocaleResolver</literal> etc)</para>
- </sect2>
- </sect1>
- <sect1 id="security-interception">
- <title>Security Interception</title>
- <sect2 id="security-interception-all-secure-objects">
- <title>All Secure Objects</title>
- <para>As described in the High Level Design section, each secure
- object has its own security interceptor which is responsible for
- handling each request. Handling involves a number of
- operations:</para>
- <orderedlist>
- <listitem>
- <para>Store the configuration attributes that are associated with
- each secure request.</para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para>Extract the <literal>ConfigAttributeDefinition</literal>
- that applies to the request from the relevant
- <literal>ObjectDefinitionSource</literal>.</para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para>Obtain the <literal>Authentication</literal> object from the
- <literal>SecurityContext</literal>, which is held in the
- <literal>SecurityContextHolder</literal>.</para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para>Pass the <literal>Authentication</literal> object to the
- <literal>AuthenticationManager</literal>, update the
- <literal>SecurityContextHolder</literal> with the response.</para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para>Pass the <literal>Authentication</literal> object, the
- <literal>ConfigAttributeDefinition</literal>, and the secure
- object to the <literal>AccessDecisionManager</literal>.</para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para>Pass the <literal>Authentication</literal> object, the
- <literal>ConfigAttributeDefinition</literal>, and the secure
- object to the <literal>RunAsManager</literal>.</para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para>If the <literal>RunAsManager</literal> returns a new
- <literal>Authentication</literal> object, update the
- <literal>SecurityContextHolder</literal> with it.</para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para>Proceed with the request execution of the secure
- object.</para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para>If the <literal>RunAsManager</literal> earlier returned a
- new <literal>Authentication</literal> object, update the
- <literal>SecurityContextHolder</literal> with the
- <literal>Authentication</literal> object that was previously
- returned by the <literal>AuthenticationManager</literal>.</para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para>If an <literal>AfterInvocationManager</literal> is defined,
- pass it the result of the secure object execution so that it may
- throw an <literal>AccessDeniedException</literal> or mutate the
- returned object if required.</para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para>Return any result received from the
- <literal>AfterInvocationManager</literal>, or if no
- <literal>AfterInvocationManager</literal> is defined, simply
- return the result provided by the secure object execution.</para>
- </listitem>
- </orderedlist>
- <para>Whilst this may seem quite involved, don't worry. Developers
- interact with the security process by simply implementing basic
- interfaces (such as <literal>AccessDecisionManager</literal>), which
- are fully discussed below.</para>
- <para>The <literal>AbstractSecurityInterceptor</literal> handles the
- majority of the flow listed above. As shown in Figure 1, each secure
- object has its own security interceptor which subclasses
- <literal>AbstractSecurityInterceptor</literal>. Each of these secure
- object-specific security interceptors are discussed below.</para>
- </sect2>
- <sect2 id="security-interception-aopalliance">
- <title>AOP Alliance (MethodInvocation) Security Interceptor</title>
- <para>To secure <literal>MethodInvocation</literal>s, developers
- simply add a properly configured
- <literal>MethodSecurityInterceptor</literal> into the application
- context. Next the beans requiring security are chained into the
- interceptor. This chaining is accomplished using Spring’s
- <literal>ProxyFactoryBean</literal> or
- <literal>BeanNameAutoProxyCreator</literal>, as commonly used by many
- other parts of Spring (refer to the sample application for examples).
- Alternatively, Acegi Security provides a
- <literal>MethodDefinitionSourceAdvisor</literal> which may be used
- with Spring's <literal>DefaultAdvisorAutoProxyCreator</literal> to
- automatically chain the security interceptor in front of any beans
- defined against the <literal>MethodSecurityInterceptor</literal>. The
- <literal>MethodSecurityInterceptor</literal> itself is configured as
- follows:</para>
- <para><programlisting><bean id="bankManagerSecurity" class="org.acegisecurity.intercept.method.aopalliance.MethodSecurityInterceptor">
- <property name="validateConfigAttributes"><value>true</value></property>
- <property name="authenticationManager"><ref bean="authenticationManager"/></property>
- <property name="accessDecisionManager"><ref bean="accessDecisionManager"/></property>
- <property name="runAsManager"><ref bean="runAsManager"/></property>
- <property name="afterInvocationManager"><ref bean="afterInvocationManager"/></property>
- <property name="objectDefinitionSource">
- <value>
- org.acegisecurity.context.BankManager.delete*=ROLE_SUPERVISOR,RUN_AS_SERVER
- org.acegisecurity.context.BankManager.getBalance=ROLE_TELLER,ROLE_SUPERVISOR,BANKSECURITY_CUSTOMER,RUN_AS_SERVER
- </value>
- </property>
- </bean></programlisting></para>
- <para>As shown above, the <literal>MethodSecurityInterceptor</literal>
- is configured with a reference to an
- <literal>AuthenticationManager</literal>,
- <literal>AccessDecisionManager</literal> and
- <literal>RunAsManager</literal>, which are each discussed in separate
- sections below. In this case we've also defined an
- <literal>AfterInvocationManager</literal>, although this is entirely
- optional. The <literal>MethodSecurityInterceptor</literal> is also
- configured with configuration attributes that apply to different
- method signatures. A full discussion of configuration attributes is
- provided in the High Level Design section of this document.</para>
- <para>The <literal>MethodSecurityInterceptor</literal> can be
- configured with configuration attributes in three ways. The first is
- via a property editor and the application context, which is shown
- above. The second is via defining the configuration attributes in your
- source code using Jakarta Commons Attributes or Java 5 Annotations.
- The third is via writing your own
- <literal>ObjectDefinitionSource</literal>, although this is beyond the
- scope of this document. Irrespective of the approach used, the
- <literal>ObjectDefinitionSource</literal> is responsible for returning
- a <literal>ConfigAttributeDefinition</literal> object that contains
- all of the configuration attributes associated with a single secure
- method.</para>
- <para>It should be noted that the
- <literal>MethodSecurityInterceptor.setObjectDefinitionSource()</literal>
- method actually expects an instance of
- <literal>MethodDefinitionSource</literal>. This is a marker interface
- which subclasses <literal>ObjectDefinitionSource</literal>. It simply
- denotes the <literal>ObjectDefinitionSource</literal> understands
- <literal>MethodInvocation</literal>s. In the interests of simplicity
- we'll continue to refer to the
- <literal>MethodDefinitionSource</literal> as an
- <literal>ObjectDefinitionSource</literal>, as the distinction is of
- little relevance to most users of the
- <literal>MethodSecurityInterceptor</literal>.</para>
- <para>If using the application context property editor approach (as
- shown above), commas are used to delimit the different configuration
- attributes that apply to a given method pattern. Each configuration
- attribute is assigned into its own <literal>SecurityConfig</literal>
- object. The <literal>SecurityConfig</literal> object is discussed in
- the High Level Design section.</para>
- <para>If you are using the Jakarta Commons Attributes approach, your
- bean context will be configured differently:</para>
- <para><programlisting><bean id="attributes" class="org.springframework.metadata.commons.CommonsAttributes"/>
- <bean id="objectDefinitionSource" class="org.acegisecurity.intercept.method.MethodDefinitionAttributes">
- <property name="attributes"><ref local="attributes"/></property>
- </bean>
- <bean id="bankManagerSecurity" class="org.acegisecurity.intercept.method.aopalliance.MethodSecurityInterceptor">
- <property name="validateConfigAttributes"><value>false</value></property>
- <property name="authenticationManager"><ref bean="authenticationManager"/></property>
- <property name="accessDecisionManager"><ref bean="accessDecisionManager"/></property>
- <property name="runAsManager"><ref bean="runAsManager"/></property>
- <property name="objectDefinitionSource"><ref bean="objectDefinitionSource"/></property>
- </bean></programlisting></para>
- <para>In addition, your source code will contain Jakarta Commons
- Attributes tags that refer to a concrete implementation of
- <literal>ConfigAttribute</literal>. The following example uses the
- <literal>SecurityConfig</literal> implementation to represent the
- configuration attributes, and results in the same security
- configuration as provided by the property editor approach
- above:</para>
- <para><programlisting>public interface BankManager {
- /**
- * @@SecurityConfig("ROLE_SUPERVISOR")
- * @@SecurityConfig("RUN_AS_SERVER")
- */
- public void deleteSomething(int id);
- /**
- * @@SecurityConfig("ROLE_SUPERVISOR")
- * @@SecurityConfig("RUN_AS_SERVER")
- */
- public void deleteAnother(int id);
- /**
- * @@SecurityConfig("ROLE_TELLER")
- * @@SecurityConfig("ROLE_SUPERVISOR")
- * @@SecurityConfig("BANKSECURITY_CUSTOMER")
- * @@SecurityConfig("RUN_AS_SERVER")
- */
- public float getBalance(int id);
- }</programlisting></para>
- <para>If you are using the Spring Security Java 5 Annotations
- approach, your bean context will be configured as follows:</para>
- <para><programlisting><bean id="attributes" class="org.acegisecurity.annotation.SecurityAnnotationAttributes"/>
- <bean id="objectDefinitionSource" class="org.acegisecurity.intercept.method.MethodDefinitionAttributes">
- <property name="attributes"><ref local="attributes"/></property>
- </bean>
- <bean id="bankManagerSecurity" class="org.acegisecurity.intercept.method.aopalliance.MethodSecurityInterceptor">
- <property name="validateConfigAttributes"><value>false</value></property>
- <property name="authenticationManager"><ref bean="authenticationManager"/></property>
- <property name="accessDecisionManager"><ref bean="accessDecisionManager"/></property>
- <property name="runAsManager"><ref bean="runAsManager"/></property>
- <property name="objectDefinitionSource"><ref bean="objectDefinitionSource"/></property>
- </bean></programlisting></para>
- <para>In addition, your source code will contain the Acegi Java 5
- Security Annotations that represent the
- <literal>ConfigAttribute</literal>. The following example uses the
- <literal>@Secured</literal> annotations to represent the configuration
- attributes, and results in the same security configuration as provided
- by the property editor approach:</para>
- <para><programlisting>import org.acegisecurity.annotation.Secured;
- public interface BankManager {
- /**
- * Delete something
- */
- @Secured({"ROLE_SUPERVISOR","RUN_AS_SERVER" })
- public void deleteSomething(int id);
- /**
- * Delete another
- */
- @Secured({"ROLE_SUPERVISOR","RUN_AS_SERVER" })
- public void deleteAnother(int id);
- /**
- * Get balance
- */
- @Secured({"ROLE_TELLER","ROLE_SUPERVISOR","BANKSECURITY_CUSTOMER","RUN_AS_SERVER" })
- public float getBalance(int id);
- }</programlisting></para>
- <para>You might have noticed the
- <literal>validateConfigAttributes</literal> property in the above
- <literal>MethodSecurityInterceptor</literal> examples. When set to
- <literal>true</literal> (the default), at startup time the
- <literal>MethodSecurityInterceptor</literal> will evaluate if the
- provided configuration attributes are valid. It does this by checking
- each configuration attribute can be processed by either the
- <literal>AccessDecisionManager</literal> or the
- <literal>RunAsManager</literal>. If neither of these can process a
- given configuration attribute, an exception is thrown. If using the
- Jakarta Commons Attributes method of configuration, you should set
- <literal>validateConfigAttributes</literal> to
- <literal>false</literal>.</para>
- </sect2>
- <sect2 id="security-interception-aspectj">
- <title>AspectJ (JoinPoint) Security Interceptor</title>
- <para>The AspectJ security interceptor is very similar to the AOP
- Alliance security interceptor discussed in the previous section.
- Indeed we will only discuss the differences in this section.</para>
- <para>The AspectJ interceptor is named
- <literal>AspectJSecurityInterceptor</literal>. Unlike the AOP Alliance
- security interceptor, which relies on the Spring application context
- to weave in the security interceptor via proxying, the
- <literal>AspectJSecurityInterceptor</literal> is weaved in via the
- AspectJ compiler. It would not be uncommon to use both types of
- security interceptors in the same application, with
- <literal>AspectJSecurityInterceptor</literal> being used for domain
- object instance security and the AOP Alliance
- <literal>MethodSecurityInterceptor</literal> being used for services
- layer security.</para>
- <para>Let's first consider how the
- <literal>AspectJSecurityInterceptor</literal> is configured in the
- Spring application context:</para>
- <para><programlisting><bean id="bankManagerSecurity" class="org.acegisecurity.intercept.method.aspectj.AspectJSecurityInterceptor">
- <property name="validateConfigAttributes"><value>true</value></property>
- <property name="authenticationManager"><ref bean="authenticationManager"/></property>
- <property name="accessDecisionManager"><ref bean="accessDecisionManager"/></property>
- <property name="runAsManager"><ref bean="runAsManager"/></property>
- <property name="afterInvocationManager"><ref bean="afterInvocationManager"/></property>
- <property name="objectDefinitionSource">
- <value>
- org.acegisecurity.context.BankManager.delete*=ROLE_SUPERVISOR,RUN_AS_SERVER
- org.acegisecurity.context.BankManager.getBalance=ROLE_TELLER,ROLE_SUPERVISOR,BANKSECURITY_CUSTOMER,RUN_AS_SERVER
- </value>
- </property>
- </bean></programlisting></para>
- <para>As you can see, aside from the class name, the
- <literal>AspectJSecurityInterceptor</literal> is exactly the same as
- the AOP Alliance security interceptor. Indeed the two interceptors can
- share the same <literal>objectDefinitionSource</literal>, as the
- <literal>ObjectDefinitionSource</literal> works with
- <literal>java.lang.reflect.Method</literal>s rather than an AOP
- library-specific class. Of course, your access decisions have access
- to the relevant AOP library-specific invocation (ie
- <literal>MethodInvocation</literal> or <literal>JoinPoint</literal>)
- and as such can consider a range of addition criteria when making
- access decisions (such as method arguments).</para>
- <para>Next you'll need to define an AspectJ <literal>aspect</literal>.
- For example:</para>
- <para><programlisting>package org.acegisecurity.samples.aspectj;
- import org.acegisecurity.intercept.method.aspectj.AspectJSecurityInterceptor;
- import org.acegisecurity.intercept.method.aspectj.AspectJCallback;
- import org.springframework.beans.factory.InitializingBean;
- public aspect DomainObjectInstanceSecurityAspect implements InitializingBean {
- private AspectJSecurityInterceptor securityInterceptor;
- pointcut domainObjectInstanceExecution(): target(PersistableEntity)
- && execution(public * *(..)) && !within(DomainObjectInstanceSecurityAspect);
- Object around(): domainObjectInstanceExecution() {
- if (this.securityInterceptor != null) {
- AspectJCallback callback = new AspectJCallback() {
- public Object proceedWithObject() {
- return proceed();
- }
- };
- return this.securityInterceptor.invoke(thisJoinPoint, callback);
- } else {
- return proceed();
- }
- }
- public AspectJSecurityInterceptor getSecurityInterceptor() {
- return securityInterceptor;
- }
- public void setSecurityInterceptor(AspectJSecurityInterceptor securityInterceptor) {
- this.securityInterceptor = securityInterceptor;
- }
- public void afterPropertiesSet() throws Exception {
- if (this.securityInterceptor == null)
- throw new IllegalArgumentException("securityInterceptor required");
- }
- }</programlisting></para>
- <para>In the above example, the security interceptor will be applied
- to every instance of <literal>PersistableEntity</literal>, which is an
- abstract class not shown (you can use any other class or
- <literal>pointcut</literal> expression you like). For those curious,
- <literal>AspectJCallback</literal> is needed because the
- <literal>proceed();</literal> statement has special meaning only
- within an <literal>around()</literal> body. The
- <literal>AspectJSecurityInterceptor</literal> calls this anonymous
- <literal>AspectJCallback</literal> class when it wants the target
- object to continue.</para>
- <para>You will need to configure Spring to load the aspect and wire it
- with the <literal>AspectJSecurityInterceptor</literal>. A bean
- declaration which achieves this is shown below:</para>
- <para><programlisting><bean id="domainObjectInstanceSecurityAspect"
- class="org.acegisecurity.samples.aspectj.DomainObjectInstanceSecurityAspect"
- factory-method="aspectOf">
- <property name="securityInterceptor"><ref bean="aspectJSecurityInterceptor"/></property>
- </bean></programlisting></para>
- <para>That's it! Now you can create your beans from anywhere within
- your application, using whatever means you think fit (eg <literal>new
- Person();</literal>) and they will have the security interceptor
- applied.</para>
- </sect2>
- <sect2 id="security-interception-filterinvocation">
- <title>FilterInvocation Security Interceptor</title>
- <para>To secure <literal>FilterInvocation</literal>s, developers need
- to add a filter to their <literal>web.xml</literal> that delegates to
- the <literal>SecurityEnforcementFilter</literal>. A typical
- configuration example is provided below: <programlisting><filter>
- <filter-name>Acegi HTTP Request Security Filter</filter-name>
- <filter-class>org.acegisecurity.util.FilterToBeanProxy</filter-class>
- <init-param>
- <param-name>targetClass</param-name>
- <param-value>org.acegisecurity.intercept.web.SecurityEnforcementFilter</param-value>
- </init-param>
- </filter>
- <filter-mapping>
- <filter-name>Acegi HTTP Request Security Filter</filter-name>
- <url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
- </filter-mapping></programlisting></para>
- <para>Notice that the filter is actually a
- <literal>FilterToBeanProxy</literal>. Most of the filters used by the
- Acegi Security System for Spring use this class. Refer to the Filters
- section to learn more about this bean.</para>
- <para>In the application context you will need to configure three
- beans:</para>
- <programlisting><bean id="securityEnforcementFilter" class="org.acegisecurity.intercept.web.SecurityEnforcementFilter">
- <property name="filterSecurityInterceptor"><ref bean="filterInvocationInterceptor"/></property>
- <property name="authenticationEntryPoint"><ref bean="authenticationEntryPoint"/></property>
- </bean>
- <bean id="authenticationEntryPoint" class="org.acegisecurity.ui.webapp.AuthenticationProcessingFilterEntryPoint">
- <property name="loginFormUrl"><value>/acegilogin.jsp</value></property>
- <property name="forceHttps"><value>false</value></property>
- </bean>
- <bean id="filterInvocationInterceptor" class="org.acegisecurity.intercept.web.FilterSecurityInterceptor">
- <property name="authenticationManager"><ref bean="authenticationManager"/></property>
- <property name="accessDecisionManager"><ref bean="accessDecisionManager"/></property>
- <property name="runAsManager"><ref bean="runAsManager"/></property>
- <property name="objectDefinitionSource">
- <value>
- CONVERT_URL_TO_LOWERCASE_BEFORE_COMPARISON
- \A/secure/super/.*\Z=ROLE_WE_DONT_HAVE
- \A/secure/.*\Z=ROLE_SUPERVISOR,ROLE_TELLER
- </value>
- </property>
- </bean></programlisting>
- <para>The <literal>AuthenticationEntryPoint</literal> will be called
- if the user requests a secure HTTP resource but they are not
- authenticated. The class handles presenting the appropriate response
- to the user so that authentication can begin. Three concrete
- implementations are provided with the Acegi Security System for
- Spring: <literal>AuthenticationProcessingFilterEntryPoint</literal>
- for commencing a form-based authentication,
- <literal>BasicProcessingFilterEntryPoint</literal> for commencing a
- HTTP Basic authentication process, and
- <literal>CasProcessingFilterEntryPoint</literal> for commencing a Yale
- Central Authentication Service (CAS) login. The
- <literal>AuthenticationProcessingFilterEntryPoint</literal> and
- <literal>CasProcessingFilterEntryPoint</literal> have optional
- properties related to forcing the use of HTTPS, so please refer to the
- JavaDocs if you require this.</para>
- <para>The <literal>PortMapper</literal> provides information on which
- HTTPS ports correspond to which HTTP ports. This is used by the
- <literal>AuthenticationProcessingFilterEntryPoint</literal> and
- several other beans. The default implementation,
- <literal>PortMapperImpl</literal>, knows the common HTTP ports 80 and
- 8080 map to HTTPS ports 443 and 8443 respectively. You can customise
- this mapping if desired.</para>
- <para>The <literal>SecurityEnforcementFilter</literal> primarily
- provides session management support and initiates authentication when
- required. It delegates actual <literal>FilterInvocation</literal>
- security decisions to the configured
- <literal>FilterSecurityInterceptor</literal>.</para>
- <para>Like any other security interceptor, the
- <literal>FilterSecurityInterceptor</literal> requires a reference to
- an <literal>AuthenticationManager</literal>,
- <literal>AccessDecisionManager</literal> and
- <literal>RunAsManager</literal>, which are each discussed in separate
- sections below. The <literal>FilterSecurityInterceptor</literal> is
- also configured with configuration attributes that apply to different
- HTTP URL requests. A full discussion of configuration attributes is
- provided in the High Level Design section of this document.</para>
- <para>The <literal>FilterSecurityInterceptor</literal> can be
- configured with configuration attributes in two ways. The first is via
- a property editor and the application context, which is shown above.
- The second is via writing your own
- <literal>ObjectDefinitionSource</literal>, although this is beyond the
- scope of this document. Irrespective of the approach used, the
- <literal>ObjectDefinitionSource</literal> is responsible for returning
- a <literal>ConfigAttributeDefinition</literal> object that contains
- all of the configuration attributes associated with a single secure
- HTTP URL.</para>
- <para>It should be noted that the
- <literal>FilterSecurityInterceptor.setObjectDefinitionSource()</literal>
- method actually expects an instance of
- <literal>FilterInvocationDefinitionSource</literal>. This is a marker
- interface which subclasses <literal>ObjectDefinitionSource</literal>.
- It simply denotes the <literal>ObjectDefinitionSource</literal>
- understands <literal>FilterInvocation</literal>s. In the interests of
- simplicity we'll continue to refer to the
- <literal>FilterInvocationDefinitionSource</literal> as an
- <literal>ObjectDefinitionSource</literal>, as the distinction is of
- little relevance to most users of the
- <literal>FilterSecurityInterceptor</literal>.</para>
- <para>If using the application context property editor approach (as
- shown above), commas are used to delimit the different configuration
- attributes that apply to each HTTP URL. Each configuration attribute
- is assigned into its own <literal>SecurityConfig</literal> object. The
- <literal>SecurityConfig</literal> object is discussed in the High
- Level Design section. The <literal>ObjectDefinitionSource</literal>
- created by the property editor,
- <literal>FilterInvocationDefinitionSource</literal>, matches
- configuration attributes against <literal>FilterInvocations</literal>
- based on expression evaluation of the request URL. Two standard
- expression syntaxes are supported. The default is to treat all
- expressions as regular expressions. Alternatively, the presence of a
- <literal>PATTERN_TYPE_APACHE_ANT</literal> directive will cause all
- expressions to be treated as Apache Ant paths. It is not possible to
- mix expression syntaxes within the same definition. For example, the
- earlier configuration could be generated using Apache Ant paths as
- follows:</para>
- <para><programlisting><bean id="filterInvocationInterceptor" class="org.acegisecurity.intercept.web.FilterSecurityInterceptor">
- <property name="authenticationManager"><ref bean="authenticationManager"/></property>
- <property name="accessDecisionManager"><ref bean="accessDecisionManager"/></property>
- <property name="runAsManager"><ref bean="runAsManager"/></property>
- <property name="objectDefinitionSource">
- <value>
- CONVERT_URL_TO_LOWERCASE_BEFORE_COMPARISON
- PATTERN_TYPE_APACHE_ANT
- /secure/super/**=ROLE_WE_DONT_HAVE
- /secure/**=ROLE_SUPERVISOR,ROLE_TELLER
- </value>
- </property>
- </bean></programlisting></para>
- <para>Irrespective of the type of expression syntax used, expressions
- are always evaluated in the order they are defined. Thus it is
- important that more specific expressions are defined higher in the
- list than less specific expressions. This is reflected in our example
- above, where the more specific <literal>/secure/super/</literal>
- pattern appears higher than the less specific
- <literal>/secure/</literal> pattern. If they were reversed, the
- <literal>/secure/</literal> pattern would always match and the
- <literal>/secure/super/</literal> pattern would never be
- evaluated.</para>
- <para>The special keyword
- <literal>CONVERT_URL_TO_LOWERCASE_BEFORE_COMPARISON</literal> causes
- the <literal>FilterInvocationDefinitionSource</literal> to
- automatically convert a request URL to lowercase before comparison
- against the expressions. Whilst by default the case of the request URL
- is not converted, it is generally recommended to use
- <literal>CONVERT_URL_TO_LOWERCASE_BEFORE_COMPARISON</literal> and
- write each expression assuming lowercase.</para>
- <para>As with other security interceptors, the
- <literal>validateConfigAttributes</literal> property is observed. When
- set to <literal>true</literal> (the default), at startup time the
- <literal>FilterSecurityInterceptor</literal> will evaluate if the
- provided configuration attributes are valid. It does this by checking
- each configuration attribute can be processed by either the
- <literal>AccessDecisionManager</literal> or the
- <literal>RunAsManager</literal>. If neither of these can process a
- given configuration attribute, an exception is thrown.</para>
- </sect2>
- </sect1>
- <sect1 id="security-authentication">
- <title>Authentication</title>
- <sect2 id="security-authentication-requests">
- <title>Authentication Requests</title>
- <para>Authentication requires a way for client code to present its
- security identification to the Acegi Security System for Spring. This
- is the role of the <literal>Authentication</literal> interface. The
- <literal>Authentication</literal> interface holds three important
- objects: the principal (the identity of the caller), the credentials
- (the proof of the identity of the caller, such as a password), and the
- authorities that have been granted to the principal. The principal and
- its credentials are populated by the client code, whilst the granted
- authorities are populated by the
- <literal>AuthenticationManager</literal>.</para>
- <para><mediaobject>
- <imageobject role="html">
- <imagedata align="center" fileref="images/Authentication.gif"
- format="GIF" />
- </imageobject>
- <caption>
- <para>Figure 3: Key Authentication Architecture</para>
- </caption>
- </mediaobject></para>
- <para>As shown in Figure 3, the Acegi Security System for Spring
- includes several concrete <literal>Authentication</literal>
- implementations:</para>
- <itemizedlist spacing="compact">
- <listitem>
- <para><literal>UsernamePasswordAuthenticationToken</literal>
- allows a username and password to be presented as the principal
- and credentials respectively. It is also what is created by the
- HTTP Session Authentication system.</para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para><literal>TestingAuthenticationToken</literal> facilitates
- unit testing by automatically being considered an authenticated
- object by its associated
- <literal>AuthenticationProvider</literal>.</para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para><literal>RunAsUserToken</literal> is used by the default
- run-as authentication replacement implementation. This is
- discussed further in the Run-As Authentication Replacement
- section.</para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para><literal>CasAuthenticationToken</literal> is used to
- represent a successful Yale Central Authentication Service (CAS)
- authentication. This is discussed further in the CAS
- section.</para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para><literal>PrincipalAcegiUserToken</literal> and
- <literal>JettyAcegiUserToken</literal> implement
- <literal>AuthByAdapter</literal> (a subclass of
- <literal>Authentication</literal>) and are used whenever
- authentication is completed by Acegi Security System for Spring
- container adapters. This is discussed further in the Container
- Adapters section.</para>
- </listitem>
- </itemizedlist>
- <para>The authorities granted to a principal are represented by the
- <literal>GrantedAuthority</literal> interface. The
- <literal>GrantedAuthority</literal> interface is discussed at length
- in the Authorization section.</para>
- </sect2>
- <sect2 id="security-authentication-manager">
- <title>Authentication Manager</title>
- <para>As discussed in the Security Interception section, the
- <literal>AbstractSecurityInterceptor</literal> extracts the
- <literal>Authentication</literal> object from the
- <literal>SecurityContext</literal> in the
- <literal>SecurityContextHolder</literal>. This is then passed to an
- <literal>AuthenticationManager</literal>. The
- <literal>AuthenticationManager</literal> interface is very
- simple:</para>
- <programlisting>public Authentication authenticate(Authentication authentication) throws AuthenticationException;</programlisting>
- <para>Implementations of <literal>AuthenticationManager</literal> are
- required to throw an <literal>AuthenticationException</literal> should
- authentication fail, or return a fully populated
- <literal>Authentication</literal> object. In particular, the returned
- <literal>Authentication</literal> object should contain an array of
- <literal>GrantedAuthority</literal> objects. The
- <literal>SecurityInterceptor</literal> places the populated
- <literal>Authentication</literal> object back in the
- <literal>SecurityContext</literal> in the
- <literal>SecurityContextHolder</literal>, overwriting the original
- <literal>Authentication</literal> object.</para>
- <para>The <literal>AuthenticationException</literal> has a number of
- subclasses. The most important are
- <literal>BadCredentialsException</literal> (an incorrect principal or
- credentials), <literal>DisabledException</literal> and
- <literal>LockedException</literal>. The latter two exceptions indicate
- the principal was found, but the credentials were not checked and
- authentication is denied. An
- <literal>AuthenticationServiceException</literal> is also provided,
- which indicates the authentication system could not process the
- request (eg a database was unavailable).
- <literal>AuthenticationException</literal> also has a
- <literal>CredentialsExpiredException</literal> and
- <literal>AccoungtExpiredException</literal> subclass, although these
- are less commonly used.</para>
- </sect2>
- <sect2 id="security-authentication-provider">
- <title>Provider-Based Authentication</title>
- <para>Whilst the basic <literal>Authentication</literal> and
- <literal>AuthenticationManager</literal> interfaces enable users to
- develop their own authentication systems, users should consider using
- the provider-based authentication packages provided by the Acegi
- Security System for Spring. The key class,
- <literal>ProviderManager</literal>, is configured via the bean context
- with a list of <literal>AuthenticationProvider</literal>s:</para>
- <para><programlisting><bean id="authenticationManager" class="org.acegisecurity.providers.ProviderManager">
- <property name="providers">
- <list>
- <ref bean="daoAuthenticationProvider"/>
- <ref bean="someOtherAuthenticationProvider"/>
- </list>
- </property>
- </bean></programlisting></para>
- <para><literal>ProviderManager</literal> calls a series of registered
- <literal>AuthenticationProvider</literal> implementations, until one
- is found that indicates it is able to authenticate a given
- <literal>Authentication</literal> class. When the first compatible
- <literal>AuthenticationProvider</literal> is located, it is passed the
- authentication request. The <literal>AuthenticationProvider</literal>
- will then either throw an <literal>AuthenticationException</literal>
- or return a fully populated <literal>Authentication</literal>
- object.</para>
- <para>Note the <literal>ProviderManager</literal> may throw a
- <literal>ProviderNotFoundException</literal> (a subclass of
- <literal>AuthenticationException</literal>) if it none of the
- registered <literal>AuthenticationProviders</literal> can validate the
- <literal>Authentication</literal> object.</para>
- <para>The <literal>ProviderManager</literal> also has several other
- important functions. It integrates with concurrent session handling
- supoprt, and it also converts any exceptions thrown by an
- <literal>AuthenticationProvider</literal> and publishes a suitable
- event. The events that are published are located in the
- <literal>org.acegisecurity.event.authentication</literal> package and
- advanced users can map different exceptions to different events by
- configuring the <literal>ProviderManager.exceptionMappings</literal>
- property (generally this is not required and the default event
- propagation is appropriate - especially as events will simply be
- ignored if you don't have an <literal>ApplicationListener</literal>
- configured in the <literal>ApplicationContext</literal>).</para>
- <para>Several <literal>AuthenticationProvider</literal>
- implementations are provided with the Acegi Security System for
- Spring:</para>
- <para><itemizedlist spacing="compact">
- <listitem>
- <para><literal>TestingAuthenticationProvider</literal> is able
- to authenticate a <literal>TestingAuthenticationToken</literal>.
- The limit of its authentication is simply to treat whatever is
- contained in the <literal>TestingAuthenticationToken</literal>
- as valid. This makes it ideal for use during unit testing, as
- you can create an <literal>Authentication</literal> object with
- precisely the <literal>GrantedAuthority</literal> objects
- required for calling a given method. You definitely would not
- register this <literal>AuthenticationProvider</literal> on a
- production system.</para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para><literal>DaoAuthenticationProvider</literal> is able to
- authenticate a
- <literal>UsernamePasswordAuthenticationToken</literal> by
- accessing an authentication respository via a data access
- object. This is discussed further below, as it is the main way
- authentication is initially handled.</para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para><literal>RunAsImplAuthenticationProvider</literal> is able
- to authenticate a <literal>RunAsUserToken</literal>. This is
- discussed further in the Run-As Authentication Replacement
- section. You would not register this
- <literal>AuthenticationProvider</literal> if you were not using
- run-as replacement.</para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para><literal>AuthByAdapterProvider</literal> is able to
- authenticate any <literal>AuthByAdapter</literal> (a subclass of
- <literal>Authentication</literal> used with container adapters).
- This is discussed further in the Container Adapters section. You
- would not register this
- <literal>AuthenticationProvider</literal> if you were not using
- container adapters.</para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para><literal>CasAuthenticationProvider</literal> is able to
- authenticate Yale Central Authentication Service (CAS) tickets.
- This is discussed further in the CAS Single Sign On
- section.</para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para><literal>JaasAuthenticationProvider</literal> is able to
- delegate authentication requests to a JAAS
- <literal>LoginModule</literal>. This is discussed further
- below.</para>
- </listitem>
- </itemizedlist></para>
- </sect2>
- <sect2 id="security-authentication-concurrent-login">
- <title>Concurrent Session Support</title>
- <para>Acegi Security is able to stop the same principal authenticating
- to the same web application multiple times concurrently. Put
- differently, you can stop user "Batman" from logging into a web
- application twice at the same time.</para>
- <para>To use concurrent session support, you'll need to add the
- following to web.xml:</para>
- <para><programlisting><listener>
- <listener-class>org.acegisecurity.ui.session.HttpSessionEventPublisher</listener-class>
- </listener></programlisting></para>
- <para>In addition, you will need to add the
- <literal>org.acegisecurity.concurrent.ConcurrentSessionFilter</literal>
- to your <literal>FilterChainProxy</literal>. The
- ConcurrentSessionFilter requires only one property, sessionRegistry,
- which generally points to an instance of
- <literal>SessionRegistryImpl</literal>.</para>
- <para>The <literal>web.xml</literal>
- <literal>HttpSessionEventPublisher</literal> causes an
- <literal>ApplicationEvent</literal> to be published to the Spring
- <literal>ApplicationContext</literal> every time a
- <literal>HttpSession</literal> commences or terminates. This is
- critical, as it allows the <literal>SessionRegistryImpl</literal> to
- be notified when a session ends.</para>
- <para>You will also need to wire up the
- <literal>ConcurrentSessionControllerImpl</literal> and refer to it
- from your <literal>ProviderManager</literal> bean:</para>
- <para><programlisting><bean id="authenticationManager" class="org.acegisecurity.providers.ProviderManager">
- <property name="providers">
- <!-- your providers go here -->
- </property>
- <property name="sessionController"><ref bean="concurrentSessionController"/></property>
- </bean>
- <bean id="concurrentSessionController" class="org.acegisecurity.concurrent.ConcurrentSessionControllerImpl">
- <property name="maximumSessions"><value>1</value></property>
- <property name="sessionRegistry"><ref local="sessionRegistry"/></property>
- </bean>
- <bean id="sessionRegistry" class="org.acegisecurity.concurrent.SessionRegistryImpl"/></programlisting></para>
- </sect2>
- <sect2 id="security-authentication-provider-dao">
- <title>Data Access Object Authentication Provider</title>
- <para>The Acegi Security System for Spring includes a
- production-quality <literal>AuthenticationProvider</literal>
- implementation called <literal>DaoAuthenticationProvider</literal>.
- This authentication provider is able to authenticate a
- <literal>UsernamePasswordAuthenticationToken</literal> by obtaining
- authentication details from a data access object configured at bean
- creation time:</para>
- <para><programlisting><bean id="daoAuthenticationProvider" class="org.acegisecurity.providers.dao.DaoAuthenticationProvider">
- <property name="authenticationDao"><ref bean="inMemoryDaoImpl"/></property>
- <property name="saltSource"><ref bean="saltSource"/></property>
- <property name="passwordEncoder"><ref bean="passwordEncoder"/></property>
- </bean></programlisting></para>
- <para>The <literal>PasswordEncoder</literal> and
- <literal>SaltSource</literal> are optional. A
- <literal>PasswordEncoder</literal> provides encoding and decoding of
- passwords obtained from the authentication repository. A
- <literal>SaltSource</literal> enables the passwords to be populated
- with a "salt", which enhances the security of the passwords in the
- authentication repository. <literal>PasswordEncoder</literal>
- implementations are provided with the Acegi Security System for Spring
- covering MD5, SHA and cleartext encodings. Two
- <literal>SaltSource</literal> implementations are also provided:
- <literal>SystemWideSaltSource</literal> which encodes all passwords
- with the same salt, and <literal>ReflectionSaltSource</literal>, which
- inspects a given property of the returned
- <literal>UserDetails</literal> object to obtain the salt. Please refer
- to the JavaDocs for further details on these optional features.</para>
- <para>In addition to the properties above, the
- <literal>DaoAuthenticationProvider</literal> supports optional caching
- of <literal>UserDetails</literal> objects. The
- <literal>UserCache</literal> interface enables the
- <literal>DaoAuthenticationProvider</literal> to place a
- <literal>UserDetails</literal> object into the cache, and retrieve it
- from the cache upon subsequent authentication attempts for the same
- username. By default the <literal>DaoAuthenticationProvider</literal>
- uses the <literal>NullUserCache</literal>, which performs no caching.
- A usable caching implementation is also provided,
- <literal>EhCacheBasedUserCache</literal>, which is configured as
- follows:</para>
- <para><programlisting><bean id="daoAuthenticationProvider" class="org.acegisecurity.providers.dao.DaoAuthenticationProvider">
- <property name="authenticationDao"><ref bean="authenticationDao"/></property>
- <property name="userCache"><ref bean="userCache"/></property>
- </bean>
- <bean id="cacheManager" class="org.springframework.cache.ehcache.EhCacheManagerFactoryBean">
- <property name="configLocation">
- <value>classpath:/ehcache-failsafe.xml</value>
- </property>
- </bean>
-
- <bean id="userCacheBackend" class="org.springframework.cache.ehcache.EhCacheFactoryBean">
- <property name="cacheManager">
- <ref local="cacheManager"/>
- </property>
- <property name="cacheName">
- <value>userCache</value>
- </property>
- </bean>
-
- <bean id="userCache" class="org.acegisecurity.providers.dao.cache.EhCacheBasedUserCache">
- <property name="cache"><ref local="userCacheBackend"/></property>
- </bean></programlisting></para>
- <para>All Acegi Security EH-CACHE implementations (including
- <literal>EhCacheBasedUserCache</literal>) require an EH-CACHE
- <literal>Cache</literal> object. The <literal>Cache</literal> object
- can be obtained from wherever you like, although we recommend you use
- Spring's factory classes as shown in the above configuration. If using
- Spring's factory classes, please refer to the Spring documentation for
- further details on how to optimise the cache storage location, memory
- usage, eviction policies, timeouts etc.</para>
- <para>For a class to be able to provide the
- <literal>DaoAuthenticationProvider</literal> with access to an
- authentication repository, it must implement the
- <literal>AuthenticationDao</literal> interface:</para>
- <para><programlisting>public UserDetails loadUserByUsername(String username) throws UsernameNotFoundException, DataAccessException;</programlisting></para>
- <para>The <literal>UserDetails</literal> is an interface that provides
- getters that guarantee non-null provision of basic authentication
- information such as the username, password, granted authorities and
- whether the user is enabled or disabled. A concrete implementation,
- <literal>User</literal>, is also provided. Acegi Security users will
- need to decide when writing their <literal>AuthenticationDao</literal>
- what type of <literal>UserDetails</literal> to return. In most cases
- <literal>User</literal> will be used directly or subclassed, although
- special circumstances (such as object relational mappers) may require
- users to write their own <literal>UserDetails</literal> implementation
- from scratch. <literal>UserDetails</literal> is often used to store
- additional principal-related properties (such as their telephone
- number and email address), so they can be easily used by web
- views.</para>
- <para>Given <literal>AuthenticationDao</literal> is so simple to
- implement, it should be easy for users to retrieve authentication
- information using a persistence strategy of their choice.</para>
- <para>A design decision was made not to support account locking in the
- <literal>DaoAuthenticationProvider</literal>, as doing so would have
- increased the complexity of the <literal>AuthenticationDao</literal>
- interface. For instance, a method would be required to increase the
- count of unsuccessful authentication attempts. Such functionality
- could be easily provided by leveraging the application event
- publishing features discussed below.</para>
- <para><literal>DaoAuthenticationProvider</literal> returns an
- <literal>Authentication</literal> object which in turn has its
- <literal>principal</literal> property set. The principal will be
- either a <literal>String</literal> (which is essentially the username)
- or a <literal>UserDetails</literal> object (which was looked up from
- the <literal>AuthenticationDao</literal>). By default the
- <literal>UserDetails</literal> is returned, as this enables
- applications to add extra properties potentially of use in
- applications, such as the user's full name, email address etc. If
- using container adapters, or if your applications were written to
- operate with <literal>String</literal>s (as was the case for releases
- prior to Acegi Security 0.6), you should set the
- <literal>DaoAuthenticationProvider.forcePrincipalAsString</literal>
- property to <literal>true</literal> in your application
- context.</para>
- </sect2>
- <sect2 id="security-authentication-provider-in-memory">
- <title>In-Memory Authentication</title>
- <para>Whilst it is easy to use the
- <literal>DaoAuthenticationProvider</literal> and create a custom
- <literal>AuthenticationDao</literal> implementation that extracts
- information from a persistence engine of choice, many applications do
- not require such complexity. One alternative is to configure an
- authentication repository in the application context itself using the
- <literal>InMemoryDaoImpl</literal>:</para>
- <para><programlisting><bean id="inMemoryDaoImpl" class="org.acegisecurity.providers.dao.memory.InMemoryDaoImpl">
- <property name="userMap">
- <value>
- marissa=koala,ROLE_TELLER,ROLE_SUPERVISOR
- dianne=emu,ROLE_TELLER
- scott=wombat,ROLE_TELLER
- peter=opal,disabled,ROLE_TELLER
- </value>
- </property>
- </bean></programlisting></para>
- <para>The <literal>userMap</literal> property contains each of the
- usernames, passwords, a list of granted authorities and an optional
- enabled/disabled keyword. Commas delimit each token. The username must
- appear to the left of the equals sign, and the password must be the
- first token to the right of the equals sign. The
- <literal>enabled</literal> and <literal>disabled</literal> keywords
- (case insensitive) may appear in the second or any subsequent token.
- Any remaining tokens are treated as granted authorities, which are
- created as <literal>GrantedAuthorityImpl</literal> objects (refer to
- the Authorization section for further discussion on granted
- authorities). Note that if a user has no password and/or no granted
- authorities, the user will not be created in the in-memory
- authentication repository.</para>
- <para><literal>InMemoryDaoImpl</literal> also offers a
- <literal>setUserProperties(Properties)</literal> method, which allows
- you to externalise the <literal>java.util.Properties</literal> in
- another Spring configured bean or an external properties file. This
- might prove useful for simple applications that have a larger number
- of users, or deployment-time configuration changes, but do not wish to
- use a full database for authentication details.</para>
- </sect2>
- <sect2 id="security-authentication-provider-jdbc">
- <title>JDBC Authentication</title>
- <para>The Acegi Security System for Spring also includes an
- authentication provider that can obtain authentication information
- from a JDBC data source. The typical configuration for the
- <literal>JdbcDaoImpl</literal> is shown below:</para>
- <para><programlisting><bean id="dataSource" class="org.springframework.jdbc.datasource.DriverManagerDataSource">
- <property name="driverClassName"><value>org.hsqldb.jdbcDriver</value></property>
- <property name="url"><value>jdbc:hsqldb:hsql://localhost:9001</value></property>
- <property name="username"><value>sa</value></property>
- <property name="password"><value></value></property>
- </bean>
- <bean id="jdbcDaoImpl" class="org.acegisecurity.providers.dao.jdbc.JdbcDaoImpl">
- <property name="dataSource"><ref bean="dataSource"/></property>
- </bean></programlisting></para>
- <para>You can use different relational database management systems by
- modifying the <literal>DriverManagerDataSource</literal> shown above.
- Irrespective of the database used, a standard schema must be used as
- indicated in <literal>dbinit.txt</literal>.</para>
- <para>If you default schema is unsuitable for your needs,
- <literal>JdbcDaoImpl</literal> provides two properties that allow
- customisation of the SQL statements. You may also subclass the
- <literal>JdbcDaoImpl</literal> if further customisation is necessary.
- Please refer to the JavaDocs for details.</para>
- </sect2>
- <sect2 id="security-authentication-provider-jaas">
- <title>JAAS Authentication</title>
- <para>Acegi Security provides a package able to delegate
- authentication requests to the Java Authentication and Authorization
- Service (JAAS). This package is discussed in detail below.</para>
- <para>Central to JAAS operation are login configuration files. To
- learn more about JAAS login configuration files, consult the JAAS
- reference documentation available from Sun Microsystems. We expect you
- to have a basic understanding of JAAS and its login configuration file
- syntax in order to understand this section.</para>
- <sect3>
- <title>JaasAuthenticationProvider</title>
- <para>The <literal>JaasAuthenticationProvider</literal> attempts to
- authenticate a user’s principal and credentials through JAAS.</para>
- <para>Let’s assume we have a JAAS login configuration file,
- <literal>/WEB-INF/login.conf</literal>, with the following
- contents:</para>
- <para><programlisting>JAASTest {
- sample.SampleLoginModule required;
- };</programlisting></para>
- <para>Like all Acegi Security beans, the
- <literal>JaasAuthenticationProvider</literal> is configured via the
- application context. The following definitions would correspond to
- the above JAAS login configuration file:</para>
- <para><programlisting><bean id="jaasAuthenticationProvider" class="org.acegisecurity.providers.jaas.JaasAuthenticationProvider">
- <property name="loginConfig">
- <value>/WEB-INF/login.conf</value>
- </property>
- <property name="loginContextName">
- <value>JAASTest</value>
- </property>
- <property name="callbackHandlers">
- <list>
- <bean class="org.acegisecurity.providers.jaas.JaasNameCallbackHandler"/>
- <bean class="org.acegisecurity.providers.jaas.JaasPasswordCallbackHandler"/>
- </list>
- </property>
- <property name="authorityGranters">
- <list>
- <bean class="org.acegisecurity.providers.jaas.TestAuthorityGranter"/>
- </list>
- </property>
- </bean></programlisting></para>
- <para>The <literal>CallbackHandler</literal>s and
- <literal>AuthorityGranter</literal>s are discussed below.</para>
- </sect3>
- <sect3>
- <title>Callbacks</title>
- <para>Most JAAS <literal>LoginModule</literal>s require a callback
- of some sort. These callbacks are usually used to obtain the
- username and password from the user. In an Acegi Security
- deployment, Acegi Security is responsible for this user interaction
- (typically via a reference to a
- <literal>ContextHolder</literal>-managed
- <literal>Authentication</literal> object). The JAAS package for
- Acegi Security provides two default callback handlers,
- <literal>JaasNameCallbackHandler</literal> and
- <literal>JaasPasswordCallbackHandler</literal>. Each of these
- callback handlers implement
- <literal>JaasAuthenticationCallbackHandler</literal>. In most cases
- these callback handlers can simply be used without understanding the
- internal mechanics. For those needing full control over the callback
- behavior, internally <literal>JaasAutheticationProvider</literal>
- wraps these <literal>JaasAuthenticationCallbackHandler</literal>s
- with an <literal>InternalCallbackHandler</literal>. The
- <literal>InternalCallbackHandler</literal> is the class that
- actually implements JAAS’ normal <literal>CallbackHandler</literal>
- interface. Any time that the JAAS <literal>LoginModule</literal> is
- used, it is passed a list of application context configured
- <literal>InternalCallbackHandler</literal>s. If the
- <literal>LoginModule</literal> requests a callback against the
- <literal>InternalCallbackHandler</literal>s, the callback is in-turn
- passed to the <literal>JaasAuthenticationCallbackHandler</literal>s
- being wrapped.</para>
- </sect3>
- <sect3>
- <title>AuthorityGranters</title>
- <para>JAAS works with principals. Even “roles” are represented as
- principals in JAAS. Acegi Security, on the other hand, works with
- <literal>Authentication</literal> objects. Each
- <literal>Authentication</literal> object contains a single
- principal, and multiple <literal>GrantedAuthority</literal>[]s. To
- facilitate mapping between these different concepts, the Acegi
- Security JAAS package includes an
- <literal>AuthorityGranter</literal> interface. An
- <literal>AuthorityGranter</literal> is responsible for inspecting a
- JAAS principal and returning a <literal>String</literal>. The
- <literal>JaasAuthenticationProvider</literal> then creates a
- <literal>JaasGrantedAuthority</literal> (which implements Acegi
- Security’s <literal>GrantedAuthority</literal> interface) containing
- both the <literal>AuthorityGranter</literal>-returned
- <literal>String</literal> and the JAAS principal that the
- <literal>AuthorityGranter</literal> was passed. The
- <literal>JaasAuthenticationProvider</literal> obtains the JAAS
- principals by firstly successfully authenticating the user’s
- credentials using the JAAS <literal>LoginModule</literal>, and then
- accessing the <literal>LoginContext</literal> it returns. A call to
- <literal>LoginContext.getSubject().getPrincipals()</literal> is
- made, with each resulting principal passed to each
- <literal>AuthorityGranter</literal> defined against the
- <literal>JaasAuthenticationProvider.setAuthorityGranters(List)</literal>
- property. Acegi Security does not include any production
- <literal>AuthorityGranter</literal>s given every JAAS principal has
- an implementation-specific meaning. However, there is a
- <literal>TestAuthorityGranter</literal> in the unit tests that
- demonstrates a simple <literal>AuthorityGranter</literal>
- implementation.</para>
- </sect3>
- </sect2>
- <sect2 id="security-authentication-provider-siteminder">
- <title>Siteminder Authentication</title>
- <para>Acegi Security provides a web filter
- <literal>(org.acegisecurity.ui.webapp.SiteminderAuthenticationProcessingFilter</literal>)
- that can be used to process requests that have been pre-authenticated
- by Computer Associates' Siteminder. This filter assumes that you're
- using Siteminder for <emphasis>authentication</emphasis>, and your
- application (or backing datasource) is used for
- <emphasis>authorization</emphasis>. The use of Siteminder for
- <emphasis>authorization</emphasis> is not yet directly supported by
- Acegi.</para>
- <para>Recall that a Siteminder agent is set up on your web server to
- intercept a user's first call to your application. This agent
- redirects the initial request to a login page, and only after
- successful authentication does your application receive the request.
- Authenticated requests contain one or more HTTP headers populated by
- the Siteminder agent. Below we'll assume that the request header key
- containing the user's identity is "SM_USER", but of course your header
- values may be different based on Siteminder policy server
- configuration. Please refer to your company's "single sign-on" group
- for header details.</para>
- <sect3>
- <title>SiteminderAuthenticationProcessingFilter</title>
- <para>The first step in setting up Acegi's Siteminder support is to
- define an <literal>authenticationProcessingFilter</literal> bean and
- give it an <literal>authenticationManager</literal> to use, as well
- as to tell it where to send users upon success and failure and where
- to find the Siteminder username and password values. Most people
- won't need the password value since Siteminder has already
- authenticated the user, so it's typical to use the same header for
- both.</para>
- <para><programlisting> <!-- ======================== SITEMINDER AUTHENTICATION PROCESSING FILTER ======================= -->
- <bean id="authenticationProcessingFilter" class="org.acegisecurity.ui.webapp.SiteminderAuthenticationProcessingFilter">
- <property name="authenticationManager"><ref bean="authenticationManager"/></property>
- <property name="authenticationFailureUrl"><value>/login.jsp?login_error=1</value></property>
- <property name="defaultTargetUrl"><value>/security.do?method=getMainMenu</value></property>
- <property name="filterProcessesUrl"><value>/j_acegi_security_check</value></property>
- <property name="siteminderUsernameHeaderKey"><value>SM_USER</value></property>
- <property name="siteminderPasswordHeaderKey"><value>SM_USER</value></property>
- </bean></programlisting></para>
- <para>Since this <literal>authenticationProcessingFilter</literal>
- depends on an <literal>authenticationManager</literal>, we'll need
- to define one:</para>
- <para><programlisting> <!-- ======================== AUTHENTICATION ======================= -->
- <!--
- - The top-level Authentication Manager is responsible for all application AUTHENTICATION
- - operations. Note that it must reference one or more provider(s) defined below.
- -->
- <bean id="authenticationManager" class="org.acegisecurity.providers.ProviderManager">
- <property name="providers">
- <list>
- <ref local="daoAuthenticationProvider"/>
- </list>
- </property>
- </bean></programlisting></para>
- <para>Note that your <literal>daoAuthenticationProvider</literal>
- above will expect the password property to match what it expects. In
- this case, authentication has already been handled by Siteminder and
- you've specified the same HTTP header for both username and
- password, so you can code
- <literal>daoAuthenticationProvider</literal> to simply make sure the
- username and password values match. This may sound like a security
- weakness, but remember that users have to authenticate with
- Siteminder before your application ever receives the requests, so
- the purpose of your <literal>daoAuthenticationProvider</literal>
- should simply be to assign roles and other properties needed by
- subsequent method interceptors, etc.</para>
- <para>Finally we need to tell the
- <literal>filterChainProxy</literal> to include the
- <literal>authenticationProcessingFilter</literal> in its
- operations.</para>
- <para><programlisting> <!-- ======================== FILTER CHAIN ======================= -->
- <!--
- - The web.xml file has a single filter reference to this top-level bean, which
- - invokes the chain of sub-filters specified below.
- -->
- <bean id="filterChainProxy" class="org.acegisecurity.util.FilterChainProxy">
- <property name="filterInvocationDefinitionSource">
- <value>
- CONVERT_URL_TO_LOWERCASE_BEFORE_COMPARISON
- PATTERN_TYPE_APACHE_ANT
- /**=httpSessionContextIntegrationFilter,authenticationProcessingFilter,securityEnforcementFilter
- </value>
- </property>
- </bean></programlisting></para>
- <para>In summary, once the user has authenticated through
- Siteminder, their header-loaded request will be brokered by
- <literal>filterChainProxy</literal> to
- <literal>authenticationProcessingFilter</literal>, which in turn
- will grab the user's identity from the SM_USER request header. The
- user's identity will then be passed to the
- <literal>authenticationManager</literal> and finally
- <literal>daoAuthenticationProvider</literal> will do the work of
- authorizing the user against back-end databases, etc. and loading
- the <literal>UserDetails</literal> implementation with roles,
- username and any other property you deem relevant.</para>
- </sect3>
- </sect2>
- <sect2 id="security-authentication-recommendations">
- <title>Authentication Recommendations</title>
- <para>With the heavy use of interfaces throughout the authentication
- system (<literal>Authentication</literal>,
- <literal>AuthenticationManager</literal>,
- <literal>AuthenticationProvider</literal> and
- <literal>AuthenticationDao</literal>) it might be confusing to a new
- user to know which part of the authentication system to customize. In
- general, the following is recommended:</para>
- <itemizedlist>
- <listitem>
- <para>Use the
- <literal>UsernamePasswordAuthenticationToken</literal>
- implementation where possible.</para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para>If you simply need to implement a new authentication
- repository (eg to obtain user details from your application’s
- existing database), use the
- <literal>DaoAuthenticationProvider</literal> along with the
- <literal>AuthenticationDao</literal>. It is the fastest and safest
- way to integrate an external database.</para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para>If you're using Container Adapters or a
- <literal>RunAsManager</literal> that replaces the
- <literal>Authentication</literal> object, ensure you have
- registered the <literal>AuthByAdapterProvider</literal> and
- <literal>RunAsManagerImplProvider</literal> respectively with your
- <literal>ProviderManager</literal>.</para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para>Never enable the
- <literal>TestingAuthenticationProvider</literal> on a production
- system. Doing so will allow any client to simply present a
- <literal>TestingAuthenticationToken</literal> and obtain whatever
- access they request.</para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para>Adding a new <literal>AuthenticationProvider</literal> is
- sufficient to support most custom authentication requirements.
- Only unusual requirements would require the
- <literal>ProviderManager</literal> to be replaced with a different
- <literal>AuthenticationManager</literal>.</para>
- </listitem>
- </itemizedlist>
- </sect2>
- </sect1>
- <sect1 id="security-authorization">
- <title>Authorization</title>
- <sect2 id="security-authorization-granted-authorities">
- <title>Granted Authorities</title>
- <para>As briefly mentioned in the Authentication section, all
- <literal>Authentication</literal> implementations are required to
- store an array of <literal>GrantedAuthority</literal> objects. These
- represent the authorities that have been granted to the principal. The
- <literal>GrantedAuthority</literal> objects are inserted into the
- <literal>Authentication</literal> object by the
- <literal>AuthenticationManager</literal> and are later read by
- <literal>AccessDecisionManager</literal>s when making authorization
- decisions.</para>
- <para><literal>GrantedAuthority</literal> is an interface with only
- one method:</para>
- <para><programlisting>public String getAuthority();</programlisting></para>
- <para>This method allows <literal>AccessDecisionManager</literal>s to
- obtain a precise <literal>String</literal> representation of the
- <literal>GrantedAuthority</literal>. By returning a representation as
- a <literal>String</literal>, a <literal>GrantedAuthority</literal> can
- be easily "read" by most <literal>AccessDecisionManager</literal>s. If
- a <literal>GrantedAuthority</literal> cannot be precisely represented
- as a <literal>String</literal>, the
- <literal>GrantedAuthority</literal> is considered "complex" and
- <literal>getAuthority()</literal> must return
- <literal>null</literal>.</para>
- <para>An example of a "complex" <literal>GrantedAuthority</literal>
- would be an implementation that stores a list of operations and
- authority thresholds that apply to different customer account numbers.
- Representing this complex <literal>GrantedAuthority</literal> as a
- <literal>String</literal> would be quite complex, and as a result the
- <literal>getAuthority()</literal> method should return
- <literal>null</literal>. This will indicate to any
- <literal>AccessDecisionManager</literal> that it will need to
- specifically support the <literal>GrantedAuthority</literal>
- implementation in order to understand its contents.</para>
- <para>The Acegi Security System for Spring includes one concrete
- <literal>GrantedAuthority</literal> implementation,
- <literal>GrantedAuthorityImpl</literal>. This allows any
- user-specified <literal>String</literal> to be converted into a
- <literal>GrantedAuthority</literal>. All
- <literal>AuthenticationProvider</literal>s included with the security
- architecture use <literal>GrantedAuthorityImpl</literal> to populate
- the <literal>Authentication</literal> object.</para>
- </sect2>
- <sect2 id="security-authorization-access-decision-managers">
- <title>Access Decision Managers</title>
- <para>The <literal>AccessDecisionManager</literal> is called by the
- <literal>AbstractSecurityInterceptor</literal> and is responsible for
- making final access control decisions. The
- <literal>AccessDecisionManager</literal> interface contains three
- methods:</para>
- <para><programlisting>public void decide(Authentication authentication, Object object, ConfigAttributeDefinition config) throws AccessDeniedException;
- public boolean supports(ConfigAttribute attribute);
- public boolean supports(Class clazz);</programlisting></para>
- <para>As can be seen from the first method, the
- <literal>AccessDecisionManager</literal> is passed via method
- parameters all information that is likely to be of value in assessing
- an authorization decision. In particular, passing the secure
- <literal>Object</literal> enables those arguments contained in the
- actual secure object invocation to be inspected. For example, let's
- assume the secure object was a <literal>MethodInvocation</literal>. It
- would be easy to query the <literal>MethodInvocation</literal> for any
- <literal>Customer</literal> argument, and then implement some sort of
- security logic in the <literal>AccessDecisionManager</literal> to
- ensure the principal is permitted to operate on that customer.
- Implementations are expected to throw an
- <literal>AccessDeniedException</literal> if access is denied.</para>
- <para>The <literal>supports(ConfigAttribute)</literal> method is
- called by the <literal>AbstractSecurityInterceptor</literal> at
- startup time to determine if the
- <literal>AccessDecisionManager</literal> can process the passed
- <literal>ConfigAttribute</literal>. The
- <literal>supports(Class)</literal> method is called by a security
- interceptor implementation to ensure the configured
- <literal>AccessDecisionManager</literal> supports the type of secure
- object that the security interceptor will present.</para>
- </sect2>
- <sect2 id="security-authorization-voting-decision-manager">
- <title>Voting Decision Manager</title>
- <para>Whilst users can implement their own
- <literal>AccessDecisionManager</literal> to control all aspects of
- authorization, the Acegi Security System for Spring includes several
- <literal>AccessDecisionManager</literal> implementations that are
- based on voting. Figure 4 illustrates the relevant classes.</para>
- <para><mediaobject>
- <imageobject role="html">
- <imagedata align="center"
- fileref="images/AccessDecisionVoting.gif"
- format="GIF" />
- </imageobject>
- <caption>
- <para>Figure 4: Voting Decision Manager</para>
- </caption>
- </mediaobject></para>
- <para>Using this approach, a series of
- <literal>AccessDecisionVoter</literal> implementations are polled on
- an authorization decision. The
- <literal>AccessDecisionManager</literal> then decides whether or not
- to throw an <literal>AccessDeniedException</literal> based on its
- assessment of the votes.</para>
- <para>The <literal>AccessDecisionVoter</literal> interface has three
- methods:</para>
- <para><programlisting>public int vote(Authentication authentication, Object object, ConfigAttributeDefinition config);
- public boolean supports(ConfigAttribute attribute);
- public boolean supports(Class clazz);</programlisting></para>
- <para>Concrete implementations return an <literal>int</literal>, with
- possible values being reflected in the
- <literal>AccessDecisionVoter</literal> static fields
- <literal>ACCESS_ABSTAIN</literal>, <literal>ACCESS_DENIED</literal>
- and <literal>ACCESS_GRANTED</literal>. A voting implementation will
- return <literal>ACCESS_ABSTAIN</literal> if it has no opinion on an
- authorization decision. If it does have an opinion, it must return
- either <literal>ACCESS_DENIED</literal> or
- <literal>ACCESS_GRANTED</literal>.</para>
- <para>There are three concrete
- <literal>AccessDecisionManager</literal>s provided with the Acegi
- Security System for Spring that tally the votes. The
- <literal>ConsensusBased</literal> implementation will grant or deny
- access based on the consensus of non-abstain votes. Properties are
- provided to control behavior in the event of an equality of votes or
- if all votes are abstain. The <literal>AffirmativeBased</literal>
- implementation will grant access if one or more
- <literal>ACCESS_GRANTED</literal> votes were received (ie a deny vote
- will be ignored, provided there was at least one grant vote). Like the
- <literal>ConsensusBased</literal> implementation, there is a parameter
- that controls the behavior if all voters abstain. The
- <literal>UnanimousBased</literal> provider expects unanimous
- <literal>ACCESS_GRANTED</literal> votes in order to grant access,
- ignoring abstains. It will deny access if there is any
- <literal>ACCESS_DENIED</literal> vote. Like the other implementations,
- there is a parameter that controls the behaviour if all voters
- abstain.</para>
- <para>It is possible to implement a custom
- <literal>AccessDecisionManager</literal> that tallies votes
- differently. For example, votes from a particular
- <literal>AccessDecisionVoter</literal> might receive additional
- weighting, whilst a deny vote from a particular voter may have a veto
- effect.</para>
- <para>There are two concrete <literal>AccessDecisionVoter</literal>
- implementations provided with the Acegi Security System for Spring.
- The <literal>RoleVoter</literal> class will vote if any
- ConfigAttribute begins with <literal>ROLE_</literal>. It will vote to
- grant access if there is a <literal>GrantedAuthority</literal> which
- returns a <literal>String</literal> representation (via the
- <literal>getAuthority()</literal> method) exactly equal to one or more
- <literal>ConfigAttributes</literal> starting with
- <literal>ROLE_</literal>. If there is no exact match of any
- <literal>ConfigAttribute</literal> starting with
- <literal>ROLE_</literal>, the <literal>RoleVoter</literal> will vote
- to deny access. If no <literal>ConfigAttribute</literal> begins with
- <literal>ROLE_</literal>, the voter will abstain.
- <literal>RoleVoter</literal> is case sensitive on comparisons as well
- as the <literal>ROLE_</literal> prefix.</para>
- <para>BasicAclEntryVoter is the other concrete voter included with
- Acegi Security. It integrates with Acegi Security's
- <literal>AclManager</literal> (discussed later). This voter is
- designed to have multiple instances in the same application context,
- such as:</para>
- <para><programlisting><bean id="aclContactReadVoter" class="org.acegisecurity.vote.BasicAclEntryVoter">
- <property name="processConfigAttribute"><value>ACL_CONTACT_READ</value></property>
- <property name="processDomainObjectClass"><value>sample.contact.Contact</value></property>
- <property name="aclManager"><ref local="aclManager"/></property>
- <property name="requirePermission">
- <list>
- <ref local="org.acegisecurity.acl.basic.SimpleAclEntry.ADMINISTRATION"/>
- <ref local="org.acegisecurity.acl.basic.SimpleAclEntry.READ"/>
- </list>
- </property>
- </bean>
- <bean id="aclContactDeleteVoter" class="org.acegisecurity.vote.BasicAclEntryVoter">
- <property name="processConfigAttribute"><value>ACL_CONTACT_DELETE</value></property>
- <property name="processDomainObjectClass"><value>sample.contact.Contact</value></property>
- <property name="aclManager"><ref local="aclManager"/></property>
- <property name="requirePermission">
- <list>
- <ref local="org.acegisecurity.acl.basic.SimpleAclEntry.ADMINISTRATION"/>
- <ref local="org.acegisecurity.acl.basic.SimpleAclEntry.DELETE"/>
- </list>
- </property>
- </bean></programlisting></para>
- <para>In the above example, you'd define
- <literal>ACL_CONTACT_READ</literal> or
- <literal>ACL_CONTACT_DELETE</literal> against some methods on a
- <literal>MethodSecurityInterceptor</literal> or
- <literal>AspectJSecurityInterceptor</literal>. When those methods are
- invoked, the above applicable voter defined above would vote to grant
- or deny access. The voter would look at the method invocation to
- locate the first argument of type
- <literal>sample.contact.Contact</literal>, and then pass that
- <literal>Contact</literal> to the <literal>AclManager</literal>. The
- <literal>AclManager</literal> will then return an access control list
- (ACL) that applies to the current <literal>Authentication</literal>.
- Assuming that ACL contains one of the listed
- <literal>requirePermission</literal>s, the voter will vote to grant
- access. If the ACL does not contain one of the permissions defined
- against the voter, the voter will vote to deny access.
- <literal>BasicAclEntryVoter</literal> is an important class as it
- allows you to build truly complex applications with domain object
- security entirely defined in the application context. If you're
- interested in learning more about Acegi Security's ACL capabilities
- and how best to apply them, please see the ACL and "After Invocation"
- sections of this reference guide, and the Contacts sample
- application.</para>
- <para>It is also possible to implement a custom
- <literal>AccessDecisionVoter</literal>. Several examples are provided
- in the Acegi Security System for Spring unit tests, including
- <literal>ContactSecurityVoter</literal> and
- <literal>DenyVoter</literal>. The
- <literal>ContactSecurityVoter</literal> abstains from voting decisions
- where a <literal>CONTACT_OWNED_BY_CURRENT_USER</literal>
- <literal>ConfigAttribute</literal> is not found. If voting, it queries
- the <literal>MethodInvocation</literal> to extract the owner of the
- <literal>Contact</literal> object that is subject of the method call.
- It votes to grant access if the <literal>Contact</literal> owner
- matches the principal presented in the
- <literal>Authentication</literal> object. It could have just as easily
- compared the <literal>Contact</literal> owner with some
- <literal>GrantedAuthority</literal> the
- <literal>Authentication</literal> object presented. All of this is
- achieved with relatively few lines of code and demonstrates the
- flexibility of the authorization model.</para>
- </sect2>
- <sect2 id="security-authorization-taglib">
- <title>Authorization-Related Tag Libraries</title>
- <para>The Acegi Security System for Spring comes bundled with several
- JSP tag libraries that eases JSP writing. The tag libraries are known
- as <literal>authz</literal> and provide a range of different
- services.</para>
- <para>All taglib classes are included in the core
- <literal>acegi-security-xx.jar</literal> file, with the
- <literal>authz.tld</literal> located in the JAR's
- <literal>META-INF</literal> directory. This means for JSP 1.2+ web
- containers you can simply include the JAR in the WAR's
- <literal>WEB-INF/lib</literal> directory and it will be available. If
- you're using a JSP 1.1 container, you'll need to declare the JSP
- taglib in your <literal>web.xml file</literal>, and include
- <literal>authz.tld</literal> in the <literal>WEB-INF/lib</literal>
- directory. The following fragment is added to
- <literal>web.xml</literal>:</para>
- <para><programlisting><taglib>
- <taglib-uri>http://acegisecurity.sf.net/authz</taglib-uri>
- <taglib-location>/WEB-INF/authz.tld</taglib-location>
- </taglib></programlisting></para>
- <sect3>
- <title>AuthorizeTag</title>
- <para><literal>AuthorizeTag</literal> is used to include content if
- the current principal holds certain
- <literal>GrantedAuthority</literal>s.</para>
- <para>The following JSP fragment illustrates how to use the
- <literal>AuthorizeTag</literal>:</para>
- <para><programlisting><authz:authorize ifAllGranted="ROLE_SUPERVISOR">
- <td>
- <A HREF="del.htm?id=<c:out value="${contact.id}"/>">Del</A>
- </td>
- </authz:authorize></programlisting></para>
- <para>This tag would cause the tag's body to be output if the
- principal has been granted ROLE_SUPERVISOR.</para>
- <para>The <literal>authz:authorize</literal> tag declares the
- following attributes:</para>
- <para><itemizedlist spacing="compact">
- <listitem>
- <para><literal>ifAllGranted</literal>: All the listed roles
- must be granted for the tag to output its body.</para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para><literal>ifAnyGranted</literal>: Any of the listed roles
- must be granted for the tag to output its body.</para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para><literal>ifNotGranted</literal>: None of the listed
- roles must be granted for the tag to output its body.</para>
- </listitem>
- </itemizedlist></para>
- <para>You'll note that in each attribute you can list multiple
- roles. Simply separate the roles using a comma. The
- <literal>authorize</literal> tag ignores whitespace in
- attributes.</para>
- <para>The tag library logically ANDs all of it's parameters
- together. This means that if you combine two or more attributes, all
- attributes must be true for the tag to output it's body. Don't add
- an <literal>ifAllGranted="ROLE_SUPERVISOR"</literal>, followed by an
- <literal>ifNotGranted="ROLE_SUPERVISOR"</literal>, or you'll be
- surprised to never see the tag's body.</para>
- <para>By requiring all attributes to return true, the authorize tag
- allows you to create more complex authorization scenarios. For
- example, you could declare an
- <literal>ifAllGranted="ROLE_SUPERVISOR"</literal> and an
- <literal>ifNotGranted="ROLE_NEWBIE_SUPERVISOR"</literal> in the same
- tag, in order to prevent new supervisors from seeing the tag body.
- However it would no doubt be simpler to use
- <literal>ifAllGranted="ROLE_EXPERIENCED_SUPERVISOR"</literal> rather
- than inserting NOT conditions into your design.</para>
- <para>One last item: the tag verifies the authorizations in a
- specific order: first <literal>ifNotGranted</literal>, then
- <literal>ifAllGranted</literal>, and finally,
- <literal>ifAnyGranted</literal>.</para>
- </sect3>
- <sect3>
- <title>AuthenticationTag</title>
- <para><literal>AuthenticationTag</literal> is used to simply output
- a property of the current principal's
- <literal>Authentication.getPrincipal()</literal> object to the web
- page.</para>
- <para>The following JSP fragment illustrates how to use the
- <literal>AuthenticationTag</literal>:</para>
- <para><programlisting><authz:authentication operation="username"/></programlisting></para>
- <para>This tag would cause the principal's name to be output. Here
- we are assuming the <literal>Authentication.getPrincipal()</literal>
- is a <literal>UserDetails</literal> object, which is generally the
- case when using the typical
- <literal>DaoAuthenticationProvider</literal>.</para>
- </sect3>
- <sect3>
- <title>AclTag</title>
- <para><literal>AclTag</literal> is used to include content if the
- current principal has a ACL to the indicated domain object.</para>
- <para>The following JSP fragment illustrates how to use the
- <literal>AclTag</literal>:</para>
- <para><programlisting><authz:acl domainObject="${contact}" hasPermission="16,1">
- <td><A HREF="<c:url value="del.htm"><c:param name="contactId" value="${contact.id}"/></c:url>">Del</A></td>
- </authz:acl></programlisting></para>
- <para>This tag would cause the tag's body to be output if the
- principal holds either permission 16 or permission 1 for the
- "contact" domain object. The numbers are actually integers that are
- used with <literal>AbstractBasicAclEntry</literal> bit masking.
- Please refer tro the ACL section of this reference guide to
- understand more about the ACL capabilities of Acegi Security.</para>
- </sect3>
- </sect2>
- <sect2 id="security-authorization-recommendations">
- <title>Authorization Recommendations</title>
- <para>Given there are several ways to achieve similar authorization
- outcomes in the Acegi Security System for Spring, the following
- general recommendations are made:</para>
- <itemizedlist>
- <listitem>
- <para>Grant authorities using
- <literal>GrantedAuthorityImpl</literal> where possible. Because it
- is already supported by the Acegi Security System for Spring, you
- avoid the need to create custom
- <literal>AuthenticationManager</literal> or
- <literal>AuthenticationProvider</literal> implementations simply
- to populate the <literal>Authentication</literal> object with a
- custom <literal>GrantedAuthority</literal>.</para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para>Writing an <literal>AccessDecisionVoter</literal>
- implementation and using either <literal>ConsensusBased</literal>,
- <literal>AffirmativeBased</literal> or
- <literal>UnanimousBased</literal> as the
- <literal>AccessDecisionManager</literal> may be the best approach
- to implementing your custom access decision rules.</para>
- </listitem>
- </itemizedlist>
- </sect2>
- </sect1>
- <sect1 id="afterinvocation">
- <title>After Invocation Handling</title>
- <sect2 id="afterinvocation-overview">
- <title>Overview</title>
- <para>Whilst the <literal>AccessDecisionManager</literal> is called by
- the <literal>AbstractSecurityInterceptor</literal> before proceeding
- with the secure object invocation, some applications need a way of
- modifying the object actually returned by the secure object
- invocation. Whilst you could easily implement your own AOP concern to
- achieve this, Acegi Security provides a convenient hook that has
- several concrete implementations that integrate with its ACL
- capabilities.</para>
- <para>Figure 5 illustrates Acegi Security's
- <literal>AfterInvocationManager</literal> and its concrete
- implementations.</para>
- <para><mediaobject>
- <imageobject role="html">
- <imagedata align="center" fileref="images/AfterInvocation.gif"
- format="GIF" />
- </imageobject>
- <caption>
- <para>Figure 5: After Invocation Implementation</para>
- </caption>
- </mediaobject></para>
- <para>Like many other parts of Acegi Security,
- <literal>AfterInvocationManager</literal> has a single concrete
- implementation, <literal>AfterInvocationProvider</literal>, which
- polls a list of <literal>AfterInvocationProvider</literal>s. Each
- <literal>AfterInvocationProvider</literal> is allowed to modify the
- return object or throw an <literal>AccessDeniedException</literal>.
- Indeed multiple providers can modify the object, as the result of the
- previous provider is passed to the next in the list. Let's now
- consider our ACL-aware implementations of
- <literal>AfterInvocationProvider</literal>.</para>
- <para>Please be aware that if you're using
- <literal>AfterInvocationManager</literal>, you will still need
- configuration attributes that allow the
- <literal>MethodSecurityInterceptor</literal>'s
- <literal>AccessDecisionManager</literal> to allow an operation. If
- you're using the typical Acegi Security included
- <literal>AccessDecisionManager</literal> implementations, having no
- configuration attributes defined for a particular secure method
- invocation will cause each <literal>AccessDecisionVoter</literal> to
- abstain from voting. In turn, if the
- <literal>AccessDecisionManager</literal> property
- "<literal>allowIfAllAbstainDecisions</literal>" is
- <literal>false</literal>, an <literal>AccessDeniedException</literal>
- will be thrown. You may avoid this potential issue by either (i)
- setting "<literal>allowIfAllAbstainDecisions</literal>" to
- <literal>true</literal> (although this is generally not recommended)
- or (ii) simply ensure that there is at least one configuration
- attribute that an <literal>AccessDecisionVoter</literal> will vote to
- grant access for. This latter (recommended) approach is usually
- achieved through a <literal>ROLE_USER</literal> or
- <literal>ROLE_AUTHENTICATED</literal> configuration attribute.</para>
- </sect2>
- <sect2 id="afterinvocation-acl-aware">
- <title>ACL-Aware AfterInvocationProviders</title>
- <para>A common services layer method we've all written at one stage or
- another looks like this:</para>
- <para><programlisting>public Contact getById(Integer id);</programlisting></para>
- <para>Quite often, only principals with permission to read the
- <literal>Contact</literal> should be allowed to obtain it. In this
- situation the <literal>AccessDecisionManager</literal> approach
- provided by the <literal>AbstractSecurityInterceptor</literal> will
- not suffice. This is because the identity of the
- <literal>Contact</literal> is all that is available before the secure
- object is invoked. The
- <literal>BasicAclAfterInvocationProvider</literal> delivers a
- solution, and is configured as follows:</para>
- <para><programlisting><bean id="afterAclRead" class="org.acegisecurity.afterinvocation.BasicAclEntryAfterInvocationProvider">
- <property name="aclManager"><ref local="aclManager"/></property>
- <property name="requirePermission">
- <list>
- <ref local="org.acegisecurity.acl.basic.SimpleAclEntry.ADMINISTRATION"/>
- <ref local="org.acegisecurity.acl.basic.SimpleAclEntry.READ"/>
- </list>
- </property>
- </bean></programlisting></para>
- <para>In the above example, the <literal>Contact</literal> will be
- retrieved and passed to the
- <literal>BasicAclEntryAfterInvocationProvider</literal>. The provider
- will thrown an <literal>AccessDeniedException</literal> if one of the
- listed <literal>requirePermission</literal>s is not held by the
- <literal>Authentication</literal>. The
- <literal>BasicAclEntryAfterInvocationProvider</literal> queries the
- <literal>AclManager</literal> to determine the ACL that applies for
- this domain object to this <literal>Authentication</literal>.</para>
- <para>Similar to the
- <literal>BasicAclEntryAfterInvocationProvider</literal> is
- <literal>BasicAclEntryAfterInvocationCollectionFilteringProvider</literal>.
- It is designed to remove <literal>Collection</literal> or array
- elements for which a principal does not have access. It never thrown
- an <literal>AccessDeniedException</literal> - simply silently removes
- the offending elements. The provider is configured as follows:</para>
- <para><programlisting><bean id="afterAclCollectionRead" class="org.acegisecurity.afterinvocation.BasicAclEntryAfterInvocationCollectionFilteringProvider">
- <property name="aclManager"><ref local="aclManager"/></property>
- <property name="requirePermission">
- <list>
- <ref local="org.acegisecurity.acl.basic.SimpleAclEntry.ADMINISTRATION"/>
- <ref local="org.acegisecurity.acl.basic.SimpleAclEntry.READ"/>
- </list>
- </property>
- </bean></programlisting></para>
- <para>As you can imagine, the returned <literal>Object</literal> must
- be a <literal>Collection</literal> or array for this provider to
- operate. It will remove any element if the
- <literal>AclManager</literal> indicates the
- <literal>Authentication</literal> does not hold one of the listed
- <literal>requirePermission</literal>s.</para>
- <para>The Contacts sample application demonstrates these two
- <literal>AfterInvocationProvider</literal>s.</para>
- </sect2>
- </sect1>
- <sect1 id="security-run-as">
- <title>Run-As Authentication Replacement</title>
- <sect2 id="security-run-as-purpose">
- <title>Purpose</title>
- <para>The <literal>AbstractSecurityInterceptor</literal> is able to
- temporarily replace the <literal>Authentication</literal> object in
- the <literal>SecurityContext</literal> and
- <literal>SecurityContextHolder</literal> during the
- <literal>SecurityInterceptorCallback</literal>. This only occurs if
- the original <literal>Authentication</literal> object was successfully
- processed by the <literal>AuthenticationManager</literal> and
- <literal>AccessDecisionManager</literal>. The
- <literal>RunAsManager</literal> will indicate the replacement
- <literal>Authentication</literal> object, if any, that should be used
- during the <literal>SecurityInterceptorCallback</literal>.</para>
- <para>By temporarily replacing the <literal>Authentication</literal>
- object during a <literal>SecurityInterceptorCallback</literal>, the
- secured invocation will be able to call other objects which require
- different authentication and authorization credentials. It will also
- be able to perform any internal security checks for specific
- <literal>GrantedAuthority</literal> objects. Because Acegi Security
- provides a number of helper classes that automatically configure
- remoting protocols based on the contents of the
- <literal>ContextHolder</literal>, these run-as replacements are
- particularly useful when calling remote web services.</para>
- </sect2>
- <sect2 id="security-run-as-usage">
- <title>Usage</title>
- <para>A <literal>RunAsManager</literal> interface is provided by the
- Acegi Security System for Spring:</para>
- <para><programlisting>public Authentication buildRunAs(Authentication authentication, Object object, ConfigAttributeDefinition config);
- public boolean supports(ConfigAttribute attribute);
- public boolean supports(Class clazz);</programlisting></para>
- <para>The first method returns the <literal>Authentication</literal>
- object that should replace the existing
- <literal>Authentication</literal> object for the duration of the
- method invocation. If the method returns <literal>null</literal>, it
- indicates no replacement should be made. The second method is used by
- the <literal>AbstractSecurityInterceptor</literal> as part of its
- startup validation of configuration attributes. The
- <literal>supports(Class)</literal> method is called by a security
- interceptor implementation to ensure the configured
- <literal>RunAsManager</literal> supports the type of secure object
- that the security interceptor will present.</para>
- <para>One concrete implementation of a <literal>RunAsManager</literal>
- is provided with the Acegi Security System for Spring. The
- <literal>RunAsManagerImpl</literal> class returns a replacement
- <literal>RunAsUserToken</literal> if any
- <literal>ConfigAttribute</literal> starts with
- <literal>RUN_AS_</literal>. If any such
- <literal>ConfigAttribute</literal> is found, the replacement
- <literal>RunAsUserToken</literal> will contain the same principal,
- credentials and granted authorities as the original
- <literal>Authentication</literal> object, along with a new
- <literal>GrantedAuthorityImpl</literal> for each
- <literal>RUN_AS_</literal> <literal>ConfigAttribute</literal>. Each
- new <literal>GrantedAuthorityImpl</literal> will be prefixed with
- <literal>ROLE_</literal>, followed by the <literal>RUN_AS</literal>
- <literal>ConfigAttribute</literal>. For example, a
- <literal>RUN_AS_SERVER</literal> will result in the replacement
- <literal>RunAsUserToken</literal> containing a
- <literal>ROLE_RUN_AS_SERVER</literal> granted authority.</para>
- <para>The replacement <literal>RunAsUserToken</literal> is just like
- any other <literal>Authentication</literal> object. It needs to be
- authenticated by the <literal>AuthenticationManager</literal>,
- probably via delegation to a suitable
- <literal>AuthenticationProvider</literal>. The
- <literal>RunAsImplAuthenticationProvider</literal> performs such
- authentication. It simply accepts as valid any
- <literal>RunAsUserToken</literal> presented.</para>
- <para>To ensure malicious code does not create a
- <literal>RunAsUserToken</literal> and present it for guaranteed
- acceptance by the <literal>RunAsImplAuthenticationProvider</literal>,
- the hash of a key is stored in all generated tokens. The
- <literal>RunAsManagerImpl</literal> and
- <literal>RunAsImplAuthenticationProvider</literal> is created in the
- bean context with the same key:</para>
- <para><programlisting><bean id="runAsManager" class="org.acegisecurity.runas.RunAsManagerImpl">
- <property name="key"><value>my_run_as_password</value></property>
- </bean></programlisting><programlisting><bean id="runAsAuthenticationProvider" class="org.acegisecurity.runas.RunAsImplAuthenticationProvider">
- <property name="key"><value>my_run_as_password</value></property>
- </bean></programlisting></para>
- <para>By using the same key, each <literal>RunAsUserToken</literal>
- can be validated it was created by an approved
- <literal>RunAsManagerImpl</literal>. The
- <literal>RunAsUserToken</literal> is immutable after creation for
- security reasons.</para>
- </sect2>
- </sect1>
- <sect1 id="security-ui">
- <title>User Interfacing with the SecurityContextHolder</title>
- <sect2 id="security-ui-purpose">
- <title>Purpose</title>
- <para>Everything presented so far assumes one thing: the
- <literal>SecurityContextHolder</literal> is populated with a valid
- <literal>SecurityContext</literal>, which in turn contains a valid
- <literal>Authentication</literal> object. Developers are free to do
- this in whichever way they like, such as directly calling the relevant
- objects at runtime. However, several classes have been provided to
- make this process transparent in many situations. We call these
- classes "authentication mechanisms".</para>
- <para>The <literal>org.acegisecurity.ui</literal> package provides
- what we call "authentication processing mechanisms". An authentication
- processing mechanism is solely concerned with received an
- authentication request from the principal, testing if it seems valid,
- and if so, placing the authentication request token onto the
- <literal>SecurityContextHolder</literal>. Of course, if the
- authentication request is invalid, the authentication processing
- mechanism is responsible for informing the principal in whatever way
- is appropriate to the protocol.</para>
- <para>Recall the
- <literal>HttpSessionContextIntegrationFilter</literal> (discussed in
- the context section) is responsible for storing the
- <literal>SecurityContextHolder</literal> contents between invocations.
- This means no authentication processing mechanism need ever interact
- directly with <literal>HttpSession</literal>. Indeed
- <literal>HttpSessionContextIntegrationFilter</literal> has been
- designed to minimise the unnecessary creation of
- <literal>HttpSession</literal>s, as might occur when using Basic
- authentication for example.</para>
- <para>There are several authentication processing mechanisms included
- with Acegi Security, which will be briefly discussed in this chapter.
- The most popular (and almost always recommended) approach is HTTP Form
- Authentication, which uses a login form to authenticate the user.
- Another approach (commonly use with web services) is HTTP Basic
- Authentication, which allows clients to use HTTP headers to present
- authentication information to the Acegi Security System for Spring.
- Alternatively, you can also use Yale Central Authentication Service
- (CAS) for enterprise-wide single sign on. The final (and generally
- unrecommended) approach is via Container Adapters, which allow
- supported web containers to perform the authentication themselves.
- HTTP Form Authentication and Basic Authentication is discussed below,
- whilst CAS and Container Adapters are discussed in separate sections
- of this document.</para>
- </sect2>
- <sect2 id="security-ui-http-form">
- <title>HTTP Form Authentication</title>
- <para>HTTP Form Authentication involves using the
- <literal>AuthenticationProcessingFilter</literal> to process a login
- form. The login form simply contains <literal>j_username</literal> and
- <literal>j_password</literal> input fields, and posts to a URL that is
- monitored by the filter (by default
- <literal>j_acegi_security_check</literal>). The filter is defined in
- <literal>web.xml</literal> behind a
- <literal>FilterToBeanProxy</literal> as follows:</para>
- <para><programlisting><filter>
- <filter-name>Acegi Authentication Processing Filter</filter-name>
- <filter-class>org.acegisecurity.util.FilterToBeanProxy</filter-class>
- <init-param>
- <param-name>targetClass</param-name>
- <param-value>org.acegisecurity.ui.webapp.AuthenticationProcessingFilter</param-value>
- </init-param>
- </filter>
- <filter-mapping>
- <filter-name>Acegi Authentication Processing Filter</filter-name>
- <url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
- </filter-mapping></programlisting></para>
- <para>For a discussion of <literal>FilterToBeanProxy</literal>, please
- refer to the Filters section. The application context will need to
- define the <literal>AuthenticationProcessingFilter</literal>:</para>
- <para><programlisting><bean id="authenticationProcessingFilter" class="org.acegisecurity.ui.webapp.AuthenticationProcessingFilter">
- <property name="authenticationManager"><ref bean="authenticationManager"/></property>
- <property name="authenticationFailureUrl"><value>/acegilogin.jsp?login_error=1</value></property>
- <property name="defaultTargetUrl"><value>/</value></property>
- <property name="filterProcessesUrl"><value>/j_acegi_security_check</value></property>
- </bean></programlisting></para>
- <para>The configured <literal>AuthenticationManager</literal>
- processes each authentication request. If authentication fails, the
- browser will be redirected to the
- <literal>authenticationFailureUrl</literal>. The
- <literal>AuthenticationException</literal> will be placed into the
- <literal>HttpSession</literal> attribute indicated by
- <literal>AbstractProcessingFilter.ACEGI_SECURITY_LAST_EXCEPTION_KEY</literal>,
- enabling a reason to be provided to the user on the error page.</para>
- <para>If authentication is successful, the resulting
- <literal>Authentication</literal> object will be placed into the
- <literal>SecurityContextHolder</literal>.</para>
- <para>Once the <literal>SecurityContextHolder</literal> has been
- updated, the browser will need to be redirected to the target URL. The
- target URL is usually indicated by the <literal>HttpSession</literal>
- attribute specified by
- <literal>AbstractProcessingFilter.ACEGI_SECURITY_TARGET_URL_KEY</literal>.
- This attribute is automatically set by the
- <literal>SecurityEnforcementFilter</literal> when an
- <literal>AuthenticationException</literal> occurs, so that after login
- is completed the user can return to what they were trying to access.
- If for some reason the <literal>HttpSession</literal> does not
- indicate the target URL, the browser will be redirected to the
- <literal>defaultTargetUrl</literal> property.</para>
- <para>Because this authentication approach is fully contained within a
- single web application, HTTP Form Authentication is recommended to be
- used instead of Container Adapters.</para>
- </sect2>
- <sect2 id="security-ui-http-basic">
- <title>HTTP Basic Authentication</title>
- <para>The Acegi Security System for Spring provides a
- <literal>BasicProcessingFilter</literal> which is capable of
- processing basic authentication credentials presented in HTTP headers.
- This can be used for authenticating calls made by Spring remoting
- protocols (such as Hessian and Burlap), as well as normal user agents
- (such as Internet Explorer and Navigator). The standard governing HTTP
- Basic Authentication is defined by RFC 1945, Section 11, and the
- <literal>BasicProcessingFilter</literal> conforms with this RFC. Basic
- Authentication is an attractive approach to authentication, because it
- is very widely deployed in user agents and implementation is extremely
- simple (it's just a Base64 encoding of the username:password,
- specified in a HTTP header).</para>
- <para>To implement HTTP Basic Authentication, it is necessary to
- define <literal>BasicProcessingFilter</literal> in the fitler chain.
- The application context will need to define the
- <literal>BasicProcessingFilter</literal> and its required
- collaborator:</para>
- <para><programlisting><bean id="basicProcessingFilter" class="org.acegisecurity.ui.basicauth.BasicProcessingFilter">
- <property name="authenticationManager"><ref bean="authenticationManager"/></property>
- <property name="authenticationEntryPoint"><ref bean="authenticationEntryPoint"/></property>
- </bean>
- <bean id="authenticationEntryPoint" class="org.acegisecurity.ui.basicauth.BasicProcessingFilterEntryPoint">
- <property name="realmName"><value>Name Of Your Realm</value></property>
- </bean></programlisting></para>
- <para>The configured <literal>AuthenticationManager</literal>
- processes each authentication request. If authentication fails, the
- configured <literal>AuthenticationEntryPoint</literal> will be used to
- retry the authentication process. Usually you will use the
- <literal>BasicProcessingFilterEntryPoint</literal>, which returns a
- 401 response with a suitable header to retry HTTP Basic
- authentication. If authentication is successful, the resulting
- <literal>Authentication</literal> object will be placed into the
- <literal>SecurityContextHolder</literal>.</para>
- <para>If the authentication event was successful, or authentication
- was not attempted because the HTTP header did not contain a supported
- authentication request, the filter chain will continue as normal. The
- only time the filter chain will be interrupted is if authentication
- fails and the <literal>AuthenticationEntryPoint</literal> is called,
- as discussed in the previous paragraph.</para>
- </sect2>
- <sect2 id="security-ui-http-digest">
- <title>HTTP Digest Authentication</title>
- <para>The Acegi Security System for Spring provides a
- <literal>DigestProcessingFilter</literal> which is capable of
- processing digest authentication credentials presented in HTTP
- headers. Digest Authentication attempts to solve many of the
- weakenesses of Basic authentication, specifically by ensuring
- credentials are never sent in clear text across the wire. Many user
- agents support Digest Authentication, including FireFox and Internet
- Explorer. The standard governing HTTP Digest Authentication is defined
- by RFC 2617, which updates an earlier version of the Digest
- Authentication standard prescribed by RFC 2069. Most user agents
- implement RFC 2617. The Acegi Security
- <literal>DigestProcessingFilter</literal> is compatible with the
- "<literal>auth</literal>" quality of protection
- (<literal>qop</literal>) prescribed by RFC 2617, which also provides
- backward compatibility with RFC 2069. Digest Authentication is a
- highly attractive option if you need to use unencrypted HTTP (ie no
- TLS/HTTPS) and wish to maximise security of the authentication
- process. Indeed Digest Authentication is a mandatory requirement for
- the WebDAV protocol, as noted by RFC 2518 Section 17.1, so we should
- expect to see it increasingly deployed and replacing Basic
- Authentication.</para>
- <para>Digest Authentication is definitely the most secure choice
- between Form Authentication, Basic Authentication and Digest
- Authentication, although extra security also means more complex user
- agent implementations. Central to Digest Authentication is a "nonce".
- This is a value the server generates. Acegi Security's nonce adopts
- the following format:</para>
- <para><programlisting>base64(expirationTime + ":" + md5Hex(expirationTime + ":" + key))
- expirationTime: The date and time when the nonce expires, expressed in milliseconds
- key: A private key to prevent modification of the nonce token
- </programlisting></para>
- <para>The <literal>DigestProcessingFilterEntryPoint</literal> has a
- property specifying the <literal>key</literal> used for generating the
- nonce tokens, along with a <literal>nonceValiditySeconds</literal>
- property for determining the expiration time (default 300, which
- equals five minutes). Whilstever the nonce is valid, the digest is
- computed by concatenating various strings including the username,
- password, nonce, URI being requested, a client-generated nonce (merely
- a random value which the user agent generates each request), the realm
- name etc, then performing an MD5 hash. Both the server and user agent
- perform this digest computation, resulting in different hash codes if
- they disagree on an included value (eg password). In the Acegi
- Security implementation, if the server-generated nonce has merely
- expired (but the digest was otherwise valid), the
- <literal>DigestProcessingFilterEntryPoint</literal> will send a
- <literal>"stale=true"</literal> header. This tells the user agent
- there is no need to disturb the user (as the password and username etc
- is correct), but simply to try again using a new nonce.</para>
- <para>An appropriate value for
- <literal>DigestProcessingFilterEntryPoint</literal>'s
- <literal>nonceValiditySeconds</literal> parameter will depend on your
- application. Extremely secure applications should note that an
- intercepted authentication header can be used to impersonate the
- principal until the <literal>expirationTime</literal> contained in the
- nonce is reached. This is the key principle when selecting an
- appropriate setting, but it would be unusual for immensly secure
- applications to not be running over TLS/HTTPS in the first
- instance.</para>
- <para>Because of the more complex implementation of Digest
- Authentication, there are often user agent issues. For example,
- Internet Explorer fails to present an "<literal>opaque</literal>"
- token on subsequent requests in the same session. The Acegi Security
- filters therefore encapsulate all state information into the
- "<literal>nonce</literal>" token instead. In our testing, the Acegi
- Security implementation works reliably with FireFox and Internet
- Explorer, correctly handling nonce timeouts etc.</para>
- <para>Now that we've reviewed the theory, let's see how to use it. To
- implement HTTP Digest Authentication, it is necessary to define
- <literal>DigestProcessingFilter</literal> in the fitler chain. The
- application context will need to define the
- <literal>DigestProcessingFilter</literal> and its required
- collaborators:</para>
- <para><programlisting><bean id="digestProcessingFilter" class="org.acegisecurity.ui.digestauth.DigestProcessingFilter">
- <property name="authenticationDao"><ref local="jdbcDaoImpl"/></property>
- <property name="authenticationEntryPoint"><ref local="digestProcessingFilterEntryPoint"/></property>
- <property name="userCache"><ref local="userCache"/></property>
- </bean>
- <bean id="digestProcessingFilterEntryPoint" class="org.acegisecurity.ui.digestauth.DigestProcessingFilterEntryPoint">
- <property name="realmName"><value>Contacts Realm via Digest Authentication</value></property>
- <property name="key"><value>acegi</value></property>
- <property name="nonceValiditySeconds"><value>10</value></property>
- </bean></programlisting></para>
- <para>The configured <literal>AuthenticationDao</literal> is needed
- because <literal>DigestProcessingFilter</literal> must have direct
- access to the clear text password of a user. Digest Authentication
- will NOT work if you are using encoded passwords in your DAO. The DAO
- collaborator, along with the <literal>UserCache</literal>, are
- typically shared directly with a
- <literal>DaoAuthenticationProvider</literal>. The
- <literal>authenticationEntryPoint</literal> property must be
- <literal>DigestProcessingFilterEntryPoint</literal>, so that
- <literal>DigestProcessingFilter</literal> can obtain the correct
- <literal>realmName</literal> and <literal>key</literal> for digest
- calculations.</para>
- <para>Like <literal>BasicAuthenticationFilter</literal>, if
- authentication is successful an <literal>Authentication</literal>
- request token will be placed into the
- <literal>SecurityContextHolder</literal>. If the authentication event
- was successful, or authentication was not attempted because the HTTP
- header did not contain a Digest Authentication request, the filter
- chain will continue as normal. The only time the filter chain will be
- interrupted is if authentication fails and the
- <literal>AuthenticationEntryPoint</literal> is called, as discussed in
- the previous paragraph.</para>
- <para>Digest Authentication's RFC offers a range of additional
- features to further increase security. For example, the nonce can be
- changed on every request. Despite this, the Acegi Security
- implementation was designed to minimise the complexity of the
- implementation (and the doubtless user agent incompatibilities that
- would emerge), and avoid needing to store server-side state. You are
- invited to review RFC 2617 if you wish to explore these features in
- more detail. As far as we are aware, the Acegi Security implementation
- does comply with the minimum standards of this RFC.</para>
- </sect2>
- <sect2 id="security-ui-anonymous">
- <title>Anonymous Authentication</title>
- <para>Particularly in the case of web request URI security, sometimes
- it is more convenient to assign configuration attributes against every
- possible secure object invocation. Put differently, sometimes it is
- nice to say <literal>ROLE_SOMETHING</literal> is required by default
- and only allow certain exceptions to this rule, such as for login,
- logout and home pages of an application. There are also other
- situations where anonymous authentication would be desired, such as
- when an auditing interceptor queries the
- <literal>SecurityContextHolder</literal> to identify which principal
- was responsible for a given operation. Such classes can be authored
- with more robustness if they know the
- <literal>SecurityContextHolder</literal> always contains an
- <literal>Authentication</literal> object, and never
- <literal>null</literal>.</para>
- <para>Acegi Security provides three classes that together provide an
- anoymous authentication feature.
- <literal>AnonymousAuthenticationToken</literal> is an implementation
- of <literal>Authentication</literal>, and stores the
- <literal>GrantedAuthority</literal>[]s which apply to the anonymous
- principal. There is a corresponding
- <literal>AnonymousAuthenticationProvider</literal>, which is chained
- into the <literal>ProviderManager</literal> so that
- <literal>AnonymousAuthenticationTokens</literal> are accepted.
- Finally, there is an AnonymousProcessingFilter, which is chained after
- the normal authentication mechanisms and automatically add an
- <literal>AnonymousAuthenticationToken</literal> to the
- <literal>SecurityContextHolder</literal> if there is no existing
- <literal>Authentication</literal> held there. The definition of the
- filter and authentication provider appears as follows:</para>
- <para><programlisting><bean id="anonymousProcessingFilter" class="org.acegisecurity.providers.anonymous.AnonymousProcessingFilter">
- <property name="key"><value>foobar</value></property>
- <property name="userAttribute"><value>anonymousUser,ROLE_ANONYMOUS</value></property>
- </bean>
- <bean id="anonymousAuthenticationProvider" class="org.acegisecurity.providers.anonymous.AnonymousAuthenticationProvider">
- <property name="key"><value>foobar</value></property>
- </bean></programlisting></para>
- <para>The <literal>key</literal> is shared between the filter and
- authentication provider, so that tokens created by the former are
- accepted by the latter. The <literal>userAttribute</literal> is
- expressed in the form of
- <literal>usernameInTheAuthenticationToken,grantedAuthority[,grantedAuthority]</literal>.
- This is the same syntax as used after the equals sign for
- <literal>InMemoryDaoImpl</literal>'s <literal>userMap</literal>
- property.</para>
- <para>As explained earlier, the benefit of anonymous authentication is
- that all URI patterns can have security applied to them. For
- example:</para>
- <para><programlisting><bean id="filterInvocationInterceptor" class="org.acegisecurity.intercept.web.FilterSecurityInterceptor">
- <property name="authenticationManager"><ref bean="authenticationManager"/></property>
- <property name="accessDecisionManager"><ref local="httpRequestAccessDecisionManager"/></property>
- <property name="objectDefinitionSource">
- <value>
- CONVERT_URL_TO_LOWERCASE_BEFORE_COMPARISON
- PATTERN_TYPE_APACHE_ANT
- /index.jsp=ROLE_ANONYMOUS,ROLE_USER
- /hello.htm=ROLE_ANONYMOUS,ROLE_USER
- /logoff.jsp=ROLE_ANONYMOUS,ROLE_USER
- /acegilogin.jsp*=ROLE_ANONYMOUS,ROLE_USER
- /**=ROLE_USER
- </value>
- </property>
- </bean></programlisting>Rounding out the anonymous authentication
- discussion is the <literal>AuthenticationTrustResolver</literal>
- interface, with its corresponding
- <literal>AuthenticationTrustResolverImpl</literal> implementation.
- This interface provides an
- <literal>isAnonymous(Authentication)</literal> method, which allows
- interested classes to take into account this special type of
- authentication status. The
- <literal>SecurityEnforcementFilter</literal> uses this interface in
- processing <literal>AccessDeniedException</literal>s. If an
- <literal>AccessDeniedException</literal> is thrown, and the
- authentication is of an anonymous type, instead of throwing a 403
- (forbidden) response, the filter will instead commence the
- <literal>AuthenticationEntryPoint</literal> so the principal can
- authenticate properly. This is a necessary distinction, otherwise
- principals would always be deemed "authenticated" and never be given
- an opportunity to login via form, basic, digest or some other normal
- authentication mechanism.</para>
- </sect2>
- <sect2 id="security-ui-remember-me">
- <title>Remember-Me Authentication</title>
- <para>Remember-me authentication refers to web sites being able to
- remember the identity of a principal between sessions. This is
- typically accomplished by sending a cookie to the browser, with the
- cookie being detected during future sessions and causing automated
- login to take place. Acegi Security provides the necessary hooks so
- that such operations can take place, along with providing a concrete
- implementation that uses hashing to preserve the security of
- cookie-based tokens.</para>
- <para>Remember-me authentication is not used with digest or basic
- authentication, given they are often not used with
- <literal>HttpSession</literal>s. Remember-me is used with
- <literal>AuthenticationProcessingFilter</literal>, and is implemented
- via hooks in the <literal>AbstractProcessingFilter</literal>
- superclass. The hooks will invoke a concrete
- <literal>RememberMeServices</literal> at the appropriate times. The
- interface looks like this:</para>
- <para><programlisting>public Authentication autoLogin(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response);
- public void loginFail(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response);
- public void loginSuccess(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response, Authentication successfulAuthentication);</programlisting></para>
- <para>Please refer to JavaDocs for a fuller discussion on what the
- methods do, although note at this stage
- <literal>AbstractProcessingFilter</literal> only calls the
- <literal>loginFail()</literal> and <literal>loginSuccess()</literal>
- methods. The <literal>autoLogin()</literal> method is called by
- <literal>RememberMeProcessingFilter</literal> whenever the
- <literal>SecurityContextHolder</literal> does not contain an
- <literal>Authentication</literal>. This interface therefore provides
- the underlaying remember-me implementation with sufficient
- notification of authentication-related events, and delegates to the
- implementation whenever a candidate web request might contain a cookie
- and wish to be remembered.</para>
- <para>This design allows any number of remember-me implementation
- strategies. In the interests of simplicity and avoiding the need for
- DAO implementations that specify write and create methods, Acegi
- Security's only concrete implementation,
- <literal>TokenBasedRememberMeServices</literal>, uses hashing to
- achieve a useful remember-me strategy. In essence a cookie is sent to
- the browser upon successful interactive authentication, with that
- cookie being composed as follows:</para>
- <para><programlisting>base64(username + ":" + expirationTime + ":" + md5Hex(username + ":" + expirationTime + ":" password + ":" + key))
- username: As identifiable to TokenBasedRememberMeServices.getAuthenticationDao()
- password: That matches the relevant UserDetails retrieved from TokenBasedRememberMeServices.getAuthenticationDao()
- expirationTime: The date and time when the remember-me token expires, expressed in milliseconds
- key: A private key to prevent modification of the remember-me token
- </programlisting></para>
- <para>As such the remember-me token is valid only for the period
- specified, and provided that the username, password and key does not
- change. Notably, this has a potential security issue issue in that a
- captured remember-me token will be usable from any user agent until
- such time as the token expires. This is the same issue as with digest
- authentication. If a principal is aware a token has been captured,
- they can easily change their password and immediately invalidate all
- remember-me tokens on issue. However, if more significant security is
- needed a rolling token approach should be used (this would require a
- database) or remember-me services should simply not be used.</para>
- <para><literal>TokenBasedRememberMeServices</literal> generates a
- <literal>RememberMeAuthenticationToken</literal>, which is processed
- by <literal>RememberMeAuthenticationProvider</literal>. A
- <literal>key</literal> is shared between this authentication provider
- and the <literal>TokenBasedRememberMeServices</literal>. In addition,
- <literal>TokenBasedRememberMeServices</literal> requires an
- <literal>AuthenticationDao</literal> from which it can retrieve the
- username and password for signature comparison purposes, and generate
- the <literal>RememberMeAuthenticationToken</literal> to contain the
- correct <literal>GrantedAuthority</literal>[]s. Some sort of logout
- command should be provided by the application (typically via a JSP)
- that invalidates the cookie upon user request. See the Contacts Sample
- application's <literal>logout.jsp</literal> for an example.</para>
- <para>The beans required in an application context to enable
- remember-me services are as follows:</para>
- <para><programlisting><bean id="rememberMeProcessingFilter" class="org.acegisecurity.ui.rememberme.RememberMeProcessingFilter">
- <property name="rememberMeServices"><ref local="rememberMeServices"/></property>
- </bean>
- <bean id="rememberMeServices" class="org.acegisecurity.ui.rememberme.TokenBasedRememberMeServices">
- <property name="authenticationDao"><ref local="jdbcDaoImpl"/></property>
- <property name="key"><value>springRocks</value></property>
- </bean>
-
- <bean id="rememberMeAuthenticationProvider" class="org.acegisecurity.providers.rememberme.RememberMeAuthenticationProvider">
- <property name="key"><value>springRocks</value></property>
- </bean></programlisting>Don't forget to add your
- <literal>RememberMeServices</literal> implementation to your
- <literal>AuthenticationProcessingFilter.setRememberMeServices()</literal>
- property, include the
- <literal>RememberMeAuthenticationProvider</literal> in your
- <literal>AuthenticationManager.setProviders()</literal> list, and add
- a call to <literal>RememberMeProcessingFilter</literal> into your
- <literal>FilterChainProxy</literal> (typically immediately after your
- <literal>AuthenticationProcessingFilter</literal>).</para>
- </sect2>
- <sect2 id="security-ui-well-known">
- <title>Well-Known Locations</title>
- <para>Prior to release 0.8.0, Acegi Security referred to "well-known
- locations" in discussions about storing the
- <literal>Authentication</literal>. This approach did not explicitly
- separate the function of <literal>HttpSession</literal> storage of
- <literal>SecurityContextHolder</literal> contents from the processing
- of authentication requests received through various protocols. In
- addition, the previous approach did not facilitate storage of
- non-<literal>Authentication</literal> objects between requests, which
- was limiting usefulness of the
- <literal>SecurityContextHolder</literal> system to member of the
- community. For these reasons, the notion of well-known locations was
- abandoned, the <literal>HttpSessionContextIntegrationFilter</literal>
- was established, and the purpose of authentication processing
- mechanisms was explicitly defined and limited to interaction with the
- <literal>SecurityContextHolder</literal> only. There is no need to
- refer to well-known locations any more and we hope this clearer
- separation of responsibilities enhances understanding of the
- design.</para>
- </sect2>
- </sect1>
- <sect1 id="security-container-adapters">
- <title>Container Adapters</title>
- <sect2 id="security-container-adapters-overview">
- <title>Overview</title>
- <para>Very early versions of the Acegi Security System for Spring
- exclusively used Container Adapters for interfacing authentication
- with end users. Whilst this worked well, it required considerable time
- to support multiple container versions and the configuration itself
- was relatively time-consuming for developers. For this reason the HTTP
- Form Authentication and HTTP Basic Authentication approaches were
- developed, and are today recommended for almost all
- applications.</para>
- <para>Container Adapters enable the Acegi Security System for Spring
- to integrate directly with the containers used to host end user
- applications. This integration means that applications can continue to
- leverage the authentication and authorization capabilities built into
- containers (such as <literal>isUserInRole()</literal> and form-based
- or basic authentication), whilst benefiting from the enhanced security
- interception capabilities provided by the Acegi Security System for
- Spring (it should be noted that Acegi Security also offers
- <literal>ContextHolderAwareRequestWrapper</literal> to deliver
- <literal>isUserInRole()</literal> and similar Servlet Specification
- compatibility methods).</para>
- <para>The integration between a container and the Acegi Security
- System for Spring is achieved through an adapter. The adapter provides
- a container-compatible user authentication provider, and needs to
- return a container-compatible user object.</para>
- <para>The adapter is instantiated by the container and is defined in a
- container-specific configuration file. The adapter then loads a Spring
- application context which defines the normal authentication manager
- settings, such as the authentication providers that can be used to
- authenticate the request. The application context is usually named
- <literal>acegisecurity.xml</literal> and is placed in a
- container-specific location.</para>
- <para>The Acegi Security System for Spring currently supports Jetty,
- Catalina (Tomcat), JBoss and Resin. Additional container adapters can
- easily be written.</para>
- </sect2>
- <sect2 id="security-container-adapters-adapter-provider">
- <title>Adapter Authentication Provider</title>
- <para>As is always the case, the container adapter generated
- <literal>Authentication</literal> object still needs to be
- authenticated by an <literal>AuthenticationManager</literal> when
- requested to do so by the
- <literal>AbstractSecurityInterceptor</literal>. The
- <literal>AuthenticationManager</literal> needs to be certain the
- adapter-provided <literal>Authentication</literal> object is valid and
- was actually authenticated by a trusted adapter.</para>
- <para>Adapters create <literal>Authentication</literal> objects which
- are immutable and implement the <literal>AuthByAdapter</literal>
- interface. These objects store the hash of a key that is defined by
- the adapter. This allows the <literal>Authentication</literal> object
- to be validated by the <literal>AuthByAdapterProvider</literal>. This
- authentication provider is defined as follows:</para>
- <para><programlisting><bean id="authByAdapterProvider" class="org.acegisecurity.adapters.AuthByAdapterProvider">
- <property name="key"><value>my_password</value></property>
- </bean></programlisting></para>
- <para>The key must match the key that is defined in the
- container-specific configuration file that starts the adapter. The
- <literal>AuthByAdapterProvider</literal> automatically accepts as
- valid any <literal>AuthByAdapter</literal> implementation that returns
- the expected hash of the key.</para>
- <para>To reiterate, this means the adapter will perform the initial
- authentication using providers such as
- <literal>DaoAuthenticationProvider</literal>, returning an
- <literal>AuthByAdapter</literal> instance that contains a hash code of
- the key. Later, when an application calls a security interceptor
- managed resource, the <literal>AuthByAdapter</literal> instance in the
- <literal>SecurityContext</literal> in the
- <literal>SecurityContextHolder</literal> will be tested by the
- application's <literal>AuthByAdapterProvider</literal>. There is no
- requirement for additional authentication providers such as
- <literal>DaoAuthenticationProvider</literal> within the
- application-specific application context, as the only type of
- <literal>Authentication</literal> instance that will be presented by
- the application is from the container adapter.</para>
- <para>Classloader issues are frequent with containers and the use of
- container adapters illustrates this further. Each container requires a
- very specific configuration. The installation instructions are
- provided below. Once installed, please take the time to try the sample
- application to ensure your container adapter is properly
- configured.</para>
- <para>When using container adapters with the
- <literal>DaoAuthenticationProvider</literal>, ensure you set its
- <literal>forcePrincipalAsString</literal> property to
- <literal>true</literal>.</para>
- </sect2>
- <sect2 id="security-container-adapters-catalina">
- <title>Catalina (Tomcat) Installation</title>
- <para>The following was tested with Jakarta Tomcat 4.1.30 and
- 5.0.19.</para>
- <para><literal>$CATALINA_HOME</literal> refers to the root of your
- Catalina (Tomcat) installation.</para>
- <para>Edit your <literal>$CATALINA_HOME/conf/server.xml</literal> file
- so the <literal><Engine></literal> section contains only one
- active <literal><Realm></literal> entry. An example realm
- entry:</para>
- <para><programlisting> <Realm className="org.acegisecurity.adapters.catalina.CatalinaAcegiUserRealm"
- appContextLocation="conf/acegisecurity.xml"
- key="my_password" /></programlisting></para>
- <para>Be sure to remove any other <literal><Realm></literal>
- entry from your <literal><Engine></literal> section.</para>
- <para>Copy <literal>acegisecurity.xml</literal> into
- <literal>$CATALINA_HOME/conf</literal>.</para>
- <para>Copy <literal>acegi-security-catalina-XX.jar</literal> into
- <literal>$CATALINA_HOME/server/lib</literal>.</para>
- <para>Copy the following files into
- <literal>$CATALINA_HOME/common/lib</literal>:</para>
- <itemizedlist>
- <listitem>
- <para><literal>aopalliance.jar</literal></para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para><literal>spring.jar</literal></para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para><literal>commons-codec.jar</literal></para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para><literal>burlap.jar</literal></para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para><literal>hessian.jar</literal></para>
- </listitem>
- </itemizedlist>
- <para>None of the above JAR files (or
- <literal>acegi-security-XX.jar</literal>) should be in your
- application's <literal>WEB-INF/lib</literal>. The realm name indicated
- in your <literal>web.xml</literal> does not matter with
- Catalina.</para>
- <para>We have received reports of problems using this Container
- Adapter with Mac OS X. A work-around is to use a script such as
- follows:</para>
- <para><programlisting>#!/bin/sh
- export CATALINA_HOME="/Library/Tomcat"
- export JAVA_HOME="/Library/Java/Home"
- cd /
- $CATALINA_HOME/bin/startup.sh</programlisting></para>
- </sect2>
- <sect2 id="security-container-adapters-jetty">
- <title>Jetty Installation</title>
- <para>The following was tested with Jetty 4.2.18.</para>
- <para><literal>$JETTY_HOME</literal> refers to the root of your Jetty
- installation.</para>
- <para>Edit your <literal>$JETTY_HOME/etc/jetty.xml</literal> file so
- the <literal><Configure class></literal> section has a new
- addRealm call:</para>
- <para><programlisting> <Call name="addRealm">
- <Arg>
- <New class="org.acegisecurity.adapters.jetty.JettyAcegiUserRealm">
- <Arg>Spring Powered Realm</Arg>
- <Arg>my_password</Arg>
- <Arg>etc/acegisecurity.xml</Arg>
- </New>
- </Arg>
- </Call></programlisting></para>
- <para>Copy <literal>acegisecurity.xml</literal> into
- <literal>$JETTY_HOME/etc</literal>.</para>
- <para>Copy the following files into
- <literal>$JETTY_HOME/ext</literal>:<itemizedlist>
- <listitem>
- <para><literal>aopalliance.jar</literal></para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para><literal>commons-logging.jar</literal></para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para><literal>spring.jar</literal></para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para><literal>acegi-security-jetty-XX.jar</literal></para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para><literal>commons-codec.jar</literal></para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para><literal>burlap.jar</literal></para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para><literal>hessian.jar</literal></para>
- </listitem>
- </itemizedlist></para>
- <para>None of the above JAR files (or
- <literal>acegi-security-XX.jar</literal>) should be in your
- application's <literal>WEB-INF/lib</literal>. The realm name indicated
- in your <literal>web.xml</literal> does matter with Jetty. The
- <literal>web.xml</literal> must express the same
- <literal><realm-name></literal> as your
- <literal>jetty.xml</literal> (in the example above, "Spring Powered
- Realm").</para>
- </sect2>
- <sect2 id="security-container-adapters-joss">
- <title>JBoss Installation</title>
- <para>The following was tested with JBoss 3.2.6.</para>
- <para><literal>$JBOSS_HOME</literal> refers to the root of your JBoss
- installation.</para>
- <para>There are two different ways of making spring context available
- to the Jboss integration classes.</para>
- <para>The first approach is by editing your
- <literal>$JBOSS_HOME/server/your_config/conf/login-config.xml</literal>
- file so that it contains a new entry under the
- <literal><Policy></literal> section:</para>
- <para><programlisting> <application-policy name = "SpringPoweredRealm">
- <authentication>
- <login-module code = "org.acegisecurity.adapters.jboss.JbossSpringLoginModule"
- flag = "required">
- <module-option name = "appContextLocation">acegisecurity.xml</module-option>
- <module-option name = "key">my_password</module-option>
- </login-module>
- </authentication>
- </application-policy></programlisting></para>
- <para>Copy <literal>acegisecurity.xml</literal> into
- <literal>$JBOSS_HOME/server/your_config/conf</literal>.</para>
- <para>In this configuration <literal>acegisecurity.xml</literal>
- contains the spring context definition including all the
- authentication manager beans. You have to bear in mind though, that
- <literal>SecurityContext</literal> is created and destroyed on each
- login request, so the login operation might become costly.
- Alternatively, the second approach is to use Spring singleton
- capabilities through
- <literal>org.springframework.beans.factory.access.SingletonBeanFactoryLocator</literal>.
- The required configuration for this approach is:</para>
- <para><programlisting> <application-policy name = "SpringPoweredRealm">
- <authentication>
- <login-module code = "org.acegisecurity.adapters.jboss.JbossSpringLoginModule"
- flag = "required">
- <module-option name = "singletonId">springRealm</module-option>
- <module-option name = "key">my_password</module-option>
- <module-option name = "authenticationManager">authenticationManager</module-option>
- </login-module>
- </authentication>
- </application-policy></programlisting></para>
- <para>In the above code fragment,
- <literal>authenticationManager</literal> is a helper property that
- defines the expected name of the
- <literal>AuthenticationManager</literal> in case you have several
- defined in the IoC container. The <literal>singletonId</literal>
- property references a bean defined in a
- <literal>beanRefFactory.xml</literal> file. This file needs to be
- available from anywhere on the JBoss classpath, including
- <literal>$JBOSS_HOME/server/your_config/conf</literal>. The
- <literal>beanRefFactory.xml</literal> contains the following
- declaration:</para>
- <para><programlisting><beans>
- <bean id="springRealm" singleton="true" lazy-init="true" class="org.springframework.context.support.ClassPathXmlApplicationContext">
- <constructor-arg>
- <list>
- <value>acegisecurity.xml</value>
- </list>
- </constructor-arg>
- </bean>
- </beans></programlisting></para>
- <para>Finally, irrespective of the configuration approach you need to
- copy the following files into
- <literal>$JBOSS_HOME/server/your_config/lib</literal>:<itemizedlist>
- <listitem>
- <para><literal>aopalliance.jar</literal></para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para><literal>spring.jar</literal></para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para><literal>acegi-security-jboss-XX.jar</literal></para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para><literal>commons-codec.jar</literal></para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para><literal>burlap.jar</literal></para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para><literal>hessian.jar</literal></para>
- </listitem>
- </itemizedlist></para>
- <para>None of the above JAR files (or
- <literal>acegi-security-XX.jar</literal>) should be in your
- application's <literal>WEB-INF/lib</literal>. The realm name indicated
- in your <literal>web.xml</literal> does not matter with JBoss.
- However, your web application's
- <literal>WEB-INF/jboss-web.xml</literal> must express the same
- <literal><security-domain></literal> as your
- <literal>login-config.xml</literal>. For example, to match the above
- example, your <literal>jboss-web.xml</literal> would look like
- this:</para>
- <para><programlisting><jboss-web>
- <security-domain>java:/jaas/SpringPoweredRealm</security-domain>
- </jboss-web></programlisting></para>
- </sect2>
- <sect2 id="security-container-adapters-resin">
- <title>Resin Installation</title>
- <para>The following was tested with Resin 3.0.6.</para>
- <para><literal>$RESIN_HOME</literal> refers to the root of your Resin
- installation.</para>
- <para>Resin provides several ways to support the container adapter. In
- the instructions below we have elected to maximise consistency with
- other container adapter configurations. This will allow Resin users to
- simply deploy the sample application and confirm correct
- configuration. Developers comfortable with Resin are naturally able to
- use its capabilities to package the JARs with the web application
- itself, and/or support single sign-on.</para>
- <para>Copy the following files into
- <literal>$RESIN_HOME/lib</literal>:<itemizedlist>
- <listitem>
- <para><literal>aopalliance.jar</literal></para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para><literal>commons-logging.jar</literal></para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para><literal>spring.jar</literal></para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para><literal>acegi-security-resin-XX.jar</literal></para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para><literal>commons-codec.jar</literal></para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para><literal>burlap.jar</literal></para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para><literal>hessian.jar</literal></para>
- </listitem>
- </itemizedlist></para>
- <para>Unlike the container-wide <literal>acegisecurity.xml</literal>
- files used by other container adapters, each Resin web application
- will contain its own
- <literal>WEB-INF/resin-acegisecurity.xml</literal> file. Each web
- application will also contain a <literal>resin-web.xml</literal> file
- which Resin uses to start the container adapter:</para>
- <para><programlisting><web-app>
- <authenticator>
- <type>org.acegisecurity.adapters.resin.ResinAcegiAuthenticator</type>
- <init>
- <app-context-location>WEB-INF/resin-acegisecurity.xml</app-context-location>
- <key>my_password</key>
- </init>
- </authenticator>
- </web-app></programlisting></para>
- <para>With the basic configuration provided above, none of the JAR
- files listed (or <literal>acegi-security-XX.jar</literal>) should be
- in your application's <literal>WEB-INF/lib</literal>. The realm name
- indicated in your <literal>web.xml</literal> does not matter with
- Resin, as the relevant authentication class is indicated by the
- <literal><authenticator></literal> setting.</para>
- </sect2>
- </sect1>
- <sect1 id="security-cas">
- <title>Yale Central Authentication Service (CAS) Single Sign On</title>
- <sect2 id="security-cas-overview">
- <title>Overview</title>
- <para>Yale University produces an enterprise-wide single sign on
- system known as CAS. Unlike other initiatives, Yale's Central
- Authentication Service is open source, widely used, simple to
- understand, platform independent, and supports proxy capabilities. The
- Acegi Security System for Spring fully supports CAS, and provides an
- easy migration path from single-application deployments of Acegi
- Security through to multiple-application deployments secured by an
- enterprise-wide CAS server.</para>
- <para>You can learn more about CAS at
- <literal>http://www.yale.edu/tp/auth/</literal>. You will need to
- visit this URL to download the CAS Server files. Whilst the Acegi
- Security System for Spring includes two CAS libraries in the
- "-with-dependencies" ZIP file, you will still need the CAS Java Server
- Pages and <literal>web.xml</literal> to customise and deploy your CAS
- server.</para>
- </sect2>
- <sect2 id="security-cas-how-cas-works">
- <title>How CAS Works</title>
- <para>Whilst the CAS web site above contains two documents that detail
- the architecture of CAS, we present the general overview again here
- within the context of the Acegi Security System for Spring. The
- following refers to CAS 2.0, being the version of CAS that Acegi
- Security System for Spring supports.</para>
- <para>Somewhere in your enterprise you will need to setup a CAS
- server. The CAS server is simply a standard WAR file, so there isn't
- anything difficult about setting up your server. Inside the WAR file
- you will customise the login and other single sign on pages displayed
- to users. You will also need to specify in the web.xml a
- <literal>PasswordHandler</literal>. The
- <literal>PasswordHandler</literal> has a simple method that returns a
- boolean as to whether a given username and password is valid. Your
- <literal>PasswordHandler</literal> implementation will need to link
- into some type of backend authentication repository, such as an LDAP
- server or database.</para>
- <para>If you are already running an existing CAS server instance, you
- will have already established a <literal>PasswordHandler</literal>. If
- you do not already have a <literal>PasswordHandler</literal>, you
- might prefer to use the Acegi Security System for Spring
- <literal>CasPasswordHandler</literal> class. This class delegates
- through to the standard Acegi Security
- <literal>AuthenticationManager</literal>, enabling you to use a
- security configuration you might already have in place. You do not
- need to use the <literal>CasPasswordHandler</literal> class on your
- CAS server if you do not wish. The Acegi Security System for Spring
- will function as a CAS client successfully irrespective of the
- <literal>PasswordHandler</literal> you've chosen for your CAS
- server.</para>
- <para>Apart from the CAS server itself, the other key player is of
- course the secure web applications deployed throughout your
- enterprise. These web applications are known as "services". There are
- two types of services: standard services and proxy services. A proxy
- service is able to request resources from other services on behalf of
- the user. This will be explained more fully later.</para>
- <para>Services can be developed in a large variety of languages, due
- to CAS 2.0's very light XML-based protocol. The Yale CAS home page
- contains a clients archive which demonstrates CAS clients in Java,
- Active Server Pages, Perl, Python and others. Naturally, Java support
- is very strong given the CAS server is written in Java. You do not
- need to use any of CAS' client classes in applications secured by the
- Acegi Security System for Spring. This is handled transparently for
- you.</para>
- <para>The basic interaction between a web browser, CAS server and an
- Acegi Security for System Spring secured service is as follows:</para>
- <orderedlist>
- <listitem>
- <para>The web user is browsing the service's public pages. CAS or
- Acegi Security is not involved.</para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para>The user eventually requests a page that is either secure or
- one of the beans it uses is secure. Acegi Security's
- <literal>SecurityEnforcementFilter</literal> will detect the
- <literal>AuthenticationException</literal>.</para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para>Because the user's <literal>Authentication</literal> object
- (or lack thereof) caused an
- <literal>AuthenticationException</literal>, the
- <literal>SecurityEnforcementFilter</literal> will call the
- configured <literal>AuthenticationEntryPoint</literal>. If using
- CAS, this will be the
- <literal>CasProcessingFilterEntryPoint</literal> class.</para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para>The <literal>CasProcessingFilterEntry</literal> point will
- redirect the user's browser to the CAS server. It will also
- indicate a <literal>service</literal> parameter, which is the
- callback URL for the Acegi Security service. For example, the URL
- to which the browser is redirected might be
- <literal>https://my.company.com/cas/login?service=https%3A%2F%2Fserver3.company.com%2Fwebapp%2Fj_acegi_cas_security_check</literal>.</para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para>After the user's browser redirects to CAS, they will be
- prompted for their username and password. If the user presents a
- session cookie which indicates they've previously logged on, they
- will not be prompted to login again (there is an exception to this
- procedure, which we'll cover later). CAS will use the
- <literal>PasswordHandler</literal> discussed above to decide
- whether the username and password is valid.</para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para>Upon successful login, CAS will redirect the user's browser
- back to the original service. It will also include a
- <literal>ticket</literal> parameter, which is an opaque string
- representing the "service ticket". Continuing our earlier example,
- the URL the browser is redirected to might be
- <literal>https://server3.company.com/webapp/j_acegi_cas_security_check?ticket=ST-0-ER94xMJmn6pha35CQRoZ</literal>.</para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para>Back in the service web application, the
- <literal>CasProcessingFilter</literal> is always listening for
- requests to <literal>/j_acegi_cas_security_check</literal> (this
- is configurable, but we'll use the defaults in this introduction).
- The processing filter will construct a
- <literal>UsernamePasswordAuthenticationToken</literal>
- representing the service ticket. The principal will be equal to
- <literal>CasProcessingFilter.CAS_STATEFUL_IDENTIFIER</literal>,
- whilst the credentials will be the service ticket opaque value.
- This authentication request will then be handed to the configured
- <literal>AuthenticationManager</literal>.</para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para>The <literal>AuthenticationManager</literal> implementation
- will be the <literal>ProviderManager</literal>, which is in turn
- configured with the <literal>CasAuthenticationProvider</literal>.
- The <literal>CasAuthenticationProvider</literal> only responds to
- <literal>UsernamePasswordAuthenticationToken</literal>s containing
- the CAS-specific principal (such as
- <literal>CasProcessingFilter.CAS_STATEFUL_IDENTIFIER</literal>)
- and <literal>CasAuthenticationToken</literal>s (discussed
- later).</para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para><literal>CasAuthenticationProvider</literal> will validate
- the service ticket using a <literal>TicketValidator</literal>
- implementation. Acegi Security includes one implementation, the
- <literal>CasProxyTicketValidator</literal>. This implementation a
- ticket validation class included in the CAS client library. The
- <literal>CasProxyTicketValidator</literal> makes a HTTPS request
- to the CAS server in order to validate the service ticket. The
- <literal>CasProxyTicketValidator</literal> may also include a
- proxy callback URL, which is included in this example:
- <literal>https://my.company.com/cas/proxyValidate?service=https%3A%2F%2Fserver3.company.com%2Fwebapp%2Fj_acegi_cas_security_check&ticket=ST-0-ER94xMJmn6pha35CQRoZ&pgtUrl=https://server3.company.com/webapp/casProxy/receptor</literal>.</para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para>Back on the CAS server, the proxy validation request will be
- received. If the presented service ticket matches the service URL
- the ticket was issued to, CAS will provide an affirmative response
- in XML indicating the username. If any proxy was involved in the
- authentication (discussed below), the list of proxies is also
- included in the XML response.</para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para>[OPTIONAL] If the request to the CAS validation service
- included the proxy callback URL (in the <literal>pgtUrl</literal>
- parameter), CAS will include a <literal>pgtIou</literal> string in
- the XML response. This <literal>pgtIou</literal> represents a
- proxy-granting ticket IOU. The CAS server will then create its own
- HTTPS connection back to the <literal>pgtUrl</literal>. This is to
- mutually authenticate the CAS server and the claimed service URL.
- The HTTPS connection will be used to send a proxy granting ticket
- to the original web application. For example,
- <literal>https://server3.company.com/webapp/casProxy/receptor?pgtIou=PGTIOU-0-R0zlgrl4pdAQwBvJWO3vnNpevwqStbSGcq3vKB2SqSFFRnjPHt&pgtId=PGT-1-si9YkkHLrtACBo64rmsi3v2nf7cpCResXg5MpESZFArbaZiOKH</literal>.
- We suggest you use CAS' <literal>ProxyTicketReceptor</literal>
- servlet to receive these proxy-granting tickets, if they are
- required.</para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para>The <literal>CasProxyTicketValidator</literal> will parse
- the XML received from the CAS server. It will return to the
- <literal>CasAuthenticationProvider</literal> a
- <literal>TicketResponse</literal>, which includes the username
- (mandatory), proxy list (if any were involved), and proxy-granting
- ticket IOU (if the proxy callback was requested).</para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para>Next <literal>CasAuthenticationProvider</literal> will call
- a configured <literal>CasProxyDecider</literal>. The
- <literal>CasProxyDecider</literal> indicates whether the proxy
- list in the <literal>TicketResponse</literal> is acceptable to the
- service. Several implementations are provided with the Acegi
- Security System: <literal>RejectProxyTickets</literal>,
- <literal>AcceptAnyCasProxy</literal> and
- <literal>NamedCasProxyDecider</literal>. These names are largely
- self-explanatory, except <literal>NamedCasProxyDecider</literal>
- which allows a <literal>List</literal> of trusted proxies to be
- provided.</para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para><literal>CasAuthenticationProvider</literal> will next
- request a <literal>CasAuthoritiesPopulator</literal> to advise the
- <literal>GrantedAuthority</literal> objects that apply to the user
- contained in the <literal>TicketResponse</literal>. Acegi Security
- includes a <literal>DaoCasAuthoritiesPopulator</literal> which
- simply uses the <literal>AuthenticationDao</literal>
- infrastructure to find the <literal>UserDetails</literal> and
- their associated <literal>GrantedAuthority</literal>s. Note that
- the password and enabled/disabled status of
- <literal>UserDetails</literal> returned by the
- <literal>AuthenticationDao</literal> are ignored, as the CAS
- server is responsible for authentication decisions.
- <literal>DaoCasAuthoritiesPopulator</literal> is only concerned
- with retrieving the <literal>GrantedAuthority</literal>s.</para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para>If there were no problems,
- <literal>CasAuthenticationProvider</literal> constructs a
- <literal>CasAuthenticationToken</literal> including the details
- contained in the <literal>TicketResponse</literal> and the
- <literal>GrantedAuthority</literal>s. The
- <literal>CasAuthenticationToken</literal> contains the hash of a
- key, so that the <literal>CasAuthenticationProvider</literal>
- knows it created it.</para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para>Control then returns to
- <literal>CasProcessingFilter</literal>, which places the created
- <literal>CasAuthenticationToken</literal> into the
- <literal>HttpSession</literal> attribute named
- <literal>HttpSessionIntegrationFilter.ACEGI_SECURITY_AUTHENTICATION_KEY</literal>.</para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para>The user's browser is redirected to the original page that
- caused the <literal>AuthenticationException</literal>.</para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para>As the <literal>Authentication</literal> object is now in
- the well-known location, it is handled like any other
- authentication approach. Usually the
- <literal>HttpSessionIntegrationFilter</literal> will be used to
- associate the <literal>Authentication</literal> object with the
- <literal>SecurityContextHolder</literal> for the duration of each
- request.</para>
- </listitem>
- </orderedlist>
- <para>It's good that you're still here! It might sound involved, but
- you can relax as the Acegi Security System for Spring classes hide
- much of the complexity. Let's now look at how this is
- configured.</para>
- </sect2>
- <sect2 id="security-cas-install-server">
- <title>CAS Server Installation (Optional)</title>
- <para>As mentioned above, the Acegi Security System for Spring
- includes a <literal>PasswordHandler</literal> that bridges your
- existing <literal>AuthenticationManager</literal> into CAS. You do not
- need to use this <literal>PasswordHandler</literal> to use Acegi
- Security on the client side (any CAS
- <literal>PasswordHandler</literal> will do).</para>
- <para>To install, you will need to download and extract the CAS server
- archive. We used version 2.0.12. There will be a
- <literal>/web</literal> directory in the root of the deployment. Copy
- an <literal>applicationContext.xml</literal> containing your
- <literal>AuthenticationManager</literal> as well as the
- <literal>CasPasswordHandler</literal> into the
- <literal>/web/WEB-INF</literal> directory. A sample
- <literal>applicationContext.xml</literal> is included below:</para>
- <programlisting><bean id="inMemoryDaoImpl" class="org.acegisecurity.providers.dao.memory.InMemoryDaoImpl">
- <property name="userMap">
- <value>
- marissa=koala,ROLES_IGNORED_BY_CAS
- dianne=emu,ROLES_IGNORED_BY_CAS
- scott=wombat,ROLES_IGNORED_BY_CAS
- peter=opal,disabled,ROLES_IGNORED_BY_CAS
- </value>
- </property>
- </bean>
- <bean id="daoAuthenticationProvider" class="org.acegisecurity.providers.dao.DaoAuthenticationProvider">
- <property name="authenticationDao"><ref bean="inMemoryDaoImpl"/></property>
- </bean>
- <bean id="authenticationManager" class="org.acegisecurity.providers.ProviderManager">
- <property name="providers">
- <list>
- <ref bean="daoAuthenticationProvider"/>
- </list>
- </property>
- </bean>
- <bean id="casPasswordHandler" class="org.acegisecurity.adapters.cas.CasPasswordHandler">
- <property name="authenticationManager"><ref bean="authenticationManager"/></property>
- </bean></programlisting>
- <para>Note the granted authorities are ignored by CAS because it has
- no way of communicating the granted authorities to calling
- applications. CAS is only concerned with username and passwords (and
- the enabled/disabled status).</para>
- <para>Next you will need to edit the existing
- <literal>/web/WEB-INF/web.xml</literal> file. Add (or edit in the case
- of the <literal>authHandler</literal> property) the following
- lines:</para>
- <para><programlisting><context-param>
- <param-name>edu.yale.its.tp.cas.authHandler</param-name>
- <param-value>org.acegisecurity.adapters.cas.CasPasswordHandlerProxy</param-value>
- </context-param>
- <context-param>
- <param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
- <param-value>/WEB-INF/applicationContext.xml</param-value>
- </context-param>
- <listener>
- <listener-class>org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener</listener-class>
- </listener></programlisting></para>
- <para>Copy the <literal>spring.jar</literal> and
- <literal>acegi-security.jar</literal> files into
- <literal>/web/WEB-INF/lib</literal>. Now use the <literal>ant
- dist</literal> task in the <literal>build.xml</literal> in the root of
- the directory structure. This will create
- <literal>/lib/cas.war</literal>, which is ready for deployment to your
- servlet container.</para>
- <para>Note CAS heavily relies on HTTPS. You can't even test the system
- without a HTTPS certificate. Whilst you should refer to your web
- container's documentation on setting up HTTPS, if you need some
- additional help or a test certificate you might like to check the
- <literal>samples/contacts/etc/ssl</literal> directory.</para>
- </sect2>
- <sect2 id="security-cas-install-client">
- <title>CAS Acegi Security System Client Installation</title>
- <para>The web application side of CAS is made easy due to the Acegi
- Security System for Spring. It is assumed you already know the basics
- of using the Acegi Security System for Spring, so these are not
- covered again below. Only the CAS-specific beans are mentioned.</para>
- <para>You will need to add a <literal>ServiceProperties</literal> bean
- to your application context. This represents your service:</para>
- <para><programlisting><bean id="serviceProperties" class="org.acegisecurity.ui.cas.ServiceProperties">
- <property name="service"><value>https://localhost:8443/contacts-cas/j_acegi_cas_security_check</value></property>
- <property name="sendRenew"><value>false</value></property>
- </bean></programlisting></para>
- <para>The <literal>service</literal> must equal a URL that will be
- monitored by the <literal>CasProcessingFilter</literal>. The
- <literal>sendRenew</literal> defaults to false, but should be set to
- true if your application is particularly sensitive. What this
- parameter does is tell the CAS login service that a single sign on
- login is unacceptable. Instead, the user will need to re-enter their
- username and password in order to gain access to the service.</para>
- <para>The following beans should be configured to commence the CAS
- authentication process:</para>
- <para><programlisting><bean id="casProcessingFilter" class="org.acegisecurity.ui.cas.CasProcessingFilter">
- <property name="authenticationManager"><ref bean="authenticationManager"/></property>
- <property name="authenticationFailureUrl"><value>/casfailed.jsp</value></property>
- <property name="defaultTargetUrl"><value>/</value></property>
- <property name="filterProcessesUrl"><value>/j_acegi_cas_security_check</value></property>
- </bean>
- <bean id="securityEnforcementFilter" class="org.acegisecurity.intercept.web.SecurityEnforcementFilter">
- <property name="filterSecurityInterceptor"><ref bean="filterInvocationInterceptor"/></property>
- <property name="authenticationEntryPoint"><ref bean="casProcessingFilterEntryPoint"/></property>
- </bean>
- <bean id="casProcessingFilterEntryPoint" class="org.acegisecurity.ui.cas.CasProcessingFilterEntryPoint">
- <property name="loginUrl"><value>https://localhost:8443/cas/login</value></property>
- <property name="serviceProperties"><ref bean="serviceProperties"/></property>
- </bean></programlisting></para>
- <para>You will also need to add the
- <literal>CasProcessingFilter</literal> to web.xml:</para>
- <para><programlisting><filter>
- <filter-name>Acegi CAS Processing Filter</filter-name>
- <filter-class>org.acegisecurity.util.FilterToBeanProxy</filter-class>
- <init-param>
- <param-name>targetClass</param-name>
- <param-value>org.acegisecurity.ui.cas.CasProcessingFilter</param-value>
- </init-param>
- </filter>
- <filter-mapping>
- <filter-name>Acegi CAS Processing Filter</filter-name>
- <url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
- </filter-mapping></programlisting></para>
- <para>The <literal>CasProcessingFilter</literal> has very similar
- properties to the <literal>AuthenticationProcessingFilter</literal>
- (used for form-based logins). Each property is
- self-explanatory.</para>
- <para>For CAS to operate, the
- <literal>SecurityEnforcementFilter</literal> must have its
- <literal>authenticationEntryPoint</literal> property set to the
- <literal>CasProcessingFilterEntryPoint</literal> bean.</para>
- <para>The <literal>CasProcessingFilterEntryPoint</literal> must refer
- to the <literal>ServiceProperties</literal> bean (discussed above),
- which provides the URL to the enterprise's CAS login server. This is
- where the user's browser will be redirected.</para>
- <para>Next you need to add an <literal>AuthenticationManager</literal>
- that uses <literal>CasAuthenticationProvider</literal> and its
- collaborators:</para>
- <para><programlisting><bean id="authenticationManager" class="org.acegisecurity.providers.ProviderManager">
- <property name="providers">
- <list>
- <ref bean="casAuthenticationProvider"/>
- </list>
- </property>
- </bean>
- <bean id="casAuthenticationProvider" class="org.acegisecurity.providers.cas.CasAuthenticationProvider">
- <property name="casAuthoritiesPopulator"><ref bean="casAuthoritiesPopulator"/></property>
- <property name="casProxyDecider"><ref bean="casProxyDecider"/></property>
- <property name="ticketValidator"><ref bean="casProxyTicketValidator"/></property>
- <property name="statelessTicketCache"><ref bean="statelessTicketCache"/></property>
- <property name="key"><value>my_password_for_this_auth_provider_only</value></property>
- </bean>
- <bean id="casProxyTicketValidator" class="org.acegisecurity.providers.cas.ticketvalidator.CasProxyTicketValidator">
- <property name="casValidate"><value>https://localhost:8443/cas/proxyValidate</value></property>
- <property name="proxyCallbackUrl"><value>https://localhost:8443/contacts-cas/casProxy/receptor</value></property>
- <property name="serviceProperties"><ref bean="serviceProperties"/></property>
- <!-- <property name="trustStore"><value>/some/path/to/your/lib/security/cacerts</value></property> -->
- </bean>
- <bean id="cacheManager" class="org.springframework.cache.ehcache.EhCacheManagerFactoryBean">
- <property name="configLocation">
- <value>classpath:/ehcache-failsafe.xml</value>
- </property>
- </bean>
-
- <bean id="ticketCacheBackend" class="org.springframework.cache.ehcache.EhCacheFactoryBean">
- <property name="cacheManager">
- <ref local="cacheManager"/>
- </property>
- <property name="cacheName">
- <value>ticketCache</value>
- </property>
- </bean>
-
- <bean id="statelessTicketCache" class="org.acegisecurity.providers.cas.cache.EhCacheBasedTicketCache">
- <property name="cache"><ref local="ticketCacheBackend"/></property>
- </bean>
- <bean id="casAuthoritiesPopulator" class="org.acegisecurity.providers.cas.populator.DaoCasAuthoritiesPopulator">
- <property name="authenticationDao"><ref bean="inMemoryDaoImpl"/></property>
- </bean>
- <bean id="casProxyDecider" class="org.acegisecurity.providers.cas.proxy.RejectProxyTickets"/></programlisting></para>
- <para>The beans are all reasonable self-explanatory if you refer back
- to the "How CAS Works" section. Careful readers might notice one
- surprise: the <literal>statelessTicketCache</literal> property of the
- <literal>CasAuthenticationProvider</literal>. This is discussed in
- detail in the "Advanced CAS Usage" section.</para>
- <para>Note the <literal>CasProxyTicketValidator</literal> has a
- remarked out <literal>trustStore</literal> property. This property
- might be helpful if you experience HTTPS certificate issues. Also note
- the <literal>proxyCallbackUrl</literal> is set so the service can
- receive a proxy-granting ticket. As mentioned above, this is optional
- and unnecessary if you do not require proxy-granting tickets. If you
- do use this feature, you will need to configure a suitable servlet to
- receive the proxy-granting tickets. We suggest you use CAS'
- <literal>ProxyTicketReceptor</literal> by adding the following to your
- web application's <literal>web.xml</literal>:</para>
- <para><programlisting><servlet>
- <servlet-name>casproxy</servlet-name>
- <servlet-class>edu.yale.its.tp.cas.proxy.ProxyTicketReceptor</servlet-class>
- </servlet>
- <servlet-mapping>
- <servlet-name>casproxy</servlet-name>
- <url-pattern>/casProxy/*</url-pattern>
- </servlet-mapping></programlisting></para>
- <para>This completes the configuration of CAS. If you haven't made any
- mistakes, your web application should happily work within the
- framework of CAS single sign on. No other parts of the Acegi Security
- System for Spring need to be concerned about the fact CAS handled
- authentication.</para>
- <para>There is also a <literal>contacts-cas.war</literal> file in the
- sample applications directory. This sample application uses the above
- settings and can be deployed to see CAS in operation.</para>
- </sect2>
- <sect2 id="security-cas-advanced-usage">
- <title>Advanced CAS Usage</title>
- <para>The <literal>CasAuthenticationProvider</literal> distinguishes
- between stateful and stateless clients. A stateful client is
- considered any that originates via the
- <literal>CasProcessingFilter</literal>. A stateless client is any that
- presents an authentication request via the
- <literal>UsernamePasswordAuthenticationToken</literal> with a
- principal equal to
- <literal>CasProcessingFilter.CAS_STATELESS_IDENTIFIER</literal>.</para>
- <para>Stateless clients are likely to be via remoting protocols such
- as Hessian and Burlap. The <literal>BasicProcessingFilter</literal> is
- still used in this case, but the remoting protocol client is expected
- to present a username equal to the static string above, and a password
- equal to a CAS service ticket. Clients should acquire a CAS service
- ticket directly from the CAS server.</para>
- <para>Because remoting protocols have no way of presenting themselves
- within the context of a <literal>HttpSession</literal>, it isn't
- possible to rely on the <literal>HttpSession</literal>'s
- <literal>HttpSessionIntegrationFilter.ACEGI_SECURITY_AUTHENTICATION_KEY</literal>
- attribute to locate the <literal>CasAuthenticationToken</literal>.
- Furthermore, because the CAS server invalidates a service ticket after
- it has been validated by the <literal>TicketValidator</literal>,
- presenting the same service ticket on subsequent requests will not
- work. It is similarly very difficult to obtain a proxy-granting ticket
- for a remoting protocol client, as they are often deployed on client
- machines which rarely have HTTPS URLs that would be accessible to the
- CAS server.</para>
- <para>One obvious option is to not use CAS at all for remoting
- protocol clients. However, this would eliminate many of the desirable
- features of CAS.</para>
- <para>As a middle-ground, the
- <literal>CasAuthenticationProvider</literal> uses a
- <literal>StatelessTicketCache</literal>. This is used solely for
- requests with a principal equal to
- <literal>CasProcessingFilter.CAS_STATELESS_IDENTIFIER</literal>. What
- happens is the <literal>CasAuthenticationProvider</literal> will store
- the resulting <literal>CasAuthenticationToken</literal> in the
- <literal>StatelessTicketCache</literal>, keyed on the service ticket.
- Accordingly, remoting protocol clients can present the same service
- ticket and the <literal>CasAuthenticationProvider</literal> will not
- need to contact the CAS server for validation (aside from the first
- request).</para>
- <para>The other aspect of advanced CAS usage involves creating proxy
- tickets from the proxy-granting ticket. As indicated above, we
- recommend you use CAS' <literal>ProxyTicketReceptor</literal> to
- receive these tickets. The <literal>ProxyTicketReceptor</literal>
- provides a static method that enables you to obtain a proxy ticket by
- presenting the proxy-granting IOU ticket. You can obtain the
- proxy-granting IOU ticket by calling
- <literal>CasAuthenticationToken.getProxyGrantingTicketIou()</literal>.</para>
- <para>It is hoped you find CAS integration easy and useful with the
- Acegi Security System for Spring classes. Welcome to enterprise-wide
- single sign on!</para>
- </sect2>
- </sect1>
- <sect1 id="security-x509">
- <title>X509 Authentication</title>
- <sect2 id="security-x509-overview">
- <title>Overview</title>
- <para>The most common use of X509 certificate authentication is in
- verifying the identity of a server when using SSL, most commonly when
- using HTTPS from a browser. The browser will automatically check that
- the certificate presented by a server has been issued (ie digitally
- signed) by one of a list of trusted certificate authorities which it
- maintains.</para>
- <para>You can also use SSL with <quote>mutual authentication</quote>;
- the server will then request a valid certificate from the client as
- part of the SSL handshake. The server will authenticate the client by
- checking that it's certificate is signed by an acceptable authority.
- If a valid certificate has been provided, it can be obtained through
- the servlet API in an application. The Acegi Security X509 module
- extracts the certificate using a filter and passes it to the
- configured X509 authentication provider to allow any additional
- application-specific checks to be applied. It also maps the
- certificate to an application user and loads that user's set of
- granted authorities for use with the standard Acegi Security
- infrastructure.</para>
- <para>You should be familiar with using certificates and setting up
- client authentication for your servlet container before attempting to
- use it with Acegi Security. Most of the work is in creating and
- installing suitable certificates and keys. For example, if you're
- using Tomcat then read the instructions here <ulink
- url="http://jakarta.apache.org/tomcat/tomcat-5.0-doc/ssl-howto.html"></ulink>.
- It's important that you get this working before trying it out with
- Acegi Security.</para>
- </sect2>
- <sect2 id="security-x509-details">
- <title>X509 with Acegi Security</title>
- <para>With X509 authentication, there is no explicit login procedure
- so the implementation is relatively simple; there is no need to
- redirect requests in order to interact with the user. As a result,
- some of the classes behave slightly differently from their equivalents
- in other packages. For example, the default <quote>entry point</quote>
- class, which is normally responsible for starting the authentication
- process, is only invoked if the certificate is rejected and it always
- returns an error to the user. With a suitable bean configuration, the
- normal sequence of events is as follows <orderedlist>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>The <classname>X509ProcessingFilter</classname> extracts
- the certificate from the request and uses it as the credentials
- for an authentication request. The generated authentication
- request is an <classname>X509AuthenticationToken</classname>.
- The request is passed to the authentication manager.</para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>The <classname>X509AuthenticationProvider</classname>
- receives the token. Its main concern is to obtain the user
- information (in particular the user's granted authorities) that
- matches the certificate. It delegates this responsibility to an
- <interfacename>X509AuthoritiesPopulator</interfacename>.</para>
- </listitem>
- .
- <listitem>
- <para>The populator's single method,
- <methodname>getUserDetails(X509Certificate
- userCertificate)</methodname> is invoked. Implementations should
- return a <classname>UserDetails</classname> instance containing
- the array of <classname>GrantedAuthority</classname> objects for
- the user. This method can also choose to reject the certificate
- (for example if it doesn't contain a matching user name). In
- such cases it should throw a
- <exceptionname>BadCredentialsException</exceptionname>. A
- DAO-based implementation,
- <classname>DaoX509AuthoritiesPopulator</classname>, is provided
- which extracts the user's name from the subject <quote>common
- name</quote> (CN) in the certificate. It also allows you to set
- your own regular expression to match a different part of the
- subject's distinguished name. An
- <classname>AuthenticationDao</classname> is used to load the
- user information.<!-- TODO: Give email matching as an example --></para>
- </listitem>
-
- <listitem>
- <para>If everything has gone smoothly then there should be a
- valid <classname>Authentication</classname> object in the secure
- context and the invocation will procede as normal. If no
- certificate was found, or the certificate was rejected, then the
- <classname>SecurityEnforcementFilter</classname> will invoke the
- <classname>X509ProcessingFilterEntryPoint</classname> which
- returns a 403 error (forbidden) to the user.</para>
- </listitem>
-
- </orderedlist></para>
- </sect2>
- <sect2 id="security-x509-config">
- <title>Configuring the X509 Provider</title>
- <para>There is a version of the <link
- linkend="security-sample">Contacts Sample Application</link> which
- uses X509. Copy the beans and filter setup from this as a starting
- point for configuring your own application. A set of example
- certificates is also included which you can use to configure your
- server. These are <itemizedlist>
- <listitem>
- <para><filename>marissa.p12</filename>: A PKCS12 format file
- containing the client key and certificate. These should be
- installed in your browser. It maps to the user
- <quote>marissa</quote> in the application.</para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para><filename>server.p12</filename>: The server certificate
- and key for HTTPS connections.</para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para><filename>ca.jks</filename>: A Java keystore containing
- the certificate for the authority which issued marissa's
- certificate. This will be used by the container to validate
- client certificates.</para>
- </listitem>
- </itemizedlist> For JBoss 3.2.7 (with Tomcat 5.0), the SSL
- configuration in the <filename>server.xml</filename> file looks like
- this <programlisting><!-- SSL/TLS Connector configuration -->
- <Connector port="8443" address="${jboss.bind.address}"
- maxThreads="100" minSpareThreads="5" maxSpareThreads="15"
- scheme="https" secure="true"
- sslProtocol = "TLS"
- clientAuth="true" keystoreFile="${jboss.server.home.dir}/conf/server.p12"
- keystoreType="PKCS12" keystorePass="password"
- truststoreFile="${jboss.server.home.dir}/conf/ca.jks"
- truststoreType="JKS" truststorePass="password"
- /></programlisting><parameter>clientAuth</parameter> can also be set to
- <parameter>want</parameter> if you still want SSL connections to
- succeed even if the client doesn't provide a certificate. Obviously
- these clients won't be able to access any objects secured by Acegi
- Security (unless you use a non-X509 authentication mechanism, such as
- BASIC authentication, to authenticate the user).</para>
- </sect2>
- </sect1>
- <sect1 id="security-channels">
- <title>Channel Security</title>
- <sect2 id="security-channels-overview">
- <title>Overview</title>
- <para>In addition to coordinating the authentication and authorization
- requirements of your application, the Acegi Security System for Spring
- is also able to ensure unauthenticated web requests have certain
- properties. These properties may include being of a particular
- transport type, having a particular <literal>HttpSession</literal>
- attribute set and so on. The most common requirement is for your web
- requests to be received using a particular transport protocol, such as
- HTTPS.</para>
- <para>An important issue in considering transport security is that of
- session hijacking. Your web container manages a
- <literal>HttpSession</literal> by reference to a
- <literal>jsessionid</literal> that is sent to user agents either via a
- cookie or URL rewriting. If the <literal>jsessionid</literal> is ever
- sent over HTTP, there is a possibility that session identifier can be
- intercepted and used to impersonate the user after they complete the
- authentication process. This is because most web containers maintain
- the same session identifier for a given user, even after they switch
- from HTTP to HTTPS pages.</para>
- <para>If session hijacking is considered too significant a risk for
- your particular application, the only option is to use HTTPS for every
- request. This means the <literal>jsessionid</literal> is never sent
- across an insecure channel. You will need to ensure your
- <literal>web.xml</literal>-defined
- <literal><welcome-file></literal> points to a HTTPS location,
- and the application never directs the user to a HTTP location. The
- Acegi Security System for Spring provides a solution to assist with
- the latter.</para>
- </sect2>
- <sect2 id="security-channels-installation">
- <title>Configuration</title>
- <para>To utilise Acegi Security's channel security services, add the
- following lines to <literal>web.xml</literal>:</para>
- <para><programlisting><filter>
- <filter-name>Acegi Channel Processing Filter</filter-name>
- <filter-class>org.acegisecurity.util.FilterToBeanProxy</filter-class>
- <init-param>
- <param-name>targetClass</param-name>
- <param-value>org.acegisecurity.securechannel.ChannelProcessingFilter</param-value>
- </init-param>
- </filter>
- <filter-mapping>
- <filter-name>Acegi Channel Processing Filter</filter-name>
- <url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
- </filter-mapping></programlisting></para>
- <para>As usual when running <literal>FilterToBeanProxy</literal>, you
- will also need to configure the filter in your application
- context:</para>
- <para><programlisting><bean id="channelProcessingFilter" class="org.acegisecurity.securechannel.ChannelProcessingFilter">
- <property name="channelDecisionManager"><ref bean="channelDecisionManager"/></property>
- <property name="filterInvocationDefinitionSource">
- <value>
- CONVERT_URL_TO_LOWERCASE_BEFORE_COMPARISON
- \A/secure/.*\Z=REQUIRES_SECURE_CHANNEL
- \A/acegilogin.jsp.*\Z=REQUIRES_SECURE_CHANNEL
- \A/j_acegi_security_check.*\Z=REQUIRES_SECURE_CHANNEL
- \A.*\Z=REQUIRES_INSECURE_CHANNEL
- </value>
- </property>
- </bean>
- <bean id="channelDecisionManager" class="org.acegisecurity.securechannel.ChannelDecisionManagerImpl">
- <property name="channelProcessors">
- <list>
- <ref bean="secureChannelProcessor"/>
- <ref bean="insecureChannelProcessor"/>
- </list>
- </property>
- </bean>
- <bean id="secureChannelProcessor" class="org.acegisecurity.securechannel.SecureChannelProcessor"/>
- <bean id="insecureChannelProcessor" class="org.acegisecurity.securechannel.InsecureChannelProcessor"/></programlisting></para>
- <para>Like <literal>FilterSecurityInterceptor</literal>, Apache Ant
- style paths are also supported by the
- <literal>ChannelProcessingFilter</literal>.</para>
- <para>The <literal>ChannelProcessingFilter</literal> operates by
- filtering all web requests and determining the configuration
- attributes that apply. It then delegates to the
- <literal>ChannelDecisionManager</literal>. The default implementation,
- <literal>ChannelDecisionManagerImpl</literal>, should suffice in most
- cases. It simply delegates through the list of configured
- <literal>ChannelProcessor</literal> instances. A
- <literal>ChannelProcessor</literal> will review the request, and if it
- is unhappy with the request (eg it was received across the incorrect
- transport protocol), it will perform a redirect, throw an exception or
- take whatever other action is appropriate.</para>
- <para>Included with the Acegi Security System for Spring are two
- concrete <literal>ChannelProcessor</literal> implementations:
- <literal>SecureChannelProcessor</literal> ensures requests with a
- configuration attribute of <literal>REQUIRES_SECURE_CHANNEL</literal>
- are received over HTTPS, whilst
- <literal>InsecureChannelProcessor</literal> ensures requests with a
- configuration attribute of
- <literal>REQUIRES_INSECURE_CHANNEL</literal> are received over HTTP.
- Both implementations delegate to a
- <literal>ChannelEntryPoint</literal> if the required transport
- protocol is not used. The two <literal>ChannelEntryPoint</literal>
- implementations included with Acegi Security simply redirect the
- request to HTTP and HTTPS as appropriate. Appropriate defaults are
- assigned to the <literal>ChannelProcessor</literal> implementations
- for the configuration attribute keywords they respond to and the
- <literal>ChannelEntryPoint</literal> they delegate to, although you
- have the ability to override these using the application
- context.</para>
- <para>Note that the redirections are absolute (eg
- <literal>http://www.company.com:8080/app/page</literal>), not relative
- (eg <literal>/app/page</literal>). During testing it was discovered
- that Internet Explorer 6 Service Pack 1 has a bug whereby it does not
- respond correctly to a redirection instruction which also changes the
- port to use. Accordingly, absolute URLs are used in conjunction with
- bug detection logic in the <literal>PortResolverImpl</literal> that is
- wired up by default to many Acegi Security beans. Please refer to the
- JavaDocs for <literal>PortResolverImpl</literal> for further
- details.</para>
- </sect2>
- <sect2 id="security-channels-usage">
- <title>Usage</title>
- <para>Once configured, using the channel security filter is very easy.
- Simply request pages without regard to the protocol (ie HTTP or HTTPS)
- or port (eg 80, 8080, 443, 8443 etc). Obviously you'll still need a
- way of making the initial request (probably via the
- <literal>web.xml</literal> <literal><welcome-file></literal> or
- a well-known home page URL), but once this is done the filter will
- perform redirects as defined by your application context.</para>
- <para>You can also add your own <literal>ChannelProcessor</literal>
- implementations to the <literal>ChannelDecisionManagerImpl</literal>.
- For example, you might set a <literal>HttpSession</literal> attribute
- when a human user is detected via a "enter the contents of this
- graphic" procedure. Your <literal>ChannelProcessor</literal> would
- respond to say <literal>REQUIRES_HUMAN_USER</literal> configuration
- attributes and redirect to an appropriate entry point to start the
- human user validation process if the <literal>HttpSession</literal>
- attribute is not currently set.</para>
- <para>To decide whether a security check belongs in a
- <literal>ChannelProcessor</literal> or an
- <literal>AccessDecisionVoter</literal>, remember that the former is
- designed to handle unauthenticated requests, whilst the latter is
- designed to handle authenticated requests. The latter therefore has
- access to the granted authorities of the authenticated principal. In
- addition, problems detected by a <literal>ChannelProcessor</literal>
- will generally cause a HTTP/HTTPS redirection so its requirements can
- be met, whilst problems detected by an
- <literal>AccessDecisionVoter</literal> will ultimately result in an
- <literal>AccessDeniedException</literal> (depending on the governing
- <literal>AccessDecisionManager</literal>).</para>
- </sect2>
- </sect1>
- <sect1 id="acls">
- <title>Instance-Based Access Control List (ACL) Security</title>
- <sect2 id="acls-overview">
- <title>Overview</title>
- <para>Complex applications often will find the need to define access
- permissions not simply at a web request or method invocation level.
- Instead, security decisions need to comprise both who
- (<literal>Authentication</literal>), where
- (<literal>MethodInvocation</literal>) and what
- (<literal>SomeDomainObject</literal>). In other words, authorization
- decisions also need to consider the actual domain object instance
- subject of a method invocation.</para>
- <para>Imagine you're designing an application for a pet clinic. There
- will be two main groups of users of your Spring-based application:
- staff of the pet clinic, as well as the pet clinic's customers. The
- staff will have access to all of the data, whilst your customers will
- only be able to see their own customer records. To make it a little
- more interesting, your customers can allow other users to see their
- customer records, such as their "puppy preschool "mentor or president
- of their local "Pony Club". Using Acegi Security System for Spring as
- the foundation, you have several approaches that can be
- used:<orderedlist>
- <listitem>
- <para>Write your business methods to enforce the security. You
- could consult a collection within the
- <literal>Customer</literal> domain object instance to determine
- which users have access. By using the
- <literal>SecurityContextHolder.getContext().getAuthentication()</literal>,
- you'll be able to access the <literal>Authentication</literal>
- object.</para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para>Write an <literal>AccessDecisionVoter</literal> to enforce
- the security from the <literal>GrantedAuthority[]</literal>s
- stored in the <literal>Authentication</literal> object. This
- would mean your <literal>AuthenticationManager</literal> would
- need to populate the <literal>Authentication</literal> with
- custom <literal>GrantedAuthority</literal>[]s representing each
- of the <literal>Customer</literal> domain object instances the
- principal has access to.</para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para>Write an <literal>AccessDecisionVoter</literal> to enforce
- the security and open the target <literal>Customer</literal>
- domain object directly. This would mean your voter needs access
- to a DAO that allows it to retrieve the
- <literal>Customer</literal> object. It would then access the
- <literal>Customer</literal> object's collection of approved
- users and make the appropriate decision.</para>
- </listitem>
- </orderedlist></para>
- <para>Each one of these approaches is perfectly legitimate. However,
- the first couples your authorization checking to your business code.
- The main problems with this include the enhanced difficulty of unit
- testing and the fact it would be more difficult to reuse the
- <literal>Customer</literal> authorization logic elsewhere. Obtaining
- the <literal>GrantedAuthority[]</literal>s from the
- <literal>Authentication</literal> object is also fine, but will not
- scale to large numbers of <literal>Customer</literal>s. If a user
- might be able to access 5,000 <literal>Customer</literal>s (unlikely
- in this case, but imagine if it were a popular vet for a large Pony
- Club!) the amount of memory consumed and time required to construct
- the <literal>Authentication</literal> object would be undesirable. The
- final method, opening the <literal>Customer</literal> directly from
- external code, is probably the best of the three. It achieves
- separation of concerns, and doesn't misuse memory or CPU cycles, but
- it is still inefficient in that both the
- <literal>AccessDecisionVoter</literal> and the eventual business
- method itself will perform a call to the DAO responsible for
- retrieving the <literal>Customer</literal> object. Two accesses per
- method invocation is clearly undesirable. In addition, with every
- approach listed you'll need to write your own access control list
- (ACL) persistence and business logic from scratch.</para>
- <para>Fortunately, there is another alternative, which we'll talk
- about below.</para>
- </sect2>
- <sect2 id="acls-acl-package">
- <title>The org.acegisecurity.acl Package</title>
- <para>The <literal>org.acegisecurity.acl</literal> package is very
- simple, comprising only a handful of interfaces and a single class, as
- shown in Figure 6. It provides the basic foundation for access control
- list (ACL) lookups.</para>
- <para><mediaobject>
- <imageobject role="html">
- <imagedata align="center" fileref="images/ACLSecurity.gif"
- format="GIF" />
- </imageobject>
- <caption>
- <para>Figure 6: Access Control List Manager</para>
- </caption>
- </mediaobject></para>
- <para>The central interface is <literal>AclManager</literal>, which is
- defined by two methods:</para>
- <para><programlisting>public AclEntry[] getAcls(java.lang.Object domainInstance);
- public AclEntry[] getAcls(java.lang.Object domainInstance, Authentication authentication);</programlisting></para>
- <para><literal>AclManager</literal> is intended to be used as a
- collaborator against your business objects, or, more desirably,
- <literal>AccessDecisionVoter</literal>s. This means you use Spring's
- normal <literal>ApplicationContext</literal> features to wire up your
- <literal>AccessDecisionVoter</literal> (or business method) with an
- <literal>AclManager</literal>. Consideration was given to placing the
- ACL information in the <literal>ContextHolder</literal>, but it was
- felt this would be inefficient both in terms of memory usage as well
- as the time spent loading potentially unused ACL information. The
- trade-off of needing to wire up a collaborator for those objects
- requiring ACL information is rather minor, particularly in a
- Spring-managed application.</para>
- <para>The first method of the <literal>AclManager</literal> will
- return all ACLs applying to the domain object instance passed to it.
- The second method does the same, but only returns those ACLs which
- apply to the passed <literal>Authentication</literal> object.</para>
- <para>The <literal>AclEntry</literal> interface returned by
- <literal>AclManager</literal> is merely a marker interface. You will
- need to provide an implementation that reflects that ACL permissions
- for your application.</para>
- <para>Rounding out the <literal>org.acegisecurity.acl</literal>
- package is an <literal>AclProviderManager</literal> class, with a
- corresponding <literal>AclProvider</literal> interface.
- <literal>AclProviderManager</literal> is a concrete implementation of
- <literal>AclManager</literal>, which iterates through registered
- <literal>AclProvider</literal>s. The first
- <literal>AclProvider</literal> that indicates it can authoritatively
- provide ACL information for the presented domain object instance will
- be used. This is very similar to the
- <literal>AuthenticationProvider</literal> interface used for
- authentication.</para>
- <para>With this background, let's now look at a usable ACL
- implementation.</para>
- </sect2>
- <sect2 id="acls-masking">
- <title>Integer Masked ACLs</title>
- <para>Acegi Security System for Spring includes a production-quality
- ACL provider implementation, which is shown in Figure 7.</para>
- <para><mediaobject>
- <imageobject role="html">
- <imagedata align="center" fileref="images/BasicAclProvider.gif"
- format="GIF" />
- </imageobject>
- <caption>
- <para>Figure 7: Basic ACL Manager</para>
- </caption>
- </mediaobject></para>
- <para>The implementation is based on integer masking, which is
- commonly used for ACL permissions given its flexibility and speed.
- Anyone who has used Unix's <literal>chmod</literal> command will know
- all about this type of permission masking (eg <literal>chmod
- 777</literal>). You'll find the classes and interfaces for the integer
- masking ACL package under
- <literal>org.acegisecurity.acl.basic</literal>.</para>
- <para>Extending the <literal>AclEntry</literal> interface is a
- <literal>BasicAclEntry</literal> interface, with the main methods
- shown below:</para>
- <para><programlisting>public AclObjectIdentity getAclObjectIdentity();
- public AclObjectIdentity getAclObjectParentIdentity();
- public int getMask();
- public java.lang.Object getRecipient();</programlisting></para>
- <para>As shown, each <literal>BasicAclEntry</literal> has four main
- properties. The <literal>mask</literal> is the integer that represents
- the permissions granted to the <literal>recipient</literal>. The
- <literal>aclObjectIdentity</literal> is able to identify the domain
- object instance for which the ACL applies, and the
- <literal>aclObjectParentIdentity</literal> optionally specifies the
- parent of the domain object instance. Multiple
- <literal>BasicAclEntry</literal>s usually exist against a single
- domain object instance, and as suggested by the parent identity
- property, permissions granted higher in the object hierarchy will
- trickle down and be inherited (unless blocked by integer zero).</para>
- <para><literal>BasicAclEntry</literal> implementations typically
- provide convenience methods, such as
- <literal>isReadAllowed()</literal>, to avoid application classes
- needing to perform bit masking themselves. The
- <literal>SimpleAclEntry</literal> and
- <literal>AbstractBasicAclEntry</literal> demonstrate and provide much
- of this bit masking logic.</para>
- <para>The <literal>AclObjectIdentity</literal> itself is merely a
- marker interface, so you need to provide implementations for your
- domain objects. However, the package does include a
- <literal>NamedEntityObjectIdentity</literal> implementation which will
- suit many needs. The <literal>NamedEntityObjectIdentity</literal>
- identifies a given domain object instance by the classname of the
- instance and the identity of the instance. A
- <literal>NamedEntityObjectIdentity</literal> can be constructed
- manually (by calling the constructor and providing the classname and
- identity <literal>String</literal>s), or by passing in any domain
- object that contains a <literal>getId()</literal> method.</para>
- <para>The actual <literal>AclProvider</literal> implementation is
- named <literal>BasicAclProvider</literal>. It has adopted a similar
- design to that used by the authentication-related
- <literal>DaoAuthenticationProvder</literal>. Specifically, you define
- a <literal>BasicAclDao</literal> against the provider, so different
- ACL repository types can be accessed in a pluggable manner. The
- <literal>BasicAclProvider</literal> also supports pluggable cache
- providers (with Acegi Security System for Spring including an
- implementation that fronts EH-CACHE).</para>
- <para>The <literal>BasicAclDao</literal> interface is very simple to
- implement:</para>
- <para><programlisting>public BasicAclEntry[] getAcls(AclObjectIdentity aclObjectIdentity);</programlisting></para>
- <para>A <literal>BasicAclDao</literal> implementation needs to
- understand the presented <literal>AclObjectIdentity</literal> and how
- it maps to a storage repository, find the relevant records, and create
- appropriate <literal>BasicAclEntry</literal> objects and return
- them.</para>
- <para>Acegi Security includes a single <literal>BasicAclDao</literal>
- implementation called <literal>JdbcDaoImpl</literal>. As implied by
- the name, <literal>JdbcDaoImpl</literal> accesses ACL information from
- a JDBC database. There is also an extended version of this DAO,
- <literal>JdbcExtendedDaoImpl</literal>, which provides CRUD operations
- on the JDBC database, although we won't discuss these features here.
- The default database schema and some sample data will aid in
- understanding its function:</para>
- <para><programlisting>CREATE TABLE acl_object_identity (
- id IDENTITY NOT NULL,
- object_identity VARCHAR_IGNORECASE(250) NOT NULL,
- parent_object INTEGER,
- acl_class VARCHAR_IGNORECASE(250) NOT NULL,
- CONSTRAINT unique_object_identity UNIQUE(object_identity),
- FOREIGN KEY (parent_object) REFERENCES acl_object_identity(id)
- );
- CREATE TABLE acl_permission (
- id IDENTITY NOT NULL,
- acl_object_identity INTEGER NOT NULL,
- recipient VARCHAR_IGNORECASE(100) NOT NULL,
- mask INTEGER NOT NULL,
- CONSTRAINT unique_recipient UNIQUE(acl_object_identity, recipient),
- FOREIGN KEY (acl_object_identity) REFERENCES acl_object_identity(id)
- );
- INSERT INTO acl_object_identity VALUES (1, 'corp.DomainObject:1', null, 'org.acegisecurity.acl.basic.SimpleAclEntry');
- INSERT INTO acl_object_identity VALUES (2, 'corp.DomainObject:2', 1, 'org.acegisecurity.acl.basic.SimpleAclEntry');
- INSERT INTO acl_object_identity VALUES (3, 'corp.DomainObject:3', 1, 'org.acegisecurity.acl.basic.SimpleAclEntry');
- INSERT INTO acl_object_identity VALUES (4, 'corp.DomainObject:4', 1, 'org.acegisecurity.acl.basic.SimpleAclEntry');
- INSERT INTO acl_object_identity VALUES (5, 'corp.DomainObject:5', 3, 'org.acegisecurity.acl.basic.SimpleAclEntry');
- INSERT INTO acl_object_identity VALUES (6, 'corp.DomainObject:6', 3, 'org.acegisecurity.acl.basic.SimpleAclEntry');
- INSERT INTO acl_permission VALUES (null, 1, 'ROLE_SUPERVISOR', 1);
- INSERT INTO acl_permission VALUES (null, 2, 'ROLE_SUPERVISOR', 0);
- INSERT INTO acl_permission VALUES (null, 2, 'marissa', 2);
- INSERT INTO acl_permission VALUES (null, 3, 'scott', 14);
- INSERT INTO acl_permission VALUES (null, 6, 'scott', 1);</programlisting></para>
- <para>As can be seen, database-specific constraints are used
- extensively to ensure the integrity of the ACL information. If you
- need to use a different database (Hypersonic SQL statements are shown
- above), you should try to implement equivalent constraints.</para>
- <para>The <literal>JdbcDaoImpl</literal> will only respond to requests
- for <literal>NamedEntityObjectIdentity</literal>s. It converts such
- identities into a single <literal>String</literal>, comprising
- the<literal> NamedEntityObjectIdentity.getClassname()</literal> +
- <literal>":"</literal> +
- <literal>NamedEntityObjectIdentity.getId()</literal>. This yields the
- type of <literal>object_identity</literal> values shown above. As
- indicated by the sample data, each database row corresponds to a
- single <literal>BasicAclEntry</literal>. As stated earlier and
- demonstrated by <literal>corp.DomainObject:2</literal> in the above
- sample data, each domain object instance will often have multiple
- <literal>BasicAclEntry</literal>[]s.</para>
- <para>As <literal>JdbcDaoImpl</literal> is required to return concrete
- <literal>BasicAclEntry</literal> classes, it needs to know which
- <literal>BasicAclEntry</literal> implementation it is to create and
- populate. This is the role of the <literal>acl_class</literal> column.
- <literal>JdbcDaoImpl</literal> will create the indicated class and set
- its <literal>mask</literal>, <literal>recipient</literal>,
- <literal>aclObjectIdentity</literal> and
- <literal>aclObjectParentIdentity</literal> properties.</para>
- <para>As you can probably tell from the sample data, the
- <literal>parent_object_identity</literal> value can either be null or
- in the same format as the <literal>object_identity</literal>. If
- non-null, <literal>JdbcDaoImpl</literal> will create a
- <literal>NamedEntityObjectIdentity</literal> to place inside the
- returned <literal>BasicAclEntry</literal> class.</para>
- <para>Returning to the <literal>BasicAclProvider</literal>, before it
- can poll the <literal>BasicAclDao</literal> implementation it needs to
- convert the domain object instance it was passed into an
- <literal>AclObjectIdentity</literal>.
- <literal>BasicAclProvider</literal> has a <literal>protected
- AclObjectIdentity obtainIdentity(Object domainInstance)</literal>
- method that is responsible for this. As a protected method, it enables
- subclasses to easily override. The normal implementation checks
- whether the passed domain object instance implements the
- <literal>AclObjectIdentityAware</literal> interface, which is merely a
- getter for an <literal>AclObjectIdentity</literal>. If the domain
- object does implement this interface, that is the identity returned.
- If the domain object does not implement this interface, the method
- will attempt to create an <literal>AclObjectIdentity</literal> by
- passing the domain object instance to the constructor of a class
- defined by the
- <literal>BasicAclProvider.getDefaultAclObjectIdentity()</literal>
- method. By default the defined class is
- <literal>NamedEntityObjectIdentity</literal>, which was described in
- more detail above. Therefore, you will need to either (i) provide a
- <literal>getId()</literal> method on your domain objects, (ii)
- implement <literal>AclObjectIdentityAware</literal> on your domain
- objects, (iii) provide an alternative
- <literal>AclObjectIdentity</literal> implementation that will accept
- your domain object in its constructor, or (iv) override the
- <literal>obtainIdentity(Object)</literal> method.</para>
- <para>Once the <literal>AclObjectIdentity</literal> of the domain
- object instance is determined, the <literal>BasicAclProvider</literal>
- will poll the DAO to obtain its <literal>BasicAclEntry</literal>[]s.
- If any of the entries returned by the DAO indicate there is a parent,
- that parent will be polled, and the process will repeat until there is
- no further parent. The permissions assigned to a
- <literal>recipient</literal> closest to the domain object instance
- will always take priority and override any inherited permissions. From
- the sample data above, the following inherited permissions would
- apply:</para>
- <para><programlisting>--- Mask integer 0 = no permissions
- --- Mask integer 1 = administer
- --- Mask integer 2 = read
- --- Mask integer 6 = read and write permissions
- --- Mask integer 14 = read and write and create permissions
- ---------------------------------------------------------------------
- --- *** INHERITED RIGHTS FOR DIFFERENT INSTANCES AND RECIPIENTS ***
- --- INSTANCE RECIPIENT PERMISSION(S) (COMMENT #INSTANCE)
- ---------------------------------------------------------------------
- --- 1 ROLE_SUPERVISOR Administer
- --- 2 ROLE_SUPERVISOR None (overrides parent #1)
- --- marissa Read
- --- 3 ROLE_SUPERVISOR Administer (from parent #1)
- --- scott Read, Write, Create
- --- 4 ROLE_SUPERVISOR Administer (from parent #1)
- --- 5 ROLE_SUPERVISOR Administer (from parent #3)
- --- scott Read, Write, Create (from parent #3)
- --- 6 ROLE_SUPERVISOR Administer (from parent #3)
- --- scott Administer (overrides parent #3)</programlisting></para>
- <para>So the above explains how a domain object instance has its
- <literal>AclObjectIdentity</literal> discovered, and the
- <literal>BasicAclDao</literal> will be polled successively until an
- array of inherited permissions is constructed for the domain object
- instance. The final step is to determine the
- <literal>BasicAclEntry</literal>[]s that are actually applicable to a
- given <literal>Authentication</literal> object.</para>
- <para>As you would recall, the <literal>AclManager</literal> (and all
- delegates, up to and including <literal>BasicAclProvider</literal>)
- provides a method which returns only those
- <literal>BasicAclEntry</literal>[]s applying to a passed
- <literal>Authentication</literal> object.
- <literal>BasicAclProvider</literal> delivers this functionality by
- delegating the filtering operation to an
- <literal>EffectiveAclsResolver</literal> implementation. The default
- implementation,
- <literal>GrantedAuthorityEffectiveAclsResolver</literal>, will iterate
- through the <literal>BasicAclEntry</literal>[]s and include only those
- where the <literal>recipient</literal> is equal to either the
- <literal>Authentication</literal>'s <literal>principal</literal> or
- any of the <literal>Authentication</literal>'s
- <literal>GrantedAuthority</literal>[]s. Please refer to the JavaDocs
- for more information.</para>
- <mediaobject>
- <imageobject role="html">
- <imagedata align="center" fileref="images/Permissions.gif"
- format="GIF" />
- </imageobject>
- <caption>
- <para>Figure 8: ACL Instantiation Approach</para>
- </caption>
- </mediaobject>
- </sect2>
- <sect2 id="acls-conclusion">
- <title>Conclusion</title>
- <para>Acegi Security's instance-specific ACL packages shield you from
- much of the complexity of developing your own ACL approach. The
- interfaces and classes detailed above provide a scalable, customisable
- ACL solution that is decoupled from your application code. Whilst the
- reference documentation may suggest complexity, the basic
- implementation is able to support most typical applications
- out-of-the-box.</para>
- </sect2>
- </sect1>
- <sect1 id="security-filters">
- <title>Filters</title>
- <sect2 id="security-filters-overview">
- <title>Overview</title>
- <para>The Acegi Security System for Spring uses filters extensively.
- Each filter is covered in detail in a respective section of this
- document. This section includes information that applies to all
- filters.</para>
- </sect2>
- <sect2 id="security-filters-filtertobeanproxy">
- <title>FilterToBeanProxy</title>
- <para>Most filters are configured using the
- <literal>FilterToBeanProxy</literal>. An example configuration from
- <literal>web.xml</literal> follows:</para>
- <para><programlisting><filter>
- <filter-name>Acegi HTTP Request Security Filter</filter-name>
- <filter-class>org.acegisecurity.util.FilterToBeanProxy</filter-class>
- <init-param>
- <param-name>targetClass</param-name>
- <param-value>org.acegisecurity.ClassThatImplementsFilter</param-value>
- </init-param>
- </filter></programlisting></para>
- <para>Notice that the filter in <literal>web.xml</literal> is actually
- a <literal>FilterToBeanProxy</literal>, and not the filter that will
- actually implements the logic of the filter. What
- <literal>FilterToBeanProxy</literal> does is delegate the
- <literal>Filter</literal>'s methods through to a bean which is
- obtained from the Spring application context. This enables the bean to
- benefit from the Spring application context lifecycle support and
- configuration flexibility. The bean must implement
- <literal>javax.servlet.Filter</literal>.</para>
- <para>The <literal>FilterToBeanProxy</literal> only requires a single
- initialization parameter, <literal>targetClass</literal> or
- <literal>targetBean</literal>. The <literal>targetClass</literal>
- parameter locates the first object in the application context of the
- specified class, whilst <literal>targetBean</literal> locates the
- object by bean name. Like standard Spring web applications, the
- <literal>FilterToBeanProxy</literal> accesses the application context
- via<literal>
- WebApplicationContextUtils.getWebApplicationContext(ServletContext)</literal>,
- so you should configure a <literal>ContextLoaderListener</literal> in
- <literal>web.xml</literal>.</para>
- <para>There is a lifecycle issue to consider when hosting
- <literal>Filter</literal>s in an IoC container instead of a servlet
- container. Specifically, which container should be responsible for
- calling the <literal>Filter</literal>'s "startup" and "shutdown"
- methods? It is noted that the order of initialization and destruction
- of a <literal>Filter</literal> can vary by servlet container, and this
- can cause problems if one <literal>Filter</literal> depends on
- configuration settings established by an earlier initialized
- <literal>Filter</literal>. The Spring IoC container on the other hand
- has more comprehensive lifecycle/IoC interfaces (such as
- <literal>InitializingBean</literal>,
- <literal>DisposableBean</literal>, <literal>BeanNameAware</literal>,
- <literal>ApplicationContextAware</literal> and many others) as well as
- a well-understood interface contract, predictable method invocation
- ordering, autowiring support, and even options to avoid implementing
- Spring interfaces (eg the <literal>destroy-method</literal> attribute
- in Spring XML). For this reason we recommend the use of Spring
- lifecycle services instead of servlet container lifecycle services
- wherever possible. By default <literal>FilterToBeanProxy</literal>
- will not delegate <literal>init(FilterConfig)</literal> and
- <literal>destroy()</literal> methods through to the proxied bean. If
- you do require such invocations to be delegated, set the
- <literal>lifecycle</literal> initialization parameter to
- <literal>servlet-container-managed</literal>.</para>
- </sect2>
- <sect2 id="security-filters-filterchainproxy">
- <title>FilterChainProxy</title>
- <para>We strongly recommend to use <literal>FilterChainProxy</literal>
- instead of adding multiple filters to
- <literal>web.xml</literal>.</para>
- <para>Whilst <literal>FilterToBeanProxy</literal> is a very useful
- class, the problem is that the lines of code required for
- <literal><filter></literal> and
- <literal><filter-mapping></literal> entries in
- <literal>web.xml</literal> explodes when using more than a few
- filters. To overcome this issue, Acegi Security provides a
- <literal>FilterChainProxy</literal> class. It is wired using a
- <literal>FilterToBeanProxy</literal> (just like in the example above),
- but the target class is
- <literal>org.acegisecurity.util.FilterChainProxy</literal>. The filter
- chain is then declared in the application context, using code such as
- this:</para>
- <para><programlisting><bean id="filterChainProxy" class="org.acegisecurity.util.FilterChainProxy">
- <property name="filterInvocationDefinitionSource">
- <value>
- CONVERT_URL_TO_LOWERCASE_BEFORE_COMPARISON
- PATTERN_TYPE_APACHE_ANT
- /webServices/**=httpSessionContextIntegrationFilterWithASCFalse,basicProcessingFilter,securityEnforcementFilter
- /**=httpSessionContextIntegrationFilterWithASCTrue,authenticationProcessingFilter,securityEnforcementFilter
- </value>
- </property>
- </bean></programlisting></para>
- <para>You may notice similarities with the way
- <literal>SecurityEnforcementFilter</literal> is declared. Both regular
- expressions and Ant Paths are supported, and the most specific URIs
- appear first. At runtime the <literal>FilterChainProxy</literal> will
- locate the first URI pattern that matches the current web request.
- Each of the corresponding configuration attributes represent the name
- of a bean defined in the application context. The filters will then be
- invoked in the order they are specified, with standard
- <literal>FilterChain</literal> behaviour being respected (a
- <literal>Filter</literal> can elect not to proceed with the chain if
- it wishes to end processing).</para>
- <para>As you can see, <literal>FitlerChainProxy</literal> requires the
- duplication of filter names for different request patterns (in the
- above example, <literal>httpSessionContextIntegrationFilter</literal>
- and <literal>securityEnforcementFilter</literal> are duplicated). This
- design decision was made to enable <literal>FilterChainProxy</literal>
- to specify different <literal>Filter</literal> invocation orders for
- different URI patterns, and also to improve both the expressiveness
- (in terms of regular expressions, Ant Paths, and any custom
- <literal>FilterInvocationDefinitionSource</literal> implementations)
- and clarity of which <literal>Filter</literal>s should be
- invoked.</para>
- <para>You may have noticed we have declared two
- <literal>HttpSessionContextIntegrationFilter</literal>s in the filter
- chain (<literal>ASC</literal> is short for
- <literal>allowSessionCreation</literal>, a property of
- <literal>HttpSessionContextIntegrationFilter</literal>). As web
- services will never present a <literal>jsessionid</literal> on future
- requests, creating <literal>HttpSession</literal>s for such user
- agents would be wasteful. If you had a high-volume application which
- required maximum scalability, we recommend you use the approach shown
- above. For smaller applications, using a single
- <literal>HttpSessionContextIntegrationFilter</literal> (with its
- default <literal>allowSessionCreation</literal> as
- <literal>true</literal>) would likely be sufficient.</para>
- <para>In relation to lifecycle issues, the
- <literal>FilterChainProxy</literal> will always delegate
- <literal>init(FilterConfig)</literal> and <literal>destroy()</literal>
- methods through to the underlaying <literal>Filter</literal>s if such
- methods are called against <literal>FilterChainProxy</literal> itself.
- In this case, <literal>FilterChainProxy</literal> guarantees to only
- initialize and destroy each <literal>Filter</literal> once,
- irrespective of how many times it is declared by the
- <literal>FilterInvocationDefinitionSource</literal>. You control the
- overall choice as to whether these methods are called or not via the
- <literal>lifecycle</literal> initialization parameter of the
- <literal>FilterToBeanProxy</literal> that proxies
- <literal>FilterChainProxy</literal>. As discussed above, by default
- any servlet container lifecycle invocations are not delegated through
- to <literal>FilterChainProxy</literal>.</para>
- </sect2>
- <sect2 id="security-filters-order">
- <title>Filter Ordering</title>
- <para>The order that filters are defined in <literal>web.xml</literal>
- is important. NB: THE FILTER ORDER CHANGED FROM VERSION 0.8.0.</para>
- <para>Irrespective of which filters you are actually using, the order
- of the <literal><filter-mapping></literal>s should be as
- follows:</para>
- <orderedlist>
- <listitem>
- <para><literal>ChannelProcessingFilter</literal>, because it might
- need to redirect to a different protocol</para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para><literal>ConcurrentSessionFilter</literal>, because it
- doesn't use any <literal>SecurityContextHolder</literal>
- functionality but needs to update the
- <literal>SessionRegistry</literal> to reflect ongoing requests
- from the principal</para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para><literal>HttpSessionContextIntegrationFilter</literal>, so a
- <literal>Context</literal> can be setup in the
- <literal>SecurityContextHolder</literal> at the beginning of a web
- request, and any changes to the Context can be copied to the
- <literal>HttpSession</literal> when the web request ends (ready
- for use with the next web request)</para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para>Authentication processing mechanisms -
- <literal>AuthenticationProcessingFilter</literal>,
- <literal>CasProcessingFilter</literal>,
- <literal>BasicProcessingFilter, HttpRequestIntegrationFilter,
- JbossIntegrationFilter</literal> etc - so that the
- <literal>SecurityContextHolder</literal> can be modified to
- contain a valid <literal>Authentication</literal> request
- token</para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para>The <literal>ContextHolderAwareRequestFilter</literal>, if
- you are using it to install an Acegi Security aware
- <literal>HttpServletRequestWrapper</literal> into your servlet
- container</para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para><literal>RememberMeProcessingFilter</literal>, so that if no
- earlier authentication processing mechanism updated the
- <literal>SecurityContextHolder</literal>, and the request presents
- a cookie that enables remember-me services to take place, a
- suitable remembered
- <literal><literal>Authentication</literal></literal> object will
- be put there</para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para><literal>AnonymousProcessingFilter</literal>, so that if no
- earlier authentication processing mechanism updated the
- <literal>SecurityContextHolder</literal>, an anonymous
- <literal>Authentication</literal> object will be put there</para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para><literal>SecurityEnforcementFilter</literal>, to protect web
- URIs and catch any Acegi Security exceptions so that an
- appropriate <literal>AuthenticationEntryPoint</literal> can be
- launched</para>
- </listitem>
- </orderedlist>
- <para>All of the above filters use
- <literal>FilterToBeanProxy</literal> or
- <literal>FilterChainProxy</literal>, which is discussed in the
- previous sections. It is recommended that a single
- <literal>FilterToBeanProxy</literal> proxy through to a single
- <literal>FilterChainProxy</literal> for each application, with that
- <literal>FilterChainProxy</literal> defining all of the Acegi Security
- <literal>Filter</literal>s.</para>
- <para>If you're using SiteMesh, ensure the Acegi Security filters
- execute before the SiteMesh filters are called. This enables the
- <literal>SecurityContextHolder</literal> to be populated in time for
- use by SiteMesh decorators.</para>
- </sect2>
- </sect1>
- <sect1 id="security-sample">
- <title>Contacts Sample Application</title>
- <para>Included with the Acegi Security System for Spring is a very
- simple application that can demonstrate the basic security facilities
- provided by the system (and confirm your Container Adapter is properly
- configured if you're using one).</para>
- <para>If you build from CVS, the Contacts sample application includes
- three deployable versions:
- <literal>acegi-security-sample-contacts-filter.war</literal> is
- configured with the HTTP Session Authentication approach. The
- <literal><literal>acegi-security-sample-contacts-ca.war</literal></literal>
- is configured to use a Container Adapter. Finally,
- <literal>acegi-security-sample-contacts-cas.war</literal> is designed to
- work with a Yale CAS server. If you're just wanting to see how the
- sample application works, please use
- <literal><literal>acegi-security-sample-contacts-filter.war</literal></literal>
- as it does not require special configuration of your container. This is
- also the artifact included in ofiical release ZIPs.</para>
- <para>To deploy, simply copy the relevant WAR file from the Acegi
- Security System for Spring distribution into your container’s
- <literal>webapps</literal> directory.</para>
- <para>After starting your container, check the application can load.
- Visit
- <literal>http://localhost:</literal><literal><literal>8080/</literal>acegi-security-sample-contacts-filter</literal>
- (or whichever URL is appropriate for your web container and the WAR you
- deployed). A random contact should be displayed. Click "Refresh" several
- times and you will see different contacts. The business method that
- provides this random contact is not secured.</para>
- <para>Next, click "Debug". You will be prompted to authenticate, and a
- series of usernames and passwords are suggested on that page. Simply
- authenticate with any of these and view the resulting page. It should
- contain a success message similar to the following:</para>
- <blockquote>
- <para>Context on SecurityContextHolder is of type:
- org.acegisecurity.context.SecurityContextImpl</para>
- <para>The Context implements SecurityContext.</para>
- <para>Authentication object is of type:
- org.acegisecurity.adapters.PrincipalAcegiUserToken</para>
- <para>Authentication object as a String:
- org.acegisecurity.adapters.PrincipalAcegiUserToken@e9a7c2: Username:
- marissa; Password: [PROTECTED]; Authenticated: true; Granted
- Authorities: ROLE_TELLER, ROLE_SUPERVISOR</para>
- <para>Authentication object holds the following granted
- authorities:</para>
- <para>ROLE_TELLER (getAuthority(): ROLE_TELLER)</para>
- <para>ROLE_SUPERVISOR (getAuthority(): ROLE_SUPERVISOR)</para>
- <para>SUCCESS! Your [container adapter|web filter] appears to be
- properly configured!</para>
- </blockquote>
- <para>If you receive a different message, and deployed
- <literal>acegi-security-sample-contacts-ca.war</literal>, check you have
- properly configured your Container Adapter as described elsewhere in
- this reference guide.</para>
- <para>Once you successfully receive the above message, return to the
- sample application's home page and click "Manage". You can then try out
- the application. Notice that only the contacts available to the
- currently logged on user are displayed, and only users with
- <literal>ROLE_SUPERVISOR</literal> are granted access to delete their
- contacts. Behind the scenes, the
- <literal>MethodSecurityInterceptor</literal> is securing the business
- objects. If you're using
- <literal><literal>acegi-security-sample-contacts-filter.war</literal></literal>
- or <literal>acegi-security-sample-contacts-cas.war</literal>, the
- <literal>FilterSecurityInterceptor</literal> is also securing the HTTP
- requests. If using either of these WARs, be sure to try visiting
- <literal>http://localhost:8080/contacts/secure/super</literal>, which
- will demonstrate access being denied by the
- <literal>SecurityEnforcementFilter</literal>. Note the sample
- application enables you to modify the access control lists associated
- with different contacts. Be sure to give this a try and understand how
- it works by reviewing the sample application's application context XML
- files.</para>
- <para>The Contacts sample application also include a
- <literal>client</literal> directory. Inside you will find a small
- application that queries the backend business objects using several web
- services protocols. This demonstrates how to use the Acegi Security
- System for Spring for authentication with Spring remoting protocols. To
- try this client, ensure your servlet container is still running the
- Contacts sample application, and then execute <literal>client marissa
- koala</literal>. The command-line parameters respectively represent the
- username to use, and the password to use. Note that you may need to edit
- <literal>client.properties</literal> to use a different target
- URL.</para>
- <para>Please note the sample application's <literal>client</literal>
- does not currently support CAS. You can still give it a try, though, if
- you're ambitious: try <literal>client _cas_stateless_
- YOUR-SERVICE-TICKET-ID</literal>.</para>
- </sect1>
- <sect1 id="security-become-involved">
- <title>Become Involved</title>
- <para>We welcome you to become involved in the Acegi Security System for
- Spring project. There are many ways of contributing, including reading
- the mailing list and responding to questions from other people, writing
- new code, improving existing code, assisting with documentation, or
- simply making suggestions. Please read our project policies web page
- that is available on the Acegi Security home page. This explains the
- path to become a committer, and the administration approaches we use
- with the project.</para>
- <para>SourceForge provides CVS services for the project, allowing
- anybody to access the latest code. If you wish to contribute new code,
- please observe the following requirements. These exist to maintain the
- quality and consistency of the project:</para>
- <itemizedlist>
- <listitem>
- <para>Use a suitable IDE Jalopy plug-in to convert your code into
- the project's consistent style</para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para>Ensure your code does not break any unit tests (run the Maven
- <literal>test:test</literal> goal)</para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para>If you have added new code, please provide suitable unit tests
- (use the Maven <literal>clover:html-report</literal> to view
- coverage)</para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para>Join the acegisecurity-developer and acegisecurity-cvs mailing
- lists so you're in the loop</para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para>Use CamelCase</para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para>Add code contributions to JIRA</para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para>Add a CVS <literal>$Id: index.xml,v 1.3 2004/04/02 21:12:25
- fbos Exp $</literal> tag to the JavaDocs for any new class you
- create</para>
- </listitem>
- </itemizedlist>
- </sect1>
- <sect1 id="security-further">
- <title>Further Information</title>
- <para>Questions and comments on the Acegi Security System for Spring are
- welcome. Please use the Spring Community Forum web site at
- <literal>http://forum.springframework.org</literal>. You're also welcome
- to join the acegisecurity-developer mailing list. Our project home page
- (where you can obtain the latest release of the project and access to
- CVS, mailing lists, forums etc) is at
- <literal>http://acegisecurity.sourceforge.net</literal>.</para>
- </sect1>
- </chapter>
- </book>
|