Securing rest and actuator endpoints using custom token and http session - spring

I have a spring boot app where the API #Controller endpoints are secured using a token that is contained in the http header. The token needs to be extracted from the header and validated against an internal cache to make sure it is valid. If the token is valid then the request can proceed to the controller and if it is not valid then it should return a 401 to the caller.
I also have another requirement to secure some of the actuator end points. When the user tries to use the browser to access the respective actuator endpoint, it will check for a user session if no session exists then the request is redirected to the spring login page. When they login I need to extract the username and password and validate using an external service. If valid a session can be created for the user and they can then use the hawtio endpoint. The session needs to store role based information so that when the user tries to perform JMX operations it will only allow them to perform the appropriate read only / write if they have the requisite role.
Any pointers regarding how you'd try and tackle this would be most welcome. I am unsure whether this is achieved by specifying addFilterBefore or addFilter and I don't understand how having authenticated the user for the actuator I go about creating a session that can be stored in the context and checked later on for subsequent requests.
Thanks

Related

OpenId-Connect (OIDC) with Spring Security but without sticky sessions or central storage

We want to configure our service with OIDC authentication against a keycloak server.
We are using spring security 5.2.0 with spring boot 2.2.0.
There are multiple instances of our service and we do not want to share any state between them with central storage (e.g. databases, distributed caches, ...), nor use sticky sessions. That's why we already implemented two custom cookie-based repositories for authorization info that would normally reside in the server-side session. (CookieBasedRequestCache and CookieBasedAuthorizationRequestRepository). That way the oidc redirect flow works except for the last step where the user is redirected to the original url:
After successul login, keycloak redirects back to our instance with a code. This instance (let's call it 'A') validates the OAuth2AuthorizationResponse against the initial keycloak authorization request. It gets the information from a cookie we saved earlier in the login process to avoid Spring Security's session management.
Now, if the authorization response is successfully validated, instance 'A' sends a final redirect to the original URL that the user requested before logging in. If this request is answered by the same instance 'A', everything works fine. But if a different instance (say 'B') answers the request, it doesn't work because B doesn't know anything about the user's authentication state.
Questions:
Is there a cookie-based JWT repository we could use to save the access token across instances? Or how would one implement it?
Where in spring security's code (filter chain?) is the check whether the user is authenticated? This would be helpful for answering the final redirect to the original url.

What is the advantage of providing a Tokenized Authentication in an application with Spring Boot Backend over SecurityContextHolder?

I was getting started with Spring Boot and Angular 7 and I came across user authentication.
Let's assume the following: I have a frontend with Angular 7 and a Backend with Spring Boot that offers API's that can be accessed via HTTP.
So I know that usually the frontend authenticates the user with e.g. JWT that stores all necessary information about the user that might be needed. But I came across the SecurityContextHoler of Spring Boot Security:
Authentication authentication = SecurityContextHolder.getContext().getAuthentication();
This allows me to simply access granted Authorities and so on. So I thought about the following:
Using JWT for the frontend grants the following advantages (as far as I know):
* Users can identify when using API's
* Users may be prevented from certain UI-Elements (based on roles stored in JWT)
* Modification prevention due to checksum (invalid token afterwards)
Now I could also add a check in my Controller in the Backend that checks the SecurityContextHolder for user permission (something like a Service that checks the current context permissions vs the needed permission and returns true/false). Wouldn't that be even more save, since it is in the backend (so in my inmagination everything that runs server-sided is always a little more save than what runs client-sided)?
I can store information in the frontend (like roles and a username) to use them for the UI-based-access prevention to still have the same advantages as JWT provides, but I do not have the "effort" of implementing the JWT creation.
But obviously it is not common to do it that way (at least I never saw it), so what is the advantage of the Tokenization?
They are not mutually exclusive. You would use what you call "Tokenized Authentication", like an oAuth2 Bearer token most likely in a JWT when the Authentication is performed by a separate system from your Spring Boot backend. For example, you may be using Okta, Keycloak, Google or Facebook to authenticate the user.
At a minimum, your Spring Boot backend stores the username extracted from the JWT in the Authentication. You can get Spring Boot to extract any roles in the token and add those to Authentication::grantedAuthorites. If your backend system, has it's own set of roles in addition to what's in the token, then the backend could implement a PrincipalExtractor to load a UserDetails object for this user from the database as the Principal and merge the roles in the token with those store in the local database.
You'll probably want to security certain methods in your backend with method security annotations like #PreAuthorize(), since you shouldn't trust the front end. The method security will check permissions, like hasRole("ADMIN") or hasPermission(object, 'READ') using the Principal object in SecurityContextHolder.getContext().getAuthentication();
In the end, the token assures the backend the user accessing it is who they say they are, i.e. Authentication, but does not necessarily tell the backend what they are Authorized to do. Yes, if you control the Authentication server you can include roles in the JWT, but roles don't usually provide as fine a grained control as is required.
Independent of what level of security you implement, the token is translated into an Authorization so you can use the Spring Security framework to manage access within your backend code.
There are 3 type of token in spring security OAuth2:
1. InMemory token Store
2.JWT token store
3.JDBC token store
So now you’re talking the JWT token store. The most powerful of JWT token store is prevent the authorization server load against to the database for checking such as role,token expired so it is related database load performance. Since all the information such as: role,username, token expire ,etc include in token itself. So the authorization server or other resource sever may using the public key to verify this token itself without invoke to data store.
Hope helpful! ☺️

spring oauth 2 authorization server app share same security context with another app

I have two authorization server application ( spring boot 2.0.5 ).
The two authorization server application are similaire
When a user ask for a token, spring will register a session for that specific user and give back a token, with that token you can access to the resource of application 1 but you can't access to the resource of application 2.
My question is if there is a way to share the same security context in addion when you generate token from application 1 you can use to access of application 2 resource
What you can do is to make your applications stateless when it comes to security.
What does it mean?
Spring Security will no longer generate a session for a new logged in user. When the user logs in, you will issue him a token (e.g. JWT). Each time when the user accesses secured content, he/she will have to provide a token and your applications will verify that token with a public or private key (depending on which type of token encryption you will use - symmetric or asymmetric). In the end, you will not need to share anything, if both of your applications have same keys to verify incoming tokens.
Some tips:
A token you send upon each request to access secured resources is called "access token". Make it expirable and make it short lived (like 15 mins). Why? This token cannot be immediately invalidated unlike session which can be simply deleted. In case if someone hijacks it, it will be still able to access secured resources.
Since your "access token" is short lived, it would be annoying for a user to logs in every 15 minutes. To prolong its life, you can have another type of token called "refresh token" that can be stored in some database. This token can be immediately invalidated by simply deleting it from the database. Therefore, if someone even hijacks it, user will be able to revoke it and the hijacker will not be able to prolong his session.
References: Stateless authentication with JWT
We are also facing similar problem.
For web pages we are using SSO which cache token in clientContext and using Authorization-server-1
For making call to API-1 we are using token generated by Authorization-server-2. In this case we have create another session bean for clientContext and that is caching token (having its own oauth2RestTemplate and clientCredientialResource)
This is two legged scenario
We doing research, how to use three legged scenario for calling web/rest service, but we were not able to do so, as access token retrieval is two step process (using authorization code) and call back will execute the whole method again and not continue from line after call to rest api

How does spring basic authentication works for subsequent requests after login via basic authentication

I am implementing REST services using springMVC. Now i have added basic authentication entry point in my spring security file. But i don`t know that, Once user authenticated by passing credentials in Authorization header does he need to pass those credentials for all subsequent requests?
for example,
I have two URLs:
1) localhost/apppName/login
// Here user passes credentials in Authorization header. So, user authenticated successfully.
2) localhost/appName/getUsers/1
//Here, client need to pass those credentials in Authorization header?
if it is needed, then why spring kept prinicpal object in the SecurityContextHoder after authentication done via BasicAuthenitcationEntryPoint?
Clients of this services can be any thing like Android, java, .Net
Any suggestions will be appreciated.
Pure REST is stateless, which means that no client context is being stored on the server between requests. That means you need to send the Authorization header for each request.
You don't need to hit the login URL when using Basic auth, that's the point.
However, you can use sessions in combination with Basic auth, and in that case you should pass session cookie between requests. It may have some performance advantage, but generally I would not recommend it.

Spring Security to Validate login RestAPI

I know this question asked many times but I did not get answer that I required.
I want link that can help me to create a spring security framework, In which I donot whant login form validation.
It should be done by login RestAPI. I just hit url like-
http://localhost:8080/login
post request containing username and password and it return json response with sucess or failure status
if sucess I would be able to hit secure API Requests.
I am using spring and spring security since 1 and half year with spring security to develop rest API I use below technique for user authentication
Follow below steps
Allow to access http:// localhost:8080/login for all user
User will pass username and password in body
Authenticate user with database entry
create access token and send back to response
using this access token user with interact with secure API.
I will provide source code if you need.
I suggest you to try with Basic Authentication. I believe Rest services are mutual contract between the consumer and provider, so re design your service to access the basic auth header. Your client need to pass the base64 encoded value of username:password, Your service should get the header value and decode you will get the original data back, Check against your backend storage (Ldap or DB).
More about basic authentication . BasicAuthentication

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