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<?oxygen RNGSchema="http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/5.0/rng/docbook.rng" type="xml"?>
<article class="faq" xml:id="spring-security-faq" xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
    xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" version="5.0"><info><title>Frequently Answered
            Questions (FAQ)</title></info>
    <qandaset>
        <qandadiv>
            <title>General</title>
            <qandaentry xml:id="faq-other-concerns">
                <question><para>Will Spring Security take care of all my application security
                        requirements?</para></question>
                <answer><para> Spring Security provides you with a very flexible framework for your
                        authentication and authorization requirements, but there are many other
                        considerations for building a secure application that are outside its scope.
                        Web applications are vulnerable to all kinds of attacks which you should be
                        familiar with, preferably before you start development so you can design and
                        code with them in mind from the beginning. Check out the <link
                            xlink:href="http://www.owasp.org/">OWASP web site</link> for information
                        on the major issues facing web application developers and the
                        countermeasures you can use against them.</para></answer>
            </qandaentry>
            <qandaentry xml:id="faq-web-xml">
                <question><para>Why not just use web.xml security?</para></question>
                <answer><para>Let's assume you're developing an enterprise application based on
                        Spring. There are four security concerns you typically need to address:
                        authentication, web request security, service layer security (i.e. your
                        methods that implement business logic), and domain object instance security
                        (i.e. different domain objects have different permissions). With these
                        typical requirements in mind:
                                        <orderedlist><listitem><para><emphasis>Authentication</emphasis>:
                                    The servlet specification provides an approach to
                                    authentication. However, you will need to configure the
                                    container to perform authentication which typically requires
                                    editing of container-specific "realm" settings. This makes a
                                    non-portable configuration, and if you need to write an actual
                                    Java class to implement the container's authentication
                                    interface, it becomes even more non-portable. With Spring
                                    Security you achieve complete portability - right down to the
                                    WAR level. Also, Spring Security offers a choice of
                                    production-proven authentication providers and mechanisms,
                                    meaning you can switch your authentication approaches at
                                    deployment time. This is particularly valuable for software
                                    vendors writing products that need to work in an unknown target
                                    environment.</para></listitem><listitem><para><emphasis>Web
                                        request security:</emphasis> The servlet specification
                                    provides an approach to secure your request URIs. However, these
                                    URIs can only be expressed in the servlet specification's own
                                    limited URI path format. Spring Security provides a far more
                                    comprehensive approach. For instance, you can use Ant paths or
                                    regular expressions, you can consider parts of the URI other
                                    than simply the requested page (e.g. you can consider HTTP GET
                                    parameters) and you can implement your own runtime source of
                                    configuration data. This means your web request security can be
                                    dynamically changed during the actual execution of your
                                    webapp.</para></listitem><listitem><para><emphasis>Service layer
                                        and domain object security:</emphasis> The absence of
                                    support in the servlet specification for services layer security
                                    or domain object instance security represent serious limitations
                                    for multi-tiered applications. Typically developers either
                                    ignore these requirements, or implement security logic within
                                    their MVC controller code (or even worse, inside the views).
                                    There are serious disadvantages with this approach:
                                                  <orderedlist><listitem><para><emphasis>Separation
                                                  of concerns:</emphasis> Authorization is a
                                                crosscutting concern and should be implemented as
                                                such. MVC controllers or views implementing
                                                authorization code makes it more difficult to test
                                                both the controller and authorization logic, more
                                                difficult to debug, and will often lead to code
                                                duplication.</para></listitem><listitem><para><emphasis>Support
                                                  for rich clients and web services:</emphasis> If
                                                an additional client type must ultimately be
                                                supported, any authorization code embedded within
                                                the web layer is non-reusable. It should be
                                                considered that Spring remoting exporters only
                                                export service layer beans (not MVC controllers). As
                                                such authorization logic needs to be located in the
                                                services layer to support a multitude of client
                                                types.</para></listitem><listitem><para><emphasis>Layering
                                                  issues:</emphasis> An MVC controller or view is
                                                simply the incorrect architectural layer to
                                                implement authorization decisions concerning
                                                services layer methods or domain object instances.
                                                Whilst the Principal may be passed to the services
                                                layer to enable it to make the authorization
                                                decision, doing so would introduce an additional
                                                argument on every services layer method. A more
                                                elegant approach is to use a ThreadLocal to hold the
                                                Principal, although this would likely increase
                                                development time to a point where it would become
                                                more economical (on a cost-benefit basis) to simply
                                                use a dedicated security
                                            framework.</para></listitem><listitem><para><emphasis>Authorisation
                                                  code quality:</emphasis> It is often said of web
                                                frameworks that they "make it easier to do the right
                                                things, and harder to do the wrong things". Security
                                                frameworks are the same, because they are designed
                                                in an abstract manner for a wide range of purposes.
                                                Writing your own authorization code from scratch
                                                does not provide the "design check" a framework
                                                would offer, and in-house authorization code will
                                                typically lack the improvements that emerge from
                                                widespread deployment, peer review and new versions.
                                            </para></listitem></orderedlist></para></listitem></orderedlist></para><para>
                        For simple applications, servlet specification security may just be enough.
                        Although when considered within the context of web container portability,
                        configuration requirements, limited web request security flexibility, and
                        non-existent services layer and domain object instance security, it becomes
                        clear why developers often look to alternative solutions. </para></answer>
            </qandaentry>
            <qandaentry xml:id="faq-requirements">
                <question><para>What Java and Spring Framework versions are
                    required?</para></question>
                <answer><para> Spring Security 2.0.x requires a minimum JDK version of 1.4 and is
                        built against Spring 2.0.x. It should also be compatible with applications
                        using Spring 2.5.x. </para><para> Spring Security 3.0 requires JDK 1.5 as a
                        minimum and will also require Spring 3.0. </para></answer>
            </qandaentry>
            <qandaentry xml:id="faq-start-simple">
                <question><para> I'm new to Spring Security and I need to build an application that
                        supports CAS single sign-on over HTTPS, while allowing Basic authentication
                        locally for certain URLs, authenticating against multiple back end user
                        information sources (LDAP and JDBC). I've copied some configuration files I
                        found but it doesn't work. What could be wrong? </para><para>Or subsititute
                        an alternative complex scenario...</para></question>
                <answer><para> Realistically, you need an understanding of the technolgies you are
                        intending to use before you can successfully build applications with them.
                        Security is complicated. Setting up a simple configuration using a login
                        form and some hard-coded users using Spring Security's namespace is
                        reasonably straightforward. Moving to using a backed JDBC database is also
                        easy enough. But if you try and jump straight to a complicated deployment
                        scenario like this you will almost certainly be frustrated. There is a big
                        jump in the learning curve required to set up systems like CAS, configure
                        LDAP servers and install SSL certificates properly. So you need to take
                        things one step at a time. </para><para> From a Spring Security perspective,
                        the first thing you should do is follow the <quote>Getting Started</quote>
                        guide on the web site. This will take you through a series of steps to get
                        up and running and get some idea of how the framework operates. If you are
                        using other technologies which you aren't familiar with then you should do
                        some research and try to make sure you can use them in isolation before
                        combining them in a complex system. </para></answer>
            </qandaentry>
        </qandadiv>
        <qandadiv>
            <title>Common Problems</title>
            <qandaentry xml:id="faq-login-loop">
                <question><para>My application goes into an "endless loop" when I try to login,
                        what's going on?</para></question>
                <answer><para>A common user problem with infinite loop and redirecting to the login
                        page is caused by accidently configuring the login page as a "secured"
                        resource. Make sure your configuration allows anonymous access to the login
                        page, either by excluding it from the security filter chain or marking it as
                        requiring ROLE_ANONYMOUS.</para><para>If your AccessDecisionManager includes
                        an AuthenticatedVoter, you can use the attribute
                        "IS_AUTHENTICATED_ANONYMOUSLY". This is automatically available if you are
                        using the standard namespace configuration setup. </para><para> From Spring
                        Security 2.0.1 onwards, when you are using namespace-based configuration, a
                        check will be made on loading the application context and a warning message
                        logged if your login page appears to be protected. </para></answer>
            </qandaentry>
            <qandaentry xml:id="faq-anon-access-denied">
                <question><para>I get an exception with the message "Access is denied (user is
                        anonymous);". What's wrong?</para></question>
                <answer><para> This is a debug level message which occurs the first time an
                        anonymous user attempts to access a protected resource.
                        <programlisting>
    DEBUG [ExceptionTranslationFilter] - Access is denied (user is anonymous); redirecting to authentication entry point
    org.springframework.security.AccessDeniedException: Access is denied
    at org.springframework.security.vote.AffirmativeBased.decide(AffirmativeBased.java:68)
    at org.springframework.security.intercept.AbstractSecurityInterceptor.beforeInvocation(AbstractSecurityInterceptor.java:262)    				
                </programlisting>
                        It is normal and shouldn't be anything to worry about. </para></answer>
            </qandaentry>
            <qandaentry xml:id="faq-cached-secure-page">
                <question><para>Why can I still see a secured page even after I've logged out of my
                        application?</para></question>
                <answer><para>The most common reason for this is that your browser has cached the
                        page and you are seeing a copy which is being retrieved from the browsers
                        cache. Verify this by checking whether the browser is actually sending the
                        request (check your server access logs, the debug log or use a suitable
                        browser debugging plugin such as <quote>Tamper Data</quote> for Firefox).
                        This has nothing to do with Spring Security and you should configure your
                        application or server to set the appropriate
                            <literal>Cache-Control</literal> response headers. Note that SSL
                        requests are never cached.</para></answer>
            </qandaentry>
            <qandaentry xml:id="auth-exception-credentials-not-found">
                <question><para>I get an exception with the message "An Authentication object was
                        not found in the SecurityContext". What's wrong?</para></question>
                <answer><para> This is a another debug level message which occurs the first time an
                        anonymous user attempts to access a protected resource, but when you do not
                        have an <classname>AnonymousAuthenticationFilter</classname> in your filter
                        chain configuration.
                        <programlisting>
    DEBUG [ExceptionTranslationFilter] - Authentication exception occurred; redirecting to authentication entry point
    org.springframework.security.AuthenticationCredentialsNotFoundException: An Authentication object was not found in the SecurityContext
    at org.springframework.security.intercept.AbstractSecurityInterceptor.credentialsNotFound(AbstractSecurityInterceptor.java:342)
    at org.springframework.security.intercept.AbstractSecurityInterceptor.beforeInvocation(AbstractSecurityInterceptor.java:254)
                </programlisting>
                        It is normal and shouldn't be anything to worry about. </para></answer>
            </qandaentry>
            <qandaentry xml:id="faq-tomcat-https-session">
                <question><para> I'm using Tomcat and have enabled HTTPS for my login page,
                        switching back to HTTP afterwards. It doesn't work - I just end up back at
                        the login page after authenticating. </para></question>
                <answer><para> This happens because Tomcat sessions created under HTTPS cannot
                        subsequently be used under HTTP and any session state is lost (including the
                        security context information). Starting a session in HTTP first should work
                        as the session cookie won't be marked as secure. </para></answer>
            </qandaentry>
            <qandaentry xml:id="faq-no-security-on-forward">
                <question><para> I'm forwarding a request to another URL using the
                        RequestDispatcher, but my security constraints aren't being applied.
                    </para></question>
                <answer><para> Filters are not applied by default to forwards or includes. If you
                        really want the security filters to be applied to forwards and/or includes,
                        then you have to configure these explicitly in your web.xml using the
                        &lt;dispatcher&gt; element, a child element of &lt;filter-mapping&gt;.
                    </para></answer>
            </qandaentry>
            <qandaentry xml:id="faq-session-listener-missing">
                <question><para> I'm trying to use the concurrent session-control support but it
                        won't let me log back in, even if I'm sure I've logged out and haven't
                        exceeded the allowed sessions. </para></question>
                <answer><para>Make sure you have added the listener to your web.xml file. It is
                        essential to make sure that the Spring Security session registry is notified
                        when a session is destroyed. Without it, the session information will not be
                        removed from the registry.</para><programlisting><![CDATA[    
    <listener>
        <listener-class>org.springframework.security.ui.session.HttpSessionEventPublisher</listener-class>
    </listener> ]]>   				
            </programlisting></answer>
            </qandaentry>
            <qandaentry xml:id="faq-no-filters-no-context">
                <question><para>I have a user who has definitely been authenticated, but when I try
                        to access the <classname>SecurityContextHolder</classname> during some
                        requests, the <interfacename>Authentication</interfacename> is null. Why
                        can't I see the user information? </para></question>
                <answer><para>If you have excluded the request from the security filter chain using
                        the attribute <literal>filters='none'</literal> in the
                            <literal>&lt;intercept-url></literal> element that matches the URL
                        pattern, then the <classname>SecurityContextHolder</classname> will not be
                        populated for that request. Check the debug log to see whether the request
                        is passing through the filter chain. (You are reading the debug log,
                        right?).</para></answer>
            </qandaentry>
            <qandaentry xml:id="faq-method-security-in-web-context">
                <question><para>I have added Spring Security's &lt;global-method-security&gt;
                        element to my application context but if I add security annotations to my
                        Spring MVC controller beans (Struts actions etc.) then they don't seem to
                        have an effect.</para></question>
                <answer><para> The application context which holds the Spring MVC beans for the
                        dispatcher servlet is a child application context of the main application
                        context which is loaded using the
                            <classname>ContextLoaderListener</classname> you define in your
                            <filename>web.xml</filename>. The beans in the child context are not
                        visible in the parent context so you need to either move the
                        &lt;global-method-security&gt; declaration to the web context or moved the
                        beans you want secured into the main application context.
                        </para><para>Generally we would recommend applying method security at the
                        service layer rather than on individual web controllers.</para></answer>
            </qandaentry>
        </qandadiv>
        <qandadiv>
            <title>Spring Security Architecture Questions</title>
            <qandaentry xml:id="faq-where-is-class-x">
                <question><para>How do I know which package class X is in?</para></question>
                <answer><para>The best way of locating classes is by installing the Spring Security
                        source in your IDE. The distribution includes source jars for each of the
                        modules the project is divided up into. Add these to your project source
                        path and you can navigate directly to Spring Security classes
                            (<command>Ctrl-Shift-T</command> in Eclipse). This also makes debugging
                        easer and allows you to troubleshoot exceptions by looking directly at the
                        code where they occur to see what's going on there. </para></answer>
            </qandaentry>
            <qandaentry xml:id="faq-namespace-to-bean-mapping">
                <question><para>How do the namespace elements map to conventional bean
                        configurations?</para></question>
                <answer><para>There is a general overview of what beans are created by the namespace
                        in the namespace appendix of the reference guide. If want to know the full
                        details then the code is in the <filename>spring-security-config</filename>
                        module within the Spring Security 3.0 distribution. You should probably read
                        the chapters on namespace parsing in the standard Spring Framework reference
                        documentation first. </para></answer>
            </qandaentry>
            <qandaentry xml:id="faq-role-prefix">
                <question><para>What does <quote>ROLE_</quote> mean and why do I need it on my role names?</para></question>
                <answer>
                    <para>Spring Security has a voter-based architecture which means that an access
                        decision is made by a series of <interfacename>AccessDecisionVoter</interfacename>s.
                        The voters act on the <quote>configuration attributes</quote> which are specified for a 
                        secured resource (such as a method invocation). With this approach, not all attributes may
                        be relevant to all voters and a voter needs to know when it should ignore an attribute (abstain) and
                        when it should vote to grant or deny access based on the attribute value. 
                        The most common voter is the <classname>RoleVoter</classname> which by default votes
                        whenever it finds an attribute with the <quote>ROLE_</quote> prefix. It makes a simple comparison
                        of the attribute (such as <quote>ROLE_USER</quote>) with the name names of the authorities which
                        the current user has been assigned. If it finds a match (they have an authority called 
                        <quote>ROLE_USER</quote>), it votes to grant access, otherwise it votes to deny access. 
                    </para>
                    <para>
                        The prefix can be changed by setting the <literal>rolePrefix</literal> property of 
                        <classname>RoleVoter</classname>. If you only need to use roles in your application and have
                        no need for other custom voters, then you can set the prefix to a blank string, in which case the 
                        <classname>RoleVoter</classname> will treat all attributes as roles.
                    </para>
                </answer>
            </qandaentry>
        </qandadiv>
        <qandadiv>
            <title>Common <quote>Howto</quote> Requests</title>
            <qandaentry xml:id="faq-extra-login-fields">
                <question><para>I need to login in with more information than just the username. How
                        do I add support for extra login fields (e.g. a company
                    name)?</para></question>
                <answer><para>This question comes up repeatedly in the Spring Security forum so you
                        will find more information there by searching the archives (or through
                        google).</para><para> The submitted login information is processed by an
                        instance of <classname>UsernamePasswordAuthenticationFilter</classname>. You
                        will need to customize this class to handle the extra data field(s). One
                        option is to use your own customized authentication token class (rather than
                        the standard <classname>UsernamePasswordAuthenticationToken</classname>),
                        another is simply to concatenate the extra fields with the username (for
                        example, using a ":" as the separator) and pass them in the username
                        property of <classname>UsernamePasswordAuthenticationToken</classname>.
                        </para><para> You will also need to customize the actual authentication
                        process. If you are using a custom authentication token class, for example,
                        you will have to write an <classname>AuthenticationProvider</classname> to
                        handle it (or extend the standard
                            <classname>DaoAuthenticationProvider</classname>). If you have
                        concatenated the fields, you can implement your own
                            <interfacename>UserDetailsService</interfacename> which splits them up
                        and loads the appropriate user data for authentication. </para></answer>
            </qandaentry>
            <qandaentry xml:id="faq-dynamic-url-metadata">
                <question><para>How do I define the secured URLs within an application
                        dynamically?</para></question>
                <answer><para>People often ask about how to store the mapping between secured URLs
                        and security metadata attributes in a database, rather than in the
                        application context. </para><para> The first thing you should ask yourself
                        is if you really need to do this. If an application requires securing, then
                        it also requires that the security be tested thoroughly based on a defined
                        policy. It may require auditing and acceptance testing before being rolled
                        out into a production environment. A security-conscious organization should
                        be aware that the benefits of their diligent testing process could be wiped
                        out instantly by allowing the security settings to be modified at runtime by
                        changing a row or two in a configuration database. If you have taken this
                        into account (perhaps using multiple layers of security within your
                        application) then Spring Security allows you to fully customize the source
                        of security metadata. You can make it fully dynamic if you choose.
                        </para><para> Both method and web security are protected by subclasses of
                            <classname>AbstractSecurityInterceptor</classname> which is configured
                        with a <interfacename>SecurityMetadataSource</interfacename> from which it
                        obtains the metadata for a particular method or filter invocation
                                <footnote><para>This class previouly went by the rather obscure name
                                of <classname>ObjectDefinitionSource</classname>, but has been
                                renamed in Spring Security 3.0</para></footnote>. For web security,
                        the interceptor class is <classname>FilterSecurityInterceptor</classname>
                        and it uses the marker interface
                            <interfacename>FilterInvocationSecurityMetadataSource</interfacename>.
                        The <quote>secured object</quote> type it operates on is a
                            <classname>FilterInvocation</classname>. The default implementation
                        which is used (both in the namespace <literal>&lt;http&gt;</literal> and
                        when configuring the interceptor explicitly, stores the list of URL patterns
                        and their corresponding list of <quote>configuration attributes</quote>
                        (instances of <interfacename>ConfigAttribute</interfacename>) in an
                        in-memory map. </para><para> To load the data from an alternative source,
                        you must be using an explicitly declared security filter chain (typically
                        Spring Security's <classname>FilterChainProxy</classname>) in order to
                        customize the <classname>FilterSecurityInterceptor</classname> bean. You
                        can't use the namespace. You would then implement
                            <interfacename>FilterInvocationSecurityMetadataSource</interfacename> to
                        load the data as you please for a particular
                            <classname>FilterInvocation</classname><footnote><para>The
                                    <classname>FilterInvocation</classname> object contains the
                                    <classname>HttpServletRequest</classname>, so you can obtain the
                                URL or any other relevant information on which to base your decision
                                on what the list of returned attributes will
                            contain.</para></footnote>. A very basic outline would look something
                        like this: <programlisting language="java"><![CDATA[
  public class MyFilterSecurityMetadataSource implements FilterInvocationSecurityMetadataSource {
    
    public List<ConfigAttribute> getAttributes(Object object) {
      FilterInvocation fi = (FilterInvocation) object; 
        String url = fi.getRequestUrl();
        String httpMethod = fi.getRequest().getMethod();
        List<ConfigAttribute> attributes = new ArrayList<ConfigAttribute>();

        // Lookup your database (or other source) using this information and populate the
        // list of attributes
        
        return attributes;
    }    

    public Collection<ConfigAttribute> getAllConfigAttributes() {
      return null;
    }
    
    public boolean supports(Class<?> clazz) {
      return FilterInvocation.class.isAssignableFrom(clazz);
    }    
  }
  ]]></programlisting> For more information, look at the code for
                            <classname>DefaultFilterInvocationSecurityMetadataSource</classname>.
                    </para></answer>
            </qandaentry>
            <qandaentry xml:id="faq-what-dependencies">
                <question><para>How do I know which dependencies to add to my application to work
                        with Spring Security?</para></question>
                <answer><para>It will depend on what features you are using and what type of
                        application you are developing. With Spring Security 3.0, the project jars
                        are divided into clearly distinct areas of functionality, so it is
                        straightforward to work out which Spring Security jars you need from your
                        application requirements. All applications will need the
                            <filename>spring-security-core</filename> jar. If you're developing a
                        web application, you need the <filename>spring-security-web</filename> jar.
                        If you're using security namespace configuration you need the
                            <filename>spring-security-config</filename> jar, for LDAP support you
                        need the <filename>spring-security-ldap</filename> jar and so on.
                        </para><para> For third-party jars the situation isn't always quite so
                        obvious. A good starting point is to copy those from one of the pre-built
                        sample applications WEB-INF/lib directories. For a basic application, you
                        can start with the tutorial sample. If you want to use LDAP, with an
                        embedded test server, then use the LDAP sample as a starting point.
                        </para><para> If you are building your project with maven, then adding the
                        appropriate Spring Security modules as dependencies to your pom.xml will
                        automatically pull in the core jars that the framework requires. Any which
                        are marked as "optional" in the Spring Security POM files will have to be
                        added to your own pom.xml file if you need them. </para></answer>
            </qandaentry>
            <qandaentry xml:id="faq-ldap-authorities">
                <question><para>How do I authenticate against LDAP but load user roles from a
                        database?</para></question>
                <answer><para> The <code>LdapAuthenticationProvider</code> bean (which handles
                        normal LDAP authentication in Spring Security) is configured with two
                        separate strategy interfaces, one which performs the authenticatation and
                        one which loads the user authorities, called
                            <interfacename>LdapAuthenticator</interfacename> and
                            <interfacename>LdapAuthoritiesPopulator</interfacename> respectively.
                        The <classname>DefaultLdapAuthoritiesPopulator</classname> loads the user
                        authorities from the LDAP directory and has various configuration parameters
                        to allow you to specify how these should be retrieved. </para><para> To use
                        JDBC instead, you can implement the interface yourself, using whatever SQL
                        is appropriate for your schema: <programlisting language="java"><![CDATA[
  public class MyAuthoritiesPopulator implements LdapAuthoritiesPopulator {
    @Autowired
    JdbcTemplate template;
  
    List<GrantedAuthority> getGrantedAuthorities(DirContextOperations userData, String username) {
      List<GrantedAuthority> = template.query("select role from roles where username = ?", new String[] {username}, new RowMapper<GrantedAuthority>() {
        /** 
         *  We're assuming here that you're using the standard convention of using the role 
         *  prefix "ROLE_" to mark attributes which are supported by Spring Security's RoleVoter.
         */   
        public GrantedAuthority mapRow(ResultSet rs, int rowNum) throws SQLException {
          return new GrantedAuthorityImpl("ROLE_" + rs.getString(1);
        }
      }
    }
  }
  ]]></programlisting> You would then add a bean of this type to your application context and inject
                        it into the <code>LdapAuthenticationProvider</code>. This is covered in the
                        section on configuring LDAP using explicit Spring beans in the LDAP chapter
                        of the reference manual. Note that you can't use the namespace for
                        configuration in this case. You should also consult the Javadoc for the
                        relevant classes and interfaces. </para></answer>
            </qandaentry>
        </qandadiv>
    </qandaset>
</article>
