We are experimenting with Spring Security 5's new OAuth 2.0 Login feature. With the simple setup, Spring creates Authentication objects with a name matching the Id of the user in the OAuth 2.0 system. So if logging in with Google, Authentication::getName() returns a Google Id.
We want to use our own internal Ids and map from the OAuth2.0 provider's user Id's to our own user Ids. For example, we would take a Google user Id and use that to load our own Id. What is the correct way to do this?
We tried configuring the OIDC User Service as shown below.
#Override
protected void configure(HttpSecurity http) throws Exception
{
http.oauth2Login()
.userInfoEndpoint()
.oidcUserService(new MappingOidcUserService());
}
And then we can configure the value of Authentication::getName(). But this also changes the value of OAuth2AuthorizedClient::getPrincipalName() to our own Id. We want to be able to still get the external Id. And it's also a little concerning what other implications this could cause.
I'm using spring security to implement a programmatic, manual user login. I have a scenario where I have positively established the user's identity, and wish to log them in. I don't know their password, and so can't use the regular login code path where you submit a form to a url, which spring intercepts via a servlet Filter, doing all of it's auth+session magic.
I've searched, and it seems most people create their own Authentication object, and then tell spring about via:
PreAuthenticatedAuthenticationToken authentication = new PreAuthenticatedAuthenticationToken(user, "", user.getAuthorities());
SecurityContextHolder.getContext().setAuthentication(authentication);
Indeed, this works. Spring even puts it into the session for me, making subsequent http requests maintain their auth status.
However, I feel like this is a dirty hack. I'll present some details that I hope will give concrete examples of the problems associated with using setAuthentication() inside a controller to achieve a manual login:
To give an idea, my config is:
httpSecurity
.authorizeRequests()
.antMatchers("/test/**").permitAll()
.antMatchers("/admin/**", "/api/admin/**").hasRole("USER_SUPER_ADMIN")
.and()
.formLogin()
.loginPage("/sign-in?sp")
.loginProcessingUrl("/api/auth/sign-in")
.successHandler(createLoginSuccessHandler())
.failureHandler(createLoginFailureHandler())
.permitAll()
.and()
.logout()
.logoutUrl("/api/auth/sign-out")
.logoutSuccessHandler(createLogoutSuccessHandler())
.and()
.sessionManagement()
.maximumSessions(1)
.maxSessionsPreventsLogin(true)
.sessionRegistry(sessionRegistry)
;
Key points in the above config:
I use custom success and failure handlers for the form login
I want to config behavior for max concurrent sessions per user
I want to maintain spring's default session fixation protection (changing session id upon login).
I want to use a session registry
... more of these session/login functionalities, had I chosen to config it.
I stepped through the code to see how spring processes a form login. As expected, Spring does all the session/login functionalities that my HttpSecurity config told it to do when I use the form login. But, when I do my own custom/manual login via SecurityContextHolder.getContext().setAuthentication(), it does NONE of those functionalities. This is because spring does all of it's session/login functionalities stuff inside of a servlet Filter, and my programmatic code can't really call a Filter. Now, I can attempt to add the missing functionalities myself, duplicating their code: I see that the spring Filter uses: ConcurrentSessionControlAuthenticationStrategy, ChangeSessionIdAuthenticationStrategy, and RegisterSessionAuthenticationStrategy. I can create these objects myself, configure them, and call them after my custom login. But, that's really lame to duplicate all that spring code. Furthermore, there's still other behaviors I'm missing - I noticed that when using the form login code path, that spring triggers some login events which don't get triggered when I do my custom login. And there's probably other stuff that I'm missing or don't understand. The whole process is pretty complicated, and I feel like there's a high chance of introducing bugs if this isn't done right, not to mention that library updates would be a pain if I started duplicating spring code.
So, I feel like I'm approaching this from the wrong way. Should I be using a different strategy, so that I'm not bypassing so much of the stuff that spring does for me? Maybe I should try to make my own AuthenticationProvider to accomplish this custom login?
*To clarify, my code more or less works. But, I feel like I accomplished it using a poor strategy because I had to write code duplicating a lot of stuff that spring does for me. Further, my code doesn't perfectly replicate what spring does, making me wonder what negative implications might result. There must be a better way to programatically achieve login.
I wanted to elaborate on how I implemented the advice of dur. In my scenario, I only used a custom AuthenticationProvider.
Instead of creating a custom servlet Filter, such as extending AbstractAuthenticationProcessingFilter, which seemed like a lot of work, I choose to instead use the following strategy:
At the point in my code where I was confident that I had identified the user, and wanted them to be "logged in", I stuck a flag in the user's session, marking that they should be logged in on the next request, along with any other identity/bookkeeping info I needed, such as their username.
Then, I told the browser client to make an http post to the loginProcessingUrl (the same one I configured spring security to use for form-based login), telling them to send the standard username and password form params, although they don't need to send real values - dummy values like foo are fine.
When the user makes that post request (eg to /login), spring will invoke my custom AuthenticationProvider, which will look in the user's session to check for the flag, and to gather the username. Then it will create and return an Authentication object, such as PreAuthenticatedAuthenticationToken, which identifies the user.
Spring will handle the rest. The user is now logged in.
By doing it this way, you stay within the "normal" way of doing logins, and so spring will still automatically:
Call any custom success and failure handlers you configured for the form login, which is nice if you use that place to do certain things on login, like query or update a db.
It will respect any max concurrent sessions per user settings that you may be using.
You get to keep spring's default session fixation attack protection (changing session id upon login).
If you set a custom session timeout, eg via server.session.timeout in a properties file, spring will use it. There's probably other session config attributes that are done at this time too.
If you enabled spring's "remember me" functionality, it will work.
It will fire a login event, which is used for other spring components, such as storing the user's session in a SessionRegistry. I think the events are also used by other parts of spring, such as the actuator, and for auditing.
When I first tried just doing the typically recommended SecurityContextHolder.getContext().setAuthentication(authentication) to login my user, instead of the custom AuthenticationProvider, none of the above bullets were done for me, which can utterly break your app... or cause subtle security bugs - neither are good.
Here's some code to help solidify what I said:
Custom AuthenticationProvider
#Component
public class AccountVerificationAuthenticationProvider implements AuthenticationProvider {
#Autowired
private AppAuthenticatedUserService appAuthenticatedUserService;
#Autowired
private AuthService authService;
#Override
public Authentication authenticate(Authentication authentication) throws AuthenticationException {
// This will look in the user's session to get their username, and to make sure the flag is set to allow login without password on this request.
UserAccount userAccount = authService.getUserAccountFromRecentAccountVerificationProcess();
if (userAccount == null) {
// Tell spring we can't process this AuthenticationProvider obj.
// Spring will continue, and try another AuthenticationProvider, if it can.
return null;
}
// A service to create a custom UserDetails object for this user.
UserDetails appAuthenticatedUser = appAuthenticatedUserService.create(userAccount.getEmail(), "", true);
PreAuthenticatedAuthenticationToken authenticationToken = new PreAuthenticatedAuthenticationToken(appAuthenticatedUser, "", appAuthenticatedUser.getAuthorities());
authenticationToken.setAuthenticated(true);
return authenticationToken;
}
#Override
public boolean supports(Class<?> authentication) {
return authentication.equals(UsernamePasswordAuthenticationToken.class);
}
}
Config spring security to use the provider
// In your WebSecurityConfigurerAdapter
#Configuration
#EnableWebSecurity
public class AppLoginConfig extends WebSecurityConfigurerAdapter {
#Autowired
private AccountVerificationAuthenticationProvider accountVerificationAuthenticationProvider;
#Autowired
private ActiveDirectoryLdapAuthenticationProvider activeDirectoryLdapAuthenticationProvider;
#Override
protected void configure(AuthenticationManagerBuilder authenticationManagerBuilder) throws Exception {
// Spring will try these auth providers in the order we register them.
// We do the accountVerificationAuthenticationProvider provider first, since it doesn't need to do any slow IO to check,
// so it's very fast. Only if this AuthenticationProvider rejects (which means this http request is not for programmatic login), will spring then try the next AuthenticationProvider in the list.
authenticationManagerBuilder
.authenticationProvider(accountVerificationAuthenticationProvider)
// I'm using ActiveDirectory / LDAP for when a user logs in via entering a user + password via the html form, but whatever you want to use here should work.
.authenticationProvider(activeDirectoryLdapAuthenticationProvider);
}
#Override
protected void configure(HttpSecurity httpSecurity) throws Exception {
...
}
}
For custom web authentication you should implement combination of a custom authentication filter (for example AbstractAuthenticationProcessingFilter or just GenericFilterBean), a custom authentication provider (AuthenticationProvider) or/and custom authentication token (AbstractAuthenticationToken).
For example, see source of Spring Security Kerberos.
See also:
The AuthenticationManager, ProviderManager and AuthenticationProvider
I have a REST API written in Spring Boot with Spring Security and OAuth2. The resources are secured this way:
#Override
public void configure(HttpSecurity http) throws Exception {
http
.authorizeRequests()
.antMatchers("/api/v1/security/**").hasRole("ADMIN");
}
I'd like to introduce a new part of the API where the permissions are fine grained, based on projects. Let's consider a simple endpoint that prints the project configuration.
GET /api/v1/project/{projectId}/config
How would I configure the resource server to only allow access for users who have the role ROLE_PROJECT_{projectId}_ADMIN without having to manually specify all projects?
Also if this mechanism has a specific name, please let me know in comments to I can change the question title.
You can use path values in authorization expressions.
According to Path Variables in Web Security Expressions you should write your custom authorization logic.
public class WebSecurity {
public boolean checkUserHasAccessToProjectId(Authentication authentication, int projectId) {
// here you can check if the user has the correct role
// or implement more complex and custom authorization logic if necessary
}
}
Then in your Java security configuration you can refer to this method and pass it the value of the relevant path fragment.
http.authorizeRequests()
.antMatchers("/api/v1/project/{projectId}/config")
.access("#webSecurity.checkUserHasAccessToProjectId(authentication,#projectId)")
...
I would like to ask if there is a point to secure the methods which I call in a REST Controller with Pre and Post annotations. I have configured a security through java configuration like this:
#Override
protected void configure(HttpSecurity http) throws Exception {
http
.and()
.formLogin()
(...)
.and()
.authorizeRequests()
.antMatchers("/api/**").hasAuthority("ROLE_USER");
}
So every request under /api should be authorized with ROLE_USER. I tried to find some information about this in the internet but the only thing i could find was this:
https://coderanch.com/t/549265/Spring/method-security-spring-security
However I really can't think of a use case where a hacker would access somehow the methods in the service layer.
URL security and method security in service layer aims at different use cases.
If all you need is control that only users with a certain role can call URL with a given prefix (here API) URL security is what you need full stop.
If you have a complex application where some service methods can be called from different controllers and you want to make sure that you did not fail to restrict an access, method security can come to help by ensuring that only valid users can do certain business actions.
If you have a complex security model, for example several officse with one manager in each that has read and/or write access to his own employees data, method security on service layer directly using business model objects is the way to go.
BTW, using method security in a controller or even worse on a rest controller is generally design smell: if you can do it inside a controller it is generally better to use URL security. If it seems to make sense, you probably have imported business logic into a Fat Ugly Controller. Not speaking about method security being implemented with Spring AOP using by default JDK proxies, when controllers generally do not implement interfaces.
In addition to making it possible to have some kinds of functionality, using both techniques gives an additional layer of security.
Method level security is used to authorize the user. Spring security performs two basic operations before allowing the access.
Authenticate (Who is the user)
Authorize (What authorities the user has)
so for example if the user is having an authority of ROLE_USER and later in the architecture you decide to have rights assigned to some of the roles.
for example let's consider a role 'ROLE_USER'
and following rights has been assigned to the USER
CAN_VIEW_DATA
CAN_ADD_SUB_USERS
and so on.
so when some of the users have the right of CAN_ADD_SUB_USERS and some dont, then the method level security comes in handy.
Of course you have to play with the spring configurations for the rights and authority. But Once configured it provides an extra level of security that the applicaton might need.
Refer to this link for more info http://www.baeldung.com/role-and-privilege-for-spring-security-registration
REST is stateless. You should send something like access token (like Google API) with every request:
https://{server}/api/customers?access_token=BGhznFGDS
You can also send this information via Header-Attribute. The validation layer (Filter) decides whether the controller method may be called or not.
I prefer to implement my own Filters to get 100% of control.
My security config class (which inherits from WebSecurityConfigurerAdapter) has a method like the following.
#Override
protected void configure(HttpSecurity http) throws Exception {
http.authorizeRequests()
.antMatchers("/restaurant/**").access("hasRole('ROLE_USER')")
.and()
.formLogin();
}
However I'd rather use #PreAuthorize on my controllers instead. If I remove the method everything requires auth. What should my method look like so everything is available and access is only determined by PreAuthorize?
As has been already stated, it is not very common to use method level security to secure controller methods but rather to secure methods with business logic. And even if you need to perform authorization based on request attributes, it should be possible to achieve this with URL based security and web security expressions.
Available expressions are defined by WebSecurityExpressionRoot class, an instance of which is used as the expression root object when evaluation web-access expressions. This object also directly exposed the HttpServletRequest object under the name request so you can invoke the request directly in an expression.
Here you can find more details on when to use URL based security and when method level security.
It is rather uncommon to use #PreAuthorize on controller methods, but there may me use cases, if the decision depends on request parameters ...
If you do not want to do any authorization at the request level, you can simply have :
#Override
protected void configure(HttpSecurity http) throws Exception {
http.formLogin();
}
You only declare a form login, and no request security. But do not forget that request security uses less resources than method security.
Instead of .access("hasRole('ROLE_USER')"), try .access("permitAll"). Note that for request mappings that doesn't have a #PreAuthorize, everyone will be given access.