JAX-WS, Authentication and Authorization - How to?
What is the best way to do authentication and authorization in web services?
I am developing a set of web services, requiring role based access control. Using metro - SOAP, simple java without EJBs.
- I want to Authenticate the user just one time, using username and password, to be matched against a data base. In the subsequent calls.
- I would like to use some kind of session management. Could be some session id, retrieved to the client at login, to be presented in all calls.
So Far:
- Read authentication using a database - but I want application level validation;
Read application authentication with jax-ws - but i don't want to do the authentication mechanism every time;
I think I can use a SOAP Handler, to intercept all the messages, and do the authorization control in the hander, using some session identifier token, that comes with the message, that can be matched against an identifier saved in the data base, in the login web method.
EDIT:
I still have some questions:
- How to know the name of the web method being called?
- What kind of token should I use?
- How to pass this token between calls?
EDIT 2
Because of @ag112 answer:
I'm using Glassfish.
I use WS-Policy and WS-Security to encrypt and sign the messages. Using Mutual Certificate Authentication. I would like to complement this message level security between applications, with the authentication and authorization for the users also in message level.
I am just developing the services, and I don't know almost nothing the clients, just that they could be created in different languages.
At this point I think the most important thing is to do what ever I need to do to authenticate and authentication the users, I the most easy way to be implemented for the client applications.
Answer
@Luis: Here are my inputs.
Well exact solution for your problem depends upon kind of web service clients you expect, do you have control over web service client system, your app server etc.....but assuming you don't have any control over web service client, for you it is just a SOAP message over HTTP transport, here is probable solution.
You can of course performs session management & authentication at message level or transport level. It means either you can have session token and auth token information in SOAP message or you can use standard HTTP Session and HTTP authentication mechanism.
Of course transport level solution is much simpler and industry wide standard in case if transport layer is HTTP. For message level, ws specifications like ws-security can be used. Your each web service request is simple HTTP GET/POST identified by a unique HTTP URI. Typically in jax-ws metro environment, WSServlet is one which entry servlet for any web service call and which eventually delegates the call to right service provider implementation class. Since you application is going to be deployed in web server, you can exploit all session and authentication facilities provided by J2ee web container.
Since you are looking for role-based access control, I would use standard <web-resource-collection> in web.xml to specify which role you would like to have in case of particular HTTP URI. You can use standard JAAS login module which can do authentication and populates the JAAS subject with role. If user name/password are provided in SOAP XML, JAAS login module can also search/parse SOAP XML to retrieve those information. JAAS/app server will automatically create auth token and store it as cookie so that each subsequent request need not to go through authentication process again. This is all J2ee standard. You can find plenty of help on internet on this. Please let me know your app server so that I can provide you additional details.
If you still want to use SOAP message level session management, authentication & authorization process, then to provide you more details, may I know more details about your client side.
EDIT1: Well based on your further inputs, here is my more thoughts: Message security namely encryption and signature needs to happen each message travels between server and client. where as message authentication- you intend to do once and give a session token/auth token to client for subsequent calls.
Question still remains: if you put a unique session Identifier in SOAP response of first time authentication, do you expect client to parse SOAP response XML and ensure that client should send you session identifier each time in subsequent SOAP requests. OR You want to keep session management transparent to client and for client it needs to send username/password token first time and subsequent calls need not require any username/password token. In this case you would need to rely on transport based session management for e.g. HTTP cookies
Now what is the best for you depends upon your use case. Can you tell me what is expected use case flow? how another system (web service client) makes more than one service call to your system? Is another system user driven/some background process? What is exact need that you want only first service call to go through authentication process not subsequent calls?
PS: Glassfish server provides a way of configuring message authentication provider which automatically enables/disables message level authentication.
EDIT2: I understand you do not want to store user credentials in client app and web service server need those user credentials. OAuth is open standard protocol which allows site A to access user's private data on site B. Ultimate idea is site A gets auth token which has specific expiry time. So Token containing encrypted from of user credentials or jsession id help you avoid need of re-authentication. You only need to decide where you want to keep token at client app side You can keep token as cookie if transport is HTTP protocol.
Having said that ofcourse passing user credentials each time seems bit easier and straight forward.