Securing WebLogic Server
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The following sections describe how to configure the security providers supplied by WebLogic Server.
WebLogic Server includes such a large number of Authentication providers and Identity Assertion providers that they are better handled in a separate section. For information about configuring Authentication providers and Identity Assertion providers, see Configuring Authentication Providers.
By default, most WebLogic security providers are generally configured to run out of the box. However, the following circumstances require you to supply configuration information:
You can use either the WebLogic-supplied security providers or a custom security provider in a security realm. For information about configuring a custom security provider, see "Configure a custom security provider in the Administration Console online help.
The remainder of this section contains conceptual information and configuration options for each security provider, other than the Authorization security providers, for which see Configuring Authentication Providers.
Authorization is the process whereby the interactions between users and resources are limited to ensure integrity, confidentiality, and availability. In other words, authorization is responsible for controlling access to resources based on user identity or other information. By default, the WebLogic Authorization provider is configured. You should only need to configure a WebLogic Authorization provider when creating a new security realm.
See Configure Authorization providers in the Administration Console online help.
When multiple Authorization providers are configured in a security realm, each may return a different answer to the "is access allowed" question for a given resource. This answer may be PERMIT
, DENY
, or ABSTAIN
. Determining what to do if multiple Authorization providers do not agree on the answer is the primary function of the Adjudication provider. Adjudication providers resolve authorization conflicts by weighting each Authorization provider's answer and returning a final decision.
Each security realm requires an Adjudication provider, and can have no more than one active Adjudication provider. By default, a WebLogic security realm is configured with the WebLogic Adjudication provider. You can use either the WebLogic Adjudication provider or a custom Adjudication provider in a security realm. Note that in the Administration Console, the WebLogic Adjudication provider is referred to as the Default Adjudicator.
By default, most of the configuration options for the WebLogic Adjudication provider are defined. However, you can set the Require Unanimous Permit option to determine how the WebLogic Adjudication provider handles a combination of PERMIT
and ABSTAIN
votes from the configured Authorization providers.
PERMIT
in order for the Adjudication provider to vote true
.ABSTAIN
votes are counted as PERMIT
votes.
Role Mapping providers compute the set of roles granted to a subject for a given resource. Role Mapping providers supply Authorization providers with this role information so that the Authorization provider can answer the "is access allowed?" question for WebLogic resources. By default, a WebLogic security realm is configured with the WebLogic Role Mapping provider. You can use either the WebLogic Role Mapping provider or a custom Role Mapping provider in a security realm. Note that in the Administration Console, the WebLogic Role Mapping provider is referred to as the Default Role Mapper.
By default, most configuration options for the WebLogic Role Mapping provider are already defined. However, you can set Role Mapping Deployment Enabled, which specifies whether or not this Role Mapping provider imports information from deployment descriptors for Web applications and EJBs into the security realm. This setting is enabled by default.
In order to support Role Mapping Deployment Enabled, a Role Mapping provider must implement the DeployableRoleProvider
SSPI. Roles are stored by the WebLogic Role Mapping provider in the embedded LDAP server.
Auditing is the process whereby information about operating requests and the outcome of those requests are collected, stored, and distributed for the purposes of non-repudiation. In other words, Auditing providers produce an electronic trail of computer activity.
Configuring an Auditing provider is optional. The default security realm (myrealm
) does not have an Auditing provider configured. WebLogic Server includes a provider named the WebLogic Auditing provider (referred to as DefaultAuditor
in the Administration Console). You can also develop custom Auditing providers, as described in Auditing Providers in Developing Security Providers for WebLogic Server.
The WebLogic Auditing provider can log the events described in Table 4-1. In addition, if you enable configuration auditing (as described in Configuration Auditing), the WebLogic Auditing provider can log the events described in Table 4-5.
By default, most configuration options for the WebLogic Auditing provider are already defined. However, when configuring the WebLogic Auditing provider, you need to define the following, which can be configured in the Administration Console on the Configuration: Provider Specific page for the provider, by using WebLogic Scripting tool or by using Java Management Extensions (JMX) APIs:
Table 4-2 Audit Severity Levels
DefaultAuditRecorder.log
file. At the specified time, the audit file is closed and a new one is created. A backup file named DefaultAuditRecorder.
YYYYMMDDHHMM.log
(for example,DefaultAuditRecorder.200405130110.log
) is created in the same directory.All auditing information recorded by the WebLogic Auditing provider is saved in WL_HOME
\
yourdomain
\
yourserver\
logs\DefaultAuditRecorder.log
by default. Although an Auditing provider is configured per security realm, each server writes auditing data to its own log file in the server directory. You can specify a new directory location for the DefaultAuditRecorder.log
file on the command line with the following Java startup option:
-Dweblogic.security.audit.auditLogDir=c:\foo
The new file location will be c:\foo\
yourserver
\logs\DefaultAuditRecorder.log
.
For more information, see "Security" in the Weblogic Server Command Reference.
Warning: Using an Auditing provider affects the performance of WebLogic Server even if only a few events are logged.
For more information, see Configure Auditing providers in the Administration Console online help.
An Audit Event includes a ContextHandler
that can hold a variety of information or objects. The WebLogic Auditing provider's Active ContextHandler Entries attribute determines which ContextElement
entries in the ContextHandler
are recorded by the Auditing provider. By default, none of the ContextElements
are audited. Objects in the ContextHandler
are in most cases logged using the toString
method.
Table 4-3 lists the available ContextHandler
entries.
Table 4-3 Context Handler Entries for Auditing
You can configure the Administration Server to emit log messages and generate Audit Events when a user changes the configuration or invokes management operations on any resource within a domain. For example, if a user disables SSL on a Managed Server in a domain, the Administration Server emits log messages. If you have enabled the WebLogic Auditing provider, it writes the Audit Events to an additional security log. These messages and Audit Events provide an audit trail of changes within a domain's configuration (configuration auditing).
The Administration Server writes configuration auditing messages to its local log file. Because all configuration auditing messages are of the Info
severity, they are not written to the domain-wide message log by default.
You can do the following to enable configuration auditing:
weblogic.Server
command:-Dweblogic.domain.ConfigurationAuditType="audit"
-Dweblogic.domain.ConfigurationAuditType="log"
Causes the domain to write configuration auditing messages to the Administration Server log file only.
-Dweblogic.domain.ConfigurationAuditType="logaudit"
ConfigurationAuditType
attribute of the DomainMBean
. See WebLogic Scripting Tool.Configuration auditing messages are of the following severities:
Configuration auditing messages are identified by message IDs that fall within the range of 159900
-159910
.
The messages use MBean object names to identify resources. Object names for WebLogic Server MBeans reflect the location of the MBean within the hierarchical data model. To reflect the location, object names contain name/value pairs from the parent MBean. For example, the object name for a server's LogMBean
is: mydomain:Name=myserverlog,Type=Log,Server=myserver
. See WebLogic Server MBean Trees in Developing Custom Management Utilities with JMX.
Table 4-5 summarizes the messages.
Note: Each time an authorized user adds, modifies, or deletes a resource, the Management subsystem also generates an Info
message with the ID 140009
regardless of whether configuration auditing is enabled. For example:
<Sep 15, 2005 11:54:47 AM EDT> <Info> <Management> <140009> <Configuration changes for domain saved to the repository.>
While the message informs you that the domain's configuration has changed, it does not provide the detailed information that configuration auditing messages provide. Nor does the Management subsystem generate this message when you invoke operations on resources.
Table 4-6 lists additional message attributes for configuration auditing messages. All configuration auditing messages specify the same values for these attributes.
An Audit Event is an object that Auditing providers can read and process in specific ways. An Auditing provider is a pluggable component that the security realm uses to collect, store, and distribute information about operating requests and the outcome of those requests for the purposes of non-repudiation.
If you enable a domain to emit Audit Events, the domain emits the events described in Table 4-7. All Auditing providers that are configured for the domain can handle these events.
All of the events are of severity level SUCCESS
and describe the security principal who initiated the action, whether permission was granted, and the object (MBean or MBean attribute) of the requested action.
A request to create a new configuration artifact has been allowed or prevented. |
See Javadoc. |
A request to delete an existing configuration artifact has been allowed or prevented. |
See Javadoc. |
A request to modify an existing configuration artifact has been allowed or prevented. |
See Javadoc. |
A invoke an operation on an existing configuration artifact has been allowed or prevented. |
See Javadoc. |
If you enable the default WebLogic Server Auditing provider, it writes all Audit Events as log messages in its own log file.
Other Auditing providers that you create or purchase can filter these events and write them to output repositories such as an LDAP server, database, or a simple file. In addition, other types of security providers can request audit services from an Auditing provider. See Auditing Providers in Developing Security Providers for WebLogic Server.
Credential mapping is the process whereby the authentication and authorization mechanisms of a remote system (for example, a legacy system or application) are used to obtain an appropriate set of credentials to authenticate users to a target WebLogic resource. The WebLogic Credential Mapping provider maps WebLogic Server subjects to the username/password pairs to be used when accessing such resources.
By default, most configuration options for the WebLogic Credential Mapping provider are defined. However, you have the option of setting Credential Mapping Deployment Enabled, which specifies whether or not this Credential Mapping provider imports credential maps from a resource adapter's deployment descriptor (weblogic-ra.xml
file) into the security realm. This setting is enabled by default.
In order to support Credential Mapping Deployment Enabled, a Credential Mapping provider must implement the DeployableCredentialProvider
SSPI. The credential mapping information is stored in the embedded LDAP server.
You can create credential mappings using the Administration Console. To create a credential mapping for the WebLogic Credential Mapping provider:
The PKI (Public Key Infrastructure) Credential Mapping provider included in WebLogic Server maps (a) a WebLogic Server subject (the initiator) and target resource (and an optional credential action) to (b) a key pair or public certificate that can be used by applications when accessing the targeted resource. The PKI Credential Mapping provider uses the subject and resource name to retrieve the corresponding credential from the keystore.
To use the PKI Credential Mapping provider, you need to:
myrealm
). See PKI Credential Mapper Attributes and Configure Credential Mapping providers in the Administration Console online help.To configure the PKI Credential Mapping provider, set values for these attributes:
In addition, two optional attributes determine how the PKI Credential Mapping provider locates credential mappings in cases where the exact resource or subject may not be available:
For more information, see Configure Credential Mapping providers in the Administration Console online help.
You can create credential mappings using the Administration Console. To create a credential mapping for the PKI Credential Mapping provider:
You can optionally label a credential mapping with a Credential Action. The Credential Action is an arbitrary string that you can use to distinguish credential mappings used in different circumstances. For example, you might have one credential mapping used for decrypting a message from a remote resource and another credential mapping used to sign messages to be sent to the same resource. The subject initiator and the target resource are not sufficient to distinguish these two credential mappings. You can use the Credential Action to label one of these credential mappings something like decrypt
and the other one sign
. Then, the application calling the PKI Credential Mapping provider can provide the desired Credential Action value in the ContextHandler
that is passed to the provider.
The SAML Credential Mapping provider acts as a producer of SAML security assertions, allowing WebLogic Server to act as a source site for using SAML for single sign-on. The SAML Credential Mapping provider generates valid SAML 1.1 assertions for authenticated subjects based on the configuration of the target site or resource. The SAML Credential Mapping provider can be configured as a SAML Intersite Transfer Service. You can configure the provider to add user information and group membership to the AttributeStatement contained in the assertion, which then can be used as part of the asserted identity. Note that you can define default values in the SAML Credential Mapping provider for generating attributes in assertions and override those values for particular classes of assertions in the assertion configuration, as described in Produced Assertion Configuration.
For general information about WebLogic Server's support for SAML, see Securlity Assertion Markup Language (SAML) and Single Sign-On with the WebLogic Security Framework in Understanding WebLogic Security. For information about how to use the SAML Credential Mapping provider in a SAML single sign-on configuration, see Configuring Single Sign-On with Web Browsers and HTTP Clients.
These attributes configure the SAML Credential Mapping provider as a SAML authority.
Table 4-8 Source Site Configuration Attributes
These attributes configure the SAML Credential Mapping provider as a SAML source site:
Table 4-9 Source Site Configuration Attributes
These attributes configure the SAML Credential Mapping provider for the POST SAML profile:
Table 4-10 POST Profile Configuration Attributes
These attributes configure the SAML Credential Mapping provider for the Artifact SAML profile:
Table 4-11 Artifact Profile Configuration Attributes
The following settings are used to configure individual assertions produced by the SAML Credential Mapping provider. You can configure the SAML Credential Mapping provider with any number of assertions, allowing the Credential Mapper to generate different assertions for different purposes. You configure assertions with Java-style properties, in key=value format. The key takes the form assertionName.propertyName
.
Table 4-12 Produced Assertion Configuration Properties
Listing 4-1 is an example of how you might configure produced assertions. It includes both a POST profile assertion, named mypost
, and an Artifact profile assertion, named myart
.
Listing 4-1 Produced Assertion Configuration
Assertions=mypost,myart
mypost.AssertionType=bearer
mypost.Target=http://www.destination_site.com:7001/targets/PostTarget.jsp
mypost.ConsumerURL=https://www.destination_site.com:7002/samlacs/acs
mypost.IncludeGroups=true
myart.AssertionType=artifact
myart.Target=http://www.destination_site.com:7001/targets/Art*
myart.ConsumerURL=https://www.destination_site.com:7002/samlacs/acs
WebLogic Server may receive digital certificates as part of Web Services requests, two-way SSL, or other secure interactions. To validate these certificates, WebLogic Server includes a Certificate Lookup and Validation (CLV) framework, whose function is to look up and validate X.509 certificate chains. The key elements of the CLV framework are the CertPathBuilder and the CertPathValidators. The CLV framework requires one and only active CertPathBuilder which, given a reference to a certificate chain, finds the chain and validates it, and zero or more CertPathValidators which, given a certificate chain, validates it.
When WebLogic Server receives a certificate, the CLV framework uses the security provider configured as the CertPathBuilder to look up and validate the certificate chain. If the certificate chain is found and valid, the framework then calls each configured CertPathValidator, in the order the administrator configured them, to perform extra validation on the chain. The chain is only valid if the builder and all the validators successfully validate it.
A chain is valid only if all of the following are true:
WebLogic Server includes two CLV security providers: the WebLogic CertPath provider (which acts as both a CertPathBuilder and a CertPathValidator), described in CertPath Provider, and the Certificate Registry, described in Certificate Registry. Use just the WebLogic CertPath provider if you want to use trusted CA-based validation of the full certificate chain. Use just the Certificate Registry if you want only to validate that certificates are registered. Use both, designating the Certificate Registry as the current builder, if you want to use both types of validation.
For more information about certificate lookup and validation, see Configuring Identity and Trust.
The default security realm in WebLogic Server is configured with the WebLogic CertPath provider. The CertPath provider serves two functions. It is a CertPathBuilder and a CertPathValidator. The CertPath provider receives an end certificate or a certificate chain. It uses the server's list of trusted CAs to complete the certificate chain, if necessary. After building the chain, the CertPath provider validates the chain, checking the signatures in the chain, ensuring that the chain has not expired, checking the chain's basic constraints, and verifying that the chain terminates in a certificate issued by one of the server's trusted CAs.
The WebLogic CertPath provider requires no configuration, other than its Current Builder attribute, which indicates whether the CertPath provider should be used as the active certificate chain builder.
The Certificate Registry is a security provider that allows you to explicitly register the list of trusted certificates that are allowed to access WebLogic Server. If you configure a Certificate Registry as part of your security realms, then only certificates that are registered in the Certificate Registry will be considered valid. The Certificate Registry provides an inexpensive mechanism for performing revocation checking. By removing a certificate from the Certificate Registry, you can invalidate a certificate immediately. The registry is stored in the embedded LDAP server.
The Certificate Registry is both a CertPath Builder and a CertPath Validator. In either case, the Certificate Registry ensures that the chain's end certificate is stored in the registry, but does no other validation. If you use the Certificate Registry as your security realm's CertPath Builder and you also want to use the WebLogic CertPath provider or another security provider to perform full chain validation, make sure that you register the intermediate and root CAs in each server's trust keystore, and the end certificates in the Certificate Registry.
The default security realm in WebLogic Server does not include a Certificate Registry. Once you configure a Certificate Registry, you can use the WebLogic Administration Console to add, remove, and view certificates in the registry. You can export a certificate from a keystore to a file, using the Java keytool
utility. You can import a certificate that is a PEM or DER file in the file system into the Certificate Registry using the console. You can also use the console to view the contents of a certificate, including its subject DN, issuer DN, serial number, valid dates, fingerprints, etc.
For more information, see Configure Certification Path providers in the Administration Console online help.
Note: The WebLogic Keystore provider is deprecated in this release of WebLogic Server. It is only supported for backward compatibility. Use Java KeyStores (JKS) instead. All of the functionality that was supported by the WebLogic Keystore provider is available through use of Java KeyStores.
For information about configuring the WebLogic Keystore provider, see Configure keystores in the Administration Console online help.
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