The Security Provider Architecture

Let's now turn our attention to WebLogic's infrastructure for application-level security. WebLogic defines a standard set of SSPIs that provide high-level security services. WebLogic also supplies a default set of security providers that implement these SSPIs. These default security providers support and enhance the standard J2EE role-based security framework. In fact, they also allow you to programmatically control its behavior. There are two important characteristics of this security framework:

Modular

The SSPIs are split into discrete modules so that each security provider can deal with different but specific aspects of WebLogic's security (e.g., authentication, authorization, auditing, and more).

Pluggable

Because these security providers live behind a layer of SSPIs, WebLogic makes it easier to replace or enhance the default implementation with your own or a third-party implementation.

The SSPIs hide the actual implementation of the security providers, thereby enabling you to plug in and play your own modules and modify selected aspects of the security. For instance, the default Authentication Provider can be replaced with one that supports some form of biometric recognition, or the Auditing Provider can be replaced with one that notifies interested parties after a user has made a certain number of failed attempts to log in.

A security realm is a logical grouping of users, groups, roles, and security policies, along with a complete set of security providers. By default, WebLogic Server comes equipped with two such realms: the legacy compatibility realm that provides support for WebLogic 6.x-type security configurations, and the new default realm. The default realm, which is often referred to by its default name myrealm, is WebLogic's standard implementation of the security providers. Although you can configure multiple realms for a domain, one realm can be active only; this active realm controls all aspects of the domain's security.

You can determine which realm your domain is set up to use by selecting the domain from the left frame of the Administration Console and then choosing the View Domain-Wide Security Settings option. The Configuration/General tab displays a Default Realm field that indicates the security realm currently being used by your domain. The Administration Console lets you configure virtually all aspects of the security realm. You can view and modify the realm's configuration by selecting the realm from under the Security/Realms node in the left pane of the Administration Console. Here, you will find subnodes for all the security providers within the realm, together with access to the realm's users, groups, and roles.

To understand how WebLogic's default security realm works, you need to understand the authentication and authorization structure that WebLogic imposes on its resources and how it integrates with the standard J2EE role-based security. The remainder of this section is dedicated to exploring these concepts. The following section examines the security providers in more detail.

17.3.1 Overview

WebLogic's authentication and authorization providers, part of the default implementation of the SSPIs, rely on the important concepts shown in the following list.

• A user, which represents a person, system, or Java client
• A group, which represents a static collection of users
• A role, which represents a dynamic collection of users
• A security policy, which defines which users are granted access to a WebLogic resource

You can use WebLogic to configure these entities and thereby protect any resource within a domain, right from the call to an EJB method all the way through to a particular operation from the Administration Console. This framework prohibits unauthorized access both from within (e.g., a servlet invoking an EJB method) and from without (e.g., a Java client attempting to use a JDBC data source).

To place these concepts in context, let's refer back to Section 2.9 in Chapter 2, where we examined how to protect the web resources in the /admin directory of a web application. In the standard web.xml deployment descriptor, we defined a security constraint that granted access to a security role named webadmin:

 
 Admin Resources
 security constraints for admin stuff
 /admin/*
 POST
 GET
 
 
 webadmin
 
 
 NONE
 

Of course, this setup relies on a security role that we also defined in the descriptor file:

 webadmin

Up until this point, we have utilized the standard J2EE security features found in the deployment descriptors. Now we have to assign the virtual security role defined in the web.xml file to an actual physical entity in WebLogic Server. This is achieved by associating the role name to a number of principals already configured in WebLogic Server. The weblogic.xml descriptor file for the web application holds this mapping:

 webadmin
 jmountjoy
 achugh

This XML fragment correlates the webadmin role defined and used within the web application with the actual WebLogic users jmountjoy and achugh. In this way, we are able to prohibit users who are not in the webadmin role from accessing web content under the /admin folder. Let's now look at just how this setup protects the web resources in the web application.

A protected resource restricts access to only a subset of users. Any user that satisfies the access constraints laid down on the protected resource is then authorized to access the resource. WebLogic lets you protect a variety of resources: web applications, URLs (as in the earlier example), individual EJB methods, web services, connection pools, and even branches of the JNDI tree. For instance, you could ensure that only certain users are allowed to access a connection pool or invoke a method on a protected EJB. In the case of our sample web application, the set of URLs matching the pattern /admin/* represents a protected resource. This means that you can easily set up a secure environment in which applications are forced to obey the security constraints that you've laid out. WebLogic also makes it easy to adapt the configuration according to your needs with minimal code changes. In the case of our sample web application, the security constraints are defined declaratively in the deployment descriptors. Thus, you can adjust the security settings with no code changes.

The access control mechanism relies on the notion of an authenticated user. The user represents an authenticated entity it could be a person (as in this case) or an external, client program. A user may authenticate itself in different ways. Over the Web, a user may be required to fill in a login form. A Java client application, on the other hand, may rely on JAAS authentication to establish trust with WebLogic Server. In our example, the user is determined from the username and password (login credentials) supplied over the Web. In general, a user has a number of principals (identities) associated with it as a result of an authentication. For instance, the principals associated with the system user after successful authentication include the system user itself and the group to which it belongs i.e., the Administrators group. Some users may not authenticate at all, in which case they will remain anonymous.

When the domain holds an overwhelming number of WebLogic users, it becomes cumbersome to manage the security needs of each individual user. For this reason, WebLogic lets you configure static collections of users, called groups. From a security point of view, if a role or policy statement is applied to a group, the role or policy is assigned to all members of the group. From an administration point of view, it is easier to manage a handful of groups rather than (say) several hundred users. Remember, a group is a static collection of users. An administrator explicitly defines the members of a group at configuration time. As we saw earlier, a group can also act as a security principal. So, for instance, our weblogic.xml descriptor file could easily map the security role to the name of an existing group:

 webadmin
 someAdminGroup

In this case, access to the web content would be restricted only to all users within someAdminGroup.

A security role represents a dynamic collection of users whose membership is evaluated at runtime based on the subject's principals and other membership criteria. Whether a user is in a role depends on whether the user satisfies the membership conditions of the role at runtime. You can specify a number of membership conditions for the role. These include a logical mix of usernames, group names, and times of access during the day. For instance, you may define the membership condition for the DayShopper role as being "any user who belongs to the Shopper group and the time of access is between 8:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m.". You may assign a number of roles to a resource in order to help specify the authorization conditions of the resource. Note that the roles themselves do not guarantee access control, they just facilitate in the definition of a policy statement that ultimately protects access to the target resource. In terms of the earlier example, we created a role called webadmin. The membership conditions for the role are simple: the client has to be authenticated as either jmountjoy or achugh before the web application considers it in the webadmin role.

You can protect a WebLogic resource by defining a policy statement for it. A security policy is a statement about access it determines which users will have access to the resource. Just as you can with roles, you can define a policy in terms of a logical combination of a number of conditions: usernames, group names, the time of access during the day, and role names. For instance, you could assign the following policy to a JDBC pool: "the caller must belong to the DayShopper role or the Administrator group." This means that only authenticated users who belong to the Administrator group or pass the membership criteria of the DayShopper role may access the pool. If any user fails these access control checks defined for the JDBC pool, WebLogic will raise an authorization exception.

Now let's revisit the earlier security constraints on our web application in terms of these concepts. The weblogic.xml descriptor file defines a webadmin role. At deploy time, WebLogic reads this descriptor file and creates a webadmin role within its internal security configuration. This internal security role is configured to ensure that only the users achugh and jmountjoy can qualify for membership to this role. Thus, the J2EE role gets mapped to a WebLogic role, whereas the role-to-principal(s) assignment defines the membership criteria for the internal role.

In addition, WebLogic creates and assigns a policy statement to the web application that protects all web resources that match the URL pattern /admin/*. The policy statement will grant access to any caller satisfying the following condition: "the caller is in the webadmin role." Through this policy statement, WebLogic can ensure that any user who isn't a member of the webadmin role is unable to access the web content under the /admin folder. Thus, WebLogic relies on a behind-the-scenes policy statement to enforce the security constraints defined by the deployment descriptors. Later, we see how you can explicitly create your own policy statements.

17.3.2 Users and Groups

To list the users that belong to a realm, select the realm from the Administration Console and choose the Users node. You then can use the righthand frame to view all the users or filter the list. The System user account also will be part of the list this is the Administration user account that was defined when you used the Configuration Wizard to create the domain. Select the "Configure a new User" option to create a new user. For each user, you need to specify a name, a short description, and a password. Note that all usernames within a realm must be unique. The default provider uses case-insensitive usernames. The user may belong to one or more groups.

To list and edit all the groups that belong to a security realm, select the realm from the Administration Console and then choose the Groups node. You can also create a new group here. The Membership tab for a group is a little misleading, as it does not let you view the members of the group. To see if a user is a member of a group, you have to select the user and view its Groups tab. WebLogic allows you to add groups to other existing groups, and the Membership tab lists all subgroups that are contained within the selected group. You can also use this tab to add another group to the current group.

Group membership places two important implications on your security configuration. Imagine you've defined two groups, A and B, in your domain, where group B is a member of group A. This means that:

• Every user that belongs to group B also belongs to group A.
• If you assign a role or policy to group A, all members of group A as well as all members of group B will be assigned the same role or policy.

When you view the Groups tab for a user, the Administration Console lists only the groups that the user belongs to directly. So, if a user belongs to group B, the Administration Console lists only group B under the Groups tab, even though the user actually belongs to both groups A and B.

When you create a new domain using the Configuration Wizard, the following groups are created automatically and are ready for use: Administrators, Deployers, Operators, and Monitors. Initially, the System user is the only user created, and it is also the only member of the Administrators group in the domain.

Remember, groups simply ease the task of administration. If a user is a member of a group, he is not automatically guaranteed any special privileges. A group inherits access privileges only when it participates in a policy statement (either directly or through a role). For example, the initial System user account acquires Administrative access rights only because it is a member of the Administrators group, which in turn is a member of a (global) Admin role, and a policy statement is in place that grants access to all areas of the domain to the Admin role.

Two groups are not listed on the Groups page, but are automatically made available to the security realm:

users

This group represents the set of all authenticated users. Any user that successfully authenticates itself is a member of the users group.

everyone

This group represents the set of all WebLogic users, including anonymous users. Any user, whether authenticated or anonymous, is a member of the group everyone.

These groups provide a convenient way for setting up the default access control. For instance, a resource can be made accessible to all users through the policy statement "User is a member of the group everyone." Alternatively, you can restrict access to only authenticated users by defining the following policy on a resource: "User is a member of the users group." You can also programmatically check for group membership on the server side. The following example checks whether the current user is a member of the users or everyone group:

/** returns false if executed without any security context */
weblogic.security.SubjectUtils.isUserInGroup(
 weblogic.security.Security.getCurrentSubject( ),"users");
/** returns true regardless of whether the user authenticates */
weblogic.security.SubjectUtils.isUserInGroup(
 weblogic.security.Security.getCurrentSubject( ),"everyone");

17.3.3 Protecting User Accounts

WebLogic provides a user lockout facility to prevent abuse of user accounts. A user is locked out when a set threshold number of failed login attempts are made. When this happens, the user account is locked for a configurable period of time, or until an Administrator unlocks the user account. During this period, the user is prohibited from using those credentials to access the server. In order to configure user lockout, select the realm from under Security/Realms node in the left frame of the Administration Console. You then can use the User Lockout tab to adjust the lockout features and view lockout statistics.

Table 17-2 lists the various configuration options available under the User Lockout tab. By default, these settings are configured for maximum security.

Table 17-2. Configuring user lockout

Setting	Description	Default
Lockout Enabled	This setting indicates whether the lockout facility is enabled. You will need to disable this feature if you use an alternative Authentication Provider that supports its own mechanism for protecting user accounts.	true
Lockout Threshold	This setting determines the maximum number of failed login attempts that are permitted before the user is locked out.	5
Lockout Reset Duration	Suppose the Lockout Threshold is 5 minutes and the Lockout Reset Duration is 3 minutes. If a user makes five failed login attempts within 3 minutes, the user account will be locked out. If the five failed attempts do not occur within 3 minutes, the account still will remain alive.	5 minutes
Lockout Duration	This setting determines the duration (in minutes) that a user will not be able to access his account after being locked out.	30 minutes
Lockout Cache Size	This setting specifies the size of the cache that holds the invalid login attempts.	5
Lockout GC Threshold	This setting determines the maximum number of invalid login attempts that are held in memory. When the number of invalid login records exceeds this value, WebLogic's garbage collector removes all records that have expired i.e., when the associated user has been locked out.	400

While a user is locked out, a Details link appears under the Locked column in the user list (under the Users node). If you select this link for any user in the list, you can view the number of failed login attempts for the user and the time when the last login attempt failed. You also can choose the Unlock option to manually reactivate the user's account.

17.3.4 Roles

Unlike a group, a role represents a dynamic collection of users. Role membership can be defined in terms of the following criteria:

Username

You can specify a number of usernames. If the authenticated user matches one of the names in the list, and it satisfies all other criteria, it automatically becomes a member of the role.

Group names

You can specify a number of group names. If the authenticated user is a member of any of the groups in the list, and it satisfies all other criteria, it automatically becomes a member of the role.

Hours of access

You can define a number of time periods during which users are allowed access. If the user tries to access a resource during one of the time periods specified and satisfies all other criteria, it automatically becomes a member of the role.

You can combine these rules in various ways, using logical AND and OR relationships. For instance, you could create RoleA based on the criteria that the user belongs to the group UKSeller and hours of access are between 8:00 a.m. and 9:00 p.m. Any user who then tries to access a resource between these hours and also is a member of the UKSeller group will be a member of RoleA. Alternatively, you could create RoleB based on the criteria that the user belongs to the group UKSeller or the hours of access are between 8:00 a.m and 9:00 p.m. In this case, any member of UKSeller will always be in the role, and any user who tries to access a resource between 8:00 a.m and 9:00 p.m also will be a member of the role, regardless of the groups it belongs to. The membership conditions for the role are evaluated at runtime when a user attempts to access a resource that is protected by a policy statement defined in terms of that role. Thus, the membership conditions help evaluate whether the user is in the role at a point in time.

In general, WebLogic's default Role Mapping Provider manages the information about all the roles defined in a security realm. In fact, two kinds of roles can be defined: global and scoped roles.

17.3.5 Global Roles

Global roles are available to all resources within a security domain. A default set of global roles is created automatically when you create a new domain; it is used to grant access to various operations. These prefabricated global roles are associated with default security policies that implement the factory-set security configuration for your WebLogic domain:

Admin

Users that belong to this role have complete access to all areas of the domain. This includes the ability to view and edit the domain configuration, start and stop servers, deploy applications (EJBs, JMS factories, web applications), and more. Any user that belongs to the Administrators group automatically inherits the Admin role. That is, the membership condition for the Admin role is that the user must belong to the Administrators group.

Deployer

Users in this role are allowed to view the domain configuration, view and edit deployment descriptors, and deploy applications, EJBs, startup and shutdown classes, J2EE connectors, and web service components. The membership condition for the Deployer role is that the user must belong to the Deployers group.

Operator

Users in this role can view the server configuration, as well as start, stop and resume server instances. The membership condition for the Operator role is that the user must belong to the Operators group.

Monitor

Users in this role are allowed only to view the server's configuration. The membership condition for the Monitor role is that the user must belong to the Monitors group.

In order to create or modify existing global roles, select the realm from the left frame of the Administration Console and then select the Global Roles node.

WebLogic also provides a global role called anonymous. Its membership is defined to include all users in the everyone group. Even though the anonymous role does not appear in the roles listed in the Administration Console, you still can use it to define policies on resources.

17.3.6 Scoped Roles

Most roles are scoped, meaning that they apply to a particular resource or branch of a JNDI tree. Unlike global roles that are independent of any resource and can be managed centrally via the Administration Console, scoped roles are distributed across various resources. You have to select a particular resource in order to view the associated scoped roles. Regardless of the actual resource, the underlying principle for creating a scoped role is the same. Locate the resource from the left pane of the Administration Console, then right-click and select Define Scoped Role. In some cases, you can define scoped roles and their brethren, scoped policies, on even finer aspects. For example, you can define a scoped role and policy on a per-method basis for EJBs, on a per-operation basis for web services, and on an HTTP method type (POST, GET, HEAD, etc.) basis for web resources within a web application. Let's now look at how to create scoped roles for particular resources, and at some precautions you need to take during setup.

17.3.6.1 Connection pools and multipools

JDBC resources are located under the Services/JDBC subtree. You can right-click a chosen resource (e.g., connection pool) and select Define Scoped Role to define a role for the resource. You also can delete or modify previously assigned roles.

JDBC roles are hierarchical. If you right-click the JDBC/Connection Pools node, you can follow the same procedure to create a scoped role that is applicable to all connection pools.

17.3.6.2 JNDI branches

You can assign a role to a specific node or branch of the JNDI tree for a server. Select the server from the left frame of the Administration Console, then right-click and select the "View JNDI tree" option. This launches a new browser window that lets you explore the JNDI tree for the chosen server. You then can select any node in the tree, right-click, and select the Define Scoped Role option.

17.3.6.3 Web applications

The role and policy assignment for web applications is slightly different, in the sense that the roles and policies are scoped to particular URLs within the web application. Choose the web application from the left pane of the Administration Console and then select the Define Scoped Role option. You then will be asked to supply a URL pattern and a role that will be used to restrict access to the URL pattern. Later, you can apply a policy statement to the web application using the same URL pattern and scoped role. For example, you may wish to scope a role and policy to a particular servlet only, in which case you can use a URL pattern such as /servletname. If you want the role to apply to all resources in the web application, use the URL pattern /*.

17.3.6.4 Web services

Web service components are typically packaged in an EAR. You can locate the web service by expanding the node representing the application under the Deployments/Applications node. In WebLogic 7.0, you can locate the web service from under the Deployments/Web Services node.

Right-click a service and select the Define Scoped Role option. This will let you define a role for all of the services in the selected web service module. You also can select the Define Policies and Roles for Individual Services option, which provides you with a table listing all web services. For each web service, you can choose the Define Scoped Role option to create a scoped role for that web service alone. When you define a scoped policy in this way, you also will be able to choose to which operations the policy should be applied.

The web service roles and policies are hierarchical. In essence, if you set up a role or policy on a web service module using the Define Roles option, all services within the module inherit the role and policy. You also can set a policy on the application that bundles the web service module. In this case, all web service modules and all web services within the modules will inherit the role and policy.

17.3.6.5 EJBs

The assignment of scoped roles to EJBs is very similar to that for web services. If you select the EJB Modules node, any role or policy you define will be inherited by all EJBs. If you select a particular EJB module and choose the Define Scoped Role option, any roles you define will be scoped to all EJBs within that module. Finally, if you select the Define Policies and Roles for Individual Beans option, you will be presented with a list of EJBs, thus allowing you to assign the scoped role or policy individually to each EJB. If you define a policy for a particular EJB in this manner, you also can specify to which EJB methods the policy should be applied. An alternative approach to defining scoped roles for all the EJBs in an application is to simply define a global role instead.

17.3.6.6 JMS destinations

To assign a scoped role to a JMS destination, select the JMS destination under the JMS server node that hosts it, right-click, and select the Define Scoped Role option.

17.3.6.7 Using the deployment descriptors

For a J2EE component (e.g., EJB, web application), the role information also can be obtained from the deployment descriptors, as demonstrated earlier in the web application example. When you deploy a J2EE component, the roles are automatically created and populated with the data held in the deployment descriptors. If you subsequently make changes to the new security roles, these changes are not persisted back to the deployment descriptors. Ideally, once the J2EE component is deployed, you need to reconfigure WebLogic so that it doesn't refresh the roles when the component is redeployed. Later, we'll see how to alter this default behavior of the security providers by instructing them to ignore the security constraints in the deployment descriptors.

17.3.7 The externally-defined Element

Recall how we used the weblogic.xml descriptor file for a web application to map the security roles defined earlier in the standard web.xml descriptor file to actual principals in WebLogic's security realm. For example, the following portion from the weblogic.xml descriptor file shows how to list the principals associated with the role mysecrole:

 mysecrole
 jon
 system

Alternatively, you could use the externally-defined[1] element to indicate to WebLogic that the security role defined in the web.xml descriptor file actually points to a role in the security realm created manually using the Administration Console. This approach means that you don't need to explicitly map the security role to existing WebLogic users and groups. Instead, you can defer the membership conditions for the security role until after the web application is deployed. For instance, suppose the weblogic.xml descriptor file for our web application includes the following security information:

[1] This element is called global-role in WebLogic 7.0.

 mysecrole
 

This indicates that the security constraints for the web application's descriptor rely on a role called mysecrole that already has been configured for the realm. When you deploy the web application, WebLogic will look for mysecrole within its security realm and use this security role to configure a policy statement on the web application. In this case, the policy statement will specify the following condition: "Caller is a member of the role mysecrole." In this way, WebLogic can ensure that only users who are members of the security role mysecrole may invoke the protected resource. Of course, mysecrole now must be configured for the realm using the Administration Console, either as a global role or as a scoped role for this particular web application. A similar technique can be used for EJBs.

An important benefit of the externally-defined element is that you don't need to modify the way in which WebLogic handles security information in the deployment descriptors (see the Section 17.3.9 later in this chapter). Because the security constraints are implemented through a policy statement defined in terms of a security role that only can be populated using the Administration Console, there is no chance of overwriting this role and policy assignment. The major difference between this element and the traditional J2EE role assignment is that any security role assignment that lists the principals in the weblogic.xml descriptor file will create a role whose membership conditions are defined in terms of these principals. If you use the externally-defined element, the security role assignment must refer to a role that you've configured for the realm using the Administration Console.

17.3.8 Policies

Security policies let you protect a wide variety of server resources. For instance, you can decide who has access to the Administration Console, who can start and stop the servers, and who can access the connection pools, web applications, EJBs, enterprise applications, J2EE connectors, a particular branch of the JNDI tree, and more. Security policies offer very tight control over the authorization settings within the WebLogic domain. Although scoped roles look very similar to policies, policies define access control while roles do not. In summary:

• A policy statement is used to protect a resource.
• A policy statement lets you specify a number of conditions under which users may access the resource.

A security policy uses a superset of the conditions that are available to a role. You can define a policy in terms of a logical combination of usernames, group names, time-of-day settings, and roles. The roles used in a policy can be either global roles, or those scoped to the resource for which you are defining the policy.

A WebLogic resource is protected only when it has been assigned a security policy. Some WebLogic resources come with a set of default policies applied to them.

Whereas role information is stored by the Role Mapping Provider, policy information is stored by the Authorization Provider. Even though you may configure the security policies in the same way as the roles, we recommend that you set up roles to identify user responsibilities and create policies to specify access restrictions using these roles. That is, you should define roles in terms of existing users, groups, and time-of-day settings, and then you can use these roles to configure a policy statement for the resource. This scheme fits nicely with the J2EE role-based security model covered earlier in Section 17.3.1.

A policy can be assigned in a number of ways:

• WebLogic can assign policies to web applications and EJBs automatically, after it has read their deployment descriptors.
• The Administrator can assign policies to WebLogic resources manually and tweak their configuration.
• WebLogic provides default security policies that are applied to many resources.

17.3.8.1 Using the Administration Console

An Administrator can explicitly define security policies that help protect WebLogic resources. You can assign a security policy in the same way that you define a scoped role for a resource. Simply select the resource from the left pane of the Administration Console, then right-click and choose the Define Security Policy option instead. EJBs offer an additional option, "Define Security Policies and Roles for Individual beans," that allows you to define a policy for a particular EJB and to further limit this policy to selected EJB methods. Web service modules offer similar functionality, allowing you to define a policy for a particular web service within a module and to further limit the policy to selected web service operations. This same functionality exists for JMS destinations, whereby the policy can be limited to either a send, receive, or browse operation on a queue, or to a send or receive operation on a topic.

17.3.8.2 Enabling user-defined policies

In WebLogic 8.1, new policies that you create using the Administration Console will, by default, not be applied. Instead, only those policies that were defined using deployment descriptors will be in operation. For example, if you add a new scoped policy for all .html files in a web application, and assuming that you had no such security constraint defined in the deployment descriptors, your new scoped policy will not be operational. To toggle this behavior, you need to select the security realm from the left pane of the Administration Console and then select the General tab. The Check Roles and Policies setting can assume two possible values.

Web Applications and EJBs Protected by DD

This option ensures that WebLogic honors only those security constraints defined in the deployment descriptors of web applications and EJB modules. This is the default behavior of the security realm.

All Web Applications and EJBs

This option ensures that WebLogic honors any security policies that are configured for the web applications and EJB modules using the Administration Console.

Thus, you must change the value of the Check Roles and Policies setting to the latter option if you need to enable the policies defined using the Administration Console.

17.3.8.3 Using the deployment descriptors

WebLogic supports the J2EE security model, which relies on the security roles defined in the descriptor files to determine access privileges. WebLogic's Authorization Provider examines the deployment descriptors when the EAR or WAR is deployed and creates internal security roles based on the configuration settings. In addition, the provider defines a security policy that grants access to all principals that belong to these roles. Later, we'll see how to alter the default behavior of the providers by instructing them to ignore the security data held in the deployment descriptors.

17.3.8.4 Default policies

WebLogic comes equipped with a number of default security policies for example, WebLogic supports a default policy that restricts access to the Administration Console. The following security policies are based on role membership:

Administrative resources

The Administration Console and other administrative resources are protected by a security policy that demands that the caller be in one of the following roles: Admin, Deployer, Operator, or Monitor.

Server resources

Resources under the Server node in the Administration Console are protected by a security policy that demands that the caller be either in the Admin or Operator roles.

COM resources

Resources under the Services/jCOM node in the left pane of the Administration Console are protected by a policy that demands that the caller be in the JCOM role.

By default, all application-specific resources, such as those related to JDBC, JMS, EJB, EIS, MBean, and Web Services, are accessible to all users. This is possible because these resources are protected by the default policy, which demands that the caller be in the everyone group. You can always view the default security policy that applies to a WebLogic resource. For instance, if you right-click the Connection Pool node under the Services/JDBC node and then choose the Define Security Policy option, you can view the default policy for all connection pools.

When you configure a new resource for example, a new JDBC pool or a web services component it automatically inherits the default security policy. Any new security policy associated with a resource also uses the inherited policy conditions. However, if you define a new security policy for a resource with new policy conditions, these settings override the inherited policy conditions. That is, if you define a policy for a resource, the inherited policy conditions are ignored. For instance, if you define a policy constraint for a JDBC pool that requires that the caller be in the role MyRole, it overrides the default policy constraint that the caller be a member of the group everyone.

17.3.9 Ignoring the Deployment Descriptors

When an application is deployed, WebLogic inspects the security constraints defined in the deployment descriptors and sets up the appropriate role and policy statements in the various providers. Because these roles and policy statements are not persisted to the deployment descriptors (but rather to an internal store), reading this information from the descriptor files the next time the application is deployed means that WebLogic may overwrite any changes that you make to the role and policy information. You can prevent this overwriting behavior by instructing WebLogic to ignore the security constraints in the deployment descriptors the next time the application is deployed. To configure this, navigate to the security realm using the left pane of the Administration Console, and then in the General tab change the value of the On Future Re-Deploys[2] attribute. The default value for this setting i.e., initialize roles and "policies" from DD ensures that WebLogic does create the roles and policies based on the security information held in the deployment descriptors. If you set the attribute to "ignore roles and policies from DD," you can prevent WebLogic from reading the security information held within the deployment descriptors.

[2] WebLogic 7.0 users should enable the Ignore Security Data in Deployment Descriptors flag instead.

Because the providers manage all the information about the roles and policy statements, you have greater control over this access control information now that you can decide when WebLogic should ignore the security data in the deployment descriptors. You have two basic options, each with their own security implications:

• If you choose to ignore the deployment descriptors before actually deploying an application, the security constraints for the application need to be configured manually from the Administration Console. The providers will persist the access control information in their own stores, and the security data in the deployment descriptors will be ignored completely.
• If you choose to ignore the deployment descriptors after deploying the application, the providers already will be populated with the security constraints in the descriptor files, which you can later further refine from the Administration Console. Once again, the providers will store this information in their own stores. However, because the security settings in the descriptor files have been ignored, they can no longer override any changes you've made to the roles and policy statements.

17.3.10 Summary

Figure 17-1 summarizes the security architecture that we have just described.

Figure 17-1. Static structure of authentication components

As you can see from the figure, users may belong to groups, and groups may contain other groups. Roles may be defined in terms of users and/or groups. Roles can either be global or scoped to a particular kind of resource. Here we haven't shown all resourcesjust the hierarchical connection pool resources. A particular connection pool is contained in the Connection Pools resource.

Strictly speaking, policies are applied to a ResourceMBean. At runtime, a ResourceMBean will exist that represents each actual JDBC Connection Pool, all of which extend to another MBean that represents the "container" holding all of the connection pools. Inheritance of policies works because the ResourceMBeans extend each other in this way.

Scoped roles and policies may be associated either with the Connection Pools container (in which case it is inherited by all its instances), or with a particular JDBC Pool itself. All policies are scoped because they are always associated with a particular resource.