Thursday, January 9, 2014

SAML "OneTimeUse" support in Apache CXF 2.7.8

Apache WSS4J 1.6.13 contains a number of features to support working with SAML 2.0 tokens with a "OneTimeUse" Condition. Firstly, it is now possible to create a SAML 2.0 token with this attribute via the ConditionsBean. Secondly, support has been added to cache any token Identifier which has a "OneTimeUse" Condition. The idea is that any SAML 2.0 token with a "OneTimeUse" Condition cannot be used again (or replayed). Hence, this is another form of defence against replay attacks, similar to existing support to cache signed Timestamps and UsernameToken nonces.

This functionality in WSS4J has been integrated into Apache CXF. Two new configuration tags have been added to control caching SAML 2.0 tokens with "OneTimeUse" Conditions:
  • ws-security.enable.saml.cache -  Whether to cache SAML2 Token Identifiers, if the token contains a "OneTimeUse" Condition. The default value is "true" for message recipients, and "false" for message initiators.
  • ws-security.saml.cache.instance - This holds a reference to a ReplayCache instance used to cache SAML2 Token Identifiers, when the token has a "OneTimeUse" Condition. The default instance that is used is the EHCacheReplayCache.
Note that caching only applies when either a WS-SecurityPolicy "SamlToken" policy is in effect, or else that a SAML action (signed or unsigned) has been configured for the non-security-policy case. In either of these scenarios, a message recipient will automatically enforce OneTimeUse, unless it has been configured not to via the "enable" configuration tag defined above.

The client functionality in Apache CXF that gets a security token from an STS (SecurityTokenService) when the service has an "IssuedToken" policy has also been updated to take a "OneTimeUse" Condition into account. If the issued token from the STS has a "OneTimeUse" Condition, then the token is not cached on the message exchange. What this means is that if the client makes another service invocation, it will get a new token from the STS, as the "OneTimeUse" Condition of the previous token means that it can't be reused.



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