Recent security enhancements in Apache CXF 2.7.x

In this post, I will cover some new security features and enhancements that are contained in Apache CXF 2.7.2 (release notes), as well as the previous 2.7.1 release (release notes).

1) STS Enhancements

• The STS ClaimsManager used to call all ClaimsHandler implementations for processing. Now it only calls the implementations that support the requested claim (CXF-4461).
• New functionality was added to the STS to support processing 'primary' and 'secondary' claims, and to merge claims with the same dialects (CXF-4664).
• It is now possible for the STSClient to send a 'Claims' Element to the STS via a CallbackHandler (CXF-4638).
• You can now configure signature + encryption Crypto objects in the STS via a URL or properties object, as per the runtime (CXF-4705).

2) SAML Enhancements

• SAML SubjectConfirmation requirements are now enforced for the non-policy case (CXF-4655).
• The JAX-RS SAML interceptors have been enhanced to allow sending an existing SAML Token, rather than always creating one (CXF-4639).

3) XACML Enhancements

A new 'cxf-rt-security' module was introduced in CXF 2.7.1, for security functionality that is common to several of the runtime modules (WS-Security, RS-Security, etc.). For now this module contains some new security functionality based around XACML:

• It contains some helper classes to construct XACML Request statements using OpenSAML for the XACML 2.0 core specification (see here), as well as the SAML Profile of XACML 2.0 (and here).
• It contains an interface to create an XACML request given a Principal, list of roles and a CXF Message object, as well as a default implementation. This implementation follows the SAML 2.0 profile of XACML 2.0. The principal name is inserted as the Subject ID, and the list of roles associated with that principal are inserted as Subject roles.  The action to send defaults to "execute". The resource is the WSDL Operation for a SOAP service, and the request URI for a REST service. The current DateTime is also sent in an Environment.
• An abstract interceptor is provided that wraps the XACML request creation functionality given above. It can perform an XACML authorization request to a remote PDP, and make an authorization decision based on the response. It takes the principal and roles from the CXF SecurityContext, and uses the XACMLRequestBuilder to construct an XACML Request statement.