Security considerations for Web services

When you configure WS-Security, you should make every effort to verify that the result is not vulnerable to a wide range of attack mechanisms. There are possible security concerns that arise when we are securing Web services.

In WAS, when you enable integrity, confidentiality, and the associated tokens within a SOAP message, security is not guaranteed. This list of security concerns is not complete. You must conduct our own security analysis for the environment.

• Ensuring the message freshness Message freshness involves protecting resources from a replay attack in which a message is captured and resent. Digital signatures, by themselves, cannot prevent a replay attack because a signed message can be captured and resent. IBM recommends that you allow message recipients to detect message replay attacks when messages are exchanged through an open network. Use the following elements, which are described in the WS-Security specifications, for this purpose:

  Timestamp

  Use the timestamp element to keep track of messages and to detect replays of previous messages. The WS-Security 2004 spec recommends that you cache time stamps for a given period of time. As a guideline, we can use five minutes as a minimum period of time to detect replays. Messages that contain an expired timestamp are rejected.

  Nonce

  A nonce is a child element of the <UsernameToken> element in the UsernameToken profile. Because each nonce element has a unique value, recipients can detect replay attacks with relative ease.

  Both the time stamp and nonce element must be signed. Otherwise, these elements can be altered and, therefore, cannot prevent replay attacks.

• Use XML digital signature and XML encryption properly to avoid a potential security hole

  The WS-Security 2004 spec defines how to use XML digital signature and XML encryption in SOAP headers. Therefore, users must understand XML digital signature and XML encryption in the context of other security mechanisms and their possible threats to an entity. For XML digital signature, be aware of all of the security implications resulting from the use of digital signatures in general and XML digital signature in particular. When you build trust into an application based on a digital signature, incorporate other technologies such as certification trust validation based upon the Public Key Infrastructure (PKI). For XML encryption, the combination of digital signing and encryption over a common data item might introduce some cryptographic vulnerabilities. For example, when you encrypt digitally signed data, we might leave the digital signature in plain text and leave your message vulnerable to plain text guessing attacks. As a general practice, when data is encrypted, encrypt any digest or signature over the data. For more information, see http://www.w3.org/TR/xmlenc-core/#sec-Sign-with-Encrypt.

• Protecting the integrity of security tokens

  The possibility of a token substitution attack exists. In this scenario, a digital signature is verified with a key that is often derived from a security token and is included in a message. If the token is substituted, a recipient might accept the message based on the substituted key, which might not be what you expect. One possible solution to this problem is to sign the security token (or the unique identifying data from which the signing key is derived) together with the signed data. In some situations, the token that is issued by a trusted authority is signed. In this case, there might not be an integrity issue. However, because application semantics and the environment might change over time, the best practice is to prevent this attack. You must assess the risk assessment based upon the deployed environment.

• Verifying the certificate to leverage the certificate path verification and the certificate revocation list

  IBM recommends that you verify that the authenticity or validity of the token identity used for digital signature is properly trusted. Especially for an X.509 token, this issue involves verifying the certificate path and using a certificate revocation list (CRL). In the WS-Security implementation in WAS V 6 and later, the certificate is verified by the <TokenConsumer> element. WAS provides a default implementation for the X.509 certificate that uses the Java CertPath library to verify and validate the certificate. In the implementation, there is no explicit concept of a CRL. Rather, proper root certificates and intermediate certificates are prepared in files only. For a sophisticated solution, you might develop your own TokenConsumer implementation that performs certificate and CRL verification using the online CRL database or the Online Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP).

• Protecting the username token with a password

  IBM recommends that you do not send a password in a username token to a downstream server without protection. Use transport-level security such as SSL (for example, HTTPS) or use XML encryption within WS-Security to protect the password. The preferred method of protection depends upon the environment. However, we might be able to send a password to a downstream server as plain text in some special environments where we are positive that we are not vulnerable to an attack.

Secure Web services involves more work than just enabling XML digital signature and XML encryption. To properly secure a Web service, have knowledge about the PKI. The amount of security that we need depends upon the deployed environment and the usage patterns. However, there are some basic rules and best practices for securing Web services. IBM recommends that you read some books on PKI and also read information on the Web Services Interoperability Organization (WS-I) Basic Security Profile (BSP).

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Subtopics

Nonce, a randomly generated token
Basic Security Profile compliance tips
Distributed nonce cache

 

Related concepts

WS-Security provides message integrity, confidentiality, and authentication

 

Related tasks

Secure Web services applications using message level security

 

Related information

Basic Security Profile V1.0