Single sign-on settings
To set the configuration values for single sign-on (SSO), from the administrative console go to:
Security > Global security > Authentication > Web and SIP security > Single sign-on (SSO)
Enabled
The single sign-on function is enabled.
Web applications that use Java EE FormLogin style login pages, such as the administrative console, require single sign-on (SSO) enablement. Only disable SSO for certain advanced configurations where LTPA SSO-type cookies are not required.
Information Value Data type Boolean Default Enabled Range Enabled or Disabled
Requires SSL
The single sign-on function is enabled only when requests are made over HTTPS SSL connections. When this property is enabled, security is automatically enabled.
Information Value Data type Boolean Default Disable Range Enable or Disable
Domain name
Domain name (.ibm.com, for example) for all single sign-on hosts.
The application server uses all the information after the first period, from left to right, for the domain names. If domain name is not defined, the web browser defaults the domain name to the host name where the web application is running and SSO is restricted to the application server host name and does not work with other application server host names in the domain.
We can specify multiple domains separated by a semicolon (;), a space ( ), a comma (,), or a pipe (|). Each domain is compared with the host name of the HTTP request until the first match is located. For example, if we specify...
ibm.com;austin.ibm.com
...and a match is found in the ibm.com domain first, the application server does not match the austin.ibm.com domain. However, if a match is not found in either ibm.com or austin.ibm.com, the application server does not set a domain for the LtpaToken cookie.
- The session manager uses a secure random generator to generate session ID. The session ID is written to the cookie when the cookie is created in the setCookie method. The session manager does not set the LtpaToken to cookies.
- Usage of multiple domain names in the Domain Name field does not necessarily allow us to use different domain names during a single session. For example, if a Domain Name contains the value ibm.com;lotus.com, we can only access a server with a successful SSO login at www.ibm.com or www.lotus.com but not both because the browser controls whether or not to send the LTPA cookie.
If we specify the UseDomainFromURL value, the application server sets the SSO domain name value to the domain of the host used in the web address. For example, if an HTTP request comes from server1.raleigh.ibm.com, the application server sets the SSO domain name value to raleigh.ibm.com. The UseDomainFromURL value is case insensitive. We could us usedomainfromurl:
Information Value Data type String
Interoperability mode
That an interoperable cookie is sent to the browser to support back-level servers.
In WebSphere Application Server v6 and later, a new cookie format is needed by the security attribute propagation functionality. When the interoperability mode flag is enabled, the server can send a maximum of two single sign-on (SSO) cookies back to the browser. In some cases, the server just sends the interoperable SSO cookie.
Web inbound security attribute propagation
When web inbound security attribute propagation is enabled, security attributes are propagated to front-end application servers. When this option is disabled, the single sign-on (SSO) token is used to log in and recreate the Subject from the user registry.
If the application server is a member of a cluster and the cluster is configured with a data replication service (DRS) domain, then propagation occurs. If DRS is not configured, then the SSO token contains the originating server information.
With this information, the receiving server can contact the originating server using an MBean call to get the original serialized security attributes.
Set security cookies as HTTPOnly to resist cross-site scripting attacks
The HttpOnly attribute is a browser attribute created to prevent client side applications (such as Java scripts) from accessing cookies to prevent some cross-site scripting vulnerabilities. The attribute specifies that LTPA and WASReqURL cookies include the HTTPOnly field. For session cookies, see the session settings for servers, applications, and web modules.
Information Value Data type boolean Default enabled Range enabled or disabled
Configure SSO capability with ISAM WebSEAL Login module settings for JAAS SecurityConfigurationCommands Security custom properties
LTPA V2 cookie name
Use this field to set the new com.ibm.websphere.security.customLTPACookieName and com.ibm.websphere.security.customSSOCookieName custom properties.
The com.ibm.websphere.security.customLTPACookieName custom property is used to customize the name of the cookies used for LTPA tokens.
The com.ibm.websphere.security.customSSOCookieName custom property us used to customize the name of the cookies used for LTPA v2 (LTPA2) tokens.
For more detailed information on each property, read the Security custom properties topic.