Migrate trust association interceptors


 

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Data sources are not supported for use within a Trust Association Interceptor (TAI). Data sources are intended for use within J2EE applications and designed to operate within the EJB and Web containers. TAIs do not run within a container, and while data sources may function in the TAI environment, they are untested and not guaranteed to function properly.

 

Changes to WAS ND-provided TAIs

For WAS ND-provided implementation for the WebSEAL server, a new optional property is added...

com.ibm.websphere.security.webseal.ignoreProxy

If this property is set to true or yes, the implementation does not check for the proxy host names and the proxy ports to match any of the host names and ports that are listed in the properties...

For example, if the VIA header contains the following information:

HTTP/1.1 Fred (Proxy), 1.1 Sam (Apache/1.1),
HTTP/1.1 webseal1:7002, 1.1 webseal2:7001

...and the property...

com.ibm.websphere.security.webseal.ignoreProxy

...is set to true or yes, the host name Fred, is not used when matching the host names. By default, this property is not set, which implies that any proxy host names and ports that are expected in the VIA header are listed in the host names and the ports properties to satisfy the isTargetInterceptor method.

 

Migrating product-provided TAIs

The properties that are located in the files...

are not migrated from previous versions of WAS. You must migrate the appropriate properties to WAS Version 6.0.x using the trust association panels in the admin console.

 

Changes to the custom TAIs

If the custom interceptor extends...

com.ibm.websphere.security.WebSphereBaseTrustAssociationInterceptor

...implement the following new method to initialize the interceptor...

public int init (java.util.Properties props);

WAS checks the return status before using the trust association implementation. Zero (0) is the default value for indicating that the interceptor is successfully initialized.

However, if a previous implementation of the TAI returns a different error status, we can either change the implementation to match the expectations or make one of the following changes:

Method 1:

Add the property...

com.ibm.websphere.security.trustassociation.initStatus

...in the TAI custom properties. Set the property to the value that indicates the interceptor is successfully initialized. All of the other possible values imply failure. In case of failure, the corresponding TAI is not used.

Method 2:

Add the property...

com.ibm.websphere.security.trustassociation.ignoreInitStatus

...in the TAI custom properties. Set the value of this property to true, which tells WAS to ignore the status of this method. If we add this property to the custom properties, WAS does not check the return status, which is similar to previous versions of WAS.

The public int init (java.util.Properties props method replaces the public int init (String propsFile) method.

The init(Properties) method accepts a java.util.Properties object, which contains the set of properties that is required to initialize the interceptor. All of the properties set for an interceptor are sent to this method. The interceptor can then use these properties to initialize itself. For example, in WAS ND-provided implementation for the WebSEAL server, this method reads the hosts and ports so that a request coming in can be verified to come from trusted hosts and ports. A return value of Zero (0) implies that the interceptor initialization is successful. Any other value implies that the initialization is not successful and the interceptor is not used.

The init(String) method still works to use it instead of implementing the init(Properties) method. The only requirement is that you enter the file name containing the custom trust association properties using the Custom Properties link of the interceptor in the admin console or by using scripts. We can enter the property using either of the following methods. The first method is used for backward compatibility with previous versions of WAS.

Method 1:

The same property names used in the previous release are used to obtain the file name. The file name is obtained by concatenating .config to the property...

com.ibm.websphere.security.trustassociation.types

APP_ROOT/properties/myTAI.properties

...set the following properties...

  • com.ibm.websphere.security.trustassociation.types = myTAItype
  • com.ibm.websphere.security.trustassociation.myTAItype.config = APP_ROOT/properties/myTAI.properties

Method 2:

We can set the com.ibm.websphere.security.trustassociation.initPropsFile property in the trust association custom properties to the location of the file. For example, set the following property:

com.ibm.websphere.security.trustassociation.initPropsFile=APP_ROOT/properties/myTAI.properties

The previous line of code is split into two lines for illustrative purposes only. Type as one continuous line.

In an ND installation, where the location of the file name can vary for different nodes, use the variable install_root to refer to the WAS installation directory.

However, it is highly recommended that the implementation be changed to implement the init(Properties) method instead of relying on the init (String propsfile) method.

 

Migrate custom TAIs

The trust associations from previous versions of WAS are not automatically migrated to WAS Version 6.0.x and later. We can manually migrate these trust associations using the following steps:

  1. Recompile the implementation file, if necessary.

    To recompile the implementation file, type the following code:

    $WAS_HOME/java/bin/javac -classpath $WAS_HOME/plugins/com.ibm.ws.runtime.jar;$WAS_HOME/lib/j2ee.jar yourfile.java

  2. Copy the custom TAI class files to a location in the product class path. Copy these class files into WAS_HOME/lib/ext.

    You must copy this class file into the class path of each node and cell.

  3. Start WAS.
  4. Enable security to use the TAI.

    The properties that are located in the custom trust association properties file and in the trustedserver.properties file are not migrated from previous versions of WAS. You must migrate the appropriate properties to WAS Version 6.0.x and later using the trust association panels in the admin console.

Integrating third-party HTTP reverse proxy servers