Why WS security is needed to provide tokens,signatures etc if there are ssl communication to achieve this purpose? How can WS security used to provide integrity,confidentiality and authenticity that ssl can't provide?simply why ws secuirty(If possible can you provide any example)
If business partner of paypal using paypal's web service in its website.If that web service is asking for username and password of its customer,how paypal can protect customers data from there Business partners?How soap transaction can take place between customers,paypal and its business patners?plz can you explain how WS security concepts ( provide integrity, confidentiality,authenticity) in this case?
The main difference is that HTTP related security mechanisms secure the transport layer of the web service, and WS security addresses a higher level of abstraction.
similarly, you may have also security solutions in higher (for example: encrypt just a specific password field in a web service) or lower levels (like VPN)
Different scenarios will require different security measures in different layers
Some examples:
Web Services are not limited to HTTP transport - your environment may include other transports (like messaging using JMS, MSMQ, etc). setting up security at the Web Services layer (rather then the transport layer) will allow you to use a common mechanism for the whole environment.
Another issue is that http level security information is "pealed" as you go higher in the Web Services Stack - for example, in many places you wont be accessing the service provider directly, but through a central ESB (Enterprise Service Bus). the ESB acts as a central hub for services, and may also perform tasks such as logging, routing, publishing to multiple service endpoints, etc.
When using an ESB the http connection is broken at the ESB, and the service gets a new http connection originating from the ESB - thus http security mechanisms cannot offer end-to-end security.
WS Security information however can be preserved even if the messages are routed through an ESB
What you describe in you last comment appears to be not related to the previous answer
Do you mean they have a mechanism like OpenID or kerberos, where you can use your credentials from one site to access a different site?
This isn't specific to web services, and there are various existing protocols to do it (my guess is that they use an existing protocol). Of course a similar mechanism can be developed using WS Security standards.
The kerberos protocol for example works like this:
1. The user authenticates to the security server
2. the security server replies with a signed message (called ticket) saying "the user 123 has been authenticated"
3. The user uses this message to prove that he is indeed user 123 to the 2nd site, without the need for the 2nd site to actually get his username password.
This protocol is based on encryption and cryptographic signatures - both are available using WS security.
SSL (TLS) security will protect the user from eavesdropping. But it won't protect you (your site) from malicious users. You're still vulnerable to buffer overflows, SQL injection and so on.
For a great example watch the "How I met your girlfriend" talks by Samy Kamkar at Defcon (shorter) and at Blackhat (longer). Samy explains using web application vulnerabilities to breaking into an account (in this case it's Facebook) of someone who uses SSL.
The main difference between SSL and WS-Security is, SSL is transport level but WS-Security is message level... In other words when you use SSL - as soon as the message left the transport channel - its not secured. But with WS-Security message will be still secured and message security is independent from the transport channel.
With WS-Security,
Authentication --> UsernameToken
Non-repudiation --> Signature [XML
Signature/WS-Security] Confidentiality --> Encryption [XML
Encryption/WS-Security]
Integrity --> Signature [XML Signature/WS-Security]
Pure SSL provides Authentication/Confidentiality and Integrity - but not Non-repudiation.
2-legged OAuth is a standard to support Non-repudiation over SSL.
Thanks...
WS or Web Service Security is an extension of SOAP which applies security to different web services. Ws-Security uses XML signatures and encryption to provide end to end security. Main focus of this protocol is to specify how integrity and confidentiality can be enforced in messages exchanges between user and service provider on web such as Paypal. This service also allows communication of different security token formats like SAML, X.509, Kerberos etc. Unlike HTTP protocol which mainly focuses on providing security at transport level, WS security mechanism implements higher level of abstraction in application layer and provide encrypted security solution.
Since need of security is different on every platforms, these two standards focuses to meet distinguish need of such security platforms. With the help of this security, end to end security, non- repudiation, reverse proxy, transport bindings etc are improved.
In general terms you can say that this service is another method to provide better security to data exchange platforms and user’s privacy. There are many other services/software which does same task like TOR (provides integrity to user privacy), ScrapeSentry (a service which provide security from bad bot traffic and spam), Distil Network (another service to block spam on web spam) etc. However concept of every security mechanism is different but their main motive is to provide constant and reliable security to user as well as businesses.
Good day people,
the SSL/TLS technology is a security technology. Its goal is to protect the user from having his/her information (credit card, address, tel number...) being stolen by a hacker. The SSL certificate will protect the website and each person who connects on the website will be sure to have a secured environment.
The quality of the security depends on the type of certificate installed on the website in question, whether it is DV (Domain Validation), OV (Organization Validation), EV (Extended Validation), if the SGC technology is present or not.
If you have any other questions, you can have more details here.
Related
I have two questions.
How to decide which one of the following is best for me to choose as my authentication method?
Sign Message with X509 Certificate
Require Mutual TLS
How to implement the two authentication methods?
I am using a Rails 4 app as my Connect API endpoint.
What's best for you will depend on your situation and priorities.
Sign Message with X509 Certificate
This can be used to verify or prove the source of the message. In this case DocuSign. This could be useful for auditing purposes.
Require Mutual TLS
With Mutual Auth TLS both the sender and the receiver verify each other using certificates. So the receiver knows the communication has been initiated by DocuSign, and the DocuSign service verifies that the certificate used by the receiver is as per configuration settings in the DocuSign console. The aim here is to prevent a Man-in-the-middle type attack where the communication could be intercepted and modified/recorded by an attacker.
This answer talks about the differences in more detail.
I think the key point is both approaches solve different problems, depending on your situation you may require one, both or neither.
Regarding implementation, TLS is typically done at a server level, so may require only configuration and no application code. XML signing on the other hand is typically done within the application itself.
Is it possible to block connections to a web service (server) from outside its domain?
For example consider a web app that fetches data from Twitter's API using Twitter's "application only auth". The web app's client uses AJAX to call it's own server, which in turn calls Twitter's API with Twitter's token.
While the token is never exposed to the client side code is there anything to stop an outside server side app from calling the web app's server using the URLs used by the client and for example exhausting the Twitter tokens rate limits?
Is it possible to block connections to a web service (server) from outside its domain?
Certainly. Set your web server's access control lists to drop connections from outside of your IP range. Alternately, install a firewall. That's very straightforward, but I suspect you mean something else by "outside its domain?"
From your description, you seem to be really asking whether you verify that you're only talking to your own client application. As a general rule, no. You can authenticate users. That's easy. If the user isn't logged in and authorized to use your service, you don't forward requests to Twitter. But you can't authenticate applications.
If you're going to accept any user who shows up, you can't stop them from using whatever client they want. There is no way to ensure that it is your unmodified client if you've allowed it to be run on their machine. They can always modify it, and they can always send you arbitrary traffic from other programs and you can't tell the difference. On the network, bytes are bytes.
It's not all hopeless; there are things you can do. See https://stackoverflow.com/a/9183066/97337 for another version of this question, and links to several other versions of the question. (They're not exactly duplicates in how they're asked, but they all wind up being basically the same answer.)
You should secure your web service with user and password security or certificate security. The basic idea is that the web service client must authenticate in order to call your web service.
Here are some technics (there are others or variations):
1) HTTP basic authentication and HTTPS
2) Mutual SSL authentication - Also called two-way authentication, is a process in which both entities authenticate with each other. The server presents a certificate to the client and the client present a certificate to the server.
3) With SOAP web services you can use WS-Security standard.
4) OAuth framework
5) With Rest services you can use options 1), 2), 4). Or implement one by your own. This are good recomendations.
As you can see, there are a lot of ways to secure a web service.
I am implementing RESTful web services using NetBeans (JAX-RS) and Glassfish server to expose database resources.
I want to implement varying levels of security depending upon the users requirement (maybe choice provided to user). From various discussions regarding REST security, I understand there are different ways (given below) in which security can be implemented. How can I implement a security solution as a service which will be invoked depending upon the context.
TLS (HTTPS) +
1. HTTP Basic
2. HTTP Digest
3. two-legged OAuth
4. a Cookie-based approach
5. client certificates
6. Signed requests using HMAC and a limited lifetime
Thanks in advance
You can try to implement security by using Policies at Runtime.
Policy gives the flexibility to implement different security scenario (userauth, oauth,saml etc) depending upon the context.
We implemented the same in web service using Apache CXF and WS-SecurityPolicy.
For rest service I think similar concept can be used.
I am creating a web service for end users which will have a front-end in the form of an Adobe AIR desktop app but users will be able to access their data through the website too. User's data will be synchronized between the server and the local data store. The problem is that I cannot get an SSL certificate. Is there a way to make this more secure....
I think I can use something like two-legged oAuth or an Amazon S3 like authentication system?
What do you recommend in such a situation?
The first question is: why can you not get an SSL certificate? I can think of two reasons:
SSL certificates are too expensive
You don't want to have a certificate issued by a third party
If your problem is #1, StartSSL provides free certificates with a 1-year validity or charges $50 for unlimited certificates valid for 2 years (including wildcards). They are recognized by both Mozilla and the Microsoft trust store.
If the issue is #2, why not issue a self-signed certificate and hard-code it into your application? That does not compromise the security of the system at all (only your particular cert will be accepted by the app), but eliminates the need to "get" an SSL certificate from somewhere else.
If you really really can't use SSL, look at challenge-response systems such as Kerberos or anonymous key-material generators like Diffie-Hellman (with an asymmetric key for server identity validation). Many methods exist for secure two-party authentication over an insecure line. The key is that the ID verification step must be challenge-response instead of a "send me your secret" scheme.
I have been doing some research lately about best approaches to authenticating web services calls (REST SOAP or whatever). But none of the Approaches convinced me... But i still can't a make a choise...
Some talk about SSL and http basic authentication -login/password- which just seems weird for a machine (i mean having to assign a login/password to a machine, or is it not ?).
Some others say API keys (seems like these scheme is more used for tracking and not realy for securing).
Some say tokens (like session IDs) but shouldn't we stay stateless (especially if in REST style) ?
In my use case, when a remote app is calling one of our web services, i have to authenticate the calling application obviously, and the call must - if applicable - tell me which user it impersonates so i can deal with authorization later.
Any thoughts ?
So, you have User -> clientServer -> yourServer, yes?
You need to authenticate clientServer -> yourServer, to make sure not just anyone can talk to your server.
If this is an established trust relationship (i.e. you guys chat, sign documents, and do other things "out of band"), then you can simply use SSL certs, certs that you can sign.
Basically you set up your own Certificate Authority, create a root certificate, and then create a client certificate signed by that root certificate.
You then send that certificate to the clientServer, and don't let anyone connect to your service that doesn't have a certificate signed by your root certificate.
If the client ever ceases their relationship, you can revoke their cert and they can't talk to you any more.
As for identifying the User, that will need to be part of the API. The Client should authenticate them properly, and then forward any credentials to you that you require.
That can be a first class part of your web service (like a parameter), or if you use SOAP it can be passed along in a SAML attachment in the SOAP header, that you can then extract.
WS-Security has about 8000 ways of securing SOAP web services, as you may have discovered.
So, it kind of depends on what you want to do, and other requirements. But given what little you have, this should work peachy.