Book Image

Securing WebLogic Server 12c

Book Image

Securing WebLogic Server 12c

Overview of this book

Security is a must in modern Enterprise architecture, and WebLogic implements a very complete and complex architecture for configuration and implementation, and we need to deeply know in technologies, terminology and how the security process works between all actors. Transparent security of your applications and Weblogic infrastructure need a good knowledge of the issues you can incur in this long and error prone configuration process. "Securing WebLogic Server 12c" will simplify a complex world like WebLogic Security, helping the reader to implement and configure. It's the only fast guide that will let you develop and deploy in a production system with best practices both from the development world and the operation world. This book will try to make a clear picture of Java EE Security with clean and simple step-by-step examples that will guide the reader to security implementation and configuration From the concepts of Java EE Security to the development of secure application, from the configuration of a realm to the setup of Kerberos Single Sign on, every concept is expressed in simple terms and surrounded by examples and pictures. Finally, also a way to develop WebLogic Security Providers with Maven, so that you can add the security part of your infrastructure to your enterprise best practices.
Table of Contents (12 chapters)

JASPIC and Java EE


After so many pages talking about security and how to implement it in WebLogic, the question is: why is all this custom-made and not regulated by Java EE?

Java EE 6 has the correct answer to this question: the JASPIC 1.0 specification, a message processing framework that is protocol-independent and that can do what an Authentication Provider does for us; that is, populate Subjects with Principals and therefore authenticate a remote user agent.

In a manner that is different from WebLogic Security Framework, where everything is inside a secure framework API because the message and the protocol are managed by the application server, this is done at the message level. In this way, it enforces the concept that security is something related to the protocol and the way information is exchanged.

In fact, currently we have three profiles that are part of the standard specification, one that is able to authenticate HTTP clients, another that works with SOAP messages, and a third profile that tries to bridge the new specification with the existing JAAS login module on the market.

This is the first implementation in WebLogic and its immaturity is apparent from the total lack of documentation and the fact that the configuration is not integrated into the custom deployment descriptors. So, consider using it only on noncritical systems.