10. Web Application Security

You can use the attribute filters = "none" as an alternative to supplying a filter bean list. This will omit the request pattern from the security filter chain entirely. Note that anything matching this path will then have no authentication or authorization services applied and will be freely accessible. If you want to make use of the contents of the SecurityContext contents during a request, then it must have passed through the security filter chain. Otherwise the SecurityContextHolder will not have been populated and the contents will be null.

The AuthenticationEntryPoint will be called if the user requests a secure HTTP resource but they are not authenticated. An appropriate AuthenticationException or AccessDeniedException will be thrown by a security interceptor further down the call stack, triggering the commence method on the entry point. This does the job of presenting the appropriate response to the user so that authentication can begin. The one we’ve used here is LoginUrlAuthenticationEntryPoint, which redirects the request to a different URL (typically a login page). The actual implementation used will depend on the authentication mechanism you want to be used in your application.

What happens if a user is already authenticated and they try to access a protected resource? In normal usage, this shouldn’t happen because the application workflow should be restricted to operations to which a user has access. For example, an HTML link to an administration page might be hidden from users who do not have an admin role. You can’t rely on hiding links for security though, as there’s always a possibility that a user will just enter the URL directly in an attempt to bypass the restrictions. Or they might modify a RESTful URL to change some of the argument values. Your application must be protected against these scenarios or it will definitely be insecure. You will typically use simple web layer security to apply constraints to basic URLs and use more specific method-based security on your service layer interfaces to really nail down what is permissible.

If an AccessDeniedException is thrown and a user has already been authenticated, then this means that an operation has been attempted for which they don’t have enough permissions. In this case, ExceptionTranslationFilter will invoke a second strategy, the AccessDeniedHandler. By default, an AccessDeniedHandlerImpl is used, which just sends a 403 (Forbidden) response to the client. Alternatively you can configure an instance explicitly (as in the above example) and set an error page URL which it will forwards the request to ^[11]. This can be a simple "access denied" page, such as a JSP, or it could be a more complex handler such as an MVC controller. And of course, you can implement the interface yourself and use your own implementation.

It’s also possible to supply a custom AccessDeniedHandler when you’re using the namespace to configure your application. See the namespace appendix for more details.

Another responsibility of ExceptionTranslationFilter responsibilities is to save the current request before invoking the AuthenticationEntryPoint. This allows the request to be restored after the user has authenticated (see previous overview of web authentication). A typical example would be where the user logs in with a form, and is then redirected to the original URL by the default SavedRequestAwareAuthenticationSuccessHandler (see below).

The RequestCache encapsulates the functionality required for storing and retrieving HttpServletRequest instances. By default the HttpSessionRequestCache is used, which stores the request in the HttpSession. The RequestCacheFilter has the job of actually restoring the saved request from the cache when the user is redirected to the original URL.

Under normal circumstances, you shouldn’t need to modify any of this functionality, but the saved-request handling is a "best-effort" approach and there may be situations which the default configuration isn’t able to handle. The use of these interfaces makes it fully pluggable from Spring Security 3.0 onwards.

From Spring Security 3.0, the job of loading and storing the security context is now delegated to a separate strategy interface:

public interface SecurityContextRepository {

SecurityContext loadContext(HttpRequestResponseHolder requestResponseHolder);

void saveContext(SecurityContext context, HttpServletRequest request,
        HttpServletResponse response);
}

The HttpRequestResponseHolder is simply a container for the incoming request and response objects, allowing the implementation to replace these with wrapper classes. The returned contents will be passed to the filter chain.

The default implementation is HttpSessionSecurityContextRepository, which stores the security context as an HttpSession attribute ^[12]. The most important configuration parameter for this implementation is the allowSessionCreation property, which defaults to true, thus allowing the class to create a session if it needs one to store the security context for an authenticated user (it won’t create one unless authentication has taken place and the contents of the security context have changed). If you don’t want a session to be created, then you can set this property to false:

<bean id="securityContextPersistenceFilter"
    class="org.springframework.security.web.context.SecurityContextPersistenceFilter">
<property name='securityContextRepository'>
    <bean class='org.springframework.security.web.context.HttpSessionSecurityContextRepository'>
    <property name='allowSessionCreation' value='false' />
    </bean>
</property>
</bean>

Alternatively you could provide an instance of NullSecurityContextRepository, a null object implementation, which will prevent the security context from being stored, even if a session has already been created during the request.

The filter calls the configured AuthenticationManager to process each authentication request. The destination following a successful authentication or an authentication failure is controlled by the AuthenticationSuccessHandler and AuthenticationFailureHandler strategy interfaces, respectively. The filter has properties which allow you to set these so you can customize the behaviour completely ^[14]. Some standard implementations are supplied such as SimpleUrlAuthenticationSuccessHandler, SavedRequestAwareAuthenticationSuccessHandler, SimpleUrlAuthenticationFailureHandler, ExceptionMappingAuthenticationFailureHandler and DelegatingAuthenticationFailureHandler. Have a look at the Javadoc for these classes and also for AbstractAuthenticationProcessingFilter to get an overview of how they work and the supported features.

If authentication is successful, the resulting Authentication object will be placed into the SecurityContextHolder. The configured AuthenticationSuccessHandler will then be called to either redirect or forward the user to the appropriate destination. By default a SavedRequestAwareAuthenticationSuccessHandler is used, which means that the user will be redirected to the original destination they requested before they were asked to login.

	Note
	The ExceptionTranslationFilter caches the original request a user makes. When the user authenticates, the request handler makes use of this cached request to obtain the original URL and redirect to it. The original request is then rebuilt and used as an alternative.

If authentication fails, the configured AuthenticationFailureHandler will be invoked.

The HttpServletRequest.getRemoteUser() will return the result of SecurityContextHolder.getContext().getAuthentication().getName() which is typically the current username. This can be useful if you want to display the current username in your application. Additionally, checking if this is null can be used to indicate if a user has authenticated or is anonymous. Knowing if the user is authenticated or not can be useful for determining if certain UI elements should be shown or not (i.e. a log out link should only be displayed if the user is authenticated).

The HttpServletRequest.getUserPrincipal() will return the result of SecurityContextHolder.getContext().getAuthentication(). This means it is an Authentication which is typically an instance of UsernamePasswordAuthenticationToken when using username and password based authentication. This can be useful if you need additional information about your user. For example, you might have created a custom UserDetailsService that returns a custom UserDetails containing a first and last name for your user. You could obtain this information with the following:

Authentication auth = httpServletRequest.getUserPrincipal();
// assume integrated custom UserDetails called MyCustomUserDetails
// by default, typically instance of UserDetails
MyCustomUserDetails userDetails = (MyCustomUserDetails) auth.getPrincipal();
String firstName = userDetails.getFirstName();
String lastName = userDetails.getLastName();

	Note
	It should be noted that it is typically bad practice to perform so much logic throughout your application. Instead, one should centralize it to reduce any coupling of Spring Security and the Servlet API’s.

The HttpServletRequest.isUserInRole(String) will determine if SecurityContextHolder.getContext().getAuthentication().getAuthorities() contains a GrantedAuthority with the role passed into isUserInRole(String). Typically users should not pass in the "ROLE_" prefix into this method since it is added automatically. For example, if you want to determine if the current user has the authority "ROLE_ADMIN", you could use the following:

boolean isAdmin = httpServletRequest.isUserInRole("ADMIN");

This might be useful to determine if certain UI components should be displayed. For example, you might display admin links only if the current user is an admin.

The HttpServletRequest.authenticate(HttpServletRequest,HttpServletResponse) method can be used to ensure that a user is authenticated. If they are not authenticated, the configured AuthenticationEntryPoint will be used to request the user to authenticate (i.e. redirect to the login page).

The HttpServletRequest.login(String,String) method can be used to authenticate the user with the current AuthenticationManager. For example, the following would attempt to authenticate with the username "user" and password "password":

try {
httpServletRequest.login("user","password");
} catch(ServletException e) {
// fail to authenticate
}

	Note
	It is not necessary to catch the ServletException if you want Spring Security to process the failed authentication attempt.

The HttpServletRequest.logout() method can be used to log the current user out.

Typically this means that the SecurityContextHolder will be cleared out, the HttpSession will be invalidated, any "Remember Me" authentication will be cleaned up, etc. However, the configured LogoutHandler implementations will vary depending on your Spring Security configuration. It is important to note that after HttpServletRequest.logout() has been invoked, you are still in charge of writing a response out. Typically this would involve a redirect to the welcome page.

The AsynchContext.start(Runnable) method that ensures your credentials will be propagated to the new Thread. Using Spring Security’s concurrency support, Spring Security overrides the AsyncContext.start(Runnable) to ensure that the current SecurityContext is used when processing the Runnable. For example, the following would output the current user’s Authentication:

final AsyncContext async = httpServletRequest.startAsync();
async.start(new Runnable() {
    public void run() {
        Authentication authentication = SecurityContextHolder.getContext().getAuthentication();
        try {
            final HttpServletResponse asyncResponse = (HttpServletResponse) async.getResponse();
            asyncResponse.setStatus(HttpServletResponse.SC_OK);
            asyncResponse.getWriter().write(String.valueOf(authentication));
            async.complete();
        } catch(Exception e) {
            throw new RuntimeException(e);
        }
    }
});

If you are using Java Based configuration, you are ready to go. If you are using XML configuration, there are a few updates that are necessary. The first step is to ensure you have updated your web.xml to use at least the 3.0 schema as shown below:

<web-app xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_3_0.xsd"
version="3.0">

</web-app>

Next you need to ensure that your springSecurityFilterChain is setup for processing asynchronous requests.

<filter>
<filter-name>springSecurityFilterChain</filter-name>
<filter-class>
    org.springframework.web.filter.DelegatingFilterProxy
</filter-class>
<async-supported>true</async-supported>
</filter>
<filter-mapping>
<filter-name>springSecurityFilterChain</filter-name>
<url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
<dispatcher>REQUEST</dispatcher>
<dispatcher>ASYNC</dispatcher>
</filter-mapping>

That’s it! Now Spring Security will ensure that your SecurityContext is propagated on asynchronous requests too.

So how does it work? If you are not really interested, feel free to skip the remainder of this section, otherwise read on. Most of this is built into the Servlet specification, but there is a little bit of tweaking that Spring Security does to ensure things work with asynchronous requests properly. Prior to Spring Security 3.2, the SecurityContext from the SecurityContextHolder was automatically saved as soon as the HttpServletResponse was committed. This can cause issues in an Async environment. For example, consider the following:

httpServletRequest.startAsync();
new Thread("AsyncThread") {
    @Override
    public void run() {
        try {
            // Do work
            TimeUnit.SECONDS.sleep(1);

            // Write to and commit the httpServletResponse
            httpServletResponse.getOutputStream().flush();
        } catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }
}.start();

The issue is that this Thread is not known to Spring Security, so the SecurityContext is not propagated to it. This means when we commit the HttpServletResponse there is no SecuriytContext. When Spring Security automatically saved the SecurityContext on committing the HttpServletResponse it would lose our logged in user.

Since version 3.2, Spring Security is smart enough to no longer automatically save the SecurityContext on commiting the HttpServletResponse as soon as HttpServletRequest.startAsync() is invoked.

The HttpServletRequest.changeSessionId() is the default method for protecting against Session Fixation attacks in Servlet 3.1 and higher.

To implement HTTP Basic Authentication, you need to add a BasicAuthenticationFilter to your filter chain. The application context should contain BasicAuthenticationFilter and its required collaborator:

<bean id="basicAuthenticationFilter"
class="org.springframework.security.web.authentication.www.BasicAuthenticationFilter">
<property name="authenticationManager" ref="authenticationManager"/>
<property name="authenticationEntryPoint" ref="authenticationEntryPoint"/>
</bean>

<bean id="authenticationEntryPoint"
class="org.springframework.security.web.authentication.www.BasicAuthenticationEntryPoint">
<property name="realmName" value="Name Of Your Realm"/>
</bean>

The configured AuthenticationManager processes each authentication request. If authentication fails, the configured AuthenticationEntryPoint will be used to retry the authentication process. Usually you will use the filter in combination with a BasicAuthenticationEntryPoint, which returns a 401 response with a suitable header to retry HTTP Basic authentication. If authentication is successful, the resulting Authentication object will be placed into the SecurityContextHolder as usual.

If the authentication event was successful, or authentication was not attempted because the HTTP header did not contain a supported authentication request, the filter chain will continue as normal. The only time the filter chain will be interrupted is if authentication fails and the AuthenticationEntryPoint is called.

Now that we’ve reviewed the theory, let’s see how to use it. To implement HTTP Digest Authentication, it is necessary to define DigestAuthenticationFilter in the filter chain. The application context will need to define the DigestAuthenticationFilter and its required collaborators:

<bean id="digestFilter" class=
    "org.springframework.security.web.authentication.www.DigestAuthenticationFilter">
<property name="userDetailsService" ref="jdbcDaoImpl"/>
<property name="authenticationEntryPoint" ref="digestEntryPoint"/>
<property name="userCache" ref="userCache"/>
</bean>

<bean id="digestEntryPoint" class=
    "org.springframework.security.web.authentication.www.DigestAuthenticationEntryPoint">
<property name="realmName" value="Contacts Realm via Digest Authentication"/>
<property name="key" value="acegi"/>
<property name="nonceValiditySeconds" value="10"/>
</bean>

The configured UserDetailsService is needed because DigestAuthenticationFilter must have direct access to the clear text password of a user. Digest Authentication will NOT work if you are using encoded passwords in your DAO ^[15]. The DAO collaborator, along with the UserCache, are typically shared directly with a DaoAuthenticationProvider. The authenticationEntryPoint property must be DigestAuthenticationEntryPoint, so that DigestAuthenticationFilter can obtain the correct realmName and key for digest calculations.

Like BasicAuthenticationFilter, if authentication is successful an Authentication request token will be placed into the SecurityContextHolder. If the authentication event was successful, or authentication was not attempted because the HTTP header did not contain a Digest Authentication request, the filter chain will continue as normal. The only time the filter chain will be interrupted is if authentication fails and the AuthenticationEntryPoint is called, as discussed in the previous paragraph.

Digest Authentication’s RFC offers a range of additional features to further increase security. For example, the nonce can be changed on every request. Despite this, Spring Security implementation was designed to minimise the complexity of the implementation (and the doubtless user agent incompatibilities that would emerge), and avoid needing to store server-side state. You are invited to review RFC 2617 if you wish to explore these features in more detail. As far as we are aware, Spring Security’s implementation does comply with the minimum standards of this RFC.

This implementation supports the simpler approach described in Section 10.5.2, “Simple Hash-Based Token Approach”. TokenBasedRememberMeServices generates a RememberMeAuthenticationToken, which is processed by RememberMeAuthenticationProvider. A key is shared between this authentication provider and the TokenBasedRememberMeServices. In addition, TokenBasedRememberMeServices requires A UserDetailsService from which it can retrieve the username and password for signature comparison purposes, and generate the RememberMeAuthenticationToken to contain the correct GrantedAuthority s. Some sort of logout command should be provided by the application that invalidates the cookie if the user requests this. TokenBasedRememberMeServices also implements Spring Security’s LogoutHandler interface so can be used with LogoutFilter to have the cookie cleared automatically.

The beans required in an application context to enable remember-me services are as follows:

<bean id="rememberMeFilter" class=
"org.springframework.security.web.authentication.rememberme.RememberMeAuthenticationFilter">
<property name="rememberMeServices" ref="rememberMeServices"/>
<property name="authenticationManager" ref="theAuthenticationManager" />
</bean>

<bean id="rememberMeServices" class=
"org.springframework.security.web.authentication.rememberme.TokenBasedRememberMeServices">
<property name="userDetailsService" ref="myUserDetailsService"/>
<property name="key" value="springRocks"/>
</bean>

<bean id="rememberMeAuthenticationProvider" class=
"org.springframework.security.authentication.RememberMeAuthenticationProvider">
<property name="key" value="springRocks"/>
</bean>

Don’t forget to add your RememberMeServices implementation to your UsernamePasswordAuthenticationFilter.setRememberMeServices() property, include the RememberMeAuthenticationProvider in your AuthenticationManager.setProviders() list, and add RememberMeAuthenticationFilter into your FilterChainProxy (typically immediately after your UsernamePasswordAuthenticationFilter).

This class can be used in the same way as TokenBasedRememberMeServices, but it additionally needs to be configured with a PersistentTokenRepository to store the tokens. There are two standard implementations.

The database schema is described above in Section 10.5.3, “Persistent Token Approach”.

A common question is "do I need to protect JSON requests made by javascript?" The short answer is, it depends. However, you must be very careful as there are CSRF exploits that can impact JSON requests. For example, a malicious user can create a CSRF with JSON using the following form :

<form action="https://bank.example.com/transfer" method="post" enctype="text/plain">
<input name='{"amount":100,"routingNumber":"evilsRoutingNumber","account":"evilsAccountNumber", "ignore_me":"' value='test"}' type='hidden'>
<input type="submit"
    value="Win Money!"/>
</form>

This will produce the following JSON structure

{ "amount": 100,
"routingNumber": "evilsRoutingNumber",
"account": "evilsAccountNumber",
"ignore_me": "=test"
}

If an application were not validating the Content-Type, then it would be exposed to this exploit. Depending on the setup, a Spring MVC application that validates the Content-Type could still be exploited by updating the URL suffix to end with ".json" as shown below:

<form action="https://bank.example.com/transfer.json" method="post" enctype="text/plain">
<input name='{"amount":100,"routingNumber":"evilsRoutingNumber","account":"evilsAccountNumber", "ignore_me":"' value='test"}' type='hidden'>
<input type="submit"
    value="Win Money!"/>
</form>

What if my application is stateless? That doesn’t necessarily mean you are protected. In fact, if a user does not need to perform any actions in the web browser for a given request, they are likely still vulnerable to CSRF attacks.

For example, consider an application uses a custom cookie that contains all the state within it for authentication instead of the JSESSIONID. When the CSRF attack is made the custom cookie will be sent with the request in the same manner that the JSESSIONID cookie was sent in our previous example.

Users using basic authentication are also vulnerable to CSRF attacks since the browser will automatically include the username password in any requests in the same manner that the JSESSIONID cookie was sent in our previous example.

The first step to protecting against CSRF attacks is to ensure your website uses proper HTTP verbs. Specifically, before Spring Security’s CSRF support can be of use, you need to be certain that your application is using PATCH, POST, PUT, and/or DELETE for anything that modifies state.

This is not a limitation of Spring Security’s support, but instead a general requirement for proper CSRF prevention. The reason is that including private information in an HTTP GET can cause the information to be leaked. See RFC 2616 Section 15.1.3 Encoding Sensitive Information in URI’s for general guidance on using POST instead of GET for sensitive information.

The next step is to include Spring Security’s CSRF protection within your application. Some frameworks handle invalid CSRF tokens by invaliding the user’s session, but this causes its own problems. Instead by default Spring Security’s CSRF protection will produce an HTTP 403 access denied. This can be customized by configuring the AccessDeniedHandler to process InvalidCsrfTokenException differently.

As of Spring Security 4.0, CSRF protection is enabled by default with XML configuration. If you would like to disable CSRF protection, the corresponding XML configuration can be seen below.

<http>
    <!-- ... -->
    <csrf disabled="true"/>
</http>

CSRF protection is enabled by default with Java Configuration. If you would like to disable CSRF, the corresponding Java configuration can be seen below. Refer to the Javadoc of csrf() for additional customizations in how CSRF protection is configured.

@EnableWebSecurity
public class WebSecurityConfig extends
WebSecurityConfigurerAdapter {

    @Override
    protected void configure(HttpSecurity http) throws Exception {
        http
            .csrf().disable();
    }
}

One issue is that the expected CSRF token is stored in the HttpSession, so as soon as the HttpSession expires your configured AccessDeniedHandler will receive a InvalidCsrfTokenException. If you are using the default AccessDeniedHandler, the browser will get an HTTP 403 and display a poor error message.

Note

One might ask why the expected CsrfToken isn’t stored in a cookie by default. This is because there are known exploits in which headers (i.e. specify the cookies) can be set by another domain. This is the same reason Ruby on Rails no longer skips CSRF checks when the header X-Requested-With is present . See this webappsec.org thread for details on how to perform the exploit. Another disadvantage is that by removing the state (i.e. the timeout) you lose the ability to forcibly terminate the token if it is compromised.

A simple way to mitigate an active user experiencing a timeout is to have some JavaScript that lets the user know their session is about to expire. The user can click a button to continue and refresh the session.

Alternatively, specifying a custom AccessDeniedHandler allows you to process the InvalidCsrfTokenException any way you like. For an example of how to customize the AccessDeniedHandler refer to the provided links for both xml and Java configuration .

Finally, the application can be configured to use CookieCsrfTokenRepository which will not expire. As previously mentioned, this is not as secure as using a session, but in many cases can be good enough.

In order to protect against forging log in requests the log in form should be protected against CSRF attacks too. Since the CsrfToken is stored in HttpSession, this means an HttpSession will be created as soon as CsrfToken token attribute is accessed. While this sounds bad in a RESTful / stateless architecture the reality is that state is necessary to implement practical security. Without state, we have nothing we can do if a token is compromised. Practically speaking, the CSRF token is quite small in size and should have a negligible impact on our architecture.

A common technique to protect the log in form is by using a JavaScript function to obtain a valid CSRF token before the form submission. By doing this, there is no need to think about session timeouts (discussed in the previous section) because the session is created right before the form submission (assuming that CookieCsrfTokenRepository isn’t configured instead), so the user can stay on the login page and submit the username/password when he wants. In order to achieve this, you can take advantage of the CsrfTokenArgumentResolver provided by Spring Security and expose an endpoint like it’s described on here.

Adding CSRF will update the LogoutFilter to only use HTTP POST. This ensures that log out requires a CSRF token and that a malicious user cannot forcibly log out your users.

One approach is to use a form for log out. If you really want a link, you can use JavaScript to have the link perform a POST (i.e. maybe on a hidden form). For browsers with JavaScript that is disabled, you can optionally have the link take the user to a log out confirmation page that will perform the POST.

If you really want to use HTTP GET with logout you can do so, but remember this is generally not recommended. For example, the following Java Configuration will perform logout with the URL /logout is requested with any HTTP method:

@EnableWebSecurity
public class WebSecurityConfig extends
WebSecurityConfigurerAdapter {

    @Override
    protected void configure(HttpSecurity http) throws Exception {
        http
            .logout()
                .logoutRequestMatcher(new AntPathRequestMatcher("/logout"));
    }
}

There are two options to using CSRF protection with multipart/form-data. Each option has its tradeoffs.

	Note
	Before you integrate Spring Security’s CSRF protection with multipart file upload, ensure that you can upload without the CSRF protection first. More information about using multipart forms with Spring can be found within the 17.10 Spring’s multipart (file upload) support section of the Spring reference and the MultipartFilter javadoc .

public class SecurityApplicationInitializer extends AbstractSecurityWebApplicationInitializer {

    @Override
    protected void beforeSpringSecurityFilterChain(ServletContext servletContext) {
        insertFilters(servletContext, new MultipartFilter());
    }
}

<filter>
    <filter-name>MultipartFilter</filter-name>
    <filter-class>org.springframework.web.multipart.support.MultipartFilter</filter-class>
</filter>
<filter>
    <filter-name>springSecurityFilterChain</filter-name>
    <filter-class>org.springframework.web.filter.DelegatingFilterProxy</filter-class>
</filter>
<filter-mapping>
    <filter-name>MultipartFilter</filter-name>
    <url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
</filter-mapping>
<filter-mapping>
    <filter-name>springSecurityFilterChain</filter-name>
    <url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
</filter-mapping>

<form action="./upload?${_csrf.parameterName}=${_csrf.token}" method="post" enctype="multipart/form-data">

The HiddenHttpMethodFilter should be placed before the Spring Security filter. In general this is true, but it could have additional implications when protecting against CSRF attacks.

Note that the HiddenHttpMethodFilter only overrides the HTTP method on a POST, so this is actually unlikely to cause any real problems. However, it is still best practice to ensure it is placed before Spring Security’s filters.

In the past Spring Security required you to provide your own cache control for your web application. This seemed reasonable at the time, but browser caches have evolved to include caches for secure connections as well. This means that a user may view an authenticated page, log out, and then a malicious user can use the browser history to view the cached page. To help mitigate this Spring Security has added cache control support which will insert the following headers into you response.

Cache-Control: no-cache, no-store, max-age=0, must-revalidate
Pragma: no-cache
Expires: 0

Simply adding the <headers> element with no child elements will automatically add Cache Control and quite a few other protections. However, if you only want cache control, you can enable this feature using Spring Security’s XML namespace with the <cache-control> element and the [email protected] attribute.

<http>
    <!-- ... -->

    <headers defaults-disable="true">
        <cache-control />
    </headers>
</http>

Similarly, you can enable only cache control within Java Configuration with the following:

@EnableWebSecurity
public class WebSecurityConfig extends
WebSecurityConfigurerAdapter {

@Override
protected void configure(HttpSecurity http) throws Exception {
    http
    // ...
    .headers()
        .defaultsDisabled()
        .cacheControl();
}
}

If you actually want to cache specific responses, your application can selectively invoke HttpServletResponse.setHeader(String,String) to override the header set by Spring Security. This is useful to ensure things like CSS, JavaScript, and images are properly cached.

When using Spring Web MVC, this is typically done within your configuration. For example, the following configuration will ensure that the cache headers are set for all of your resources:

@EnableWebMvc
public class WebMvcConfiguration implements WebMvcConfigurer {

    @Override
    public void addResourceHandlers(ResourceHandlerRegistry registry) {
        registry
            .addResourceHandler("/resources/**")
            .addResourceLocations("/resources/")
            .setCachePeriod(31556926);
    }

    // ...
}

Historically browsers, including Internet Explorer, would try to guess the content type of a request using content sniffing . This allowed browsers to improve the user experience by guessing the content type on resources that had not specified the content type. For example, if a browser encountered a JavaScript file that did not have the content type specified, it would be able to guess the content type and then execute it.

Note

There are many additional things one should do (i.e. only display the document in a distinct domain, ensure Content-Type header is set, sanitize the document, etc) when allowing content to be uploaded. However, these measures are out of the scope of what Spring Security provides. It is also important to point out when disabling content sniffing, you must specify the content type in order for things to work properly.

The problem with content sniffing is that this allowed malicious users to use polyglots (i.e. a file that is valid as multiple content types) to execute XSS attacks. For example, some sites may allow users to submit a valid postscript document to a website and view it. A malicious user might create a postscript document that is also a valid JavaScript file and execute a XSS attack with it.

Content sniffing can be disabled by adding the following header to our response:

X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff

Just as with the cache control element, the nosniff directive is added by default when using the <headers> element with no child elements. However, if you want more control over which headers are added you can use the <content-type-options> element and the [email protected] attribute as shown below:

<http>
    <!-- ... -->

    <headers defaults-disabled="true">
        <content-type-options />
    </headers>
</http>

The X-Content-Type-Options header is added by default with Spring Security Java configuration. If you want more control over the headers, you can explicitly specify the content type options with the following:

@EnableWebSecurity
public class WebSecurityConfig extends
WebSecurityConfigurerAdapter {

@Override
protected void configure(HttpSecurity http) throws Exception {
    http
    // ...
    .headers()
        .defaultsDisabled()
        .contentTypeOptions();
}
}

When you type in your bank’s website, do you enter mybank.example.com or do you enter https://mybank.example.com ? If you omit the https protocol, you are potentially vulnerable to Man in the Middle attacks . Even if the website performs a redirect to https://mybank.example.com a malicious user could intercept the initial HTTP request and manipulate the response (i.e. redirect to https://mibank.example.com and steal their credentials).

Many users omit the https protocol and this is why HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) was created. Once mybank.example.com is added as a HSTS host , a browser can know ahead of time that any request to mybank.example.com should be interpreted as https://mybank.example.com . This greatly reduces the possibility of a Man in the Middle attack occurring.

	Note
	In accordance with RFC6797 , the HSTS header is only injected into HTTPS responses. In order for the browser to acknowledge the header, the browser must first trust the CA that signed the SSL certificate used to make the connection (not just the SSL certificate).

One way for a site to be marked as a HSTS host is to have the host preloaded into the browser. Another is to add the "Strict-Transport-Security" header to the response. For example the following would instruct the browser to treat the domain as an HSTS host for a year (there are approximately 31536000 seconds in a year):

Strict-Transport-Security: max-age=31536000 ; includeSubDomains

The optional includeSubDomains directive instructs Spring Security that subdomains (i.e. secure.mybank.example.com) should also be treated as an HSTS domain.

As with the other headers, Spring Security adds HSTS by default. You can customize HSTS headers with the <hsts> element as shown below:

<http>
    <!-- ... -->

    <headers>
        <hsts
            include-subdomains="true"
            max-age-seconds="31536000" />
    </headers>
</http>

Similarly, you can enable only HSTS headers with Java Configuration:

@EnableWebSecurity
public class WebSecurityConfig extends
WebSecurityConfigurerAdapter {

@Override
protected void configure(HttpSecurity http) throws Exception {
    http
    // ...
    .headers()
        .httpStrictTransportSecurity()
            .includeSubdomains(true)
            .maxAgeSeconds(31536000);
}
}

HTTP Public Key Pinning (HPKP) is a security feature that tells a web client to associate a specific cryptographic public key with a certain web server to prevent Man in the Middle (MITM) attacks with forged certificates.

To ensure the authenticity of a server’s public key used in TLS sessions, this public key is wrapped into a X.509 certificate which is usually signed by a certificate authority (CA). Web clients such as browsers trust a lot of these CAs, which can all create certificates for arbitrary domain names. If an attacker is able to compromise a single CA, they can perform MITM attacks on various TLS connections. HPKP can circumvent this threat for the HTTPS protocol by telling the client which public key belongs to a certain web server. HPKP is a Trust on First Use (TOFU) technique. The first time a web server tells a client via a special HTTP header which public keys belong to it, the client stores this information for a given period of time. When the client visits the server again, it expects a certificate containing a public key whose fingerprint is already known via HPKP. If the server delivers an unknown public key, the client should present a warning to the user.

	Note
	Because the user-agent needs to validate the pins against the SSL certificate chain, the HPKP header is only injected into HTTPS responses.

Enabling this feature for your site is as simple as returning the Public-Key-Pins HTTP header when your site is accessed over HTTPS. For example, the following would instruct the user-agent to only report pin validation failures to a given URI (via the report-uri directive) for 2 pins:

Public-Key-Pins-Report-Only: max-age=5184000 ; pin-sha256="d6qzRu9zOECb90Uez27xWltNsj0e1Md7GkYYkVoZWmM=" ; pin-sha256="E9CZ9INDbd+2eRQozYqqbQ2yXLVKB9+xcprMF+44U1g=" ; report-uri="http://example.net/pkp-report" ; includeSubDomains

A pin validation failure report is a standard JSON structure that can be captured either by the web application’s own API or by a publicly hosted HPKP reporting service, such as, REPORT-URI .

The optional includeSubDomains directive instructs the browser to also validate subdomains with the given pins.

Opposed to the other headers, Spring Security does not add HPKP by default. You can customize HPKP headers with the <hpkp> element as shown below:

<http>
    <!-- ... -->

    <headers>
        <hpkp
            include-subdomains="true"
            report-uri="http://example.net/pkp-report">
            <pins>
                    <pin algorithm="sha256">d6qzRu9zOECb90Uez27xWltNsj0e1Md7GkYYkVoZWmM=</pin>
                    <pin algorithm="sha256">E9CZ9INDbd+2eRQozYqqbQ2yXLVKB9+xcprMF+44U1g=</pin>
            </pins>
        </hpkp>
    </headers>
</http>

Similarly, you can enable HPKP headers with Java Configuration:

@EnableWebSecurity
public class WebSecurityConfig extends
WebSecurityConfigurerAdapter {

        @Override
        protected void configure(HttpSecurity http) throws Exception {
                http
                // ...
                .headers()
                        .httpPublicKeyPinning()
                                .includeSubdomains(true)
                                .reportUri("http://example.net/pkp-report")
                                .addSha256Pins("d6qzRu9zOECb90Uez27xWltNsj0e1Md7GkYYkVoZWmM=", "E9CZ9INDbd+2eRQozYqqbQ2yXLVKB9+xcprMF+44U1g=";
        }
}

Allowing your website to be added to a frame can be a security issue. For example, using clever CSS styling users could be tricked into clicking on something that they were not intending (video demo ). For example, a user that is logged into their bank might click a button that grants access to other users. This sort of attack is known as Clickjacking .

	Note
	Another modern approach to dealing with clickjacking is to use the section called “Content Security Policy (CSP)”.

There are a number ways to mitigate clickjacking attacks. For example, to protect legacy browsers from clickjacking attacks you can use frame breaking code . While not perfect, the frame breaking code is the best you can do for the legacy browsers.

A more modern approach to address clickjacking is to use X-Frame-Options header:

X-Frame-Options: DENY

The X-Frame-Options response header instructs the browser to prevent any site with this header in the response from being rendered within a frame. By default, Spring Security disables rendering within an iframe.

You can customize X-Frame-Options with the frame-options element. For example, the following will instruct Spring Security to use "X-Frame-Options: SAMEORIGIN" which allows iframes within the same domain:

<http>
    <!-- ... -->

    <headers>
        <frame-options
        policy="SAMEORIGIN" />
    </headers>
</http>

Similarly, you can customize frame options to use the same origin within Java Configuration using the following:

@EnableWebSecurity
public class WebSecurityConfig extends
WebSecurityConfigurerAdapter {

@Override
protected void configure(HttpSecurity http) throws Exception {
    http
    // ...
    .headers()
        .frameOptions()
            .sameOrigin();
}
}

Some browsers have built in support for filtering out reflected XSS attacks . This is by no means foolproof, but does assist in XSS protection.

The filtering is typically enabled by default, so adding the header typically just ensures it is enabled and instructs the browser what to do when a XSS attack is detected. For example, the filter might try to change the content in the least invasive way to still render everything. At times, this type of replacement can become a XSS vulnerability in itself . Instead, it is best to block the content rather than attempt to fix it. To do this we can add the following header:

X-XSS-Protection: 1; mode=block

This header is included by default. However, we can customize it if we wanted. For example:

<http>
    <!-- ... -->

    <headers>
        <xss-protection block="false"/>
    </headers>
</http>

Similarly, you can customize XSS protection within Java Configuration with the following:

@EnableWebSecurity
public class WebSecurityConfig extends
WebSecurityConfigurerAdapter {

@Override
protected void configure(HttpSecurity http) throws Exception {
    http
    // ...
    .headers()
        .xssProtection()
            .block(false);
}
}

Content Security Policy (CSP) is a mechanism that web applications can leverage to mitigate content injection vulnerabilities, such as cross-site scripting (XSS). CSP is a declarative policy that provides a facility for web application authors to declare and ultimately inform the client (user-agent) about the sources from which the web application expects to load resources.

	Note
	Content Security Policy is not intended to solve all content injection vulnerabilities. Instead, CSP can be leveraged to help reduce the harm caused by content injection attacks. As a first line of defense, web application authors should validate their input and encode their output.

A web application may employ the use of CSP by including one of the following HTTP headers in the response:

Each of these headers are used as a mechanism to deliver a security policy to the client. A security policy contains a set of security policy directives (for example, script-src and object-src), each responsible for declaring the restrictions for a particular resource representation.

For example, a web application can declare that it expects to load scripts from specific, trusted sources, by including the following header in the response:

Content-Security-Policy: script-src https://trustedscripts.example.com

An attempt to load a script from another source other than what is declared in the script-src directive will be blocked by the user-agent. Additionally, if the report-uri directive is declared in the security policy, then the violation will be reported by the user-agent to the declared URL.

For example, if a web application violates the declared security policy, the following response header will instruct the user-agent to send violation reports to the URL specified in the policy’s report-uri directive.

Content-Security-Policy: script-src https://trustedscripts.example.com; report-uri /csp-report-endpoint/

Violation reports are standard JSON structures that can be captured either by the web application’s own API or by a publicly hosted CSP violation reporting service, such as, REPORT-URI .

The Content-Security-Policy-Report-Only header provides the capability for web application authors and administrators to monitor security policies, rather than enforce them. This header is typically used when experimenting and/or developing security policies for a site. When a policy is deemed effective, it can be enforced by using the Content-Security-Policy header field instead.

Given the following response header, the policy declares that scripts may be loaded from one of two possible sources.

Content-Security-Policy-Report-Only: script-src 'self' https://trustedscripts.example.com; report-uri /csp-report-endpoint/

If the site violates this policy, by attempting to load a script from evil.com, the user-agent will send a violation report to the declared URL specified by the report-uri directive, but still allow the violating resource to load nevertheless.

script-src 'self' https://trustedscripts.example.com; object-src https://trustedplugins.example.com; report-uri /csp-report-endpoint/

<http>
    <!-- ... -->

    <headers>
        <content-security-policy
            policy-directives="script-src 'self' https://trustedscripts.example.com; object-src https://trustedplugins.example.com; report-uri /csp-report-endpoint/" />
    </headers>
</http>

<http>
    <!-- ... -->

    <headers>
        <content-security-policy
            policy-directives="script-src 'self' https://trustedscripts.example.com; object-src https://trustedplugins.example.com; report-uri /csp-report-endpoint/"
            report-only="true" />
    </headers>
</http>

@EnableWebSecurity
public class WebSecurityConfig extends
WebSecurityConfigurerAdapter {

@Override
protected void configure(HttpSecurity http) throws Exception {
    http
    // ...
    .headers()
        .contentSecurityPolicy("script-src 'self' https://trustedscripts.example.com; object-src https://trustedplugins.example.com; report-uri /csp-report-endpoint/");
}
}

@EnableWebSecurity
public class WebSecurityConfig extends
WebSecurityConfigurerAdapter {

@Override
protected void configure(HttpSecurity http) throws Exception {
    http
    // ...
    .headers()
        .contentSecurityPolicy("script-src 'self' https://trustedscripts.example.com; object-src https://trustedplugins.example.com; report-uri /csp-report-endpoint/")
        .reportOnly();
}
}

Referrer Policy is a mechanism that web applications can leverage to manage the referrer field, which contains the last page the user was on.

Spring Security’s approach is to use Referrer Policy header, which provides different policies :

Referrer-Policy: same-origin

The Referrer-Policy response header instructs the browser to let the destination knows the source where the user was previously.

<http>
    <!-- ... -->

    <headers>
        <referrer-policy policy="same-origin" />
    </headers>
</http>

@EnableWebSecurity
public class WebSecurityConfig extends
WebSecurityConfigurerAdapter {

@Override
protected void configure(HttpSecurity http) throws Exception {
    http
    // ...
    .headers()
        .referrerPolicy(ReferrerPolicy.SAME_ORIGIN);
}
}

Feature Policy is a mechanism that allows web developers to selectively enable, disable, and modify the behavior of certain APIs and web features in the browser.

Feature-Policy: geolocation 'self'

With Feature Policy, developers can opt-in to a set of "policies" for the browser to enforce on specific features used throughout your site. These policies restrict what APIs the site can access or modify the browser’s default behavior for certain features.

<http>
    <!-- ... -->

    <headers>
        <feature-policy policy-directives="geolocation 'self'" />
    </headers>
</http>

@EnableWebSecurity
public class WebSecurityConfig extends
WebSecurityConfigurerAdapter {

@Override
protected void configure(HttpSecurity http) throws Exception {
    http
    // ...
    .headers()
        .featurePolicy("geolocation 'self'");
}
}

There may be times you wish to inject custom security headers into your application that are not supported out of the box. For example, given the following custom security header:

X-Custom-Security-Header: header-value

When using the XML namespace, these headers can be added to the response using the <header> element as shown below:

<http>
    <!-- ... -->

    <headers>
        <header name="X-Custom-Security-Header" value="header-value"/>
    </headers>
</http>

Similarly, the headers could be added to the response using Java Configuration as shown in the following:

@EnableWebSecurity
public class WebSecurityConfig extends
WebSecurityConfigurerAdapter {

@Override
protected void configure(HttpSecurity http) throws Exception {
    http
    // ...
    .headers()
        .addHeaderWriter(new StaticHeadersWriter("X-Custom-Security-Header","header-value"));
}
}

When the namespace or Java configuration does not support the headers you want, you can create a custom HeadersWriter instance or even provide a custom implementation of the HeadersWriter.

Let’s take a look at an example of using an custom instance of XFrameOptionsHeaderWriter. Perhaps you want to allow framing of content for the same origin. This is easily supported by setting the policy attribute to "SAMEORIGIN", but let’s take a look at a more explicit example using the ref attribute.

<http>
    <!-- ... -->

    <headers>
        <header ref="frameOptionsWriter"/>
    </headers>
</http>
<!-- Requires the c-namespace.
See http://docs.spring.io/spring/docs/current/spring-framework-reference/htmlsingle/#beans-c-namespace
-->
<beans:bean id="frameOptionsWriter"
    class="org.springframework.security.web.header.writers.frameoptions.XFrameOptionsHeaderWriter"
    c:frameOptionsMode="SAMEORIGIN"/>

We could also restrict framing of content to the same origin with Java configuration:

@EnableWebSecurity
public class WebSecurityConfig extends
WebSecurityConfigurerAdapter {

@Override
protected void configure(HttpSecurity http) throws Exception {
    http
    // ...
    .headers()
        .addHeaderWriter(new XFrameOptionsHeaderWriter(XFrameOptionsMode.SAMEORIGIN));
}
}