[BEEHIVE-635] Tomcat PageflowValve does not check for security-constraints defined in web.xml

• Type: Bug
• Status: Closed
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Fixed
• Affects Version/s: V1Alpha, V1Beta, v1m1
• Fix Version/s: 1.0.1
• Component/s: NetUI
• Environment: Using beehive latest from SVN and Tomcat 5.5.7
• Assignee: Julie Zhuo
• Reporter: Abdessattar Sassi
• Created: 10/May/05 19:51
• Updated: 02/Feb/06 03:16
• Resolved: 09/Dec/05 02:15

Description

The Tomcat implementation of the Pipeline for a Context is such that only one Valve which is also an Authenticator valve is added to the Pipeline. The standard Tomcat Authenticator valves (e.g. BasicAuthenticator) check for and honor all the security constraints specified in the webapp web.xml descriptor.

The PageflowValve implementation part of tomcat-server under netui is an Authenticaor valve as it extends BasicAuthenticator, which means that it is mutually exclusive with the regular Tomcat authenticator valves (only one can be in the pipeline). It does not however keep the features that were part of the AuthenticatorBase and the BasicAuthentiocator invoke() method implementation. Such issue results for example in the user-data-constraint elements being completely ignored, and therefore pages who are supposed to be served only with SSL are always served without SSL.

Following is an example of the code from the regular Tomcat authenticators that is missing from beehive adapter (please note that the code is from Tomcat 5.5.7 with which by the way beehive does not compile, but should give you a good idea of the missing features...):

// Enforce any user data constraint for this security constraint
if (log.isDebugEnabled())

{ log.debug(" Calling hasUserDataPermission()"); }

Realm realm = this.context.getRealm();
// Is this request URI subject to a security constraint?
SecurityConstraint [] constraints
= realm.findSecurityConstraints(request, this.context);
if (!realm.hasUserDataPermission(request, response,
constraints)) {
if (log.isDebugEnabled())

{ log.debug(" Failed hasUserDataPermission() test"); }

/*

• ASSERT: Authenticator already set the appropriate
• HTTP status code, so we do not have to do anything special
  */
  return;
  }