[WSS-130] WSSecutityEngine does not validate UsernameToken in Soap header

• Type: Bug
• Status: Closed
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Fixed
• Affects Version/s: 1.5.2
• Fix Version/s: 1.5.4
• Component/s: WSS4J Handlers
• Environment: Any
• Assignee: Ruchith B. Gunaratne
• Reporter: Rick Duckworth
• Created: 27/Jun/08 14:49
• Updated: 01/Jul/08 17:22
• Resolved: 01/Jul/08 17:22

Description

WSS4J does not validate the UsernameToken in the SOAP header of a request. Consider the following SOAP message...

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<soapenv:Envelope xmlns:soapenv="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
<soapenv:Header>
<wsse:Security xmlns:wsse="http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-wssecurity-secext-1.0.xsd" soapenv:mustUnderstand="1">
<wsu:UsernameToken xmlns:wsu="http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-wssecurity-utility-1.0.xsd" wsu:Id="UsernameToken-802441115">
<wsse:Username>user</wsse:Username>
<wsse:Password Type="http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-username-token-profile-1.0#PasswordText">test</wsse:Password>
</wsu:UsernameToken>
</wsse:Security>
</soapenv:Header>
<soapenv:Body>
<getAlertTemplates xmlns="http://service.com"></getAlertTemplates>
</soapenv:Body>
</soapenv:Envelope>

Notice the incorrect namespace on the UsernameToken. It should be wsse:UsernameToken rather than wsu:UsernameToken. WSS4J will gladly hand this request to the web service without processing the UsernameToken and thus delegating to the CallbackHandler and performing authentication. In addition if the UsernameToken is completely missing the same behavior is observed.

The problem occurs in WSSecurityEngine.processSecurityHeader(). It gets a reference to the security header node and iterates through each of its children. If the child is an element then it attempts to retrieve a processor for it via WSSConfig.getProcessor(). The problem here is that if the UsernameToken does not follow the OASIS standard then a processor will not be returned and consequently the CallbackHandler that is configured to handle authentication is never called. Similarly it is not called if the UsernameToken is completely missing. It seems that there should be some mechanism to validate the UsernameToken before processing is attempted. If validation fails then the request must fail in a similar fashion as if the entire Security header is missing.