Purpose

To provide a lightweight guide for other CBIIT applications (eg, caArray) can secure their own grid services.

Technical Details

Assumptions

Changes to Business Application

  • JBoss 4.0.5
  • JAAS
  • Existing Secured Remote EJBs
  • Using Common Security Module (CSM)
  1. Add CommonsGridLoginModule to JAAS login module (security-config.xml)
  2. Introduce a new grid service instance CSM Group
    (warning) Update the application name 'po' to your application's name 
    INSERT INTO CSM_GROUP (GROUP_NAME, GROUP_DESC, APPLICATION_ID) VALUES ('gridClient', 'Grid Service Invocation Group', (select application_id from csm_application where application_name = 'po'));
  3. Update @Remote EJBs endpoints to allow the new CSM Group using the @RolesAllowed annotation 
    @RolesAllowed("gridClient")
public void myRemoteEndpointMethod() { ... }

Changes to Grid Service(s)

  • caGrid 1.3
  • JBoss 4.0.5 Grid Service Deployment
  • Using BDA for JBoss container configuration of secure services
  • Secured Remote EJBs for Business Application integration
  1. Alter Service Context(s) within Introduce
  2. Alter how remote services (eg, EJBs) are authenticated and authorized for each grid service request.
    As an example, create a GridSecurityJNDIServiceLocator class to authenticate using both the Grid User's Identity (eg, /O=caBIG/OU=caGrid/OU=Training/OU=Dorian/CN=coppagridtest instead of a typical remote service user. In short, you'll base your implementation off of your existing Locator (eg, JNDIServiceLocator) and replace existing occurrences with the new GridSecurityJNDIServiceLocator

    See http://gforge.nci.nih.gov/svnroot/coppa/trunk/code/po-grid/src/gov/nih/nci/coppa/po/grid/remote/GridSecurityJNDIServiceLocator.java for full code

    Below is an example that demonstrates the essence of how to code it up your new GridSecurityJNDIServiceLocator class.

    CoreServicesConfiguration is the ServiceConfiguration for our (Main Service) context that you previously added a Service Property when updating your services using Introduce.

    GridSecurityJNDIServiceLocator may not be a singleton (static) within your application as the contained InitialContext instance needs to reference the Grid Identity for the incoming request by using SecurityUtils.getCallerIdentity().

    While this is recognized as a performance hit, we've yet to figure a better way. If anyone is able to determine a better way, please let the COPPA team know team-po@5amsolutions.com --thanks

    ...
    private InitialContext context;
    private static final String JNDI_PRINCIPAL = "java.naming.security.principal";
    private static final String JNDI_CREDENTIALS = "java.naming.security.credentials";

    /**
     * @return a ServiceLocator with the caller's identity
     * @throws Exception if a problem occurs 
     */
    public static ServiceLocator newInstance() throws Exception {
        return new GridSecurityJNDIServiceLocator(SecurityUtils.getCallerIdentity());
    }
    
    /**
     * Get an instance of the service locator. specific to the grid user.
     * 
     * @param userIdentity user identity of the grid user
     */
    public GridSecurityJNDIServiceLocator(String userIdentity) {       
        try {
            Properties props = new Properties();
            props.load(GridSecurityJNDIServiceLocator.class.getClassLoader().getResourceAsStream("jndi.properties"));

            // set grid service principal and grid identity as java.naming.security.principal
            CoreServicesConfiguration coreConfiguration = CoreServicesConfiguration.getConfiguration();
            String principal = props.getProperty(JNDI_PRINCIPAL)
                    + coreConfiguration.getGridServicePrincipalSeparator() + userIdentity;
            props.setProperty(JNDI_PRINCIPAL, principal);
            
            LOG.debug("Properties " + props.toString());
            
            context = new InitialContext(props);
            
        } catch (Exception e) {
            LOG.error("Unable to load jndi properties.", e);
            throw new RuntimeException("Unable to load jndi properties.", e);
        }
    }


    private Object lookup(String name) throws NamingException {
        Object object = null;
        int i = 0;
        while (object == null && i < MAX_RETRIES) {
             try {
                 LOG.debug("Performing JNDI Lookup of : " + name);
                 object = context.lookup(name);
             } catch (CommunicationException com) {
                 LOG.warn("Unable to lookup: " + name);
             }
             i++;
        }

        return object;
    }

    /**
     * {@inheritDoc}
     */
    public PersonEntityServiceRemote getPersonService() throws NamingException {
        PersonEntityServiceRemote object = (PersonEntityServiceRemote) lookup("po/PersonEntityServiceBean/remote");
        return object;
    }
...

Changes to BDA scripts

This section will likely vary based on many factors and more notably your specific version of BDA and existing deployment configuration steps.

TODO

TODO

Changes to Promotion Tiers (involves Systems Team)

Business Application Updates

None.

Grid Instance Updates

Warning: These updates only apply to the JBoss server instance that hosts new secure grid services

Overview of Updates
  1. Request Host Certificates for each grid-related server instance that is to become secured.
  2. Make updates to the various jboss-4.0.5.GA-jems-ejb3/server/<serverinstance>/deploy/jbossweb-tomcat55.sar/server.xml files for the JBoss server instances requiring a secure grid listener.
  3. Make updates to server instance's bindings configuration (bindings.xml)
  4. Ensure that OS user account has Globus available on the file system with a environment variable exported (export GLOBUS_LOCATION=<path>)
Request Host Certificates for each grid-related server instance that is to become secured.

Systems will need to request the host certificates for the various promotion tiers and place the generated pair of files (*-cert.pem and *-key.pem) in a location accessible to each of the various user accounts responsible for running each JBoss server instance by following the instructions here, http://cagrid.org/display/knowledgebase/Request+a+Host+Certificate.

When this is done a hostname will need to be specified which will be used by all server instances that resolve to this grid service hostname.

Make updates to the various jboss-4.0.5.GA-jems-ejb3/server/<serverinstance>/deploy/jbossweb-tomcat55.sar/server.xml files for the JBoss server instances requiring a secure grid listener.

Information on how to update jboss-4.0.5.GA-jems-ejb3/server/<serverinstance>/deploy/jbossweb-tomcat55.sar/server.xml files

The Grid uses it's own Trust Fabric and does not require certificates from an external Certificate Authority (CA) vendor, it includes it's own local CA and knows how to trust these certificates. This is not a standard SSL configuration.

Basically, in this step you'll be adding a HTTPS <Connector> and removing any existing HTTP & HTTPS <Connector>(s) for the <Service> definition within the bundled Tomcat servlet container inside JBoss.

In the original file you'll notice the proxyPort is set to the HTTPPort defined for the instance's specific binding configuration (see your bindings.xml) – 29080 in the example below

<Server>
   <Service>
   ...
     <Connector acceptCount="100" 
	  address="$\{jboss.bind.address\}" 
	  connectionTimeout="20000" 
	  disableUploadTimeout="true" 
	  emptySessionPath="true" 
	  enableLookups="false" 
	  maxHttpHeaderSize="8192"
	  maxThreads="250" 
	  port="8080" 
	  proxyName="localhost" 
	  proxyPort="29080" 
	  redirectPort="8443" 
	  strategy="ms"/>
  ...
    <Engine>
      <Host>
  ...
      </Host> 
    </Engine>
  </Service>
</Server>

Now, here is where things may get somewhat tricky (or not). To add the new Connector you'll need to remove the existing and add (define) a new <Connector>. Below is an example: 

<Server>
   <Service>
   ...
     <Connector acceptCount="10" 
 	  autoFlush="true" 
 	  cert="/Users/smatyas/apps/po/jboss-4.0.5.GA-jems-ejb3/server/<serverinstance>/conf/<serverinstancehostname>-cert.pem" 
 	  className="org.globus.tomcat.coyote.net.HTTPSConnector" 
 	  debug="0" 
 	  disableUploadTimeout="true" 
 	  enableLookups="true" 
 	  key="/Users/smatyas/apps/po/jboss-4.0.5.GA-jems-ejb3/server/<serverinstance>/conf/<serverinstancehostname>-key.pem" 
 	  maxSpareThreads="75" 
 	  maxThreads="150" 
 	  minSpareThreads="25" 
 	  port="<DesiredPortForHTTPS>" 
 	  protocolHandlerClassName="org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11Protocol" 
 	  proxyName="<serverinstancehostname>" 
 	  proxyPort="<DesiredPortForHTTPS>" 
 	  scheme="https" 
 	  socketFactory="org.globus.tomcat.catalina.net.BaseHTTPSServerSocketFactory"/>
  ...
    <Engine>
      <Host>
  ...
      </Host> 
      <Valve className="org.globus.tomcat.coyote.valves.HTTPSValve55"/>
    </Engine>
  </Service>
</Server>

In the above example, you'll notice the absolute path to Host Cert files for the cert and key attributes. Again, these files can be anywhere on the filesystem so long as they are both accessible to the user account tied to the particular jboss server instance (jboss-4.0.5.GA-jems-ejb3/server/<serverinstance>/).
Next, you'll need to make sure you choose a <DesiredPortForHTTPS> for both the port and proxyPort attributes and that they are the same.

Make updates to server instance's bindings configuration (bindings.xml)

Lastly, some changes will need to be made to the server instance bindings configuration for our instance's configuration. In short, since we've removed the existing HTTP-based <Connector> and replaced it with a HTTPS-based <Connector> we'll need to update the references to the previously defined HTTP-based port within the bindings.xml. Attached is an example bindings.xml that we've generated. You'll notice that we use 29443 throughout for our HTTPS port.

It may be easiest, though somewhat confusing, to simply repurpose the existing HTTP port to become the HTTPS port. We choose not to do that however, that appears to be a viable option too.

Ensure that OS user account has Globus available on the file system with a environment variable exported (export GLOBUS_LOCATION=<path>)

The binary can be found here, http://gforge.nci.nih.gov/svnroot/commonlibrary/trunk/techstack-2006/os-independent/ws-core-enum-4.0.3.zip

We recommend that the WS-CORE-4.0.3 be unpacked into a shared directory, say /usr/local/ws-core-4.0.3. Then, update the user's bash profile (~/.bash_profile) to define and export GLOBUS_LOCATION. 

ANT_HOME=/local/home/jboss45e/apache-ant-1.7.0
JAVA_HOME=/usr/jdk1.5.0_10
GLOBUS_LOCATION=/usr/local/ws-core-4.0.3

export ANT_HOME JAVA_HOME GLOBUS_LOCATION
export PATH=$ANT_HOME/bin:$JAVA_HOME/bin:$PATH