How can I use Spring Security without sessions?

Question

I am building a web application with Spring Security that will live on Amazon EC2 and use Amazon's Elastic Load Balancers. Unfortunately, ELB does not support sticky sessions, so I need to ensure my application works properly without sessions.

So far, I have setup RememberMeServices to assign a token via a cookie, and this works fine, but I want the cookie to expire with the browser session (e.g. when the browser closes).

I have to imagine I'm not the first one to want to use Spring Security without sessions... any suggestions?

Answer 1

Take a look at SecurityContextPersistenceFilter class. It defines how the SecurityContextHolder is populated. By default it uses HttpSessionSecurityContextRepository to store security context in http session.

I have implemented this mechanism quite easily, with custom SecurityContextRepository.

See the securityContext.xml below:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
       xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
       xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"
       xmlns:tx="http://www.springframework.org/schema/tx"
       xmlns:sec="http://www.springframework.org/schema/security"
       xmlns:jee="http://www.springframework.org/schema/jee"
       xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
       http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd
       http://www.springframework.org/schema/context http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context.xsd
       http://www.springframework.org/schema/tx http://www.springframework.org/schema/tx/spring-tx-3.0.xsd
       http://www.springframework.org/schema/security http://www.springframework.org/schema/security/spring-security.xsd
       http://www.springframework.org/schema/jee http://www.springframework.org/schema/jee/spring-jee-3.0.xsd"&gt;

    <context:annotation-config/>

    <sec:global-method-security secured-annotations="enabled" pre-post-annotations="enabled"/>

    <bean id="securityContextRepository" class="com.project.server.security.TokenSecurityContextRepository"/>

    <bean id="securityContextFilter" class="com.project.server.security.TokenSecurityContextPersistenceFilter">
        <property name="repository" ref="securityContextRepository"/>
    </bean>

    <bean id="logoutFilter" class="org.springframework.security.web.authentication.logout.LogoutFilter">
        <constructor-arg value="/login.jsp"/>
        <constructor-arg>
            <list>
                <bean class="org.springframework.security.web.authentication.logout.SecurityContextLogoutHandler"/>
            </list>
        </constructor-arg>
    </bean>

    <bean id="formLoginFilter"
          class="org.springframework.security.web.authentication.UsernamePasswordAuthenticationFilter">
        <property name="authenticationManager" ref="authenticationManager"/>
        <property name="authenticationSuccessHandler">
            <bean class="com.project.server.security.TokenAuthenticationSuccessHandler">
                <property name="defaultTargetUrl" value="/index.html"/>
                <property name="passwordExpiredUrl" value="/changePassword.jsp"/>
                <property name="alwaysUseDefaultTargetUrl" value="true"/>
            </bean>
        </property>
        <property name="authenticationFailureHandler">
            <bean class="com.project.server.modules.security.CustomUrlAuthenticationFailureHandler">
                <property name="defaultFailureUrl" value="/login.jsp?failure=1"/>
            </bean>
        </property>
        <property name="filterProcessesUrl" value="/j_spring_security_check"/>
        <property name="allowSessionCreation" value="false"/>
    </bean>

    <bean id="servletApiFilter"
          class="org.springframework.security.web.servletapi.SecurityContextHolderAwareRequestFilter"/>

    <bean id="anonFilter" class="org.springframework.security.web.authentication.AnonymousAuthenticationFilter">
        <property name="key" value="ClientApplication"/>
        <property name="userAttribute" value="anonymousUser,ROLE_ANONYMOUS"/>
    </bean>


    <bean id="exceptionTranslator" class="org.springframework.security.web.access.ExceptionTranslationFilter">
        <property name="authenticationEntryPoint">
            <bean class="org.springframework.security.web.authentication.LoginUrlAuthenticationEntryPoint">
                <property name="loginFormUrl" value="/login.jsp"/>
            </bean>
        </property>
        <property name="accessDeniedHandler">
            <bean class="org.springframework.security.web.access.AccessDeniedHandlerImpl">
                <property name="errorPage" value="/login.jsp?failure=2"/>
            </bean>
        </property>
        <property name="requestCache">
            <bean id="nullRequestCache" class="org.springframework.security.web.savedrequest.NullRequestCache"/>
        </property>
    </bean>

    <alias name="filterChainProxy" alias="springSecurityFilterChain"/>

    <bean id="filterChainProxy" class="org.springframework.security.web.FilterChainProxy">
        <sec:filter-chain-map path-type="ant">
            <sec:filter-chain pattern="/**"
                              filters="securityContextFilter, logoutFilter, formLoginFilter,
                                        servletApiFilter, anonFilter, exceptionTranslator, filterSecurityInterceptor"/>
        </sec:filter-chain-map>
    </bean>

    <bean id="filterSecurityInterceptor"
          class="org.springframework.security.web.access.intercept.FilterSecurityInterceptor">
        <property name="securityMetadataSource">
            <sec:filter-security-metadata-source use-expressions="true">
                <sec:intercept-url pattern="/staticresources/**" access="permitAll"/>
                <sec:intercept-url pattern="/index.html*" access="hasRole('USER_ROLE')"/>
                <sec:intercept-url pattern="/rpc/*" access="hasRole('USER_ROLE')"/>
                <sec:intercept-url pattern="/**" access="permitAll"/>
            </sec:filter-security-metadata-source>
        </property>
        <property name="authenticationManager" ref="authenticationManager"/>
        <property name="accessDecisionManager" ref="accessDecisionManager"/>
    </bean>

    <bean id="accessDecisionManager" class="org.springframework.security.access.vote.AffirmativeBased">
        <property name="decisionVoters">
            <list>
                <bean class="org.springframework.security.access.vote.RoleVoter"/>
                <bean class="org.springframework.security.web.access.expression.WebExpressionVoter"/>
            </list>
        </property>
    </bean>

    <bean id="authenticationManager" class="org.springframework.security.authentication.ProviderManager">
        <property name="providers">
            <list>
                <bean name="authenticationProvider"
                      class="com.project.server.modules.security.oracle.StoredProcedureBasedAuthenticationProviderImpl">
                    <property name="dataSource" ref="serverDataSource"/>
                    <property name="userDetailsService" ref="userDetailsService"/>
                    <property name="auditLogin" value="true"/>
                    <property name="postAuthenticationChecks" ref="customPostAuthenticationChecks"/>
                </bean>
            </list>
        </property>
    </bean>

    <bean id="customPostAuthenticationChecks" class="com.project.server.modules.security.CustomPostAuthenticationChecks"/>

    <bean name="userDetailsService" class="com.project.server.modules.security.oracle.UserDetailsServiceImpl">
        <property name="dataSource" ref="serverDataSource"/>
    </bean>

</beans>

Answer 2

It seems to be even easier in Spring Securitiy 3.0. If you're using namespace configuration, you can simply do as follows:

<http create-session="never">
  <!-- config -->
</http>

Or you could configure the SecurityContextRepository as null, and nothing would ever get saved that way as well: http://static.springsource.org/spring-security/site/docs/3.0.x/reference/core-web-filters.html#security-context-repository

Answer 3

Actually create-session="never" doesn't mean being completely stateless. There's an issue for that in Spring Security issue management.

Answer 4

Just a quick note: it's "create-session" rather than "create-sessions"

create-session (From http://static.springsource.org/spring-security/site/docs/3.0.x/reference/appendix-namespace.html)

Controls the eagerness with which an HTTP session is created.

If not set, defaults to "ifRequired". Other options are "always" and "never".

The setting of this attribute affect the allowSessionCreation and forceEagerSessionCreation properties of HttpSessionContextIntegrationFilter. allowSessionCreation will always be true unless this attribute is set to "never". forceEagerSessionCreation is "false" unless it is set to "always".

So the default configuration allows session creation but does not force it. The exception is if concurrent session control is enabled, when forceEagerSessionCreation will be set to true, regardless of what the setting is here. Using "never" would then cause an exception during the initialization of HttpSessionContextIntegrationFilter.

For specific details of the session usage, there is some good documentation in the HttpSessionSecurityContextRepository javadoc.