Spring Security - Persistent Remember Me Issue

Question

I've been trying to track down why Spring Security isn't creating the Spring Security remember me cookie (SPRING_SECURITY_REMEMBER_ME_COOKIE). However, based on what I see via the HTTP headers the cookie is being set it's just that there is an additional GET request for /j_spring_security_check that is causing the exception below. This also results in the cookie being removed.

FINE: Authentication request failed: org.springframework.security.authentication.AuthenticationServiceException: Authentication method not supported: GET

I'm using Spring 3.0.1, Spring Security 3.0.3 Snapshot, and Google App Engine 1.3.1. Any ideas as to what is going on?

Mar 17, 2010 10:38:35 AM org.springframework.security.web.authentication.AbstractAuthenticationProcessingFilter doFilter
FINE: Request is to process authentication
Mar 17, 2010 10:38:35 AM org.springframework.security.web.authentication.AbstractAuthenticationProcessingFilter unsuccessfulAuthentication
FINE: Authentication request failed: org.springframework.security.authentication.AuthenticationServiceException: Authentication method not supported: GET
Mar 17, 2010 10:38:35 AM org.springframework.security.web.authentication.AbstractAuthenticationProcessingFilter unsuccessfulAuthentication
FINE: Updated SecurityContextHolder to contain null Authentication
Mar 17, 2010 10:38:35 AM org.springframework.security.web.authentication.AbstractAuthenticationProcessingFilter unsuccessfulAuthentication
FINE: Delegating to authentication failure handlerorg.springframework.security.web.authentication.SimpleUrlAuthenticationFailureHandler@4196c169
Mar 17, 2010 10:38:35 AM org.springframework.security.web.authentication.rememberme.AbstractRememberMeServices loginFail
FINE: Interactive login attempt was unsuccessful.
Mar 17, 2010 10:38:35 AM org.springframework.security.web.authentication.rememberme.AbstractRememberMeServices cancelCookie
FINE: Cancelling cookie

Below is the relevant portion of the applicationContext-security.xml.

<http auto-config="false">
    <intercept-url pattern="/css/**" filters="none" />
    <intercept-url pattern="/img/**" filters="none" />
    <intercept-url pattern="/js/**" filters="none" />
    <intercept-url pattern="/app/admin/**" filters="none" />
    <intercept-url pattern="/app/login/**" filters="none" />
    <intercept-url pattern="/app/register/**" filters="none" />
    <intercept-url pattern="/app/error/**" filters="none" />
    <intercept-url pattern="/" filters="none" />
    <intercept-url pattern="/**" access="ROLE_USER" />
    <logout logout-success-url="/" />
    <form-login login-page="/app/login" default-target-url="/" authentication-failure-url="/app/login?login_error=1" />
    <session-management invalid-session-url="/app/login" />
    <remember-me services-ref="rememberMeServices" key="myKey" />
</http>

<authentication-manager alias="authenticationManager">
    <authentication-provider user-service-ref="userDetailsService">
        <password-encoder hash="sha-256" base64="true">
            <salt-source user-property="username" />
        </password-encoder>
    </authentication-provider>
</authentication-manager>

<beans:bean id="userDetailsService" class="com.my.service.auth.UserDetailsServiceImpl" />

<beans:bean id="rememberMeServices" class="org.springframework.security.web.authentication.rememberme.PersistentTokenBasedRememberMeServices">
    <beans:property name="userDetailsService" ref="userDetailsService" />
    <beans:property name="tokenRepository" ref="persistentTokenRepository" />
    <beans:property name="key" value="myKey" />
</beans:bean>

<beans:bean id="persistentTokenRepository" class="com.my.service.auth.PersistentTokenRepositoryImpl" />

Below are the http headers for the scenario I'm having issues with:

http://localhost:8080/j_spring_security_check

POST /j_spring_security_check HTTP/1.1
Host: localhost:8080
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9.2) Gecko/20100115 Firefox/3.6 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)
Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8
Accept-Language: en-us,en;q=0.5
Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate
Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7
Keep-Alive: 115
Connection: keep-alive
Referer: http://localhost:8080/app/login
Cookie: JSESSIONID=15t2gq1vo5noj
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
Content-Length: 88
j_username=test%40test.com&j_password=test&_spring _security_remember_me=on&submit=Submit
HTTP/1.1 302 Found
Expires: Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 GMT
Set-Cookie: JSESSIONID=1dymxpkh13z32;Path=/
Set-Cookie: SPRING_SECURITY_REMEMBER_ME_COOKIE=U05kS2NTakNIZTN Dd0hFcWxqZXRUQT09Oi90M3Q0NTA1czhxSjRadTQ5NW5FQVE9P Q;Path=/;Expires=Wed, 31-Mar-10 10:52:07 GMT
Location: http://localhost:8080/app/helloWorld
Content-Length: 0
Server: Jetty(6.1.x)
----------------------------------------------------------
http://localhost:8080/app/helloWorld

GET /app/helloWorld HTTP/1.1
Host: localhost:8080
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9.2) Gecko/20100115 Firefox/3.6 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)
Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8
Accept-Language: en-us,en;q=0.5
Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate
Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7
Keep-Alive: 115
Connection: keep-alive
Referer: http://localhost:8080/app/login
Cookie: JSESSIONID=1dymxpkh13z32; SPRING_SECURITY_REMEMBER_ME_COOKIE=U05kS2NTakNIZTN Dd0hFcWxqZXRUQT09Oi90M3Q0NTA1czhxSjRadTQ5NW5FQVE9P Q

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Language: en-US
Content-Type: text/html
Content-Length: 526
Server: Jetty(6.1.x)
----------------------------------------------------------
http://localhost:8080/j_spring_security_check

GET /j_spring_security_check HTTP/1.1
Host: localhost:8080
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9.2) Gecko/20100115 Firefox/3.6 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)
Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8
Accept-Language: en-us,en;q=0.5
Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate
Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7
Keep-Alive: 115
Connection: keep-alive
Cookie: JSESSIONID=1dymxpkh13z32; SPRING_SECURITY_REMEMBER_ME_COOKIE=U05kS2NTakNIZTN Dd0hFcWxqZXRUQT09Oi90M3Q0NTA1czhxSjRadTQ5NW5FQVE9P Q

HTTP/1.1 302 Found
Expires: Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 GMT
Set-Cookie: SPRING_SECURITY_REMEMBER_ME_COOKIE=;Path=/;Expires=Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 GMT
Location: http://localhost:8080/app/login?login_error=1
Content-Length: 0
Server: Jetty(6.1.x)
----------------------------------------------------------
http://localhost:8080/app/login?login_error=1

GET /app/login?login_error=1 HTTP/1.1
Host: localhost:8080
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9.2) Gecko/20100115 Firefox/3.6 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)
Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8
Accept-Language: en-us,en;q=0.5
Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate
Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7
Keep-Alive: 115
Connection: keep-alive
Cookie: JSESSIONID=1dymxpkh13z32

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Language: en-US
Content-Type: text/html
Content-Length: 928
Server: Jetty(6.1.x)

Answer 1

Have you tried using the simplest version of remember-me ?

<remember-me key="myAppKey"/>

Could be that your custom implementation of the token repository is at fault. What does your PersistentTokenRepositoryImpl actually do?

http://static.springsource.org/spring-security/site/docs/3.0.x/reference/remember-me.html

Answer 2

Remember Me was broken in Spring Security 3.0.1: SEC-1356. Use 3.0.2.

Answer 3

Turns out that Firebug was generating the additional GET request.