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XML Web Services & Security
Handy writes "Web Services (SOAP, .net, WSDL ? , UDDI ? ) create an even greater need for robust security. Exposed interfaces and fragmented administration coupled with a need for app-level security points to a greater need for a centralized managed security services model."
It could be worse than what it is now, at least microsoft doesnt make phones yet.
"The United States has no right, no desire, and no intention to impose our form of government on anyone else." - Bush 05
Just like linking directly to bugzilla? good job guyz
Not only is this article not saying a single new thing about web application security, the site at the end of the link only has 4 articles on it. This smells of advertising for a new site? Now I am not one to wear a tinfoil hat but I smell a conspiracy going on with news that isn't really news!!
***I GOT NUTHIN***
This was an interesting read and I'm sure it is good info for tech managers- maybe if we keep hammering at them they will get it, but if you write code and you realize that we are connecting systems deeper and deeper - security becomes more and more of an issue. That seems to be a bit of a no brainer.
And all this talk of the computer is the network, and the future of tech and all this stuff - security is the linch pin to making it viable.
I think stability runs a very close second- especially as more critical systems become a part of this big electronic gestalt everyone dreams of- but if it is insecure, I know I wouldn't touch it w/a 10 ft. pole.
.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
The drive to get business advantage from XML Web Services will cause turbulent times for IT managers. To successfully navigate these new issues, managers must change their mind set from "fragmented security systems focused on using network perimeter to shield closed business systems" to "consistent managed security systems focused on managing application level security for inherently distributed business systems".
This article was written by Kerry Champion, president and Andy Yang, Senior Director of Product Management at Westbridge Technology, Inc., a provider of security and reliability infrastructure software for XML Web Services networks.
I'm not saying I disagree with their conclusion, but you always have to be suspicious when somebody comes out with an article that concludes that to be successful you have to use their product/service or something like it.
"If I could live to be several hundred
I could take a walk and really wander, really wonder."
Good luck for anyone actually trying to implement a secure soap based app, what with the moving targets of XML Encryption, different ways to use XML Signatures, the need to incorporate WS Routing (and possibly WS-Security). I know these specs are likely to change soon.
Yes, you read that correctly...
for once, reading the article is actually more wasteful than posting on the topic without reading it, since pretty much everything contained in the article is housed in the "common-sense" sector of your brain just waiting to be released.
It might have been, 'time to post another flame attraction article', time or something, who knows, but this article is the most LAME I've read here.
Which isn't bad considering the 1000's I've read that were good-to-GREAT...just my humble opinion.
"Just Smile and Nod." --Huck
The drive to get business advantage from XML Web Services will cause turbulent times for IT managers. To successfully navigate these new issues, managers must change their mind set from "fragmented security systems focused on using network perimeter to shield closed business systems" to "consistent managed security systems focused on managing application level security for inherently distributed business systems".
Hmm... I know of a manager (very higher up), when asked about security implications of some assumptions in the design of a product (for web services), very confidently responsed, "They [customers] can always configure their firewall". *That* was the solution!
S
This article was written by Kerry Champion, president and Andy Yang
Ala... The presentation was made by Jerry Yang, Chariman and Cheif Yahoo, and XYZ, VP and Junior Yahoo...
S
I can't stress security enough. Too often we see the methodology of "write first, secure second."
No no no no. I'm sorry, that just won't cut it in today's world of scam artists. We need to be building in security on the server side from the ground up.
I am loath to resort to buzzwords, but "proactive" really describes just how I feel.
At my company we have met this challenge head-on by deploying a full server force of Mandrake Linux coupled with Apache 2. Apache 2 picks up where the original left off, with the added features of clones referring to Stormtroopers (as opposed to the original modular system). I find that our server compromises have decreased ~70% since making the switch from an IIS server farm.
I have also heard good things about BSD in regards to security and web apps. Great to see this finally getting the press it deserves.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
Here is my take. And here is Bruce Schneier's..
Why not cocks? You know, at least some she-male action?
A problem with the new Web Services paradigm is that there is no place for a proprietary protocol anymore. We used to have proprietary encoding schemes over closed transports (IPX). Now we have XML over HTTP over IP, all of which are public standards. Systems that were relying only on obscurity for their security are now fully exposed because data is transmitted "in the clear".
That, along with the multiplication of software layers (Browser -> Plugin -> Applet -> TCP - > Server -> Servlet -> AppServer -> 10 other middle layers) makes for very complicated systems with slower performance and bigger security holes. All this for no good reason other that going through firewall by riding over HTTP.
I've yet to meet someone explain to me the true advantages of Web Services. They are to me the biggest fad we've seen in corporate computing in recent years. Everybody's doing it, so it must be good.
-- Home is where you eat your heart out.
For a lot of companies HTTP is an exposed interface (for others it's disconnected from core data). This sounds like the same old "security on the internet" thing we've been hearing for years now.
If you can't be part of the solution there's penty of money to be made prolonging the problem. NB
© 2004 The SCO Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Web services require two things that the Internet is not notorious for:
1) Security
2) Reliability
While the Internet works most of the time, is "most of the time" acceptable for web services? Some routing screw up happens and suddenly your ability to charge your customers is hosed.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
This includes a broad patent on form signing which appears to cover most forms of hierarchical documents, such as XML.
It hangs on your handlebars!
Say no to software patents.
~~~
I fail to see why SOAP exists except to bypass firewalls, since firewalls exist to restrict what calls/ports/protocols can be made in TCPIP. What will happen in two years will be a "firewall" system for SOAP calls, followed two years later by a new protocol to bypass that security layer, billed in an exciting acronym. Repeat ad infinitum.
Hey, I'm just your average shit and piss factory.
Goat Achievement Award, 2002[gnu.org]
Keep On Stumpin'[foxnews.com]
From all of us at the thimble manufacturing facility, keep up the good work and bring us 300 more!
Bagina Muffblatt
CEO
Yes, that's right children, resist it all you can. Run away! .NET.
That's right you don't want to care about SOAP/WS-Security and all of that non-sense. You just stick with PHP and PERL and you'll be fine. Let me worry about XML Encryption Standards and WS-Security and the demon known as
"Shop Smart, Shop S-Mart!"
I like-a do-the cha-cha.
you are NOT a human. you are a UN-logged in troll (and a poor one at that with stileproject links) please follow these instructions so that you can become a worthwhile member of the universe: 1. Lay down 2. get skullfucked 3. die thx!
I really don't know (flame gently if I'm being ignorant), but I'm hoping someone can explain this simply.
If https is secure... and xml/soap is http-based... what's the giant technical leap preventing https transmission of soap/xml packets?
Also, if you're doing business with say, a vendor of yours, what's stopping the both of you from encrypting the body of the soap messages on both sides by means of a PGP key or something?
I'm just curious as to why the issue seems to be reasonably solved with http web traffic, but isn't with SOAP...
Ah, Black Man's Wheels. Won't affect me then :)
[no, I'm not white trash, a lot of black guys around here drive BMW's, so there.]
That's good, because if I thought you shot an animal because the noise bothered you, I'd shoot you in the lung because your cruel, inhumane attitude bothers me.
CEE5210S The signal SIGHUP was received.
It amazes me how much directory services are overlooked, even for this one simple use.
LDAP is made for doing centralized management. Be it user management or even configuration of services, it's built into every system and OpenLDAP is seriously robust. Just take the 10 minutes or whatever to figure out how to use LDAP and familiarize yourself with the most widely used schemas.
Using LDAP schemas is like going to create a user table in a database and having the table definition laid out for you. Also all applications should be able to follow the structure. Voila, portable services for applications.
Please, go familiarize yourself with LDAP. Not to mention SASL (RFC 2222) is meant as a system independent way of handling authentication and authorization. OpenLDAP, Cyrus IMAP and a number of other server apps handle SASL quite well, not to mention it's included in most distros.
IIRC, the Java Authentication and Authorization APIs also deal with SASL quite well.
The solutions to most of the problems that come up with 'Web Services' (a limited tool being forced on everything) have been solved by a simple trip to the IETF's RFC repository. Now you just need to use a language and environment that has libraries built for the RFC's. C or Java are your best bets, Perl comes in next, but I've found the libraries to be in various states of working, not something I'd bet my next project on.
Arrogance is Confidence which lacks integrity. -- me
I couldn't agree any less! You logged-in trolls are just dog schnizzel! THinking ya'll can log and lag into slashdot when and where you want. Pathetic.
It takes a troll seed to post goatse.cx everywhere he wants...
but it takes a real troll to innovate new trolling technology.
This is a sad day for trolls of all kind. Anonymous trolling will never be the same with trolls that have logged-in. What with proving you are a troll, logged-in trolls guaruntee identity theft by other trolls.
Anonymous trolling is better, yes. While you logged-in trolls ass-fuck eachother, and who wouldn't want that, us anonymous trolls claim:
FROST PIST
FP
fp?
frist psot!
burgers
frist purd
turd poast
roast prist
and
www.redcoat.net/tubgirl.jpg.
Sorry, we claim all those as said in the original license published by hotgrits.org
Slashdot is now offering full story advertisements, in the clever form of "user submitted stories" as pointed out by some others already. The submitter, the "story" writer, and the company are all one in the same from the looks of it. If I were you, I'd take your intelligent ideas away from this corporate owned, and pathetically administrated whore of a website called slashdot. You're not going to get your agenda's accomplished hanging out on a terrorist website like this commie site. Enjoy!
I was just looking into XML-RPC and SOAP the other day, and for the most part Transport and even Serialization are separate components - fully replacable...
To build something that inter-ops well, you don't need to use things that are 100% standard. Especially in a component world. Worse-case-senerio a new transport protocol needs implementing in a different language - for the most part that should be very simple.
This issue is exactly why Microsoft thought they could put over Hailstorm. As a centralized model for Web Services with built-in security, user identification, preferences and certificate management Hailstorm looked like a damn good way for Microsoft to break into a new revenue space while consolidating control over the Internet.
Luckily for us Web Services weren't anywhere close to ready, at least compared to the hype for them, and Microsoft fell for their own marketing by introducing Hailstorm too soon. If they had kept it under wraps until Web Services were actually being rolled out (and running into the need for centralized security) they might have been hailed as saviors. Instead they jumped into the fray too soon and, combined with the antitrust problems, found themselves in a world of shit.
I don't know if Micrsoft has abandoned Hailstorm for good -- I do know they don't have a problem walking away from anything that doesn't pan out. But there is a chance Hailstorm, or something very similar (perhaps funded by Microsoft, but not directly owned), will return when the time is right. I expect the best model for this would be for Microsoft (and/or their competitors) to partner with the big banks and credit firms. In this case you have the businesses with the largest need for such services (and who already have significant databases) opening up their system as another revenue source. If my conjecture is valid I would expect to see announcements of such partnerships in the next six months or so.
In any case what I would like to see is an open source 'Hailstorm'. I understand there are a couple of such projects like that out there now. It would be a very Good Thing (tm) if these projects would settle on a single wire format and data model soon. Why? Because the first such system in general use is going to set the standard for everyone that follows. I would like to see both the standard itself and at least one of the implementations of that standard be open and free (as in speach).
A further extension of this concept would be to allow easy, trusted, collaboration between user identification systems. This kind of decentralization would help keep the biggies from controlling the entire dataspace. Unfortunately it may be difficult or impossible to do without compromising security.
Perhaps the best way to start is small and simple: An identification server of some kind. This service would allow you to check with with a trusted authority to make sure someone accessing your service is who they say they are. Such a server should also allow for anomynity by allowing someone to create an identity that cannot easily be traced back to the real person. Such an anomymous identify should be marked as such in some way in order to allow the service provider to decide if they want to accept it or not, but should be set up so that only the original creator of the identity can use it.
I can go on, but then I already have. Haven't I?
Jack William Bell
- -
Are you an SF Fan? Are you a Tru-Fan?
Well the ideal is not to get caught here. If can't get a clean shot at the upper body because of the way the animal is facing you can aim for the lower body also. If you can hit the stomach or the intestines infection should set in and be just as fatal. The only problem is infection can take to long to kill allowing time for medical attention and recovery. This puts you right back to square one.
If your a bad shot or the thought of using a gun on a living animal, even a pest, doesn't sit well with you, there are a number of poisons that will be just as effective.
nt = no text
. . . which is still needed to provide decent security for collaborative web services. That aspect of Hailstorm will probably eventually lead to (probably several) centralized Hailstorm-like services. Espcially where money is moving around (which is why I mentioned banks and credit companies).
I certainly understand companies wanting to keep the information local (espcially sales and preferences info that can be used to infer sales). This kind of thing is very important and I doubt they would want to share it with Microsoft or anyone else. I am sure that was one of the reasons Microsoft folded their hand, and I am sure you are right about it coming back as a package.
Still I stand on my prediction for the need of central identification services and the loss of personal control if someone doesn't provde an open source implementation of such.
As to the "Troll" moderation, you might be right on that as well (although it seems a bit over the top). I do believe meta-moderation works because I know it makes me think before I moderate.
Jack William Bell
- -
Are you an SF Fan? Are you a Tru-Fan?
They have their flaws, but any standard way to connect systems in a platform-agnostic way without worrying about the n firewalls that may or may not block the way between them is bound to get some support from developers.
Speed is not always critical, and a lot of times you don't know shit about your users infrastructure. In those cases web services help a lot.
Besides, the typical business case for a web service is two servers talking to each other (HTTP, FTP, SMTP or other protocol). So there is usually no human client involved. (Of course there might be a browser in the other end, but if you buid a web service just for that you might as well just have a ordinary dynamic web page.)
Seems this is the way it's gonna be, whatever we think about it. With the support of MS and Sun and an ever increasing mindshare Web Services will be hard to avoid soon...
There are problems as well, we might be creating a really big pile of shit that is bound hit the fan in a few years.
Time will tell, there really is no way to tell yet.
Lets just hope this won't be a new MS Outlook...
Anyway, your bashing on open protocols make me think you just might be a troll. So I guess I just been trolled.
damn!
"First lesson," Jon said. "Stick them with the pointy end."
> why not use php perl mod_perl instead of c#
.NET?" I don't think his boss is into Apache.
Did you read the part of the parent's post that said, "The company is alining its self with M$ and
they all use subliminal {encrypted} communications channels so you dont know what kind of data is being passed back and forth
The point of doing web services in XML across HTTP is that it is easy and can use established technologies. If you don't want anyone intercepting the message (channel-based security), that is what SSL is for and works trivially with any web server and client, and is built into Java.
Once you have a secure pipe, it doesn't take a genius to solve the additional security needs of 95% of the applications. Add a password here. Add a signature or message digest there. Do a calling card pattern. Most of what certain vendors are screaming for is huge overkill to highlight their own products that they would like to have people using instead of what is here today and works well.
These are the same people that kept RSA under restrictive patent for so many years. Just say no.
This is fucking amazing. I can post something that doesn't go with the popular option on here and I'm labeled as flamebate or Troll and mod'ed down so far I have to wear raincoat to take a piss. But if I post the most discusting thing imaginable but as long as it has nothing to do with the topic and no one touches it. Hell
If this doesn't show you something is fucked up about the moderation system then nothing will.
Things to note (strategic):
None of SOAP, WSDL, UDDI, and now WS Security are "Royalty Free".
SOAP isn't a de jure standard -- it's a W3C "note".
UDDI was supposed to move into an open standards body in 2001 but still hasn't.
By publishing WS Security on their websites and through no open standards body we see Microsoft, IBM and that other company abandoning even attempts to appear open.
On the technical side -- if you want to see a little deeper into the security issues left unsolved by SOAP, I recommend you look at the OASIS technical committee specification, ebXML Message Service Specification version 2.0 rev C.
I thought SGML was more comprehensive, and therefore technically superior.
I've been working on a project: macs, that provides (among other things) a protocol neutral authorization mechanism for hierarchical sets of resources. Featuring things like delegated administration mentioned in the article. We have been using this to control user access to things like web sites and file servers, but it would be trivial to adapt it to protect APIs instead.
Do people really leave their APIs dangling out there for all to call? Would this be a feature people would find useful?
-- "it's not enough to be a great programmer; you have to find a great problem" - Charles Simonyi
The article by Rich DeMillo (CNet news.com May 15, 2002) is much better. He gets to the underlying issue that we are patching up problems as they arise rather than paying any attention to understanding what we are really trying to achieve. In particular he says "The headlong rush to Web services is going to make things worse."
DeMillo has been around long enough to know what he is talking about, but I expect his wisdom to fall on deaf ears in today's instant gratification culture.
Geez, isn't that the same thing everyone rants on .net for?
At least with the current mishmash of crap that usually passes for any corporate network there's no "mother lode" to crack into to get the keys to the entire kingdom...
just because MS missed the point, people that have already tested MS.net in real life projects just notice "hey babe, but this is just nothing more java already got but worse !" or "but i can do better with the websphere suite, so i do back there !"
...) to either pure linux ones or at least to Java in order to get away from MS asylum in a smooth way ...
:o) LOL !
.net and they will never do it nor port it to a non WinXX platform ! A CLI port is not enough to have any kind of portability. To have a realy Java counterpart MS should provide a whole .net port, ie a complete port an implementation tested/patched and up to date of every single APIs including COM+ ;-)
.net is not dead, but yes it will never take up the whole world. At the end MS may reallize that they are just in a no way out ;-)
Ok, some people are trying to do some, but customers are either shifting from MS old technologies (ASP, VB, MFC, MTS, COM
Who entrepreneur can yet trust MS on the enterprise ground ?
Remember when then told you that "wora" (ie multiplatform and portability) was nothing but hell ! Now they try to make people beleive they will run office on Tux
But wake up kids, MS is just fooling you yet and again, ok they standardize the CLI&CLR but not
So each time i look as fud such as "mono" it makes me laugh, not because it is not feasable far from that but just because Sun has proven that instead of doing the port it is the port velocity (ie be able to have the same update on every platform) that has momentum !
That's why no
Anyway portability is the key to get out from MS.
-4R34'.