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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."
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.
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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.
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..
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.
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...
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
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?
. . . 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."
While I tend to agree with your conclusion that actual Web Services (in their current formulation) are mostly a fad, I disagree with your suggestion that standardization yields weak security.
Obscure security can only secure the trivial. Lots of eyeballs checking and auditing the code, beating on it ruthlessly, does work. (That's a slight misquote Linus' Law of Debugging from "The Cathedral and the Bazaar") Witness Linux or *BSD.
Message-driven, discovery-based APIs for applications will be a good thing. For one thing, the actual APIs would fall more in line with O-O practice, where you classify objects by the messages they respond to (and not, instead, by the attributes they have). For another, you'd have a framework for service design-by-contract. But port 80 HTTP requests seem to be a lousy way to do this.
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.
Ehmm... Not really the same thing.
The good 'ol www is a machine <--> human interface.
Web services on the other hand is primarily a machine <--> machine interface.
It has some uses since HTML and the www is not well suited for automated reading. (If you ever wrote a screen-scrape program and tried to keep it working for more than a few months you'd agree with me...)
Problem is, what you are really doing is exposing a api for server to server communication to the general public.
Web services makes this an easy task, and chanses are people will forget to secure their apps.
Any hole will be a remote hole...
Scary thought, huh?
Might be the next outlook.
...or not
"First lesson," Jon said. "Stick them with the pointy end."
But port 80 HTTP requests seem to be a lousy way to do this.
So do it on another protocol.
Why is it everyone thinks web services are only meant to be HTTP?
SOAP is not dependent on any protocol except maybe ASCII.
Send it by SMTP, FTP or whatever you like. It's just an XML document following a certain schema agreed upon by all involved. This means that any way you can transmit plain text you can run a "web service".
I blame MS for this fixation on HTTP.
...Though I have actuallty read a paper by some ms developer complaining about how HTTP is not well suited for all SOAP requests (beeing a stateless protocol some things are hard to do...).
"First lesson," Jon said. "Stick them with the pointy end."
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.
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.
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.