???? wrote:
Hey,
I want to change the way that tomcat authenticates to the DB of our
application, from SQL authentication to Windows authentication.
We use Tomcat 6.0.29 , and the user and password to connect to the DB is
specified in clear text in the xml configuration file under the folder
conf/catalina/localhost.
My goal is to remove the user and password from the xml file, and letting
the tomcat windows service run with a domain user that has permissions to
the DB.
when I searched for a solutions for what i'm trying to do, i got to this
page-
http://wiki.apache.org/tomcat/FAQ/Windows#Q4
Which suggest these methods:
-Waffle/JNA
-Tomcat SPNEGO
-SPNEGO SF
-Jespa (commercial)
-Tomcat IIS Connector
-Samba JCIFs (obsolete, no NTLMv2)
Are one of these methods suit for what I'm trying to do?
When reading about Tomcat SPNEGO, it says that users working on a windows
client OS and IE or Firefox, can be silently authenticated (SSO) to a Tomcat
running on a windows server via NTLM or kerberos. It doesn't seem to be what
I aim for, since tomcat users are not interest me, only the tomcat windows
service and how it connects to the DB
Exactly. Now you have the issue correctly framed.
And you are right above : all these methods indeed identify/authenticate the client of the
Tomcat application to Tomcat, not Tomcat itself to something else. (**)
The one thing missing in your description above, is that your Tomcat server is running on
a Windows machine.
And also that your back-end database system is able itself to perform user authentication
either in clear-text (user-id + password), or via Windows NTLM authentication.
(And, if the back-end database server is set to do NTLM authentication, then it can only
do so for Domain user-id's; NTLM authentication will not work with a "server-local" user-id).
So now you have to make one additional effort of thinking rationally, and answer the
following fundamental question : why ?
I mean, what exactly is the problem with having a user-id and a password for the database,
in clear in a Tomcat configuration file ? Are there users that can connect to the Tomcat
server, and read those configuration files, and which should not be able to do so ?
And if that is the case, can you not do something like :
a) either block these users from accessing the Tomcat server (the best solution)
OR
b)
- start Tomcat under some Windows user-id (with password)
- set the permissions of the Tomcat configuration files, so that *only* this user-id can
read them ?
Various people have previously tried to point out different aspects which remain true,
among which :
1) encrypting something is often a chicken-and-egg kind of problem : if you encrypt
something, then you need to decrypt it somewhere else; and the key to decrypt it has to be
stored somewhere also. And so on..
2) in terms of security, it is much better to run Tomcat under a "server local" user-id
than as a Domain user-id. That is because the local user-id only gives access to the
local machine, while a domain user-id gives access to the whole domain.
By running Tomcat as a domain user, you decrease the security of the whole
network.
3) security is always a matter of multiple layers of defense. In this case, your first
line is to prevent unauthorised people to access the Tomcat configuration files.
Because if they can do that, then they can break through any other security that you would
put in place. Think about it : no matter how, Tomcat needs access to the DB. If Tomcat
has access to the the DB, then any user who can control Tomcat can access the DB. (*)
4) your second line of defense, would be that the DB server only accepts connections from
Tomcat. This way, if someone can get hold of the user-id of Tomcat, at least they cannot
use it to access the DB directly.
(*) Suppose Tomcat runs under domain user-id XYZ, with a very secret password.
If I can get access to the Tomcat configuration files, then I can also install any Tomcat
application somewhere, and make Tomcat run it.
And this application will run under the Tomcat user-id, even if I do not know what this
user-id is. So this application could for example dump the whole database in some network
directory of my choice (and then, if I am really a bad guy, delete the database too).
(**) unless you want real security of access to the DB, and have the Tomcat application
make its own connection to the DB, and authenticate to the DB as the final user of the
application.
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