???? 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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