spring-bootspring-security

Spring Security blocks POST requests despite SecurityConfig


I'm developing a REST API based on Spring Boot (spring-boot-starter-web) where I use Spring Security (spring-security-core e spring-security-config) to protect the different endpoints.

The authentication is done by using a local database that contains users with two different sets of roles: ADMIN andUSER. USER should be able toGET all API endpoints and POST to endpoints based onrouteA. ADMIN should be able to do the same asUSER plus POST andDELETE to endpoints based on `routeB

However the behavior I'm getting is that I can do GET requests to any endpoint but POST requests always return HTTP 403 Forbidden for either type of user - ADMIN and USER - which is not expected what I'm expecting based on my SecurityConfiguration.

Any ideas of what am I missing?


SecurityConfiguration.java

@Configuration
@EnableWebSecurity
public class SecurityConfiguration extends WebSecurityConfigurerAdapter {

    private static final Logger logger = LoggerFactory.getLogger(SecurityConfiguration.class);

    @Autowired
    private RESTAuthenticationEntryPoint authenticationEntryPoint;

    @Autowired
    private DataSource dataSource;

    @Override
    public void configure(AuthenticationManagerBuilder builder) throws Exception {
        logger.info("Using database as the authentication provider.");
        builder.jdbcAuthentication().dataSource(dataSource).passwordEncoder(new BCryptPasswordEncoder());
    }

    @Override
    protected void configure(HttpSecurity http) throws Exception {
        http.sessionManagement().sessionCreationPolicy(SessionCreationPolicy.STATELESS).and().
            authorizeRequests().antMatchers(HttpMethod.GET, "/**").hasAnyRole("ADMIN", "USER")
                               .antMatchers(HttpMethod.POST, "/routeA/*").hasAnyRole("ADMIN", "USER")
                               .antMatchers(HttpMethod.POST, "/routeB/*").hasRole("ADMIN")
                               .antMatchers(HttpMethod.DELETE, "/routeB/*").hasRole("ADMIN").and().
            requestCache().requestCache(new NullRequestCache()).and().
            httpBasic().authenticationEntryPoint(authenticationEntryPoint).and().
            cors();
    }

    @Bean
    public CorsConfigurationSource corsConfigurationSource() {
        final CorsConfiguration configuration = new CorsConfiguration();
        configuration.setAllowedOrigins(Arrays.asList("*"));
        configuration.setAllowedMethods(Arrays.asList("HEAD", "GET", "POST", "PUT", "DELETE", "PATCH"));
        configuration.setAllowCredentials(true);
        configuration.setAllowedHeaders(Arrays.asList("Authorization", "Cache-Control", "Content-Type"));
        final UrlBasedCorsConfigurationSource source = new UrlBasedCorsConfigurationSource();
        source.registerCorsConfiguration("/**", configuration);
        return source;
    }

RouteBController .java

@RestController
public class RouteBController {

    static final Logger logger = LoggerFactory.getLogger(RouteBController.class);

    public RouteBController() { }

    @RequestMapping(value = "routeB", produces = MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON_UTF8_VALUE, method = RequestMethod.GET)
    public String getStuff() {
        return "Got a hello world!";
    }

    @RequestMapping(value = "routeB", produces = MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON_UTF8_VALUE, method = RequestMethod.POST)
    public String postStuff() {
        return "Posted a hello world!";
    }

}

RESTAuthenticationEntryPoint.java

@Component
public class RESTAuthenticationEntryPoint extends BasicAuthenticationEntryPoint {

    @Override
    public void afterPropertiesSet() throws Exception {
        setRealmName("AppNameHere");
        super.afterPropertiesSet();
    }
}

Solution

  • BEFORE disabling the CSFR as a way of fixing this issue, please check the resources on Mohd Waseem's answer to better understand why it is important and to have an idea of how it can be properly set up. As RCaetano has said, CSFR is here to help us from attacks and it should not be disabled blindly.

    Since this answer still explained the 2 issues on my original questions, I'll leave it as the marked answer to create awareness about possible issues with the CSFT and security routes but don't take it literally.


    There were 2 issues in SecurityConfiguration.java that made it misbehave.

    Although the 403 Forbidden error message didn't contain any message indication of why it was failing (see example below) it turns out it was due to having CSRF enabled. Disabling it allowed for POST and DELETE requests to be processed.

    {
        "timestamp": "2018-06-26T09:17:19.672+0000",
        "status": 403,
        "error": "Forbidden",
        "message": "Forbidden",
        "path": "/routeB"
    }
    

    Also the expression used in antMatched(HttpMethod, String) for RouteB was incorrect because /routeB/* expects it to have something after /. The correct configuration is /routeB/** since more paths can be present (or not).


    The corrected SecurityConfiguration.java is

    @Override
    protected void configure(HttpSecurity http) throws Exception {
        http.sessionManagement().sessionCreationPolicy(SessionCreationPolicy.STATELESS).and().
            authorizeRequests().antMatchers(HttpMethod.GET, "/**").hasAnyRole("ADMIN", "USER")
                               .antMatchers(HttpMethod.POST, "/routeA/**").hasAnyRole("ADMIN", "USER")
                               .antMatchers(HttpMethod.POST, "/routeB/**").hasRole("ADMIN")
                               .antMatchers(HttpMethod.DELETE, "/routeB/**").hasRole("ADMIN").and().
            requestCache().requestCache(new NullRequestCache()).and().
            httpBasic().authenticationEntryPoint(authenticationEntryPoint).and().
            cors().and().
            csrf().disable();
    }
    

    Source: StackOverflow em Português