XML and Web Services Security

XML and Web Services Security can include two use cases. These use cases include the following:

Transport Level Security, is where security is addressed by the transport layer. Adding security in this way is discussed in the following example sections:

Basic Authentication with JAX-RPC

Client-Certificate Authentication over HTTP/SSL with JAX-RPC.

Message-Level Security, is where the security information is contained within the SOAP message, which allows security information to travel along with the message. This model enables message parts to be transported without intermediate nodes seeing or modifying the message. Adding security in this way is discussed in the following section:

Message-Level Security.

Transport Level Security

Authentication is a process that verifies the identity of a user, device, or other entity in a computer system, usually as a prerequisite to allowing access to resources in a system. There are several ways in which this can happen, the following ways are discussed in this section:

A user authentication method can be defined for an application in its deployment descriptor. When a user authentication method is specified for an application, the Web container activates the specified authentication mechanism when you attempt to access a protected resource. The options for user authentication methods are discussed in Configuring Login Authentication. The example application discussed in Basic Authentication with JAX-RPC shows how to add basic authentication to a JAX-RPC application.

A transport guarantee can be defined for an application in its deployment descriptor. Use this method to run over an SSL-protected session and ensure that all message content is protected for confidentiality. The options for transport guarantees are discussed in Specifying a Secure Connection. An example application that discusses running over an SSL-protected session is discussed in Client-Certificate Authentication over HTTP/SSL with JAX-RPC.

When running over an SSL-protected session, the server and client can authenticate one another and negotiate an encryption algorithm and cryptographic keys before the application protocol transmits or receives its first byte of data.

Secure Socket Layer (SSL) technology allows Web browsers and Web servers to communicate over a secured connection. In this secure connection, the data that is being sent is encrypted before being sent, then decrypted upon receipt and prior to processing. Both the browser and the server encrypt all traffic before sending any data. For more information, see What is Secure Socket Layer Technology?.

Digital certificates are necessary when running HTTP over SSL (HTTPS). The HTTPS service of most Web servers will not run unless a digital certificate has been installed. Use the procedure outlined in Setting Up Digital Certificates to set up a digital certificate that can be used by your Web server to enable SSL.

Basic Authentication with JAX-RPC

In this section, we discuss how to configure JAX-RPC-based Web service applications for HTTP basic authentication. With HTTP basic authentication (<auth-method>BASIC</auth-method>) the Web server will authenticate a user by using the user name and password obtained from the Web client. If the topic of authentication is new to you, please refer to the section titled Using Login Authentication.

For this tutorial, we begin with the example application in <INSTALL>/jwstutorial12/examples/jaxrpc/staticstub and <INSTALL>/jwstutorial12/examples/jaxrpc/helloservice and add user name/password authentication. The resulting application can be found in the directories <INSTALL>/jwstutorial12/examples/jaxrpc/basicauth and <INSTALL>/jwstutorial12/examples/jaxrpc/basicauthclient. In general, the following steps are necessary to add basic authentication to a JAX-RPC application. In the example application included with this tutorial, many of these steps have been completed for you and are listed here expressly for the purpose of listing what needs to be done should you wish to create a similar application outside of this tutorial.

Add the appropriate security elements to the web.xml deployment descriptor. For this example, these have been added. Refer to Add Security Elements to web.xml for further description of these elements.

Edit the build.properties files. The build.properties file needs to be modified because the properties in this file are specific to your installation of the Java WSDP and Java WSDP Tutorial. See Edit the Build Properties for information on which properties need to be set.

Set security properties in the client code. For the example application, this step has been completed. The code for this example is shown in Set Security Properties in the Client Code.

Build, deploy, and run the Web service (see Building and Running the Example for Basic Authentication). You will use the Ant tool to compile and run the example application.

Add Security Elements to web.xml

For HTTP basic authentication, the application deployment descriptor, web.xml, includes the information on who is authorized to access the application, which URL patterns and HTTP methods are protected, and what type of user authentication method this application uses. This information is added to the deployment descriptor inside <security-constraint>, <login-config>, and <security-role> elements. These security elements are discussed in more detail in Specifying Security Constraints and in the Java Servlet Specification, which can be browsed or downloaded online at http://java.sun.com/products/servlet/. Code in bold is added to web.xml to enable HTTP basic authentication:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" ?> 
- <web-app version="2.4" xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/
j2ee" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" 
xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee http://
java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee/web-app_2_4.xsd">
<display-name>Basic Authentication Security</display-name> 
- <session-config>
    <session-timeout>60</session-timeout> 
  </session-config>
- <security-constraint>
-   <web-resource-collection>
      <web-resource-name>SecureHello</web-resource-name> 
      <url-pattern>/hello</url-pattern> 
      <http-method>GET</http-method> 
      <http-method>POST</http-method> 
    </web-resource-collection>
-   <auth-constraint>
      <role-name>admin</role-name> 
    </auth-constraint>
-   <user-data-constraint>
      <transport-guarantee>NONE</transport-guarantee> 
    </user-data-constraint>
  </security-constraint>
- <login-config>
    <auth-method>BASIC</auth-method> 
  </login-config>
- <security-role>
    <role-name>admin</role-name> 
  </security-role>
  </web-app>

Note that the <role-name> element specifies admin, a role that has already been specified in the Tomcat user's file. For more information on defining and linking roles, see Setting up Security Roles.

Edit the Build Properties

To run the application with basic authentication, we have set up the application so that some of the values are passed to the application from the build.properties file, which is located in the <INSTALL>/jwstutorial12/examples/common directory. The following example assumes you are running on Tomcat. In order to perform basic authentication, the application needs to know your user name and password. The following items need to be set to the real values for your user name, password, and installation. The username and password properties must correspond to a user assigned the admin role, which is the user name and password entered during installation or one you've entered after installation, because that is the role to which we gave access in the deployment descriptor. If username and password variables already exist in the file, change them to the correct values, otherwise, add them.

Set Security Properties in the Client Code

The source code for the client is in the HelloClient.java file of the <INSTALL>/jwstutorial12/examples/jaxrpc/basicauthclient/src directory. For basic authentication, the client code must setusername and password properties. The username and password properties correspond to the admin role, which is the user name and password combination entered during installation and provided in the application deployment descriptor as an authorized role for secure transactions. (See Setting up Security Roles.)

The client sets the aforementioned security properties as shown in the code below. The code in bold is the code that had been added from the original version of the jaxrpc/staticstub example application.

package basicauthclient;

import javax.xml.rpc.Stub;

public class HelloClient {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
    
        if (args.length !=3) {
          System.out.println("HelloClient Error: Wrong 
           number of runtime arguments!");
          System.exit(1);
        }
        
        String username=args[0];
        String password=args[1];
        String endpointAddress=args[2];

      // print to display for verification purposes
        System.out.println("username: " + username);
        System.out.println("password: " + password);
        System.out.println("Endpoint address = " +
           endpointAddress); 


    try {
      Stub stub = createProxy();
        stub._setProperty(
          javax.xml.rpc.Stub.USERNAME_PROPERTY,
            username);
        stub._setProperty(
          javax.xml.rpc.Stub.PASSWORD_PROPERTY,
            password);
        stub._setProperty
          (javax.xml.rpc.Stub.ENDPOINT_ADDRESS_PROPERTY,
          endpointAddress);

      HelloIF hello = (HelloIF)stub;
      System.out.println(hello.sayHello("Duke! I feel
        secure!"));
        } catch (Exception ex) {
            ex.printStackTrace();
        }
    }    

    private static Stub createProxy() {
        // Note: MyHelloService_Impl is implementation-specific.
        return (Stub)(new
          MyHelloService_Impl().getHelloIFPort());
    }
}

Building and Running the Example for Basic Authentication

To build and run the jaxrpc/basicauth example using basic authentication, follow these steps:

Follow the instructions in Edit the Build Properties.

Go to the <INSTALL>/jwstutorial12/examples/jaxrpc/basicauth directory.

Build the JAX-RPC service by entering the following at the command prompt in the /basicauth directory (this and the following steps that use Ant assume that you have the executable for Ant in your path: if not, you will need to provide the fully-qualified path to the Ant executable). This command runs the Ant target named build in the build.xml file.

ant build

Deploy the JAX-RPC service by entering the following at the command prompt in the /basicauth directory:

ant deploy

Build the JAX-RPC client by entering the following at the command prompt in the /basicauthclient directory:

ant build

Run the JAX-RPC client by entering the following at the command prompt in the /basicauthclient directory:

Client-Certificate Authentication over HTTP/SSL with JAX-RPC

In this section, we discuss how to configure a simple JAX-RPC-based Web service application for client-certificate authentication over HTTP/SSL. Client-certificate authentication (<auth-method>CLIENT-CERT</auth-method>) uses HTTP over SSL, in which the server and, optionally, the client authenticate one another with Public Key Certificates. If the topic of authentication is new to you, please refer to the section titled Using Login Authentication.

This example application starts with the example application in <INSTALL>/jwstutorial12/examples/jaxrpc/helloservice and adds both client and server authentication to the example. In SSL certificate-based basic authentication, the server presents its certificate to the client, and the client authenticates to the server by sending its user name and password. This type of authentication is sometimes called server authentication. Mutual authentication adds the dimension of client authentication. For mutual authentication, we need both the client's identity, as contained in a client certificate, and the server's identity, as contained in a server certificate inside keystore.jks, and we need both of these identities to be contained in a mutual trust-store (cacerts.jks) where they can be verified.

To add mutual authentication to the <INSTALL>/jwstutorial12/examples/jaxrpc/helloservice example, we need to complete the following steps. In the example application included with this tutorial, many of these steps have been completed for you and are listed here expressly for the purpose of listing what needs to be done should you wish to create a similar application outside of this tutorial.

Create the appropriate certificates and keystores. For this example, the certificates and keystores are created for a generic localhost and are included with the example application. See the section Keystores and Trust-Stores in the Mutual Authentication Example for a discussion of these files. If you are creating a different application, refer to the section Setting Up Digital Certificates for more information on creating the keystores and certificates and importing the client and server identity into the trust-store.

Configure the SSL Connector. For this release of Tomcat, the SSL connector needs to be configured before you can run the example application, and the information about the server keystore must be added to the server.xml file as well. Read the instructions on how to do this in the section Configuring the SSL Connector for Certificate Authentication.

Edit the build.properties files to add the location and password to the trust-store, and other properties, as appropriate. The build.properties file needs to be modified because the properties in this file are specific to your installation of the Java WSDP and Java WSDP Tutorial. For a discussion of the modifications that need to be made to build.properties, see Modifying the Build Properties.

Set security properties in the client code. For the example application, this step has been completed. For a discussion of the security properties that have been set in the HelloClient, see Setting Security Properties in the Client Code.

Add the appropriate security elements to the web.xml deployment descriptor. For this example, these have been added. The security elements that have been added are discussed in the section Enabling Mutual Authentication over SSL.

Build the client and server files, deploy the server, and run the client (see Build, Deploy, and Run the Mutual Authentication Example). You will use the Ant tool to compile and deploy the example application.

Keystores and Trust-Stores in the Mutual Authentication Example

In this example, the keystore file (keystore.jks) and the trust-store file (cacerts.jks) have already been created for a generic localhost and are included with the example application in the directory <INSTALL>/jwstutorial12/examples/jaxrpc/mutualauth. These files were created using the following steps, which are discussed in more detail in Setting Up Digital Certificates.

Create a server certificate in the file keystore.jks.

Export the certificate.

Import the certificate into the trust-store, cacerts.jks.

Create a client certificate in the client keystore.

Export the certificate.

Import the certificate into the trust-store, cacerts.jks.

Configuring the SSL Connector for Certificate Authentication

By default, the SSL Connector is not enabled for Tomcat for this release of the Java WSDP. To use the SSL Connector that comes pre-configured for Tomcat, you need to uncomment the section that includes the SSL connector, as discussed in Configuring the SSL Connector. In this same file, you must add the information on the location and password of the server's keystore file. The following code snippet is from the Tomcat Server Configuration file, which is located at <JWSDP_HOME>/conf/server.xml. Open this file, remove the comment tags around the SSL Connector if you haven't done so already (highlighted in bold), and add the keystore information as shown in bold below:

<!-- Define a SSL Coyote HTTP/1.1 Connector on port 8443 -->
<!-- REMOVE the comment tag on the next line-->
<!--
<Connector
    className="org.apache.coyote.tomcat5.CoyoteConnector"
    port="8443" minProcessors="5" maxProcessors="75"
    enableLookups="true" disableUploadTimeout="true"
    acceptCount="100" debug="0" scheme="https" 
    secure="true">
<Factory    
    className=
      "org.apache.coyote.tomcat5.CoyoteServerSocketFactory"
    keystoreFile=
      "<INSTALL>/jwstutorial12/examples/jaxrpc/
      mutualauth/keystore.jks"
    keystorePass="changeit"
    clientAuth="false" protocol="TLS" />
</Connector>
<!-- REMOVE the comment tag on the line below-->
-->

Modifying the Build Properties

To run the application with mutual authentication, we have set up the application so that some of the values are passed to the application from various build.properties file.

To run any of the examples, you need to modify the build.properties file located in the <INSTALL>/jwstutorial12/examples/common directory. This file provides general properties about who you are and where things are located on your computer to the Ant targets we will run later in this example. In this case, you need to provide the location where the tutorial is installed and your user name and password. The username and password properties must correspond to a user assigned to the admin role, which may be the user name and password entered during installation or a user name and password entered at a later time and assigned the admin role. The user name and password must be assigned the role user because that is the role to which we gave access in the deployment descriptor. If you need more information, see Modifying the Build Properties File.

To run the mutual authentication example, you also need to edit the build.properties file in the <INSTALL>/jwstutorial12/examples/jaxrpc/common directory. This file provides specific information about the JAX-RPC examples to the Ant targets we will be running later regarding the location of the keystore and trust-store files and their associated passwords.

Make sure to enter values for the following properties. Replace <INSTALL> with the fully-qualified path to the file, for example, c:/jwsdp-1.2 or /home/your_name.

Setting Security Properties in the Client Code

The source code for the client is in the HelloClient.java file of the <INSTALL>/jwstutorial12/examples/jaxrpc/mutualauthclient/src directory. For mutual authentication, the client code must set several security-related properties. These values are passed into the client code when the Ant build and run tasks are executed.

trustStore. The value of the trustStore property is the fully qualified name of the trust-store file: <INSTALL>/jwstutorial12/examples/jaxrpc/mutualauth/cacerts.jks.

trustStorePassword. The trustStorePassword property is the password of the trust-store. The default value of this password is changeit.

keyStore. The value of the keyStore property is the fully qualified name of the keystore file: <INSTALL>/jwstutorial12/examples/jaxrpc/mutualauth/keystore.jks.

keyStorePassword. The keyStorePassword property is the password of the keystore. The default value of this password is changeit.

endpointAddress. The endpointAddress property sets the endpoint address that the stub uses to access the service.

package mutualauthclient;

import javax.xml.rpc.Stub;

public class HelloClient {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
    
        if (args.length !=5) {
          System.out.println("HelloClient Error: Need 5
        runtime arguments!");
          System.exit(1);
        }
        
        String keyStore=args[0];
        String keyStorePassword=args[1];
        String trustStore=args[2];
        String trustStorePassword=args[3];
        String endpointAddress=args[4];


      // print to display for verification purposes
        System.out.println("keystore: " + keyStore);
        System.out.println("keystorePassword: " +
        keyStorePassword);
        System.out.println("trustStore: " + trustStore);
        System.out.println("trustStorePassword: " +
        trustStorePassword);
        System.out.println("Endpoint address: " +
        endpointAddress);

    try {
      Stub stub = createProxy();
      System.setProperty("javax.net.ssl.keyStore",
        keyStore);
      System.setProperty("javax.net.ssl.keyStorePassword",
        keyStorePassword);
      System.setProperty("javax.net.ssl.trustStore",
        trustStore);
      System.setProperty("javax.net.ssl.trustStorePassword",
        trustStorePassword);
      stub._setProperty(
          javax.xml.rpc.Stub.ENDPOINT_ADDRESS_PROPERTY,
            endpointAddress);

      HelloIF hello = (HelloIF)stub;
      System.out.println(hello.sayHello("Duke! (        secure!"));
        } catch (Exception ex) {
            ex.printStackTrace();
        }
    }    

    private static Stub createProxy() {
        // Note: MyHelloService_Impl is implementation-specific.
        return (Stub)(new
          MySecureHelloService_Impl().getHelloIFPort());
    }
}

Enabling Mutual Authentication over SSL

The two ways of implementing client authentication are discussed in Enabling Mutual Authentication Over SSL. You can set client authentication for all applications (by specifying this in the deployment descriptor for the server) or for just a single application (by specifying this in the deployment descriptor for the application). For this example, we are enabling client authentication for this application only, so we specify the login authentication method in the deployment descriptor, web.xml, as being CLIENT-CERT.

To view the application deployment descriptor, open the web.xml file located in the <INSTALL>/jwstutorial12/examples/jaxrpc/mutualauth directory. The following section adds client certification to this example:

The user authentication method specifies a client-certificate method of authentication in this example. For this authentication to run over SSL, we also need to specify which type of transport guarantee to use. For this example, we have chosen CONFIDENTIAL, which is specified in the web.xml file as follows:

Build, Deploy, and Run the Mutual Authentication Example

To build, deploy, and run the JAX-RPC service example with mutual authentication, follow these steps:

Follow these steps even if you are running the given example from the <INSTALL>/jwstutorial12/examples/jaxrpc/mutualauth directory. These steps are specific to your machine and implementation.

Configuring the SSL Connector for Certificate Authentication.

Modifying the Build Properties.

Go to the <INSTALL>/jwstutorial12/examples/jaxrpc/mutualauth directory.

Build the JAX-RPC service by entering the following at the command prompt in the /mutualauth directory (this and the following steps that use Ant assume that you have the executable for Ant in your path: if not, you will need to provide the fully-qualified path to the Ant executable):

ant build

Deploy the JAX-RPC service by entering the following at the command prompt in the /mutualauth directory:

ant deploy

Change to the directory <INSTALL>/jwstutorial12/examples/jaxrpc/mutualauthclient.

Build the JAX-RPC client by entering the following at the command prompt:

Run the JAX-RPC client by entering the following at the command prompt:

Buildfile: build.xml

run-mutualauth-client:
    [java] keyStore: <INSTALL>/jwstutorial12/examples/jaxrpc/
mutualauth/keystore.jks
    [java] keyStorePassword: changeit
    [java] trustStore: <INSTALL>/jwstutorial12/examples/
jaxrpc/mutualauth/cacerts.jks
    [java] trustStorePassword: changeit
    [java] endpointAddress = https://localhost:8443/secure-
mutualauth/hello
    [java] Hello Duke (secure)

BUILD SUCCESSFUL

Message-Level Security

In message-level security, security information is contained within the SOAP message, which allows security information to travel along with the message. For example, a portion of the message may be signed by a sender and encrypted for a particular receiver. When the message is sent from the initial sender, it may pass through intermediate nodes before reaching its intended receiver. In this scenario, the encrypted portions continue to be opaque to any intermediate nodes and can only be decrypted by the intended receiver. For this reason, message-level security is also sometimes referred to as end-to-end security.

This release of the Java WSDP includes samples that illustrate how a JAX-RPC developer can use the XML and Web Services Security framework, as well as documentation for the nonstandard APIs. The example applications can be found in the <JWSDP_HOME>/xws-security/samples/ directory. The example starts with the <INSTALL>/jwstutorial12/examples/jax-rpc/helloservice/ example shipped with the Java WSDP Tutorial and adds XML Digital Signature. Instructions for running the example are included in the README.txt files included with each sample.

In this release, the default trust-store bundled with the pack is the only certificate that will be accepted for signing and verifying the requests and responses. This trust-store contains both the client and server certificates.

Sample application dump prints out both the client and server request and response SOAP messages.

Sample application sign begins with the JAX-RPC helloservice sample and configures it so that the response is signed by the server and verified by the client. The request message is not changed.

Sample application sign2 starts with the JAX-RPC helloservice sample. In this example, the client signs the request, the message is dumped out, the message travels over the network, the server verifies the signature, the business method is called, the server signs the response, the message travels back over the network, and the client verifies the response. This sample also demonstrates how the calling client identity can be retrieved in the business method.

API documentation for the nonstandard APIs can be viewed at <JWSDP_HOME>/xws-security/docs/api/index.html.

Signing and Verifying a SOAP Message

This section discusses using the XML and Web Services Security (XWS-Security) to sign and verify SOAP request and response messages. Starting with an unsecured JAX-RPC client, the call gets access to a client proxy object, in this case a static stub. To secure this client, a ClientHelper must be created and bound to that proxy object. There can be several kinds of ClientHelpers depending on the kind of credentials the client uses. A ClientHelper has no credentials associated with it, while a CertificateClientHelper carries X509 certificate credentials.

On the server side, there is only one kind of credential, an X509 Certificate credential, which means that there is only one ServerHelper class. As with the client, a ServerHelper instance needs to be created and this must be done before a business method is called. Use the init(Object) method of the ServiceLifecycle interface to do this. The unsecured JAX-RPC endpoint must implement ServiceLifecycle and add an init(Object context) method, as shown in the example code in Configuring the Server to Verify a Request Received from the Client and to Sign Responses Sent to the Client.

In this release, only programmatic security is supported. None of the security information is added to the deployment descriptors.

Configuring the Server to Sign a Server Response

To configure a server to sign all response to a client, you add a ServerHelper to your server implementation. In the example at <JWSDP_HOME>/xws-security/samples/sign/server/src/sign/HelloImpl.java, when a client invokes an RPC service, the server signs the response with the default credential. The code that does this looks like this:

The createFor(context) method creates a ServerHelper instance and binds it to a servlet endpoint implementation. This method will attempt to initialize the server credentials and client credential databases but will not throw any exceptions upon failure. The server credentials use a JAAS entry name of XwsSecurityServerKey and the client databases use XwsSecurityClientCertificateDatabase.

To read the API documentation for ServerHelper, open <JWSDP_HOME>/xws-security/docs/api/com/sun/xml/rpc/security/ServerHelper.html.

Configuring a Static Client to Verify Server Responses

To configure a static client to verify server responses, you add a ClientHelper, a utility API used to add security to a proxy by adding a handler to verify all of the responses from the server. A ClientHelper has no client credential but may be associated with an optional server certificate credential. The following code (in bold), from <JWSDP_HOME>/xws-security/samples/sign/client/src/sign/StaticHelloClient.java, shows one example of configuring a static client to verify server responses:

public class StaticHelloClient {
  public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception { 
    Remote proxy = (Remote) createProxy(); 
 
    // Create a ClientHelper to verify the response from 
    // the server 
    ClientHelper.createFor(proxy).addVerifyResponse(); 
 
    HelloIF hello = (HelloIF) proxy; 
    System.out.println(hello.sayHello("to Duke!")); 
  }
}

The line of code in bold gets the proxy and configures the helper for the proxy using the ClientHelper API. The addVerifyResponse method adds an action to verify a response message from the server and returns this object in support of method-call chaining. The createFor method attempts to bind the Helper to the proxy. The server credentials will be initialized using a JAAS default entry name of XwsSecurityServerCertificate. If a server credential could not be located, no exception is thrown because it is possible to call methods on this class that do not require server credentials.

To read the API documentation for ClientHelper, open <JWSDP_HOME>/xws-security/docs/api/com/sun/xml/rpc/security/ClientHelper.html.

Configuring the Server to Verify a Request Received from the Client and to Sign Responses Sent to the Client

In Configuring the Server to Sign a Server Response, configuring a server to sign responses to the client was discussed. This section adds to that example by verifying that the request is from a valid client before sending a response. The sign2 sample application includes server-side source code that illustrates how to verify a request received from the client in addition to showing how to sign responses sent to the client. This sample also shows you how to extract information about the client principal with which the request was signed. The following code snippet demonstrates one way to configure the server as described above (from <JWSDP_HOME>/xws-security/samples/sign2/server/src/sign2/HelloImpl.java):

public class HelloImpl implements HelloIF, ServiceLifecycle {
  private static final String prompt = "Hello ";
  private ServerHelper sh;

  public String sayHello(String s) {
    // The following illustrates how to access the Principal
    // associated with the client signature in a business
    // method. 
    return prompt + s + " and also to " +
      sh.getClientPrincipal();
  }
...

  public void init(Object context) throws ServiceException {
    // Configure this endpoint to sign the response with the
    // server's credentials.  Also, save the ServerHelper
    // instance in a field so we can access it later from a
    // business method.
    sh = ServerHelper.createFor(context);
    sh.addCertificateVerifyRequest().addSignResponse();

    }

}

When you get a request that was signed by the client, use the getClientPrincipal method to find out who signed the request. Use the addCertificateVerifyRequest method to verify a request message from the client. The client Subject and Principal will be set to the client identity if verification is successful.

Of course, for this scenario to work, you need to add a sign request to your client code as well. The client source code illustrates how to sign a request sent to the server and to verify the response that is received. In this example, we use the CertificateClientHelper API to sign the request from the client. The server code, above, signs the response, and the client verifies the response. The CertificateClientHelper class is used to help set up client-side security using X509 Certificate credentials. A CertificateClientHelper is typically associated with a client credential and may be associated with a server certificate credential. The following code snippet is from the sample application at <JWSDP_HOME>/xws-security/samples/sign2/client/src/sign2/StaticHelloClient.java:

The addSignRequest method adds an action to sign a request message to the server. If getClientSubject() returns null, then this method will throw a ServiceException because a client private key is needed to sign a request. The addDumpRequest method is used to dump a stack trace to the console for debugging purposes.

To read the API documentation for ClientCertificateHelper, open <JWSDP_HOME>/xws-security/docs/api/com/sun/xml/rpc/security/ClientCertificateHelper.html.

Further Discussion of XML Digital Signatures

With this implementation of the XML Digital Signature technology, you can verify the integrity of the message, but anyone who picks up the XML document will be able to see its contents. To add authentication to this example, you can use DSig in combination with SSL technology to encrypt the actual contents of the document. Adding certificate-based authentication to a JAX-RPC application is discussed in Client-Certificate Authentication over HTTP/SSL with JAX-RPC.