HTTP Public Key Pinning is a header that allows you to pin a certificate to a host, consider it the next step after HSTS ISAM for Web & Sending Security HTTP Headers the solution isn't any different to send the header with WebSEAL. The HTTP Public-Key-Pins response header associates a specific cryptographic public key with... Continue Reading →
OAuth Auth – Credential Enrichment and HTTP Header Sending
If you wanted to add HTTP Headers to the junctioned request, similar to how the old OAuth EAS used to. For example sending the Client ID, or the Token details as HTTP headers, there is an easy way to do this from the OAuth Mapping rule. Here I am not only adding things like the... Continue Reading →
Configure ISAM to listen on multiple interfaces and ports
Its possible to configure ISAM to listen on more than one network interface, more than one IP, and more than one set of ports. The easiest way to configure this, is in the LMI under the configuration settings for an individual reverse proxy instance: There are settings for: The IP to listen on. This must... Continue Reading →
ISAM Basic Users (aka Lite Users) vs Federated ISAM users
ISAM introduced the concept of non-imported users which we named Basic users, or lite users depending on who you ask, back in 2014 with version 8.0.0.4. I still regularly receive a bunch of questions as to what this means from an architectural perspective, and most importantly, what are the advantages and disadvantages to this new... Continue Reading →
Developing a client with OAuth and IBM Security Access Manager
IBM Security Access Manager provides a set of capabilities that can be used for authentication and authorization of a client accessing API's and can be scoped to a user or clients needs. When you moving away from browser use cases, REST based API's depend less on session cookies and instead make use of security tokens.... Continue Reading →
ISAM Selective use of Local Response Redirect
In ISAM using the Local Response Redirect capability has traditionally been overkill when using it for an EAI for a login operation. The reason being, almost any error or management page that is traditionally handled by ISAM now gets redirected to your EAI. Including Login operations, Logout page, Stepup and other authentication related operations. It... Continue Reading →
OAuth Auth ISAM authentication level mapping
ISAM provides the concept of Authentication Levels out of the box. This means a given authentication mechanism or flow can be assigned an integer value >0 that represents the authentication strength. OAuth Auth can make use of this for features such as incremental authentication - for example if the OAuth grant was issued via single... Continue Reading →
Setting an Authentication Level for Kerberos in ISAM
Tying an authentication mechanism to an authentication level can be very useful when writing security policy in ISAM. For example you might want a password based authentication (Such as Basic Auth or Forms Auth) to map to level 1, whilst you might hold a federated identity, or something achieved through another EAI to have a... Continue Reading →
IBM Security Access Manager (ISAM) Kerberos Configuration Guide
My colleague has posted an in depth set of articles on IBM DeveloperWorks for Kerberos configuration with ISAM. It covers both Kerberos integration's, being Desktop SSO with Kerberos into ISAM, and junctioning to servers using Kerberos for Junction SSO. The article is available here: https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/wikis/home?lang=en#!/wiki/W746177d414b9_4c5f_9095_5b8657ff8e9d/page/Information%20and%20Guides%20for%20Kerberos%20SSO
ISAM Forms SSO into BMC Remedy
Updated 09/2015: HTTP 505 error solved. See end of article. On a customer site, I encountered BMC Remedy, and had to perform SSO into the Application from ISAM. My initial attempt included trying to use the standard integration we have with Tomcat versions, as detailed here: http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg24021393 Unfortunately, this didn't work in the time I'd... Continue Reading →
ISAM EAI Server Error: 0x38cf042f
When trying to configure an EAI, I encountered the following error whenever it was supposed to be authenticating the user: Server Error Access Manager WebSEAL could not complete your request due to an unexpected error. Diagnostic Information Method: GET URL: <url> Error Code: 0x38cf042f Error Text: Server Error Solution Provide your System Administrator with the... Continue Reading →
OAuth Authorization
When using ISAM in OAuth patterns, there are a number of ways you can do authorization based on OAuth scopes. In general, at last check, there are three main ways of Authorizing OAuth requests based on their scope. (or other attributes associated with the tokens). The mechanisms available are dependent on which OAuth validation mechanism... Continue Reading →
ISAM for Web – Different login pages per junction
Update 15/05/2015: It would seem that I may have over complicated this, we have a ISAM feature to do this already! 🙂 Apparently since TAM 6.1.1 we can use static management and error page templates per junction, as stated in the following technote: http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21587936 So feel free to choose your own adventure! Different people access... Continue Reading →
ISAM for Web – Clickjacking prevention
What is Clickjacking? Clickjacking (User Interface redress attack, UI redress attack, UI redressing) is a malicious technique of tricking a Web user into clicking on something different from what the user perceives they are clicking on, thus potentially revealing confidential information or taking control of their computer while clicking on seemingly innocuous web pages. It... Continue Reading →
ISAM for Web – Sending Security HTTP Headers
Update 5/08/15: In the ISAM 8.0.1.3 Release, we've added a new stanza to the ISAM Reverse Proxy config file. This allows the easy addition of headers to all ISAM responses. [rsp-header-names] # # This stanza is used to define static HTTP headers which will be added # to every HTTP response from the WebSEAL server. ... Continue Reading →