Spring Security Token based Authentication

Question

I have a rest api where I am authenticating using spring security Basic Authorization where client sends username and password for each request. Now, I wanted to implement token based authentication where I will send a token in response header when user is authenticated at first. For further requests, client can include that token in the header which will be used to authenticate the user to the resources. I have two authentication providers tokenAuthenticationProvider and daoAuthenticationProvider

@Component
public class TokenAuthenticationProvider implements AuthenticationProvider {

    @Autowired
    private TokenAuthentcationService service;

    @Override
    public Authentication authenticate(final Authentication authentication) throws AuthenticationException {

        final RequestAttributes requestAttributes = RequestContextHolder.getRequestAttributes();
        final HttpServletRequest request = ((ServletRequestAttributes) requestAttributes).getRequest();
        final String token = request.getHeader(Constants.AUTH_HEADER_NAME);
        final Token tokenObj = this.service.getToken(token);
        final AuthenticationToken authToken = new AuthenticationToken(tokenObj);
        return authToken;
    }

     @Override
        public boolean supports(final Class<?> authentication) {
            return AuthenticationToken.class.isAssignableFrom(authentication);
        }
}

And in daoAuthenticationProvider I am setting custom userDetailsService and authenticating against user login details by fetching it from the database (which is working fine as long as user name and password are passed using Authorization:Basic bGllQXBpVXNlcjogN21wXidMQjRdTURtR04pag== as header)

But when I include token in the header using X-AUTH-TOKEN (which is Constants.AUTH_HEADER_NAME), tokenAuthenticationProvider is not being called. I am getting error as

{"timestamp":1487626368308,"status":401,"error":"Unauthorized","message":"Full authentication is required to access this resource","path":"/find"}

And here is how I am adding authentication providers.

    @Override
    public void configure(final AuthenticationManagerBuilder auth) throws Exception {

        final UsernamePasswordAuthenticationProvider daoProvider = new 

UsernamePasswordAuthenticationProvider(this.service, this.passwordEncoder());
    auth.authenticationProvider(this.tokenAuthenticationProvider);
    auth.authenticationProvider(daoProvider);
}

Please suggest how can I implement Token based authentication without hurting the current behavior of spring security.

You have different ways to do this, You can @Autowired the provider directly on each Filter, or set that Providers in one Authentication Manager, and work with it in the both FIlters. Of course, you have to set both Filters in the Spring Security FilterChain. — Dani
you have set the authenticationProvider twice, will the second one, daoProvider, not override the first one, tokentAuthenticationProvider, which is exact the class that didn't get run? — ChrisZ

Raghavendra Raghavendra · Accepted Answer · 2017-02-23T19:24:14

Here is how I was able to implement token based authentication and basic authentication

SpringSecurityConfig.java

@Configuration
@EnableWebSecurity
public class SecurityConfig extends WebSecurityConfigurerAdapter
{

    @Override
    public void configure(final AuthenticationManagerBuilder auth) throws Exception
    {
        auth.userDetailsService(this.participantService).passwordEncoder(this.passwordEncoder());
    }

    @Override
    protected void configure(final HttpSecurity http) throws Exception
    {

        //Implementing Token based authentication in this filter
        final TokenAuthenticationFilter tokenFilter = new TokenAuthenticationFilter();
        http.addFilterBefore(tokenFilter, BasicAuthenticationFilter.class);

        //Creating token when basic authentication is successful and the same token can be used to authenticate for further requests
        final CustomBasicAuthenticationFilter customBasicAuthFilter = new CustomBasicAuthenticationFilter(this.authenticationManager() );
        http.addFilter(customBasicAuthFilter);

    }
}

TokenAuthenticationFilter.java

    public class TokenAuthenticationFilter extends GenericFilterBean
    {


        @Override
        public void doFilter(final ServletRequest request, final ServletResponse response, final FilterChain chain)
                throws IOException, ServletException
        {
            final HttpServletRequest httpRequest = (HttpServletRequest)request;

             //extract token from header
            final String accessToken = httpRequest.getHeader("header-name");
            if (null != accessToken) {
           //get and check whether token is valid ( from DB or file wherever you are storing the token)

          //Populate SecurityContextHolder by fetching relevant information using token
               final User user = new User(
                            "username",
                            "password",
                            true,
                            true,
                            true,
                            true,
                            authorities);
                    final UsernamePasswordAuthenticationToken authentication =
                            new UsernamePasswordAuthenticationToken(user, null, user.getAuthorities());
                    SecurityContextHolder.getContext().setAuthentication(authentication);

            }

            chain.doFilter(request, response);
        }

      }

CustomBasicAuthenticationFilter.java

@Component
public class CustomBasicAuthenticationFilter extends BasicAuthenticationFilter {


    @Autowired
    public CustomBasicAuthenticationFilter(final AuthenticationManager authenticationManager) {
        super(authenticationManager);
    }

    @Override
    protected void onSuccessfulAuthentication(final javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest request, final javax.servlet.http.HttpServletResponse response, final Authentication authResult) {
        //Generate Token
        //Save the token for the logged in user
        //send token in the response
        response.setHeader("header-name" , "token");


    }

}

As our CustomBasicAuthenticationFilter has been configured and added as a filter to the spring security,

Whenever basic authentication is successful the request will be redirected to onSuccessfulAuthentication where we set the token and send it in the response with some header "header-name".

If "header-name" is sent for further request, then the request will go through TokenAuthenticationFilter first before attempting to try Basic Authentication.

Spring Security Token based Authentication

2 Answers