Web Service security (WS-security) is an SOAP-based security standard that provides Web services with message-level integrity, confidentiality and authentication.

With WS-security, the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) message contains a SOAP header, which includes signature, encryption information, protocols for processing the secured information, and security tokens for credential propagation.

A WS-Security policy file (WSSE) is associated with a Web service so that both inbound and outbound SOAP messages are handled according to the security policy in the WSSE file.

Geronimo 2.2 has two WS-security providers: Axis2 for Tomcat Web container and CXF for Jetty. They enable the following WS-security features in Web service development for Geronimo:

• XML Security - allows one to send along with the message a digital signature of it, which assures that no one modified the message content between the sender and receiver.
• XML Encryption -allows one to encrypt the message body or only its part using the given cryptography algorithm.
• Username Tokens - adds username and password values to the message header.
• Security Assertions Markup Language (SAML) Tokens - configured on web services via Geronimo deployment descriptors and/or annotations.
• Timestamps - specifies how long the security data remains valid.

In this guide, CXF/Jetty will be used as an example.

Enabling WS-security in Web service client

Configuring security properties

You can specify various properties using a <property> element in the <port> section in geronimo-web.xml for a CXF/Jetty client.
To configure ws-security properties, you only need to prefix each property with a wss4j.in file for inbound settings, or wss4j.out for outbound settings. For example:

Enabling signed or encrypted SOAP messages

Geronimo allows the CXF/Jetty client to sendor receive the signed or encrypted SOAP messages. You can enable this feature inside <port> in the geronimo-web.xml at client side. The following code snippet is an example for both signing and encrypting:

Enabling WS-security at service side

Configuring Username token

Geronimo CXF/Jetty provides support for UsernameToken Profile at server side. For example, to involve UsernameToken profile for the Web service CalculatorService, add the following lines in geronimo-web.xml:

Enabling signed or encrypted SOAP messages

Similarly, you can enable the service side to send or receive signed or encrypted SOAP messages by configuring the <port> section in geronimo-web.xml. The following example passes security properties: