Overview
This guide provides some guidelines for security configuration for Wildfly application servers based on OWASP recommendations.
For additional information on security configuration of the application server, you can refer to the following link: https://docs.jboss.org/author/display/WFLY10/Security+Realms
Management Console Security
To secure application server configuration, it is necessary to setup the users and roles that can access the application server's management console.
For more information, you can refer to https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Testing_Identity_Management
To configure Wildfly security, follow the directions in the link below.
https://docs.jboss.org/author/display/WFLY8/Security+Realms
HTTPS Configuration
CRM.COM application is designed to process and store customer sensitive data.
To transmit this data to the user's browser in a secure way, the application server should be configured to use HTTPS and SSL/TLS protocol.
For more information, you can refer to https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Testing_for_Sensitive_information_sent_via_unencrypted_channels_%28OTG-CRYPST-003%29
To configure Wildfly for HTTPS, follow the directions in the link below.
https://docs.jboss.org/author/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=66322705
SSL/TLS Configuration
Due to known vulnerabilities, it is required to enable specific encryption protocols and cypher suites.
More specifically, it is recommended to use TLS v1.2 encryption protocol and TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_GCM_SHA384 cypher suite.
For more information, you can refer to https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Testing_for_SSL-TLS_%28OWASP-CM-001%29
To configure Wildfly, the Undertow subsystem should be configured by adding the enabled-protocols and enabled-cipher-suites attributes in https listener as follows.
<subsystem xmlns="urn:jboss:domain:undertow:2.0">
<buffer-cache name="default"/>
<server name="default-server">
...
<https-listener name="default-ssl" socket-binding="https" security-realm="SslRealm" no-request-timeout="30000" enabled-cipher-suites="TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_GCM_SHA384" enabled-protocols="TLSv1.2"/>
</server>
...
</subsystem>
HTTP Strict Transport Security
The HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) header is a mechanism that web sites have to communicate to the web browsers that all traffic exchanged with a given domain must always be sent over https, this will help protect the information from being passed over unencrypted requests.
For more information, you can refer to https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Test_HTTP_Strict_Transport_Security_%28OTG-CONFIG-007%29
To configure the HSTS header on Wildfly, the Undertow subsystem should be configured by adding 2 lines in standalone.xml as follows.
<subsystem xmlns="urn:jboss:domain:undertow:2.0">
<buffer-cache name="default"/>
<server name="default-server">
<http-listener name="default" socket-binding="http" redirect-socket="https"/>
<host name="default-host" alias="localhost">
...
<!-- Add the following line -->
<filter-ref name="HSTS"/>
...
</host>
</server>
<servlet-container name="default">
...
</servlet-container>
<handlers>
...
</handlers>
<filters>
<!-- Add the following line -->
<response-header name="HSTS" header-name="Strict-Transport-Security" header-value="max-age=3600"/>
</filters>
</subsystem>
Server Fingerprinting
Server fingerprinting is the process of identifying the Web server / technologies used.
For more information, you can refer to https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Fingerprint_Web_Server_%28OTG-INFO-002%29
To avoid server fingerprinting the following configurations should be done on the application server.
Wildfly by default includes the Server and X-Powered-By headers.
Connection: close Vary: Accept-Encoding Last-Modified: Mon, 26 Oct 2015 22:15:17 GMT X-Powered-By: Undertow/1 Server: WildFly/9 Content-Length: 2425 Content-Type: text/html Date: Wed, 21 Sep 2016 14:59:31 GMT
To remove these headers, you need to change the default configuration of the Undertow subsystem.
One way to do that is to edit the configuration file standalone.xml and remove the following lines.
<subsystem xmlns="urn:jboss:domain:undertow:2.0">
<buffer-cache name="default"/>
<server name="default-server">
<http-listener name="default" socket-binding="http" redirect-socket="https"/>
<host name="default-host" alias="localhost">
<location name="/" handler="welcome-content"/>
<!-- The following 2 lines should be removed -->
<!--filter-ref name="server-header"/-->
<!--filter-ref name="x-powered-by-header"/-->
</host>
</server>
<servlet-container name="default">
<jsp-config development="true"/>
<websockets/>
</servlet-container>
<handlers>
<file name="welcome-content" path="${jboss.home.dir}/welcome-content"/>
</handlers>
<filters>
<response-header name="server-header" header-name="Server" header-value="WildFly/9"/>
<response-header name="x-powered-by-header" header-name="X-Powered-By" header-value="Undertow/1"/>
</filters>
</subsystem>
Clickjacking
“Clickjacking” is a malicious technique that consists of deceiving a web user into interacting (in most cases by clicking) with something different to what the user believes they are interacting with.
For more information, you can refer to https://www.owasp.org/index.php?title=Testing_for_Clickjacking_(OTG-CLIENT-009)&setlang=en
To avoid clickjacking vulnerability, the following configurations should be done on the application server.
Wildfly by default does not include the X-Frame-Options: DENY header in response headers.
Connection: close Vary: Accept-Encoding Last-Modified: Mon, 26 Oct 2015 22:15:17 GMT X-Powered-By: Undertow/1 Server: WildFly/9 Content-Length: 2425 Content-Type: text/html Date: Wed, 21 Sep 2016 14:59:31 GMT
To add this header, you need to change the default configuration of the Undertow subsystem.
One way to do this is to edit the configuration file standalone.xml and add the following 2 lines.
<subsystem xmlns="urn:jboss:domain:undertow:2.0">
<buffer-cache name="default"/>
<server name="default-server">
<http-listener name="default" socket-binding="http" redirect-socket="https"/>
<host name="default-host" alias="localhost">
<location name="/" handler="welcome-content"/>
<!-- The following line should be added -->
<filter-ref name="X-Frame-Options"/>
</host>
</server>
<servlet-container name="default">
<jsp-config development="true"/>
<websockets/>
</servlet-container>
<handlers>
<file name="welcome-content" path="${jboss.home.dir}/welcome-content"/>
</handlers>
<filters>
<!-- The following line should be added -->
<response-header name="X-Frame-Options" header-name="X-Frame-Options" header-value="DENY"/>
</filters>
</subsystem>
Secure Cookies
CRM.COM application uses cookies to store session information.
It is crucial that the session cookie the application is using is secure.
For more information, you can refer to https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Testing_for_cookies_attributes_%28OTG-SESS-002%29
To configure secure session cookie on Wildfly, the following changes are needed in standalone.xml.
<subsystem xmlns="urn:jboss:domain:undertow:2.0">
<buffer-cache name="default"/>
<server name="default-server">
<http-listener name="default" socket-binding="http" redirect-socket="https"/>
<host name="default-host" alias="localhost">
...
</host>
</server>
<servlet-container name="default">
<!-- Add the following line -->
<session-cookie http-only="true" secure="true"/>
</servlet-container>
<handlers>
...
</handlers>
<filters>
...
</filters>
</subsystem>
Default Applications
Some application server installations include by default applications and tools that should be disabled for maximum security.
Wildfly does not include any default applications. However, the welcome page should be disabled.
This can be done by removing the following lines from standalone.xml.
<subsystem xmlns="urn:jboss:domain:undertow:2.0">
<buffer-cache name="default"/>
<server name="default-server">
<http-listener name="default" socket-binding="http" redirect-socket="https"/>
<host name="default-host" alias="localhost">
<!-- The following line should be removed -->
<!-- <location name="/" handler="welcome-content"/> -->
</host>
</server>
<servlet-container name="default">
...
</servlet-container>
<!-- The following lines should be removed -->
<!-- <handlers>
<file name="welcome-content" path="${jboss.home.dir}/welcome-content"/>
</handlers> -->
<filters>
...
</filters>
</subsystem>
Client Initiated Renegotiation
To disable Client Initiated Renegotiation the following option should be added in $JAVA_OPTS variable in /opt/wildfly/bin/standalone.conf
-Djdk.tls.rejectClientInitiatedRenegotiation=true
Additional HTTP Headers
The following headers can be added for additional security:
<subsystem xmlns="urn:jboss:domain:undertow:2.0">
<buffer-cache name="default"/>
<server name="default-server">
<http-listener name="default" socket-binding="http" redirect-socket="https"/>
<host name="default-host" alias="localhost">
...
<!-- Add the following lines -->
<filter-ref name="x-xss-protection"/>
<filter-ref name="content-security-policy"/>
<filter-ref name="x-Content-type-options"/>
<filter-ref name="referrer-policy"/>
<filter-ref name="host"/>
...
</host>
</server>
<servlet-container name="default">
...
</servlet-container>
<handlers>
...
</handlers>
<filters>
<!-- Add the following lines -->
<response-header name="x-xss-protection" header-name="X-XSS-Protection" header-value="1"/>
<response-header name="content-security-policy" header-name="Content-Security-Policy" header-value="*"/>
<response-header name="x-Content-type-options" header-name="X-Content-Type-Options" header-value="nosniff"/>
<response-header name="referrer-policy" header-name="Referrer-Policy" header-value="no-referrer-when-downgrade"/>
<response-header name="host" header-name="Host" header-value="myhostname.com"/><!-- The hostname of the server should be specified here in order to avoid displaying the internal IP in the Location response header-->
</filters>
</subsystem>