This page provides some guidelines for security configuration of IBM Websphere and Wildfly application servers based on OWASP recommentations.
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
IBM Websphere
To configure IBM Websphere security, follow the directions in the link below.
Wildfly
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
IBM Websphere
To configure IBM Websphere for HTTPS, follow the directions in the link below.
http://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/en/ssw_i5_54/rzatz/secchttps.htm
Wildfly
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
IBM Websphere
To configure IBM Websphere to use TLS 1.2, check the following link.
To configure the cypher suite used, check the following link.
http://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/linuxonibm/liaag/wascrypt/l0wscry00_wasciphersuite.htm
Wildfly
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
IBM Websphere
To configure IBM HTTP Server for HSTS, follow the directions in the following link.
http://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SSAW57_8.5.5/com.ibm.websphere.ihs.doc/ihs/tihs_hsts.html
Wildfly
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.
IBM Websphere
By default, IBM Websphere does not include the server name in HTTP headers.
X-Powered-By: Servlet/3.0 Content-Type: text/html;charset=ISO-8859-1 $WSEP: Content-Language: en-GB Date: Wed, 21 Sep 2016 14:28:52 GMT
However, the X-Powered-By: Servlet/3.0 header should be removed.
This can be done by setting the custom property com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.disablexPoweredBy to the value true in Websphere's configuration.
To set this custom property, you can follow the directions in the link below.
Wildfly
Wildfly by default includes the Server and X-Powered-By headers.
Connection: close Vary: Accept-Encoding Last-Modified: Mon, 26 Oct 2015 22:15:17 GMT X-Powered-By: Undertow/1 Server: WildFly/9 Content-Length: 2425 Content-Type: text/html Date: Wed, 21 Sep 2016 14:59:31 GMT
To remove these headers, you need to change the default configuration of the Undertow subsystem.
One way to do that is to edit the configuration file standalone.xml and remove the following lines.
<subsystem xmlns="urn:jboss:domain:undertow:2.0">
<buffer-cache name="default"/>
<server name="default-server">
<http-listener name="default" socket-binding="http" redirect-socket="https"/>
<host name="default-host" alias="localhost">
<location name="/" handler="welcome-content"/>
<!-- The following 2 lines should be removed -->
<!--filter-ref name="server-header"/-->
<!--filter-ref name="x-powered-by-header"/-->
</host>
</server>
<servlet-container name="default">
<jsp-config development="true"/>
<websockets/>
</servlet-container>
<handlers>
<file name="welcome-content" path="${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.
IBM Websphere
By default, IBM Websphere does not include the X-Frame-Options: DENY header in HTTP headers.
X-Powered-By: Servlet/3.0 Content-Type: text/html;charset=ISO-8859-1 $WSEP: Content-Language: en-GB Date: Wed, 21 Sep 2016 14:28:52 GMT
This can be done by setting the header in IBM HTTP Server's configuration file /opt/IBM/HTTPServer/conf/httpd.conf as follows:
Header always append X-Frame-Options DENY
Wildfly
Wildfly by default does not include the X-Frame-Options: DENY header in response headers.
Connection: close Vary: Accept-Encoding Last-Modified: Mon, 26 Oct 2015 22:15:17 GMT X-Powered-By: Undertow/1 Server: WildFly/9 Content-Length: 2425 Content-Type: text/html Date: Wed, 21 Sep 2016 14:59:31 GMT
To add this header, you need to change the default configuration of the Undertow subsystem.
One way to do this is to edit the configuration file standalone.xml and add the following 2 lines.
<subsystem xmlns="urn:jboss:domain:undertow:2.0">
<buffer-cache name="default"/>
<server name="default-server">
<http-listener name="default" socket-binding="http" redirect-socket="https"/>
<host name="default-host" alias="localhost">
<location name="/" handler="welcome-content"/>
<!-- The following line should be added -->
<filter-ref name="X-Frame-Options"/>
</host>
</server>
<servlet-container name="default">
<jsp-config development="true"/>
<websockets/>
</servlet-container>
<handlers>
<file name="welcome-content" path="${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
IBM Websphere
To configure secure session cookie on IBM Websphere, follow the directions in the link below.
http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21427901
Wildfly
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.
IBM Websphere
IBM Websphere ships with some default web applications (for example Snoop Servlet).
To disable/remove these applications, login to the administrative console and go to Applications -> Application Types -> Websphere enterprise applications
Wildfly
Wildfly does not include any default applications.
Additional Resources
For additional information on security configuration of the application servers, you can refer to the following links.
IBM Websphere
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/websphere/techjournal/1210_lansche/1210_lansche.html
Wildfly
https://docs.jboss.org/author/display/WFLY10/Security+Realms