28. Security

If Spring Security is on the classpath, then web applications are secured by default. Spring Boot relies on Spring Security’s content-negotiation strategy to determine whether to use httpBasic or formLogin. To add method-level security to a web application, you can also add @EnableGlobalMethodSecurity with your desired settings. Additional information can be found in the Spring Security Reference Guide.

The default UserDetailsService has a single user. The user name is user, and the password is random and is printed at INFO level when the application starts, as shown in the following example:

Using generated security password: 78fa095d-3f4c-48b1-ad50-e24c31d5cf35
[Note]Note

If you fine-tune your logging configuration, ensure that the org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.security category is set to log INFO-level messages. Otherwise, the default password is not printed.

You can change the username and password by providing a spring.security.user.name and spring.security.user.password.

The basic features you get by default in a web application are:

You can provide a different AuthenticationEventPublisher by adding a bean for it.

28.1 MVC Security

The default security configuration is implemented in SecurityAutoConfiguration and UserDetailsServiceAutoConfiguration. SecurityAutoConfiguration imports SpringBootWebSecurityConfiguration for web security and UserDetailsServiceAutoConfiguration configures authentication, which is also relevant in non-web applications. To switch off the default web application security configuration completely, you can add a bean of type WebSecurityConfigurerAdapter (doing so does not disable the UserDetailsService configuration or Actuator’s security).

To also switch off the UserDetailsService configuration, you can add a bean of type UserDetailsService, AuthenticationProvider, or AuthenticationManager. There are several secure applications in the Spring Boot samples to get you started with common use cases.

Access rules can be overridden by adding a custom WebSecurityConfigurerAdapter. Spring Boot provides convenience methods that can be used to override access rules for actuator endpoints and static resources. EndpointRequest can be used to create a RequestMatcher that is based on the management.endpoints.web.base-path property. PathRequest can be used to create a RequestMatcher for resources in commonly used locations.

28.2 WebFlux Security

Similar to Spring MVC applications, you can secure your WebFlux applications by adding the spring-boot-starter-security dependency. The default security configuration is implemented in ReactiveSecurityAutoConfiguration and UserDetailsServiceAutoConfiguration. ReactiveSecurityAutoConfiguration imports WebFluxSecurityConfiguration for web security and UserDetailsServiceAutoConfiguration configures authentication, which is also relevant in non-web applications. To switch off the default web application security configuration completely, you can add a bean of type WebFilterChainProxy (doing so does not disable the UserDetailsService configuration or Actuator’s security).

To also switch off the UserDetailsService configuration, you can add a bean of type ReactiveUserDetailsService or ReactiveAuthenticationManager.

Access rules can be configured by adding a custom SecurityWebFilterChain. Spring Boot provides convenience methods that can be used to override access rules for actuator endpoints and static resources. EndpointRequest can be used to create a ServerWebExchangeMatcher that is based on the management.endpoints.web.base-path property.

PathRequest can be used to create a ServerWebExchangeMatcher for resources in commonly used locations.

For example, you can customize your security configuration by adding something like:

@Bean
public SecurityWebFilterChain springSecurityFilterChain(ServerHttpSecurity http) {
	return http
		.authorizeExchange()
			.matchers(PathRequest.toStaticResources().atCommonLocations()).permitAll()
			.pathMatchers("/foo", "/bar")
				.authenticated().and()
			.formLogin().and()
		.build();
}

28.3 OAuth2

OAuth2 is a widely used authorization framework that is supported by Spring.

28.3.1 Client

If you have spring-security-oauth2-client on your classpath, you can take advantage of some auto-configuration to make it easy to set up an OAuth2 Client. This configuration makes use of the properties under OAuth2ClientProperties.

You can register multiple OAuth2 clients and providers under the spring.security.oauth2.client prefix, as shown in the following example:

spring.security.oauth2.client.registration.my-client-1.client-id=abcd
spring.security.oauth2.client.registration.my-client-1.client-secret=password
spring.security.oauth2.client.registration.my-client-1.client-name=Client for user scope
spring.security.oauth2.client.registration.my-client-1.provider=my-oauth-provider
spring.security.oauth2.client.registration.my-client-1.scope=user
spring.security.oauth2.client.registration.my-client-1.redirect-uri-template=http://my-redirect-uri.com
spring.security.oauth2.client.registration.my-client-1.client-authentication-method=basic
spring.security.oauth2.client.registration.my-client-1.authorization-grant-type=authorization_code

spring.security.oauth2.client.registration.my-client-2.client-id=abcd
spring.security.oauth2.client.registration.my-client-2.client-secret=password
spring.security.oauth2.client.registration.my-client-2.client-name=Client for email scope
spring.security.oauth2.client.registration.my-client-2.provider=my-oauth-provider
spring.security.oauth2.client.registration.my-client-2.scope=email
spring.security.oauth2.client.registration.my-client-2.redirect-uri-template=http://my-redirect-uri.com
spring.security.oauth2.client.registration.my-client-2.client-authentication-method=basic
spring.security.oauth2.client.registration.my-client-2.authorization-grant-type=authorization_code

spring.security.oauth2.client.provider.my-oauth-provider.authorization-uri=http://my-auth-server/oauth/authorize
spring.security.oauth2.client.provider.my-oauth-provider.token-uri=http://my-auth-server/oauth/token
spring.security.oauth2.client.provider.my-oauth-provider.user-info-uri=http://my-auth-server/userinfo
spring.security.oauth2.client.provider.my-oauth-provider.jwk-set-uri=http://my-auth-server/token_keys
spring.security.oauth2.client.provider.my-oauth-provider.user-name-attribute=name

By default, Spring Security’s OAuth2LoginAuthenticationFilter only processes URLs matching /login/oauth2/code/*. If you want to customize the redirect-uri-template to use a different pattern, you need to provide configuration to process that custom pattern. For example, you can add your own WebSecurityConfigurerAdapter that resembles the following:

public class OAuth2LoginSecurityConfig extends WebSecurityConfigurerAdapter {

	@Override
	protected void configure(HttpSecurity http) throws Exception {
		http
			.authorizeRequests()
				.anyRequest().authenticated()
				.and()
			.oauth2Login()
				.redirectionEndpoint()
					.baseUri("/custom-callback");
	}
}

For common OAuth2 and OpenID providers, including Google, Github, Facebook, and Okta, we provide a set of provider defaults (google, github, facebook, and okta, respectively).

If you do not need to customize these providers, you can set the provider attribute to the one for which you need to infer defaults. Also, if the ID of your client matches the default supported provider, Spring Boot infers that as well.

In other words, the two configurations in the following example use the Google provider:

spring.security.oauth2.client.registration.my-client.client-id=abcd
spring.security.oauth2.client.registration.my-client.client-secret=password
spring.security.oauth2.client.registration.my-client.provider=google

spring.security.oauth2.client.registration.google.client-id=abcd
spring.security.oauth2.client.registration.google.client-secret=password

28.3.2 Server

Currently, Spring Security does not provide support for implementing an OAuth 2.0 Authorization Server or Resource Server. However, this functionality is available from the Spring Security OAuth project, which will eventually be superseded by Spring Security completely. Until then, you can use the spring-security-oauth2-autoconfigure module to easily set up an OAuth 2.0 server; see its documentation for instructions.

28.4 Actuator Security

For security purposes, all actuators other than /health and /info are disabled by default. The management.endpoints.web.exposure.include property can be used to enable the actuators.

If Spring Security is on the classpath and no other WebSecurityConfigurerAdapter is present, the actuators are secured by Spring Boot auto-config. If you define a custom WebSecurityConfigurerAdapter, Spring Boot auto-config will back off and you will be in full control of actuator access rules.

[Note]Note

Before setting the management.endpoints.web.exposure.include, ensure that the exposed actuators do not contain sensitive information and/or are secured by placing them behind a firewall or by something like Spring Security.

28.4.1 Cross Site Request Forgery Protection

Since Spring Boot relies on Spring Security’s defaults, CSRF protection is turned on by default. This means that the actuator endpoints that require a POST (shutdown and loggers endpoints), PUT or DELETE will get a 403 forbidden error when the default security configuration is in use.

[Note]Note

We recommend disabling CSRF protection completely only if you are creating a service that is used by non-browser clients.

Additional information about CSRF protection can be found in the Spring Security Reference Guide.