Spring Security Architecture Explained
In today's world of rapidly evolving cybersecurity threats, protecting your application from unauthorized access is paramount.
Spring Security, a powerful and flexible framework, plays a critical role in securing Spring Boot applications.
Whether you're dealing with traditional username/password authentication, JWT tokens, or other custom mechanisms, Spring Security provides the necessary tools to handle authentication and authorization seamlessly.
In this blog, we'll dive into the Spring Security architecture, exploring how various components like the Security Filter Chain, AuthenticationManager, and Authentication Providers work together to secure your application.
1. Client Request
- A user or client makes a request to the application, usually to access a protected resource.
- This request is processed by a chain of Security Filters.
2. Security Filter Chain
- Security Filter A, B, ... N: These are different filters that apply to the incoming request, where each filter can handle specific types of security logic (like CORS, CSRF protection, and more).
- One of these filters is responsible for authenticating the user.
3. Authentication Flow
- UsernamePassword Authentication Token: This token represents the user's credentials (username and password) and is passed to the authentication logic.
- The authentication logic checks if the user credentials are valid. This typically involves checking a database or other identity source.
4. AuthenticationManager / ProviderManager
- The AuthenticationManager or ProviderManager manages the overall authentication process. It delegates the authentication request to different Authentication Providers based on the type of authentication required.
5. Authentication Providers
- JWTAuthentication Provider: If you're using JWT (JSON Web Token) for authentication, this provider handles the verification of JWT tokens.
- DaoAuthentication Provider: This provider handles traditional authentication using a database, checking user credentials against stored data (e.g., in a relational database).
- Other Providers (Authentication Provider N): You can define multiple custom authentication providers if your application supports multiple methods of authentication (e.g., OAuth2, LDAP).
6. UserDetailsService
- The UserDetailsService is responsible for loading user-specific data, typically by looking up the user’s details from a database (using the DaoAuthenticationProvider).
- The PasswordEncoder ensures that passwords are securely encoded (hashed) before they are compared during the authentication process.
7. SecurityContext & JWT Authentication Filter
- If the user is successfully authenticated, the SecurityContext is updated to store the user’s authentication status.
- The JWT Authentication Filter is responsible for handling JWT tokens, ensuring that valid tokens allow access to protected resources.
8. Authentication Request/Response
- Once the authentication is performed by the filters and providers, an Authentication Request is sent to the backend.
- After validation, an Authentication Response is returned, which could contain the authentication token (such as a JWT), allowing the client to access secure resources in subsequent requests.
9. SecurityContextHeader
- The SecurityContextHeader encapsulates important security information like the user’s Principal (authenticated user), Credentials (such as the password or token), and Authorities (permissions or roles).
- These fields include:
getAuthorities(): Fetches the roles or permissions granted to the user.getPassword(),getUsername(): Standard user details.isAccountNonExpired(),isAccountNonLocked(),isCredentialsNonExpired(),isEnabled(): These are checks to ensure the user account is in good standing (not expired, locked, etc.).