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Chapter 4. WS-Security
4.1. WS-Security Overview
WS-Security standards allow policies to be applied to SOA for controlled service usage and monitoring. WS-Security provides the means to secure your services beyond transport level protocols such as HTTPS. Through a number of standards such as XML-Encryption, and headers defined in the WS-Security standard, it allows you to:
- Pass authentication tokens between services
- Encrypt messages or parts of messages
- Sign messages
- Timestamp messages
WS-Security makes heavy use of public and private key cryptography. It is helpful to understand these basics to really understand how to configure WS-Security. With public key cryptography, a user has a pair of public and private keys. These are generated using a large prime number and a key function. The keys are related mathematically, but cannot be derived from one another. With these keys we can encrypt messages. For example, if Bob wants to send a message to Alice, he can encrypt a message using her public key. Alice can then decrypt this message using her private key. Only Alice can decrypt this message as she is the only one with the private key. Messages can also be signed. This allows you to ensure the authenticity of the message. If Alice wants to send a message to Bob, and Bob wants to be sure that it is from Alice, Alice can sign the message using her private key. Bob can then verify that the message is from Alice by using her public key.
