SEC-1272: <authentication-manager> does not register default event handler DefaultAuthenticationEventPublisher

[spring-projects-issues]

Charles Gutjahr (Migrated from SEC-1272) said:

When using the namespace configuration, creating an should automatically register a default event publisher. This allows applications to be notified about security events such as logins and login failures - for example I want these notifications so that I can write audit logs of failed logins.

The Javadoc on org.springframework.security.authentication.ProviderManager states that such a default event publisher is automatically registered when using the namespace. It says:

"The standard implementation is DefaultAuthenticationEventPublisher which maps common exceptions to events (in the case of authentication failure) and publishes an AuthenticationSuccessEvent if authentication succeeds. If you are using the namespace then an instance of this bean will be used automatically by the configuration, so you will receive events from the web part of your application automatically."

However ProviderManager does not actually register a DefaultAuthenticationEventPublisher! It uses its private NullEventPublisher class that does nothing. That means that if you use the namespace configuration you don't actually receive the default events. The only way to receive those events is to manually create a ProviderManager bean and inject a DefaultAuthenticationEventPublisher bean into it.

I think that:

• should use DefaultAuthenticationEventPublisher instead of NullEventPublisher
• should allow the AuthenticationEventPublisher on ProviderManager to be overridden if desired

[spring-projects-issues]

Charles Gutjahr said:

Here is a workaround for this problem -- just in case anyone else needs to generate login events, here is what I did to get them working:

This is what I had to start with, a namespace configuration that doesn't generate events:

<security:authentication-manager>
    <security:authentication-provider user-service-ref="userDetailsService" />
</security:authentication-manager>
<bean id="userDetailsService" class="example.security.UserDetailsService" />

I changed it to this manual bean configuration, which does generate events just fine:

<bean id="org.springframework.security.authenticationManager" class="org.springframework.security.authentication.ProviderManager">
    <property name="providers">
        <list>
        <ref bean="daoAuthenticationProvider"/>
        </list>
    </property>
    <property name="authenticationEventPublisher" ref="defaultAuthenticationEventPublisher" />
</bean>
<bean id="daoAuthenticationProvider" class="org.springframework.security.authentication.dao.DaoAuthenticationProvider">
    <property name="userDetailsService" ref="userDetailsService"/>
</bean>
<bean id="userDetailsService" class="example.security.UserDetailsService" />
<bean id="defaultAuthenticationEventPublisher" class="org.springframework.security.authentication.DefaultAuthenticationEventPublisher" />

[spring-projects-issues]

Luke Taylor said:

I've updated the namespace code to register a DefaultAuthenticationEventPublisher and set it on the registered ProviderManager.

[spring-projects-issues]

Shai Yallin said:

For some reason, when using the Remember-Me services, the eventPublisher property still references the NullEventPublisher.

I'm using RC2

This is my http configuration:

<security:http entry-point-ref="loginFormEntryPoint">
    <security:intercept-url pattern="/entity/**" access="ROLE_USER"/>
    <security:logout logout-url="/logout" logout-success-url="/login" />
    <security:remember-me services-ref="rememberMeServices" key="SpringSecurityRememberMe"/>
    <security:custom-filter ref="businessEntityAuthorizationFilter" position="LAST"/>
</security:http>

<bean id="rememberMeServices" class="org.springframework.security.web.authentication.rememberme.TokenBasedRememberMeServices">
    <property name="alwaysRemember" value="true"/>
    <property name="key" value="SpringSecurityRememberMe"/>
    <property name="userDetailsService" ref="userService"/>
</bean>

[spring-projects-issues]

Timo Meinen said:

Hi Luke,

could you give an example how to register another EventPublisher using namespace declaration? In the .xsd file, I can't find an attribute called event or publisher or something similar. Thank you. Timo