Securing an Apache CXF Endpoint on the Default Jetty Engine

Some services automatically come with deployed servlets on startup. One such service is the CXF servlet running in the http://localhost:8181/cxf context. Securing such endpoints can be complicated. One approach, which Keycloak is currently using, is ServletReregistrationService, which undeploys a built-in servlet at startup, enabling you to redeploy it on a context secured by Keycloak.

The configuration file OSGI-INF/blueprint/blueprint.xml inside your application might resemble the one below. Note that it adds the JAX-RS customerservice endpoint, which is endpoint-specific to your application, but more importantly, secures the entire /cxf context.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<blueprint xmlns="http://www.osgi.org/xmlns/blueprint/v1.0.0"
           xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
           xmlns:jaxrs="http://cxf.apache.org/blueprint/jaxrs"
           xsi:schemaLocation="
		http://www.osgi.org/xmlns/blueprint/v1.0.0 http://www.osgi.org/xmlns/blueprint/v1.0.0/blueprint.xsd
		http://cxf.apache.org/blueprint/jaxrs http://cxf.apache.org/schemas/blueprint/jaxrs.xsd">

    <!-- JAXRS Application -->

    <bean id="customerBean" class="org.keycloak.example.rs.CxfCustomerService" />

    <jaxrs:server id="cxfJaxrsServer" address="/customerservice">
        <jaxrs:providers>
            <bean class="com.fasterxml.jackson.jaxrs.json.JacksonJsonProvider" />
        </jaxrs:providers>
        <jaxrs:serviceBeans>
            <ref component-id="customerBean" />
        </jaxrs:serviceBeans>
    </jaxrs:server>


    <!-- Securing of whole /cxf context by unregister default cxf servlet from paxweb and re-register with applied security constraints -->

    <bean id="cxfConstraintMapping" class="org.eclipse.jetty.security.ConstraintMapping">
        <property name="constraint">
            <bean class="org.eclipse.jetty.util.security.Constraint">
                <property name="name" value="cst1"/>
                <property name="roles">
                    <list>
                        <value>user</value>
                    </list>
                </property>
                <property name="authenticate" value="true"/>
                <property name="dataConstraint" value="0"/>
            </bean>
        </property>
        <property name="pathSpec" value="/cxf/*"/>
    </bean>

    <bean id="cxfKeycloakPaxWebIntegration" class="org.keycloak.adapters.osgi.PaxWebIntegrationService"
          init-method="start" destroy-method="stop">
        <property name="bundleContext" ref="blueprintBundleContext" />
        <property name="jettyWebXmlLocation" value="/WEB-INF/jetty-web.xml" />
        <property name="constraintMappings">
            <list>
                <ref component-id="cxfConstraintMapping" />
            </list>
        </property>
    </bean>

    <bean id="defaultCxfReregistration" class="org.keycloak.adapters.osgi.ServletReregistrationService" depends-on="cxfKeycloakPaxWebIntegration"
          init-method="start" destroy-method="stop">
        <property name="bundleContext" ref="blueprintBundleContext" />
        <property name="managedServiceReference">
            <reference interface="org.osgi.service.cm.ManagedService" filter="(service.pid=org.apache.cxf.osgi)" timeout="5000"  />
        </property>
    </bean>

</blueprint>

As a result, all other CXF services running on the default CXF HTTP destination are also secured. Similarly, when the application is undeployed, the entire /cxf context becomes unsecured as well. For this reason, using your own Jetty engine for your applications as described in Secure CXF Application on separate Jetty Engine then gives you more control over security for each individual application.

  • The WEB-INF directory might need to be inside your project (even if your project is not a web application). You might also need to edit the /WEB-INF/jetty-web.xml and /WEB-INF/keycloak.json files in a similar way as in Classic WAR application. Note that you do not need the web.xml file as the security constraints are declared in the blueprint configuration file.

  • The Import-Package in META-INF/MANIFEST.MF must contain these imports:

META-INF.cxf;version="[2.7,3.2)",
META-INF.cxf.osgi;version="[2.7,3.2)";resolution:=optional,
org.apache.cxf.transport.http;version="[2.7,3.2)",
org.apache.cxf.*;version="[2.7,3.2)",
com.fasterxml.jackson.jaxrs.json;version="[2.5,3)",
org.eclipse.jetty.security;version="[8,10)",
org.eclipse.jetty.util.security;version="[8,10)",
org.keycloak.*;version="SNAPSHOT",
org.keycloak.adapters.jetty;version="SNAPSHOT",
*;resolution:=optional