Session security support

You can integrate HTTP sessions and security in WebSphere® Application Server. When security integration is enabled in the session management facility and a session is accessed in a protected resource, you can access that session only in protected resources from then on. Session security (security integration) is enabled by default.

You cannot mix secured and unsecured resources accessing sessions when security integration is turned on. Security integration in the session management facility is not supported in form-based login with SWAM.

Deprecated feature: SWAM is deprecated in WebSphere Application Server Version 9.0 and will be removed in a future release.

Security integration rules for HTTP sessions

Only authenticated users can access sessions created in secured pages and are created under the identity of the authenticated user. Only this authenticated user can access these sessions in other secured pages. To protect these sessions from unauthorized users, you cannot access them from an unsecured page.

Programmatic details and scenarios

WebSphere Application Server maintains the security of individual sessions.

An identity or user name, readable by the com.ibm.websphere.servlet.session.IBMSession interface, is associated with a session. An unauthenticated identity is denoted by the user name anonymous. WebSphere Application Server includes the com.ibm.websphere.servlet.session.UnauthorizedSessionRequestException class, which is used when a session is requested without the necessary credentials.

The session management facility uses the WebSphere Application Server security infrastructure to determine the authenticated identity associated with a client HTTP request that either retrieves or creates a session. WebSphere Application Server security determines identity using certificates, LPTA, and other methods.

After obtaining the identity of the current request, the session management facility determines whether to return the session by comparing the identity of the request with the identity of the session.

Table 1. Security integration scenarios . The following table lists possible scenarios in which security integration is enabled with outcomes dependent on whether the HTTP request is authenticated and whether a valid session ID and user name was passed to the session management facility.
Type of session ID	Unauthenticated HTTP request is used to retrieve a session	HTTP request is authenticated, with an identity of FREDused to retrieve a session
No session ID was passed in for this request, or the ID is for a session that is no longer valid	A new session is created. The user name is `anonymous`	A new session is created. The user name is `FRED`
A session ID for a valid session is passed in. The current session user name is anonymous	The session is returned.	The session is returned. session management changes the user name to `FRED`
A session ID for a valid session is passed in. The current session user name is `FRED`	The session is not returned. An UnauthorizedSessionRequestException error is created*	The session is returned.
A session ID for a valid session is passed in. The current session user name is `BOB`	The session is not returned. An UnauthorizedSessionRequestException error is created*	The session is not returned. An UnauthorizedSessionRequestException error is created*

Note: *A com.ibm.websphere.servlet.session.UnauthorizedSessionRequestException error is created to the servlet.