Failed to evaluate expression with spring security

Question

I have a Spring rest service, and I'm trying to add security to it. I followed this tutorial, but when I try to access the service directly I get the following error:

There was an unexpected error (type=Internal Server Error, status=500). Failed to evaluate expression 'ROLE_USER'

Here's my security configuration:

webSecurityConfig.xml

<http entry-point-ref="restAuthenticationEntryPoint">
      <intercept-url pattern="/**" access="ROLE_USER"/>

      <form-login
         authentication-success-handler-ref="mySuccessHandler"
         authentication-failure-handler-ref="myFailureHandler"
      />

      <logout />
   </http>

   <beans:bean id="mySuccessHandler"
      class="com.eficid.cloud.security.rest.AuthenticationSuccessHandler"/>
   <beans:bean id="myFailureHandler" class=
     "org.springframework.security.web.authentication.SimpleUrlAuthenticationFailureHandler"/>


      <authentication-manager>
        <authentication-provider>
          <user-service>
            <user name="temp" password="temp" authorities="ROLE_USER" />
          </user-service>
        </authentication-provider>
      </authentication-manager> 

SpringSecurityConfig:

public class SpringSecurityConfig {

    public SpringSecurityConfig() {
        super();
    }

}

I'm also getting this error when trying to use curl to log in:

{
"timestamp":1460399841286,
"status":403,"error":"Forbidden",
"message":"Could not verify the provided CSRF token because your session was not found.",
"path":"/spring-security-rest/login"
}

Do I need to add the csrf token manually to the command? The service has a self-signed certificate, if that makes any difference.

Solution 1

You need hasRole('ROLE_USER') in the intercept-url element.

<intercept-url pattern="/**" access="hasRole('ROLE_USER')"/>

See the docs for the other expressions, that you can use.

Solution 2

If you don't need CRF to be enabled, then you can disable it in webSecurityConfig.xml file like below:

        <http auto-config="true" use-expressions="true">
        <intercept-url pattern="/login.html" access="hasRole('ANONYMOUS')" />
        <intercept-url pattern="/**" access="hasRole('ROLE_USER')"/>
        <!-- This form is a default form that used to login  
            <http-basic/>
         -->
         <form-login login-page="/login.html"/>
         <csrf disabled="true"/>
    </http>

If CSRF is enabled, you have to include a _csrf.token in the page you want to login or logout.The below code needs to be added to the form:

<input type="hidden" name="${_csrf.parameterName}"
            value="${_csrf.token}" />

Solution 3

Spring security blocks POST requests.

To enable it you can either:

• Add after all you forms requests :

<input type="hidden" name="${_csrf.parameterName}" value="${_csrf.token}" class="form-control" />

(For example: <form id="computerForm" action="addComputer" method="POST"> <input type="hidden" name="${_csrf.parameterName}" value="${_csrf.token}" class="form-control" />

)

• Or if you use anotation, you can allow POST directly in your code by adding the csrf().disable on your WebSecurityConfigurerAdapter (I havent found the xml equivalent yet) :

  @Override protected void configure(HttpSecurity http) throws Exception { http.authorizeRequests() .antMatchers("/admin/**").access("hasRole('ROLE_ADMIN')") .and().formLogin() .csrf().disable() ;}

Comments

[Haseeb Wali]

Hai @Evgeni. When i do login along with 'X-CSRF-TOKEN' my login is successfully executed. But after that when i send some request i get 'Could not verify the provided CSRF token because your session was not found.' message. I have given proper patterns and access in my given code. Can you please suggest anything. Thanks in advance

[Evgeni Dimitrov]

@HaseebWali I suggest you ask another question and provide more details, like your configuration...