Category:OWASP XML Security Gateway Evaluation Criteria Project Latest

XML Security Gateway Evaluation Criteria

Version 0.2 (June 14, 2007)

OWASP (http://www.owasp.org) Content is available under a Creative Commons 2.5 License

Table of Contents

Introduction

Contributors Contact

  Categories Section 1 - Authentication Section 2 - Authorization Section 3 - Audit Logging Section 4 - Deployment Architecture Section 5 - Content Validation Section 6 - Management & Metrics Section 7 - Transformation Section 8 - Tools

A. License

Introduction

The OWASP XML Security Gateway Evaluation Criteria Project (XSGEC) defines an open standard for evaluating XML Security Gateways, such as those used to protect and provide security services for Web services applications. This criteria provides the OWASP community a set of standard evaluation guidance to assess the functionality and quality of XML Security Gateways. The main drivers for this project is to add clarity to the process of assessing the XML Security Gateway strengths and weaknesses, and enlightening the community as to the utility of XML Security Gateways to deliver a number of valuable security services for distributed systems.

The XML Security Gateway Evaluation Criteria (XSGEC) Project's Guiding Principles were created in order to express the intentions of its contributors when designing the criteria.
 * Create evaluation criteria supporting a transparent, level playing field for XML Security Gateway 		solutions to define their solution's key value proposition
 * Where practical, attempt to standardize nomenclature and metrics
 * Educate the community on the design considerations for XML security

XML Security Gateways (XSG) may serve as both service providers and service requesters, so the evaluation criteria seeks to assess the tool's capabilities in delivering security and assurance services to inbound and outbound service requests. Contributors

The following people have contributed their time and expertise to the project:
 * Sebastien Deleersnyder, Ascure
 * Muthu Meyyappan, United Healthcare
 * James McGovern, The Hartford
 * Mark O'Neill, Vordel
 * Gunnar Peterson, Arctec Group
 * Ivan Ristic, Breach Security
 * Brian Roddy, Cisco
 * Philippe Bogaerts, NetAppSec
 * Paul Lesov, Wells Fargo

Contact

Participation in the XML Security Gateway Evaluation Criteria project is open to all. If you wish to comment on the evaluation criteria or join the team mailing list please contact Gunnar Peterson via email gunnar@arctecgroup.net.

Categories

Section 1 - Authentication This section describes the authentication support at the service level and message level for inbound and outbound communication to the XSG.

1.1 Inbound authentication How does the XSG perform authentication for inbound services requests?


 * Mutual SSL
 * HTTP Basic Authentication
 * HTTP Digest Authentication
 * WS-Security Username Token Authentication
 * WS-Security X.509 Certificate Based Authentication
 * WS-Security: Kerberos Token
 * SAML Authentication assertion
 * Validation against Active Directory
 * Dereference Active Directory Federation Services

1.2 Outbound authentication What capabilities does the XSG have to perform outbound assertion for authenticating the XSG's request to the service? What token types are supported for insertion?


 * Mutual SSL
 * HTTP Basic Authentication
 * HTTP Digest Authentication
 * WS-Security Username Token
 * WS-Security X.509 Certificate
 * WS-Security: Kerberos Token
 * SAML Authentication assertion
 * WS-Federation assertion

1.3 Proxy Functionality What capabilities does the XSG have mapping attributes on behalf of service requesters and service providers?

Consider the following scenario

Service Requester --> Guard 1 --> Guard 2 --> Resources/Service Provider

Using the Secure Proxy patterns defined by Blakley and Heath (http://www.opengroup.org/bookstore/catalog/g031.htm) define which proxy functions (trusted proxy, delegate, authz proxy, and so on) the XSG supports and how they are implemented.

What tokens and protocols are supported for these scenarios? How is identity and attribute mapping handled?

Section 2 - Authorization

2.1 Describe XSG support for standards-based authorization:


 * XACML
 * SAML
 * LDAP

2.2 Describe how Policy Enforcement Point (PEP) and Policy Decision Point (PDP) implement authorization workflow rules.

2.3 Describe how out bound messages are marked as authorized so that service providers and service consumers can verify that policy has been applied to the message

Section 3 - Audit Logging

3.1 Describe the audit logging input and output options

3.2 Describe log analysis tools

3.3 Describe security event notification options

3.4 Where and how is logging integrated into XSG?

3.4.1 How are the logs secured? Describe support for

3.5 Does the XSG support correlation for end to end transaction logging? How is this implemented?
 * Access control model for logs
 * Log sanitization
 * Log Signing (XML Signature)
 * Remoting of log information to log management platform such as LogLogic

Section 4 - Deployment Architecture

4.1 Describe the physical deployment for the XSG:


 * Standalone hardware device
 * Software only
 * Both

4.2 Describe the options for fail over, scalability and high availability

4.3 Describe integration with messaging systems, such as JMS and MQ Series

Section 5 - Content Validation

5.1 Describe security model support for positive (whitelist) and negative (blacklist) security models

5.1.1 Positive security model (default deny) define whitelist for all allowed requests. Does the XSG support learning mode? How is the whitelist configured?

5.1.2 Negative security model (default allow) define blacklist for unallowed requests. Is the blacklist signature based or rules based?

5.2 Describe schema validation support

5.3 Describe content validation, including injection attack, external entity attack, buffer overflow prevention

5.4 Describe message and request security analysis

5.5 Describe SOAP attachment analysis

Section 6 - Management & Metrics

6.1 Describe the available management tools for the XSG

6.2 Describe the available system metrics and reporting available including diagnostics, alerts, and warnings, e.g. SNMP, email, Syslog

6.3 How are upgrades accomplished for hardware, OS, and software?

6.4 Describe how policy is managed, versioned, and stored.

Section 7 - Transformation

7.1 Describe how the XSG supports XML transformation, e.g. XPath, XQuery

Section 8 - Tools

8.1 Describe any security testing tools that work with the XSG

8.2 Describe any development tools that work with the XSG

Section 9 - Performance

9.1 Define parameters for performance metrics

A. Licence

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/ or send a letter to: Creative Commons, 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford, California 94305, USA.