Thursday 18 October 2018

Using WildFly Elytron JASPI with Standalone Undertow

As part of the development efforts for WildFly 15 an implementation of the servlet profile from the JASPI (JSR-196) specification has been added to WildFly Elytron and is in the final stages of being integrated within the application server.

As with many of the features included in WildFly Elytron it is possible to make use of this outside of the application server, this blog post combined with an example project illustrates how the WildFly Elytron JASPI implementation can be used with a standalone Undertow server.

The example project can be found at the following location: -

https://github.com/wildfly-security-incubator/elytron-examples/tree/master/undertow-standalone-jaspi

The project can be built using Apache Maven using the following command: -

mvn clean install

And executed with: -

mvn exec:exec

The remainder of this blog post will describe the remainder of the project and then demonstrate how to make an invocation to the servlet using 'curl'.

Server Auth Module

This project contains a very simple ServerAuthModule 'org.wildfly.security.examples.jaspi.SimpleServerAuthModule', this module expects to receive a username using the 'X-USERNAME' header and expects to receive a password using the 'X-PASSWORD' header.

This module does not perform it's own username and password validation, instead it makes use of a 'PasswordValidationCallback' which is handled by the 'CallbackHandler' passed to the module on initialisation, this means the verification is in turn handled by WildFly Elytron.

Finally this module makes use of a 'GroupPrincipalCallback' which is used to override the groups / role assigned to the resulting identity and in this case assign the identity the 'Users' role.

Although this example demonstrates delegating the verification of the username and password to WildFly Elytron it is also possible to implement a ServerAuthModule which performs it's own validation and instead just describe the resulting identity using the callbacks.

Servlet

To make this demonstration possible the example project contains a servlet 'org.wildfly.security.examples.servlet.SecuredServlet', the purpose of this servlet is to return a HTML page containing the name of the current authenticated identity.

Configuration and Execution

Undertow and WildFly Elytron are programatically configured and started within 'org.wildfly.security.examples.HelloWorld', this class contains some initialisation that has been seen previously and some new configuration to enable JASPI and integrate with Undertow.

createSecurityDomain()

The first step is to create the SecurityDomain backed by a SecurityRealm: -

private static SecurityDomain createSecurityDomain() throws Exception {
    PasswordFactory passwordFactory = PasswordFactory.getInstance(ALGORITHM_CLEAR, elytronProvider);

    Map<String, SimpleRealmEntry> identityMap = new HashMap<>();
    identityMap.put("elytron", new SimpleRealmEntry(Collections.singletonList(
        new PasswordCredential(passwordFactory.generatePassword(new ClearPasswordSpec("Coleoptera".toCharArray()))))));

    SimpleMapBackedSecurityRealm simpleRealm = new SimpleMapBackedSecurityRealm(() -> new Provider[] { elytronProvider });
    simpleRealm.setIdentityMap(identityMap);

    SecurityDomain.Builder builder = SecurityDomain.builder()
            .setDefaultRealmName("TestRealm");

    builder.addRealm("TestRealm", simpleRealm).build();
    builder.setRoleMapper(RoleMapper.constant(Roles.of("Test")));

    builder.setPermissionMapper((principal, roles) -> PermissionVerifier.from(new LoginPermission()));

    return builder.build();
}

Here we have a single identity 'elytron' with the password 'Coleoptera', however any of the other security realms could have been used here allowing for alternative integration options.

configureJaspi()

The next step is the JASPI configuration, at this stage this is still independent of the Undertow initialisation: -

private static String configureJaspi() {
    AuthConfigFactory authConfigFactory = new ElytronAuthConfigFactory();
    AuthConfigFactory.setFactory(authConfigFactory);

    return JaspiConfigurationBuilder.builder(null, null)
            .setDescription("Default Catch All Configuration")
            .addAuthModuleFactory(SimpleServerAuthModule::new)
            .register(authConfigFactory);
}


The first step is to initialise the Elytron implementation of 'AuthConfigFactory' and to register it as the global default implementation.

The JASPI APIs provide a lot of flexibility to allow for programatic registration of configurations, however the APIs do not provide a way to instantiate the implementations of these implementations when in the majority of the cases where dynamic registration is used it is just to register a custom ServerAuthModule.  With the changes added to Wildfly Elytron we have added a new API of our own in a class called 'org.wildfly.security.auth.jaspi.JaspiConfigurationBuilder' - this can be used to register a configuration with the 'AuthConfigFactory'.

Configuring and Starting Undertow

Now that the prior two steps have been completed it is possible to use the Undertow and WildFly Elytron APIs to complete the configuration of a deployment and start the Undertow server with JASPI authentication enabled.

The first step is using the Undertow APIs to define a deployment: -

DeploymentInfo deploymentInfo = Servlets.deployment()
        .setClassLoader(SecuredServlet.class.getClassLoader())
        .setContextPath(PATH)
        .setDeploymentName("helloworld.war")
        .addSecurityConstraint(new SecurityConstraint()
                .addWebResourceCollection(new WebResourceCollection()
                        .addUrlPattern("/secured/*"))
                .addRoleAllowed("Users")
                .setEmptyRoleSemantic(SecurityInfo.EmptyRoleSemantic.DENY))
        .addServlets(Servlets.servlet(SecuredServlet.class)
                .addMapping(SERVLET));

Next we can use the WildFly Elytron APIs to apply Wildfly Elytron backed security to this deployment: -

AuthenticationManager authManager = AuthenticationManager.builder()
        .setSecurityDomain(securityDomain)
        .build();
authManager.configure(deploymentInfo);

It is worth noting this is where the WildFly Elytron SecurityDomain is associated with the deployment, the JASPI configuration performed earlier was independent of the domain.

The final stages are now to complete the deployment before creating and starting the Undertow server: -

DeploymentManager deployManager = Servlets.defaultContainer().addDeployment(deploymentInfo);
deployManager.deploy();

PathHandler path = Handlers.path(Handlers.redirect(PATH))
        .addPrefixPath(PATH, deployManager.start());

Undertow server = Undertow.builder()
        .addHttpListener(PORT, HOST)
        .setHandler(path)
        .build();
server.start();

Invoking the Servlet

Once the server is running it is now time to invoke the servlet using 'curl', other clients could also be used however they would need to support custom headers to work with this mechanism.

Firstly if we call the servlet without any headers we should see the request rejected with a message asking for the headers: -

]$ curl -v http://localhost:28080/helloworld/secured
...
< HTTP/1.1 401 Unauthorized
< Expires: 0
< Connection: keep-alive
< Cache-Control: no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate
< Pragma: no-cache
< X-MESSAGE: Please resubmit the request with a username specified using the X-USERNAME and a password specified using the X-PASSWORD header.
< Content-Type: text/html;charset=UTF-8
< Content-Length: 71

We can now repeat the command and provide a username and password using the appropriate headers: -

]$ curl -v http://localhost:28080/helloworld/secured -H "X-Username:elytron" -H "X-Password:Coleoptera"
...
< HTTP/1.1 200 OK
< Expires: 0
< Connection: keep-alive
< Cache-Control: no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate
< Pragma: no-cache
< Content-Length: 154
<html>
  <head><title>Secured Servlet</title></head>
  <body>
    <h1>Secured Servlet</h1>
    <p>
 Current Principal 'elytron'    </p>
  </body>
</html>

In this case we now see the expected HTML specifying the name of the current identity.

















Wednesday 26 September 2018

WildFly Elytron - Credential Store - Next Steps

During the development of WildFly 11 where we introduced the WildFly Elytron project to the application server one of the new features we added was the credential store.

https://developers.redhat.com/blog/2017/12/14/new-jboss-eap-7-1-credential-store/

Now that we are planning the next stages of development for WildFly 15 and 16 we are revisiting some of the next steps for the credential store, this blog post explores some of the history of the current decisions made with the credential store and the types of enhancement being requested to develop this further.

Anyone making use of either the CredentialStore or Vault is encouraged to provider your feedback so we can take this into account as the next stages are planned.

Key Differences To Vault

Prior to the credential store the PicketBox vault was the solution used for the encryption of credentials and other fields within the application server's configuration, the credential store approach was dedicated to the secure storage of credentials.

Where the PicketBox vault is used in the application server a single Vault is defined across the whole server and aliases from the vault are referenced via expressions in the server's configuration which allows for the values to be retrieved in clear text.

The credential store on the other hand allows for multiple credential store instances to be defined, resources that make use of the credentials have been updated to a special attribute type where both the name of the credential store can be specified and the alias of the credential within the credential store.

The credential store resources additionally support management operations to allow for entries within the credential store to be manipulated either by adding / removing entries or by updating existing entries.

Uses of the Store

Reviewing where the credential store is used we seem to have two predominant scenarios.

Unlocking Local Resources

In this case a credential is required to unlock a local resource such as a KeyStore, there is no remote authentication to be performed and a credential is generally only required for decrypting the contents of the store.  This is the simplest use of the store and once the resource is unlocked it is not likely to need unlocking again.

Accessing Remote Resources

The second use we see is for services accessing a remote resource, in this case the credentials for the connection are obtained from the credential store.

This scenario has a reasonable amount of history also attached to the current implementation, it tended to be the case that if you were to access a remote resource it would either not be secured or it would be secured and authentication would require a username and password.  Additionally any SSL related configuration would be handled completely independently.

In recent years however there has been a greater demand for alternative authentication mechanisms, there has been a lot of demand for Kerberos both with the server being given it's own account for authentication and also for the propagation of a remote user authenticated against the server using Kerberos.  We haven't seen requests yet for the application server but I suspect OAuth scenarios will be requested soon.

In both of these cases the security has moved from username / password authentication to more advanced scenarios.

In parallel to the credential store WildFly Elytron has also introduced an Authentication Client API, this API can be used for configuring the client side authentication policies for various mechanisms, including scenarios that support propagation of the current identity.  The authentication client configuration also allows SSLContext configurations to be associated with a specific destination.

This now raises the question, should services establishing a remote connection which requires authentication and SSL configuration now reference an authentication client configuration instead of the current assumption that a username and credential reference is sufficient?

This question becomes quite important as it affects the approach we take to a lot of the enhancements requested of us quite significantly.

Next Features

The features currently being requested against the credential store generally cover three broad areas: -

  1. Automation of updates to the store.
  2. Real time updates.
  3. Support for expressions.

Automation of Updates to the Store

The general motivation for this enhancement is to simplify the steps configuring resources which require credentials, using the PicketBox Vault implementation the vault would need to be manipulated offline using a command line tool and then references from the application server configuration.

The CredentialStore has already moved on from this partially as management operations have been exposed to allow the contents of the store to be directly manipulated using management requests so the store can be manipulated directly from the management tools.  However an administrator is still required to operate on the two resources completely independently.

We predominantly have two options to simplify this further.

We could take the decision that further enhancement is now a tooling issue, the admin clients could detect a resource is being added that supports credential store references or the password on an existing resource that supports credential store references is being set and provide guidance / automation to persist the credential in the credential store.

  1. Would you like to store this credential in a credential store?
  2. Which credential store would you like to use? Or would you like to create a new one?
  3. What alias would you like the credential to be stored under?

Alternatively, the credential reference attribute supports specifying a reference to a credential store and an alias in the credential store - this attribute however also supports specifying a clear text password.  We could automate the manipulation in the management tier and if a clear text password is specified on a resource referencing a credential store automatically add it to the credential store and remove it from the model - if no alias is specified automatically generate one.

We could also support a combination of the two approaches as in the management tier although we could support the interception of a new clear password if a store needs to be created that would be more involved than we could automate.

Real Time Updates

Where new credentials are added to a credential store using management operations they are already available for use immediately in the application server process without a restart.  However we still have some areas to consider further real time update support: -
  1. Updates to the store on the filesystem.
  2. Complete replacement of an existing store.
  3. Updates to credentials using management operations.

In these three cases the primary interest is credentials which are already in use in the application server, however in the case of #1 and #2 it could relate to the addition of new credentials to be used immediately.

One point to consider is although our default credential store implementation is file based custom implementations could be in use which are not making use of any local files.

At the credential store level we likely should consider various modes to detect changes when emitting notifications: -
  1. File system monitoring.
  2. Notifications from within the implementation of the store.
  3. Administrator triggered reloads of either the full store or individual aliases.
At the service level where a service is making use of a credential it is likely we would want to decide how to handle updates on a service by service basis.  It is unlikely we would want to automatically restart / replace services as for some services which make use of credentials this could cause a cascade of service restarts potentially leading the redeployment of deployments.

I expect some form of notifications will be required, at the coarsest level notifications could be emitted for all services accessing a specific credential store - this however could trigger a significant overhead as a single store could contain a large number of entries used across a large number of resources.  Instead we could emit notifications just to the resources using the affected aliases, this would be more efficient from the perspective of the notifications but the complexity now is where a coarse update has been updates to a store such as the underlying file being replaced or a full store refresh being triggered by an administrator we now need to identify which credentials were really modified.

Support for Expressions

It was a deliberate decision to move away from using expressions, however there are still some demands for expressions that need to be considered.

Overall the design decisions within WildFly Elytron have always considered a desire to move away from clear text passwords being present in the application server process, where expressions are used the only route available is to obtain the clear text representation of a String and pass it around the related services.

One of the enhancements delivered for WildFly 11 was to support multiple credential stores concurrently within the application server, by moving to the complex attribute we were able to make use of capability references to select which credential store to use with a second attribute selecting the alias in the store.

Another consideration was the desire for automatic updates to be applied via the management tier, by moving from expressions to a complex attribute it opens up the options to intercept these values and persist them in the store.

A further (and possibly the greatest) consideration was the desired support for automatic updates to credentials currently in use in the server, by moving to the capability references aided by the complex attribute definition services can now obtain a direct reference to the store instead of having a credential automatically resolved.  By having a reference to a credential store we can potentially add support for direct notifications of updates applied to that store.  Where a credential is updated different services may want to respond in different ways, this is why a reference is needed.  Within the management tier we can not silently automate the updates, if we were to do so it would likely involve the removal and replacement of the service which could have a side effect of restarting many other services including the deployments.

The biggest restriction of not supporting expressions is attributes for anything other than a credential can no longer be loaded from the credential store - but the missing piece of information is how that is really used and why?

As an example usernames could be loaded using expressions, is this because in some environments the username is being considered as sensitive as the credential?  Or is it the case that where a credential is loaded from a store it is easier to load the username from the same store.

If the answer is co-location of the username and password then a more suitable path to look into may be the externalisation of the authentication client configuration allowing the complete client authentication policy to be handled as a single unit.

If we are still left with attributes in the configuration that need to be stored securely the next question is do they strictly need to be removed from the configuration and looked up from the store?  An alternative option we have to consider is supporting the encryption / decryption of Strings inlined in the management model using a credential from the store.

Other Enhancements

Following on from the main enhancements listed above there is also a set of additional enhancements we could consider.

Injection / Credential Store Access for Deployments

Deployments can already access the authentication client configuration, however if access to raw credentials is required it may help to access the store - this could additionally mean a deployment could manipulate the store.

Permission Checks

Once accessed within deployments, making use of the SecurityIdentity permission checks we could perform permission checks for different read / write operations on the credential store.

Auditing

The credential store could be updated to emit security events as it is accessed, by emitting security events these can be output to audit logs or sent to other event analysing frameworks.













Thursday 8 February 2018

WildFly Elytron - Implementing a Custom HTTP Authentication Mechanism

When WildFly Elytron is used to secure a web application is is possible to implement custom HTTP authentication mechanisms that can be registered using the Elytron subsystem, it is then possible to override the configuration within the deployment to make use of this mechanism without requiring modifications to the deployment.

This blog post explores a custom authentication mechanism that can make use of custom HTTP headers to receive a clear text username and password and use these for authentication.  Generally passing clear text passwords is something that should be voided, they are only used here to avoid over complicating the example.

This blog will be making use of two projects within the elytron-examples respository that can be found at: -

https://github.com/wildfly-security-incubator/elytron-examples


  • simple-webapp - A very simple secured web application that can be deployed to test the mechanism.
  • simple-http-mechanism - A small project containing the minimal pieces to develop a custom mechanism.

Mechanism Implementation

The major piece of any custom HTTP mechanism is going to be the actual implementation of the mechanism, all custom mechanisms are required to implement the interface HttpServerAuthenticationMechanism.html.

In general for a mechanism the evaluateRequest method is called to handle the request passing in a HttpServerRequest object, the mechanism processes the requests and uses one of the following callback methods on the request to indicate the outcome: -
For each of these callback methods it is possible to pass in an instance of a HttpServerMechanismResponder which can be used to send challenge information to the calling client, which responders are called will depend very much on the outcome of the other mechanisms in use concurrently.


The custom mechanism implemented for this blog can be found at CustomHeaderHttpAuthenticationMechanism.java

Where this custom mechanism sends a challenge the challenge is always the same so we can use a static instance of the responder to avoid creating a new one each time we need to challenge: -

    private static final HttpServerMechanismsResponder RESPONDER = new      
            HttpServerMechanismsResponder() {       
        public void sendResponse(HttpServerResponse response) throws 
                HttpAuthenticationException {
            response.addResponseHeader(MESSAGE_HEADER, "Please resubit the request with a username specified using the X-USERNAME and a password specified using the X-PASSWORD header.");
            response.setStatusCode(401);
        }
    };


The evaluateRequest method then follows a path that will be common to many mechanisms.


final String username = request.getFirstRequestHeaderValue(USERNAME_HEADER);
final String password = request.getFirstRequestHeaderValue(PASSWORD_HEADER);

if (username == null || username.length() == 0 || password == null || 
      password.length() == 0) {    
    request.noAuthenticationInProgress(RESPONDER);
    return;
}


In this first block the mechanism tests if it has authentication headers appropriate for this mechanism, if not 'noAuthenticationInProgress' is called to notify the framework this mechanism is not doing anything yet and passes the responder in case a response is needed to challenge the client.


NameCallback nameCallback = new NameCallback("Remote Authentication Name", 
                                              username);
nameCallback.setName(username);
final PasswordGuessEvidence evidence = new 
                PasswordGuessEvidence(password.toCharArray());
EvidenceVerifyCallback evidenceVerifyCallback = new 
                EvidenceVerifyCallback(evidence);
try {
    callbackHandler.handle(new Callback[] { nameCallback, 
                                            evidenceVerifyCallback });
} catch (IOException | UnsupportedCallbackException e) {
    throw new HttpAuthenticationException(e);
}

if (evidenceVerifyCallback.isVerified() == false) {
    request.authenticationFailed("Username / Password Validation Failed", 
                                 RESPONDER);
}


In this second block the mechanism takes the headers received from the client and uses them to perform authentication by passing Callbacks to the provided CallbackHandler.

After a successful authentication it is possible to associate any credentials received from the client with the resulting identity, this step is optional but can be useful.


try {
    callbackHandler.handle(new Callback[] {new IdentityCredentialCallback(
        new PasswordCredential(ClearPassword.createRaw(
                ClearPassword.ALGORITHM_CLEAR, 
                password.toCharArray())), true)});
} catch (IOException | UnsupportedCallbackException e) {
    throw new HttpAuthenticationException(e);
}

At this point the identity has been authenticated and the credential associated but no check has been performed to ensure the identity is allowed to login so the next step is an authorization.

try {
    callbackHandler.handle(new Callback[] {authorizeCallback});

    if (authorizeCallback.isAuthorized()) {
        callbackHandler.handle(new Callback[] { 
            AuthenticationCompleteCallback.SUCCEEDED });
        request.authenticationComplete();
    } else {
        callbackHandler.handle(new Callback[] { 
            AuthenticationCompleteCallback.FAILED });
        request.authenticationFailed("Authorization check failed.", RESPONDER);
    }
    return;
} catch (IOException | UnsupportedCallbackException e) {
    throw new HttpAuthenticationException(e);
}

In this last block finally an AuthenticationCompleteCallback is needed to indicate the overall outcome of the authentication as decided by the mechanism, the reason the mechanism makes this decision is because a mechanism could take into account additional information in addition beyond the outcomes from the callbacks - an an example the HTTP Digest information will asses the validity of the nonce late in the authentication process.

Mechanism Factory Implementation

After the mechanism implementation the next class required is a factory to return instances of the mechanism, factories implement the HttpAuthenticationFactory interface, in this example the factory only returns a single mechanism however a single factory could support multiple mechanisms.

Within the test project this is implemented in CustomMechanismFactory.java

The most important step within the factory is to double check the name of the mechanism requested, it is important for the factory to return null if it can not create the required mechanism.  The mechanism factory can also take into account properties in the Map passed in to decide if it can create the requested mechanism.

Advertising Availability

There are two different approaches that can be used to advertise the availability of a mechanism factory, the first is to implement a java.security.Provider with the HttpAuthenticationFactory registered as an available service once for each mechanism it supports.

This example however is very simple so instead of implementing a provider we use a java.util.ServiceLoader to discover the factory instead, to achieve this we add the descriptor org.wildfly.security.http.HttpServerAuthenticationMechanismFactory under META-INF/services the only contents required in this file are the fully qualified class name of the factory.

Mechanism Installation

At this stage the mechanism project can be built and installed in the application server as a module ready to be used, the project is a simple maven project so can be built with: -

    mvn clean install

For the next stage the application server does not need to be running, the following command can be executed within the jboss-cli to add the module to the application server: -

module add --name=org.wildfly.security.examples.custom-http \
 --resources=/path/elytron-examples/simple-http-mechanism/target/simple-http-mechanism-1.0.0.Alpha1-SNAPSHOT.jar \
 --dependencies=org.wildfly.security.elytron,javax.api

The required dependencies are very simple, the installed module just requires a dependency on the public Elytron API and the javax API for access to some of the common callbacks and related exceptions.

Testing - BASIC authentication

When testing changes within the application server it is often better to start with small changes and verify those are working before moving onto the next set of changes, often users that make a large number of changes at once find it difficult to track down at which stage an error was introduced.

The next step within this blog is to deploy the simple-webapp also in the elytron-examples repository and verify it works with HTTP BASIC authentication, once verified we will switch the configuration to use the new authentication mechanism.

Before starting the application server a new test account can be added using the add-user utility.

./add-user.sh -a -u testuser -p password -g Users

Now the application server can be started and the CLI connected to the application server.

When the sample application is deployed it will by default use the 'other' security domain so a mapping needs to be added to map this to an Elytron HTTP authentication factory: -

./subsystem=undertow/application-security-domain=other:add(
http-authentication-factory=application-http-authentication)

The simple-webapp can now be deployed directly using maven.

mvn wildfly:deploy

This application could be tested using a web browser as it is using a standard mechanism the browser would understand, however once we switch to using a custom mechanism the browser will not understand so it is better to test the call using a client that will allow us to manipulate the headers ourselves.

curl -v http://localhost:8080/simple-webapp/secured -u testuser:password

If everything is working output similar to the following should be seen (Some headers have been removed to make the output easier to read)

< HTTP/1.1 200 OK
...<
<html>
 <head><title>Secured Servlet</title></head>
 <body>
   <h1>Secured Servlet</h1>
   <p>
Current Principal 'testuser'    </p>
 </body>
</html>

At this stage authentication is being successfully applied to the web application backed by WildFly Elytron using the Elytron implementation of the HTTP BASIC authentication mechanism, the next step is to switch to using the custom mechanism.

Testing - Custom Mechanism

The first resource to add in the CLI is to discover the factory implementation.

./subsystem=elytron/service-loader-http-server-mechanism-factory=
custom-factory:add(module=org.wildfly.security.examples.custom-http)

After this is added a CLI command can be executed to immediately check which mechanisms the factory can create.

./subsystem=elytron/service-loader-http-server-mechanism-factory=
custom-factory:read-resource(include-runtime=true)
{
   "outcome" => "success",
   "result" => {
       "available-mechanisms" => ["CUSTOM_MECHANISM"],
       "module" => "org.wildfly.security.examples.custom-http"
   }
}
The next resource to add is a http-authentication-factory to tie the mechanism factory to a security-domain that will be used for the actual authentication.

./subsystem=elytron/http-authentication-factory=custom-mechanism:
add(http-server-mechanism-factory=custom-factory,
security-domain=ApplicationDomain,
mechanism-configurations=[{mechanism-name=CUSTOM_MECHANISM}])

The application-security-domain resource we added previously can now be updated to use this new http-authentication-factory.

./subsystem=undertow/application-security-domain=other:
write-attribute(name=http-authentication-factory, value=custom-mechanism)
./subsystem=undertow/application-security-domain=other:
write-attribute(name=override-deployment-config, value=true)

The second of those commands is important, the application is defined to use the BASIC authentication mechanism only, by overriding the deployment config the mechanisms from the http-authentication-factory will be used instead.

The server can now be reloaded.

:reload

The same curl command can be executed again but this time it is expected it will fail with output similar to the following.

curl -v http://localhost:8080/simple-webapp/secured -u testuser:password
< HTTP/1.1 401 Unauthorized
...
< X-MESSAGE: Please resubit the request with a username specified using the X-USERNAME and a password specified using the X-PASSWORD header.
...

Here the authentication mechanism has rejected the call and subsequently added a header describing how to authentication.

The curl command can now be modified to: -

curl -v http://localhost:8080/simple-webapp/secured -H "X-USERNAME:testuser" -H "X-PASSWORD:password"
< HTTP/1.1 200 OK
...
<
<html>
 <head><title>Secured Servlet</title></head>
 <body>
   <h1>Secured Servlet</h1>
   <p>
Current Principal 'testuser'    </p>
 </body>
</html>

The resulting output now shows authentication was successful again and the authenticated principal is 'testuser'.