Security Rules

CBSecurity can apply security rules to incoming events.

We have seen by now that rules can be defined in disk, databases, or created at runtime. These security rules all share a common anatomy and processing; let's explore it.

Rule Anatomy

A struct models each rule with keys in it internally in CBSecurity. So no matter where these rules come from, at the end of the day, they are registered as an array of structs internally.

{
	"id"            : created automatically as a UUID,
	// A list of white list events or Uri's
	"whiteList"     : "", 
	// A list of secured list events or Uri's
	"secureList"    : "", 
	// Match the event or a url
	"match"         : "event", 
	// Attach a list of roles to the rule
	"roles"         : "", 
	// Attach a list of permissions to the 
	"permissions"   : "", rule
	// If rule breaks, and you have a redirect it will redirect here
	"redirect"      : "", 
	// If rule breaks, and you have an event, it will override it
	"overrideEvent" : "", 
	// Force SSL,
	"useSSL"        : false, 
	// The action to use (redirect|override|block) when no redirect or overrideEvent is defined in the rule.
	"action"        : "", 
	// metadata we can add so mark rules that come from modules
	"module"        : "", 
	// Match all HTTP methods or particular ones as a list
	"httpMethods"   : "*",
	// The rule only matches if the IP list matches. It can be a list of IPs to match. 
	"allowedIPs"    : "*" 
}

The only required key is the secureList which is what you are trying to secure. The rest are optional.

Please note that you can add as many extra keys as you like to your security rules structure, which can contain much more context and information for the validators to use for validation. These are the ones we suggest you add and are used internally.

Please remember that by default, the secure and white lists are evaluated as regular expressions. You can turn that off in your configuration settings.

Rule Elements

Property	Type	Default	Description
action	string	empty	The action to use (redirect or override or block) when no explicit overrideEvent or redirect elements are defined. If not set, then we use the global settings.
allowedIPs	string	*	The rule only matches if the IP list matches. It can be a list of IPs to match. By default, it matches all incoming IPs.
httpMethods	string	*	Match all HTTP methods or particular ones as a list. By default, it matches all HTTP Methods.
id	uuid	createUUID()	The internal ID of the rule. We automatically assign a UUID to the rule upon registration.
match	event or URL		Determines if it needs to match the incoming URL or the incoming event. By default it matches the incoming event.
module	string	empty	The name of the module this rule belongs to. Empty if none is discovered.
overrideEvent	string		The event to override using ColdBox's event.overrideEvent() if the user if not authenticated or authorized
permissions	string		A comma delimited list of permissions that can access these secure events
redirect	string		An event or route to redirect if the user is not authenticated or authorized
roles	string		A comma delimited list of roles that can access these secure events
securelist	string		A comma delimited list of events or regex patterns to secure
whitelist	string		A comma delimited list of events or regex patterns to whitelist or to bypass security on if a match is made on the secureList
useSSL	boolean		If true, force SSL, else use whatever the request protocol is

Rules processing

When processing rules, it is essential to realize these rules are stored as an array that will be processed in order, so make sure your more specific rules will be processed before the more generic ones.

cbsecurity rules processing

Rule Overrides

As we saw from the overview and our configuration sections. We can declare the default actions for authorizations and authentication issues and to which events/URLs to go if that happens. There can be a time when you can override those global/module settings directly within a rule. Let's explore these overrides:

Redirect

If you add a redirect element, then you will explicitly override the global/module setting, and if a match is made, a redirect will occur for the event registered.

{
    "secureList" : "*",
    "redirect" : "mysecret.event"
}

OverrideEvent

If you add an overrideEvent element, then you will explicitly override the global/module setting, and an event override will occur.

{
    "secureList" : "*",
    "overrideEvent" : "main.onInvalidEvent"
}

Action

If you add an action element, then you will be explicitly overriding the global/module setting, and the action will be based on this value (override or event or block)

{
    "secureList" : "^api.*",
    "action" : "override"
}

More on White Lists

If a rule has a white list, then it means that you can declare what are the exceptions to ALLOW if the incoming URL/event was matched against the securedList. This is a great way to say, hey, secure all but allow the following events:

{
    "secureList" : ".*",
    "whitelist : "^login"
}

Please note: if a rule has a white list, it only applies to the current rule. So if the whitelist matches, it the current rule is skipped, and the process continues to the next rule.

Sometimes you want to make sure ALL events are secured, except for the ones specified, such as login events. If you add new functionality to your app it is easy to forget a new rule. To prevent unwanted access you could specify a LAST rule, which matches ALL event but NO permission at all. In that case you have to add a whitelist for all events which should still pass, for example:

{
    "secureList" : ".*",
    "whitelist" : "login",
    "permissions" : "nonExistingPermission"
}