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MQSeries.net Forum Index » Workflow Engines - IBM MQ Workflow & Business Process Choreographer » Workflow security and UPESs

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keithw
PostPosted: Wed Feb 12, 2003 4:46 am    Post subject: Workflow security and UPESs Reply with quote

Newbie

Joined: 12 Feb 2003
Posts: 2
Location: Altrincham, UK

I'm using the XML method to start a process and then interact with it. The <ProcessTemplateCreateAndStartInstance> message used to initiate a new process is checked for its sender ID and only messages from authorised users are allowed to start processes. However, the <ActivityImplInvokeResponse> is not so checked, so anybody can send such a message to a process waiting for a response.

Can anybody confirm whether this is true, and whether it's intentional or an oversight in the system design. I understand that interactions with UPESs are less critical as regards security than the initiation of new processes, but since the sender ID is easily available in the MQ message header I'm surprised that it's not checked.
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Keith Williamson
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jmac
PostPosted: Wed Feb 12, 2003 5:15 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Jedi Knight

Joined: 27 Jun 2001
Posts: 3081
Location: EmeriCon, LLC

Keith:

I cannot confirm whether this is true or false, and I am NOT an MQSeries expert, but when you send the <ActivityImplInvokeResponse> message you need to have the correlation ID from the original <ActivityImplInvoke> message, so perhaps this is not a problem.

What do you think?
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John McDonald
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fbaril3
PostPosted: Wed Feb 12, 2003 6:44 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Acolyte

Joined: 14 Jun 2002
Posts: 53

Hello,

On MQSeries, you can implement security on queues and queue manager : for instance you can allow a chosen user to connect to a queue manager and to put (or get or both) a message in a queue while the other users are not allowed.

This way, you can protect the queues the UPES uses.

For more information on MQSeries security, you can consult the MQSeries "System administration" guide (chap 10 "protecting MQSeries Object").

Hope this will help.
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keithw
PostPosted: Tue Feb 18, 2003 3:08 pm    Post subject: Thanks for the help Reply with quote

Newbie

Joined: 12 Feb 2003
Posts: 2
Location: Altrincham, UK

Thanks for confirming what I thought. We've decided to use the workflow API directly instead of using MQSeries and UPESs, mainly because of this issue.
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Keith Williamson
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dkrawczynski
PostPosted: Tue Feb 18, 2003 6:35 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Apprentice

Joined: 19 Dec 2002
Posts: 26
Location: Dallas, TX

MQWF requires a user id when starting a process instance solely because it needs to identify who started the process. This is to satisfy staffing based on the process starter.

I would venture to guess that the reason for not requiring a user id or password for that matter is that the intent of the UPES interface is for use by automated activities. It's a bit inconvenient to create and use a dummy user for automated activities. The UPES interface relieves the MQWF developer from having to physically connect to and run authentication just to run an automated activity.

It seems that some MQWF developers are tempted to use the UPES interface to implement manual activities. I don't see what the advantages of this would be considering the functionality that the API provides and the fact that the API ends up communicating of good old reliable MQSeries, the same as the UPES. Perhaps others have another opinion.
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MQSeries Workflow
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