Gotcha! Implementing Security Layers - Applied SOA Patterns on the Oracle Platform - page 447

Actually, perimeter protection is the last resort. Services and especially services-
composition controllers must be designed with caution based on all the previously
mentioned recommendations for the components design and security configura-
tion.
Using components with known vulnerabilities
Similar to XSS, this kind of design flaw is quite harmful for distributed service activities
(although, OWASP considers it as a moderate threat). The dynamic nature of service com-
positions makes SOA architecture quite susceptible to these kinds of attacks.
Going further, the implementation of the absolutely valid Endpoint Redirection SOA pat-
tern ( http://soapatterns.org/design_patterns/endpoint_redirection ), used for version control
and service load balancing, can open the door for such attacks if redirection is done by
simple mapping on LB without any perimeter protection with message scanning.
The following are the suggested patterns to apply:
• Service Perimeter Guard
• Composition Controller (subcontroller)
• Enterprise Service Repository
Make sure that all redirects originated and orchestrated by your composition controller
(destination endpoints taken from the service repository, the external API URL) are valid-
ated separately by SG. Do not accept any redirect parameters from the response message
belonging to previous invocations.
If you maintain an invocation list in a message header (message tracking data), make sure
that it is assembled from trusted sources.
Attack types
The following are the different types of identity/authentication manipulation attacks.
Reflection attacks
The attack code for the reflection attack is AT01 . A typical attack sequence is listed in the
following steps:
1. The attacker starts a new session and sends a request/challenge.
2. The server responds with an encrypted challenge and its own challenge.