Security Aspects

  JDMK does not have a homogeneous security concept; instead, developers need to be aware of the different security mechanisms to implement comprehensive security for agents that support different protocol adaptors. The SNMP adaptor relies on a file containing access control lists to determine which management systems have the right to read or modify specific parts of the MIB. Although this can be considered as an enhancement compared to the (password-based) mechanism of the early SNMP, modern fine-grained SNMP security mechanisms like VACM [#!rfc2275!#] are not supported yet. As the authentication of remote systems is based on their IP address, the agent is vulnerable with respect to IP-spoofing attacks. The authentication method of the HTTP/HTML adaptors are login/password combinations. As sensitive data is exchanged unencrypted, it is not possible to implement secure HTTP-based management solutions. The RMI and IIOP adaptors do not support authentication and access control. The only way of enabling secure authentication is based on the HTTPS (HTTP over SSL) adaptor which allows the exchange of cryptographically secure certificates. The appropriate access control system must then be implemented by the developer.

We believe that the current security mechanisms of JDMK are insufficient because developers still have to implement a large part of the security mechanisms themselves. Furthermore, the large differences between the various security mechanisms are not yet shielded behind a comprehensive security architecture.