WS-SecureConversation is a
Web Services specification, created by
IBM and others, that works in conjunction with
WS-Security,
WS-Trust and
WS-Policy to allow the creation and sharing of security contexts. Extending the use cases of
WS-Security, the purpose of WS-SecureConversation is to establish security contexts for multiple SOAP message exchanges, reducing the overhead of key establishment.
Features
* Establish a new security context in following modes:
** Security context token created by a security token service (WS-Trust STS)
** Security context token created by one of the communicating parties and propagated with a message
** Security context token created through negotiation/exchanges
* Renew security context
* Amend Security context (add claims)
* Cancel security context
* Derive key: parties may use different keys per side and function (sign/encrypt), and change keys frequently to prevent cryptographic attacks
* Maintain high secure context
WS-SecureConversation is meant to provide an extensible framework and a flexible syntax, with which one could implement various security mechanisms. It does not by itself guarantee security, but the implementor has to ensure that the result is not vulnerable to any attack.
Pros/Cons
Following a pattern similar to
TLS
TLS may refer to:
Computing
* Transport Layer Security, a cryptographic protocol for secure computer network communication
* Thread level speculation, an optimisation on multiprocessor CPUs
* Thread-local storage, a mechanism for allocating vari ...
, WS-SecureConversation establishes a kind of session key. The processing overhead for key establishment is reduced significantly when compared to WS-Security in the case of frequent message exchanges.
However, a new layer is put on top of WS-Security, that implies other WS-* protocols like
WS-Addressing and WS-Trust. So the importance of performance has to be compared to the added complexity and dependencies.
See the
performance section in WS-Security.
External links
WS-SecureConversation 1.4 Specification
Associated specifications
The following specifications are associated with WS-SecureConversation:
*
WS-Addressing
*
WS-Policy
*
WS-Security
*
WS-Trust
See also
*
Family of WS-* specifications
References
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