Securing tomcat

Introduction
Most weaknesses in Apache Tomcat come from incorrect or inappropiate configuration. It is nearly always possible to make Tomcat more secure than the default out of the box installation. What follows documents best practices and recommendations on securing a production Tomcat server, whether it be hosted on a Windows or Unix based operating system. Please note that the section ordering is not a representation of the section importance.

Software Versions
The first step is to make sure you are running the latest stable releases of software; This does not mean you have to upgrade all your production servers to a new (and potentially buggy) release which has just been made available to the public. What you must do is download the latest stable bugfix release that has continual support. For the JRE and Tomcat you should be looking at the last digits in the version number (5.5.X) as it represents the bugfix information. The bugs fixed in these releases are publicly available so if you don't upgrade you could be providing attackers with a very easy route to compromise your server.
 * Java Runtime Environment (JRE) or SDK
 * Tomcat
 * Third party libraries

UNIX

 * Create a tomcat user/group
 * Download and unpack the core distribution (referenced as TOMCAT_DIR from now on) - I don't mean to nit pick, but couldn't we use CATALINA_HOME same as the tomcat docs? Stephendv 07:57, 9 October 2006 (EDT)
 * Change TOMCAT_DIR ownership to tomcat user and tomcat group
 * Change files in TOMCAT_DIR/conf to be readonly
 * Make sure tomcat user has read/write access to /tmp and write (yes, only write) access to TOMCAT_DIR/log
 * Change the default HTTP port to something other than 8080, by editing the Connector port attribute within the Catalina Service (TOMCAT_DIR/conf/server.xml). This ensures less scripted attacks on your server, but in no way helps protect you from vulnerabilities.

Windows
- it could prevent path traversal under windows, but not unix. Separating apps from OS is common good practice anyway. Stephendv 02:32, 9 October 2006 (EDT) - As you say, there's probably not any real benefit to recommending this. Stephendv 02:32, 9 October 2006 (EDT)
 * Download the core windows service installer
 * Start the installation, click Next and Agree to the licence
 * Untick native, documentation, examples and webapps then click Next
 * Choose an installation directory (referenced as TOMCAT_DIR from now on), preferably on a different drive to the OS. do we get many advantages separating application and webapps?
 * Change the default HTTP port to something other than 8080. This ensures less scripted attacks on your server, but in no way helps protect you from vulnerabilities.
 * Choose an administrator username (NOT admin) and a secure password that complies with your organisations password policy.
 * Complete tomcat installation, but do not start service.
 * TODO: filesystem security

Common
 404 /404.jsp   java.lang.Exception /error.jsp 
 * Remove everything from TOMCAT_DIR/webapps (ROOT, balancer, jsp-examples, servlet-examples, tomcat-docs, webdav)
 * Remove everything from TOMCAT_DIR/server/webapps (host-manager, manager)
 * Replace default HTTP error pages (i.e. 404) can we specify a container wide location?
 * Replace default error page (default is stacktrace) can we specify a container wide location?
 * Consider replacing TOMCAT_DIR/conf/server.xml with TOMCAT_DIR/conf/server-minimal.xml - work out what we lose
 * is it easy to remove the version string from the server HTTP header (Apache-Coyote/1.1) ?
 * Start Tomcat, deploy your applications into TOMCAT_DIR/webapps and hope it works!

Network Security
Generic advice common to all server security (link).

Logging

 * Audit trails

User Input
User data, whether it be HTTP headers or parameters, should '"never"' be trusted. It is usually the responsibility of the application to validate data, but it is important that one poorly written application doesn't compromise Tomcat as a whole.


 * global filters
 * global error pages (see above)
 * permission lockdown (see below)

Encryption

 * SSL for password or other sensitive data exchange (bordering on application security, not specific to tomcat)
 * SSL for connections (JDBC, LDAP, etc ..)

Running Tomcat with a Security Manager
Stephendv 04:56, 9 October 2006 (EDT)
 * The default Tomcat configuration provides good protection for most requirements. Edit the $CATALINA_HOME/conf/catalina.policy to define a custom policy.
 * Start Tomcat with the -security option to enable the security manager. Optionally edit the startup scripts to ensure that  Tomcat is always started with the security manager.

Miscellaneous

 * Storing cleartext passwords in configuration files (article to add)