Hi everyone, I am working on the architecture of a future system and am stuck at security. The stack is GNU/linux, postgresql, cayenne and tomcat. Alongside the web application, I will have a WebStart-capable swing client which accesses the (remote) database. I don't want the db username or password ever to be known outside of the database server. The only solution I came up with is using ROP (don't know if any of it's limitations are going to hurt): the user enters his/her _application_ credentials which are sent to tomcat, tomcat verifies the credentials using JDBCRealm (reading from the application database) and allows the client to use the cayenne web service. Theoretically, a malicious user might write his own swing app and log in using a valid username/password combination to do whatever he likes in the database (having the complete db mapping at his disposal). This worries me, but it might be good enough for now (as the attacker wouldn't be able to compromise the database without valid credentials). In this case I have complete autonomy deciding how we're going to build the application, but what would I do if I couldn't use ROP (say, no servlet container available)? Other possibilities?
I very much welcome opinions and comments. Regards, Tomislav
