OAM 11g Single Sign-On and OAM 10g Cookies

This post is part of a larger series on Oracle Access Manager 11g called Oracle Access Manager Academy. An index to the entire series with links to each of the separate posts is available.

In an earlier post I talked about how cookies work when you're using OAM 11g server with OAM 11g WebGates. But the OAM 11g server also works with OAM 10g WebGates and there are reasons you'd deploy 10g WebGates today. But OAM 11g and 10g have fundamentally different behavior when it comes to the cookies.

So how do cookies work when you're using 10g WebGates with the 11g server?

In short they work pretty much the same way. Or at least they can work nearly the same way with 10g WebGates as they do with 11g WebGates.

I setup an environment with two servers - alpha and linux.ktest.oracleateam.com. Alpha is an IIS server with an OAM 10g WebGate and one protected directory which I cleverly named /protected/. The other machine (linux.ktest.oracleateam.com) is, as you've guessed, a Linux box with the OAM server installed. I'd include a diagram, but it looks exactly the same as the diagram in the older post.

Here's what the HTTP traffic looks like when I try to access http://alpha/protected/:

GET /protected/ HTTP/1.1
Accept: image/jpeg, image/gif, image/pjpeg, application/x-ms-application, application/xaml+xml, application/x-ms-xbap, */*
Accept-Language: en-US
User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/5.0; SLCC2; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET CLR 3.0.30729)
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate
Host: alpha
Connection: Keep-Alive

HTTP/1.1 302 Redirect
Content-Length: 0
Location: http://linux.ktest.oracleateam.com:14100/oam/server/obrareq.cgi?wh%3Dalpha%20wu%3D%2Fprotected%2F%20wo%3D1%20rh%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Falpha%20ru%3D%252Fprotected%252F
Server: Microsoft-IIS/7.5
Set-Cookie: ObSSOCookie=loggedoutcontinue; httponly; path=/
X-Powered-By: ASP.NET
Date: Fri, 09 Mar 2012 16:14:16 GMT

GET /oam/server/obrareq.cgi?wh%3Dalpha%20wu%3D%2Fprotected%2F%20wo%3D1%20rh%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Falpha%20ru%3D%252Fprotected%252F HTTP/1.1
Accept: image/jpeg, image/gif, image/pjpeg, application/x-ms-application, application/xaml+xml, application/x-ms-xbap, */*
Accept-Language: en-US
User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/5.0; SLCC2; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET CLR 3.0.30729)
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate
Host: linux.ktest.oracleateam.com:14100
Connection: Keep-Alive

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Cache-Control: no-cache, no-store
Date: Fri, 09 Mar 2012 16:16:55 GMT
Pragma: no-cache
Content-Length: 3326
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
Expires: 0
Set-Cookie: OAM_REQ=VERSION_4~KJTasxCSm1Z1LVGtpMwu5nJ3cwSYLNx1TGFLYN7tRq3Jr1Pin693MMCJJHQ6bPQL1vSxK3En%2bFaQPCNevV3Idi1o07xN9LjfFWubXf4B98yXOGRH6fT7RaZjp2dfPyqCADEG022AZg7xWsrCjff848vcqwAzLXs2schaae8z7YLXxCNVoMUGMsHFahTPkuq31ZIaqK8lZq7glReQuZyiBGXWPr5EptvGcbWEe0X9iOoeiUGFoJt6LpOCz79%2fJPpURizXOCQej3M3eCpGw8QmzUGa5ajAsPu5M0KZPViBubQwM9dsePRYNYaFizHYla8%2ftYr%2fHpgxkNLmuZ3crkzSZES45dnWdaqZBPbAcZb9S8pdGsjxMiB18bcudXC5A4DXnPwYLu92RQKrtHHgiq1JYIfMz4ZsCK5Fks%2bH3waTnw4Ec9V6EFvWF2rHXeGjqsHNN3jdZDtUlRkYcgBffUpBVkd%2fppwds%2fRcS4RVie39kRqduhbS1qphdGdy6pH8cX%2f8LEn3QoR2GXcn8cxgDEtfTR4q2JvrhbSnSChrqX967ogq8b%2bi0HEzDwFkYbhuZudsCXRHPVeOjGe78SY5IumWqCBIxW0z9LiSOhmcBDbagRFByhcTMpHZPU%2fxJxL7vdqllS8BwRPeVZuI0yuGstbBxVgWMzPJD%2bahnJXwlNODHEBCuMtYyO7gTol9VqpJo2l40PUgQUkmtw3cNf%2btazp5uTY%2fy8MG9AAyTNMTlgvaSnNTe0fwxiVMVcjuIqYUl%2fhSy%2fh1Z0lodn0w6HZQoiIyYMiEA%2felDR38iBKP4%2b14IvKroONAhuX0Ly4XSNRqGbzKyt%2fmqkc%2bguL2OPAIFjeBGMuses6r5Ml%2fepyF%2f%2bqnXTBB%2bFweBmaxHdv1uU58kWwtTfkWJwEuALDJhAXG7ixRnkHISfizpkPKGTs5jAGDj8Lhcndl1IAKbekDS5d6g2zxSpl4RDGmZuWcVG2G8XSyBs5D317CWvx1Mq3SDZhcvGy7RscDcqy7ra66j1uS49QaKvAgdGA03RzwAfCLMD4wNnj06aAkh9BXTDv%2bgHYzCaWpXm8yjMAVPr9fhXzn3Nro3ffM8I%2bEdFq2lRLdFIo04Gc4o%2f7lS0dGZKS6%2fyB5UKCtmD%2fihmsHdCVFUcRCMdff21HGT%2f8y0j6yQHNf4X1RefEdYcjbYOEv%2bbm1Jq5zcat60maesmmiBl5n6LJFYSfG6QLs4wLqZjqEXPWU96JBQuFwDjf7ux4RTcmnLG3LbU3M6lUPqfB0k8TGee7XbtaW0Z%2b69CIsYElY1ftvszOT2uMw2yAjy8nvs7iIJVvXGb0yX57h77WiySby6ISqvIH1maMdzr6jIAL76ImMc%2bCVJzJvt4WgobY6nc4OH4MSPMg%3d; path=/; HttpOnly
X-ORACLE-DMS-ECID: bc0b467a62ba363a:-50e866c2:135cc4d3539:-8000-0000000000000ab5
X-Powered-By: Servlet/2.5 JSP/2.1

As is the case with 11g WebGates the WebGate redirects me over to the OAM server to see if I have an existing session. And since I haven't logged on yet I don't have a session or associated cookie. So OAM sends me off to the login page.

So far this looks remarkably like the 11g WebGate. And by "remarkably like" I mean exactly the same as!

At this point I'm staring at the login page so let me enter the username and password and POST them to the credential collector:

POST /oam/server/auth_cred_submit HTTP/1.1
Accept: text/html, application/xhtml+xml, */*
Referer: http://linux.ktest.oracleateam.com:14100/oam/server/obrareq.cgi?wh%3Dalpha%20wu%3D%2Fprotected%2F%20wo%3D1%20rh%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Falpha%20ru%3D%252Fprotected%252F
Accept-Language: en-US
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 9.0; Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/5.0)
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate
Host: linux.ktest.oracleateam.com:14100
Content-Length: 67
Connection: Keep-Alive
Cache-Control: no-cache
Cookie: OAM_REQ=VERSION_4~KJTasxCSm1Z1LVGtpMwu5nJ3cwSYLNx1TGFLYN7tRq3Jr1Pin693MMCJJHQ6bPQL1vSxK3En%2bFaQPCNevV3Idi1o07xN9LjfFWubXf4B98yXOGRH6fT7RaZjp2dfPyqCADEG022AZg7xWsrCjff848vcqwAzLXs2schaae8z7YLXxCNVoMUGMsHFahTPkuq31ZIaqK8lZq7glReQuZyiBGXWPr5EptvGcbWEe0X9iOoeiUGFoJt6LpOCz79%2fJPpURizXOCQej3M3eCpGw8QmzUGa5ajAsPu5M0KZPViBubQwM9dsePRYNYaFizHYla8%2ftYr%2fHpgxkNLmuZ3crkzSZES45dnWdaqZBPbAcZb9S8pdGsjxMiB18bcudXC5A4DXnPwYLu92RQKrtHHgiq1JYIfMz4ZsCK5Fks%2bH3waTnw4Ec9V6EFvWF2rHXeGjqsHNN3jdZDtUlRkYcgBffUpBVkd%2fppwds%2fRcS4RVie39kRqduhbS1qphdGdy6pH8cX%2f8LEn3QoR2GXcn8cxgDEtfTR4q2JvrhbSnSChrqX967ogq8b%2bi0HEzDwFkYbhuZudsCXRHPVeOjGe78SY5IumWqCBIxW0z9LiSOhmcBDbagRFByhcTMpHZPU%2fxJxL7vdqllS8BwRPeVZuI0yuGstbBxVgWMzPJD%2bahnJXwlNODHEBCuMtYyO7gTol9VqpJo2l40PUgQUkmtw3cNf%2btazp5uTY%2fy8MG9AAyTNMTlgvaSnNTe0fwxiVMVcjuIqYUl%2fhSy%2fh1Z0lodn0w6HZQoiIyYMiEA%2felDR38iBKP4%2b14IvKroONAhuX0Ly4XSNRqGbzKyt%2fmqkc%2bguL2OPAIFjeBGMuses6r5Ml%2fepyF%2f%2bqnXTBB%2bFweBmaxHdv1uU58kWwtTfkWJwEuALDJhAXG7ixRnkHISfizpkPKGTs5jAGDj8Lhcndl1IAKbekDS5d6g2zxSpl4RDGmZuWcVG2G8XSyBs5D317CWvx1Mq3SDZhcvGy7RscDcqy7ra66j1uS49QaKvAgdGA03RzwAfCLMD4wNnj06aAkh9BXTDv%2bgHYzCaWpXm8yjMAVPr9fhXzn3Nro3ffM8I%2bEdFq2lRLdFIo04Gc4o%2f7lS0dGZKS6%2fyB5UKCtmD%2fihmsHdCVFUcRCMdff21HGT%2f8y0j6yQHNf4X1RefEdYcjbYOEv%2bbm1Jq5zcat60maesmmiBl5n6LJFYSfG6QLs4wLqZjqEXPWU96JBQuFwDjf7ux4RTcmnLG3LbU3M6lUPqfB0k8TGee7XbtaW0Z%2b69CIsYElY1ftvszOT2uMw2yAjy8nvs7iIJVvXGb0yX57h77WiySby6ISqvIH1maMdzr6jIAL76ImMc%2bCVJzJvt4WgobY6nc4OH4MSPMg%3d

username=weblogic&password=ABcd1234&request_id=-8330979068306697433

HTTP/1.1 302 Moved Temporarily
Connection: close
Date: Fri, 09 Mar 2012 16:17:01 GMT
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
Location: http://alpha/obrar.cgi?cookie=vBDzuSSiKglMEtxbyB1gBqe1aZvsE6WQhSF7%2Be%2FZ0DpntUvIXgPr79acpIo8FQ0V4mvuOrqn%2BGIendMpqPNgTuISUEDblFQjZKfNG4ixWaVW%2BitIr58w%2FvQ2kalnVL3zhKYAF2yU7rGyNolRifidAq7xW8%2BKQbyFq8GFAgga0Assv%2BxwGzvd%2FizmiXnx8cOD6KZBWGMtIeLBrJRBitqXoKgLZc6b2UuCc2VLkTufmlQdt0DZ7dOACr45efkrTSKgKhuqoykTsiKiGTIP4R2xe85TUfYYm%2F1i4E8p%2FdHmcD4tpJ4LRrslKI3MgDHj%2Ft1uq3ryhROxbcRBk2eM1Eo99QYNY6IOsFyo1sJA7YEkr7c%3D%20redirectto=%252Fprotected%252F%20ssoCookie=httponly
Set-Cookie: OAM_ID=VERSION_4~C7Iz5I0rodPWWPLR82CoQg==~bP8dGW/YVqe1NaHiCaZ3z6p2dbxVbpJpcSYMU6LVzUSBHp0C9OtSKbtvUlHHDsGImCi8KtAh3CLHXN+paF2+ZyxNOZOge2Mg2aH6vF8Wy2fUgIEYAVYjtVrP4bVTC0GpM7S6dt3XpjR/AHScYUdQNp5Olr5D3gSlBAnXWcyYxY9u/x620d5LHIYvBdZvqZzVsfAAV/5KovBKD/5wvhPWI/JDkYoUdT37VoaDp7BS1lOumUtTqzXkQTzMzAkLCzhS0M1NyCYTiT9904bIxfzhJw==; path=/; HttpOnly
Set-Cookie: OAM_REQ=invalid; path=/; HttpOnly
X-ORACLE-DMS-ECID: bc0b467a62ba363a:-50e866c2:135cc4d3539:-8000-0000000000000ab7
X-Powered-By: Servlet/2.5 JSP/2.1

Not terribly surprisingly I get an OAM_ID cookie and a redirect back to the protected resource, again just like with the 11g WebGate.

So we're on our way back to the WebGate to a fake resource called obrar.cgi with some encrypted data in the query string (yes, oddly familiar!).

The browser does the HTTP GET there...

GET /obrar.cgi?cookie=vBDzuSSiKglMEtxbyB1gBqe1aZvsE6WQhSF7%2Be%2FZ0DpntUvIXgPr79acpIo8FQ0V4mvuOrqn%2BGIendMpqPNgTuISUEDblFQjZKfNG4ixWaVW%2BitIr58w%2FvQ2kalnVL3zhKYAF2yU7rGyNolRifidAq7xW8%2BKQbyFq8GFAgga0Assv%2BxwGzvd%2FizmiXnx8cOD6KZBWGMtIeLBrJRBitqXoKgLZc6b2UuCc2VLkTufmlQdt0DZ7dOACr45efkrTSKgKhuqoykTsiKiGTIP4R2xe85TUfYYm%2F1i4E8p%2FdHmcD4tpJ4LRrslKI3MgDHj%2Ft1uq3ryhROxbcRBk2eM1Eo99QYNY6IOsFyo1sJA7YEkr7c%3D%20redirectto=%252Fprotected%252F%20ssoCookie=httponly HTTP/1.1
Accept: text/html, application/xhtml+xml, */*
Referer: http://linux.ktest.oracleateam.com:14100/oam/server/obrareq.cgi?wh%3Dalpha%20wu%3D%2Fprotected%2F%20wo%3D1%20rh%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Falpha%20ru%3D%252Fprotected%252F
Accept-Language: en-US
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 9.0; Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/5.0)
Cookie: ObSSOCookie=loggedoutcontinue
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate
Connection: Keep-Alive
Cache-Control: no-cache
Host: alpha

HTTP/1.1 302 Redirect
Content-Length: 0
Location: /protected/
Server: Microsoft-IIS/7.5
Set-Cookie: ObSSOCookie=vBDzuSSiKglMEtxbyB1gBqe1aZvsE6WQhSF7%2Be%2FZ0DpntUvIXgPr79acpIo8FQ0V4mvuOrqn%2BGIendMpqPNgTuISUEDblFQjZKfNG4ixWaVW%2BitIr58w%2FvQ2kalnVL3zhKYAF2yU7rGyNolRifidAq7xW8%2BKQbyFq8GFAgga0Assv%2BxwGzvd%2FizmiXnx8cOD6KZBWGMtIeLBrJRBitqXoKgLZc6b2UuCc2VLkTufmlQdt0DZ7dOACr45efkrTSKgKhuqoykTsiKiGTIP4R2xe85TUfYYm%2F1i4E8p%2FdHmcD4tpJ4LRrslKI3MgDHj%2Ft1uq3ryhROxbcRBk2eM1Eo99QYNY6IOsFyo1sJA7YEkr7c%3D;httponly; path=/
X-Powered-By: ASP.NET
Date: Fri, 09 Mar 2012 16:14:22 GMT

Ah! There it is - the first real difference between OAM 11g and OAM 10g WebGates behavior. With the 10g WebGate I get a good old ObSSOCookie instead of a 11g's uniquely named cookie.

I also got and a redirect back to the original resource, which I then retrieve:

GET /protected/ HTTP/1.1
Accept: text/html, application/xhtml+xml, */*
Referer: http://linux.ktest.oracleateam.com:14100/oam/server/obrareq.cgi?wh%3Dalpha%20wu%3D%2Fprotected%2F%20wo%3D1%20rh%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Falpha%20ru%3D%252Fprotected%252F
Accept-Language: en-US
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 9.0; Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/5.0)
Cookie: ObSSOCookie=vBDzuSSiKglMEtxbyB1gBqe1aZvsE6WQhSF7%2Be%2FZ0DpntUvIXgPr79acpIo8FQ0V4mvuOrqn%2BGIendMpqPNgTuISUEDblFQjZKfNG4ixWaVW%2BitIr58w%2FvQ2kalnVL3zhKYAF2yU7rGyNolRifidAq7xW8%2BKQbyFq8GFAgga0Assv%2BxwGzvd%2FizmiXnx8cOD6KZBWGMtIeLBrJRBitqXoKgLZc6b2UuCc2VLkTufmlQdt0DZ7dOACr45efkrTSKgKhuqoykTsiKiGTIP4R2xe85TUfYYm%2F1i4E8p%2FdHmcD4tpJ4LRrslKI3MgDHj%2Ft1uq3ryhROxbcRBk2eM1Eo99QYNY6IOsFyo1sJA7YEkr7c%3D
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate
Connection: Keep-Alive
Cache-Control: no-cache
Host: alpha

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Cache-Control: no-cache,private
Pragma: no-cache
Content-Type: text/html
Content-Encoding: gzip
Vary: Accept-Encoding
Server: Microsoft-IIS/7.5
X-Powered-By: ASP.NET
Date: Fri, 09 Mar 2012 16:14:22 GMT
Content-Length: 2495

As with the 11g WebGate you probably noticed that there's no domain= parameter on the cookie. Which means that this ObSSOCookie is specific to the one WebGate. But wait, didn't OAM 10g WebGates use a domain-wide cookie?

Yes they did. And 10g WebGates still do if (and only if) that's what you want.

Here's my configuration settings for my 10g WebGate:

In my case I left out the cookie domain setting for the WebGate. And by doing that I told the WebGate to act like the 11g WebGate and use "host only" cookies.

Filling in that setting changes the behavior. For new deployments of OAM 11g with 10g WebGates I generally would recommend leaving the setting blank because it solves a number of problems with cookies in larger deployments of OAM. But I'm going to put off discussing those problems until a later post.