Blog
Articles, tutorials, and field notes on identity, integration, API management, and application security — spanning nearly two decades of hands-on work.
What are APIs? (The Technology Perspective)
This post was originally published as “What are APIs? (The Technology Perspective)” on the Levvel Blog.
Modernizing SOA with APIs
This post was originally published as “Modernizing SOA with APIs” on the Levvel Blog.
Protecting Server Resources Hosting Unauthenticated APIs
This post was originally published as “Protecting Server Resources Hosting Unauthenticated APIs” on the Levvel Blog.
Convert an X509v3 Binary Security Token to PEM Format
This tutorial describes how to convert a Binary Security Token extracted from a SOAP message into a valid PEM format that can be read by openssl or similar tool. If you are ever troubleshooting the use of X509v3 certificates used with WS-Security, this can come in very handy.
WS-Security Integrity (XML Digital Signature)
This post continues exploring the use of XML Digital Signature; this time we look at WS-Security Integrity (use of XML Digital Signatures with WS-Security). Our examples show a digital signature and a timestamp in a WS-Security <Security> SOAP Header.
XML Digital Signature (an Example)
In the last post, we looked at the steps involved in generating a digital signature using the XML Digital Signature spec. The algorithm to produce a signature and validate it were explored but no examples were given. In this post, we’ll look at an example that is given in the XML Digital Signature…
XML Digital Signatures
The XML DSig specification is used to provide digital signature functionality to XML Documents. It is is used by numerous other specs such as WS-Security and SAML2. This blog entry will describe how digital signatures work with an X509 private/public key pair.
XML Editor…
I was asked recently what XML, XSD and XSLT editor I use. Given that I am an independent/small consulting firm owner, spending $1000s of dollars on development tooling that will come out of my own pocket is not my first choice.
What is Authentication?
I’ve talked about authentication many times on ThinkMiddleware.com. It recently occurred to me that I have never devoted a blog post to defining authentication. I’ve had a section on the subject in a couple of different places, but I wanted to have an article to reference from other posts. So, here…
Datapower SOMA Calls
The primary administration automation mechanism on IBM WebSphere DataPower appliances is the XML Management Interface. The XMI interface allows one to make SOMA (SOAP Configuration Management, assuming SOMA = SOap MAnagement) calls to perform various administration tasks. How to perform these…
ShrewSoft VPN Client Has Problem After Windows 7 Laptop Sleeps with VPN Active
A few months ago I switched from using Cisco’s QuickVPN software to the ShrewSoft VPN Client for Windows. I’m not going to get into the issues that I had with QuickVPN-it wasn’t very reliable. I’ve had ShrewSoft VPN for Windows v2.1.7 connecting to a Cisco RV082 VPN router. ShrewSoft provides…
SOA Specs Visualized
In a previous blog post, I listed a number of SOA Specs and Security Specs that I thought were important to be familiar with when working with DataPower and other SOA technologies. In this post, I made a quick (and dirty) Visio diagram that I tend to draw up on a whiteboard when I’m at a new client…