Spring Security Configuration – HttpSecurity vs WebSecurity

General use of WebSecurity ignoring() method omits Spring Security and none of Spring Security’s features will be available.
WebSecurity is based above HttpSecurity.

@Override
public void configure(WebSecurity web) throws Exception {
    web
        .ignoring()
        .antMatchers("/resources/**")
        .antMatchers("/publics/**");
}

@Override
protected void configure(HttpSecurity http) throws Exception {
    http
        .authorizeRequests()
        .antMatchers("/admin/**").hasRole("ADMIN")
        .antMatchers("/publics/**").hasRole("USER") // no effect
        .anyRequest().authenticated();
}

WebSecurity in the above example lets Spring ignore /resources/** and /publics/**. Therefore the .antMatchers("/publics/**").hasRole("USER") in HttpSecurity is unconsidered.

This will omit the request pattern from the security filter chain entirely.
Note that anything matching this path will then have no authentication or authorization services applied and will be freely accessible.

configure(HttpSecurity) allows configuration of web-based security at a resource level, based on a selection match – e.g. The example below restricts the URLs that start with /admin/ to users that have ADMIN role, and declares that any other URLs need to be successfully authenticated.

configure(WebSecurity) is used for configuration settings that impact global security (ignore resources, set debug mode, reject requests by implementing a custom firewall definition). For example, the following method would cause any request that starts with /resources/ to be ignored for authentication purposes.

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Let’s consider the below code, we can ignore the authentication for the endpoint provided within antMatchers using both the methods.

@Override
public void configure(WebSecurity web) throws Exception {
    web
        .ignoring()
        .antMatchers("/login", "/register", "/api/public/**");
}

@Override
public void configure(HttpSecurity http) throws Exception {

    http
        .csrf().disable()
        .authorizeRequests()
        .antMatchers("/login", "/register", "/api/public/**").permitAll()
        .anyRequest().authenticated();
}

• configure(WebSecurity web)
  Endpoint used in this method ignores the spring security filters, security features (secure headers, csrf protection etc) are also ignored and no security context will be set and can not protect endpoints for Cross-Site Scripting, XSS attacks, content-sniffing.

• configure(HttpSecurity http)
  Endpoint used in this method ignores the authentication for endpoints used in antMatchers and other security features will be in effect such as secure headers, CSRF protection, etc.