Security Tips
To ensure the security of Agiloft and the server it runs on, you should take the following steps:
See also Password Management and Security.
Assign Least Privileged Group Permissions
Users should not be assigned privileges they do not need or do not have the skills to use safely. For example, a user with the ability to delete all records in a table in one operation can do considerable unintentional damage if they are not familiar enough with Agiloft's architecture. Only trusted and trained users should be placed in the Admin group, as that group can make drastic changes to the structure and data of your system.
Use SSL and HTTPS
Agiloft is available through HTTPS access only. If you install it on your own server, you must make it available over HTTPS, even if it is being used behind the firewall. This protects information transferred over the network from being accessed by a malicious individual. Do not allow any access to Agiloft through standard HTTP.
Use SSL via HTTPS to secure web browser connections to the Agiloft server. To connect to your web server using SSL you will need to configure it manually, as it is not configured with SSL by default. You will need to purchase or generate a server certificate that authenticates your server to the clients. This configuration differs depending on the host operating system and the web server software you use. The following resources may help:
Restrict Login Access to the Agiloft Server
A root user on Unix/Linux or a user in the Administrators group in Windows can circumvent
Agiloft internal security by modifying program and data files or directly changing data in the database, including passwords. However, even an unprivileged user can circumvent security by using local web access to exploit some of the special debugging features of
Agiloft such as the JMX console, as shown below, that are not accessible to connections from outside the server.
Restrict Services Accessible on the Agiloft Server
Treat the Agiloft server as you would any other sensitive server by only allowing connections essential for Agiloft operation, such as HTTPS, and administration, such as SSH for Unix/Linux, or Terminal Services for Windows. Additional services or applications which run on the same server machine, including other web applications, may potentially contain security holes which could lead to the compromise of Agiloft data.
The default services installed with most recent Linux distributions are generally minimal. You should use the nmap tool to verify which ports are exposed on your server. For example:
linux# nmap -sS wizard.example.com Starting Nmap 4.00 ( http://www.insecure.org/nmap/ ) at 2006-12-14 18:12 PST Interesting ports on wizard.example.com (10.0.0.1): (The 1667 ports scanned but not shown below are in state: filtered) PORT STATE SERVICE 22/tcp open ssh 80/tcp open http 113/tcp closed auth 443/tcp open https 8080/tcp open http-proxy MAC Address: 00:E0:81:00:00:12 (Tyan Computer) Nmap finished: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 64.320 seconds linux#
These are the TCP ports normally used by Agiloft:
| Port number | Description |
|---|---|
| 8080 | The native connection port to the Tomcat server that is part of the Java framework behind Agiloft. |
| 443 | The standard HTTPS port for web service over SSL. This is either forwarded to the Tomcat server by the native web server or forwarded directly to port 8443 by Linux kernel using the internal firewall module. |
| 8443 | The native HTTPS port that Tomcat may be configured to listen to. It is often better to use the SSL engine in Tomcat with requests forwarded from port 443 than to configure the native Web server for SSL and request forwarding. |
| 3306 | The standard server port for MySQL, the default Linux back-end database, This port is not exposed externally - in other words, it is bound only to localhost. |