How to read username and password from a properties file for WS-Security in Mule

Question

I have implemented WS-security in CXF webservice and following is the Mule flow :-

<context:property-placeholder location="classpath:conf/DBConnectionProp.properties"/>
    <!-- Authentication security-->
     <mule-ss:security-manager>
            <mule-ss:delegate-security-provider name="memory-provider" delegate-ref="authenticationManager" />
        </mule-ss:security-manager>
        <spring:beans>
            <ss:authentication-manager alias="authenticationManager">
                <ss:authentication-provider>
                    <ss:user-service id="userService" >
                        <ss:user name="${username}" password="${password}" authorities="ROLE_ADMIN" />
                    </ss:user-service>
                </ss:authentication-provider>
            </ss:authentication-manager>
        </spring:beans>

    <cxf:ws-security name="inboundSecurityConfig">
    <cxf:mule-security-manager />
    <cxf:ws-config>
    <cxf:property key="action" value="UsernameToken" />
    </cxf:ws-config>
    </cxf:ws-security>

    <!-- Authentication security ends-->

    <flow name="securedSoapService">
    <http:inbound-endpoint exchange-pattern="request-response" host="localhost" port="8090" path="designation" doc:name="HTTP">
    <cxf:jaxws-service serviceClass="com.getdesignation.test.services.schema.maindata.v1.GetDesignation">
    <cxf:ws-security ref="inboundSecurityConfig"/>
    </cxf:jaxws-service>
    </http:inbound-endpoint>
    <component class="com.getdesignation.vertu.services.schema.maindata.v1.Impl.GetDesignationImpl" />
    </flow>

Now the issue is, it is not reading the value of username and password from properties file .. If I try to read the values from properties file <ss:user name="${username}" password="${password}" authorities="ROLE_ADMIN" /> then it will read the whole value as a string and will result following exception as invalid username and password :-

WARN  2014-09-18 21:23:41,426 [[SOAPSecurity2].connector.http.mule.default.receiver.02] org.apache.cxf.ws.security.wss4j.WSS4JInInterceptor: 
org.apache.ws.security.WSSecurityException: The security token could not be authenticated or authorized
    at org.mule.module.cxf.support.MuleSecurityManagerValidator.validate(MuleSecurityManagerValidator.java:57)
    at org.apache.ws.security.processor.UsernameTokenProcessor.handleUsernameToken(UsernameTokenProcessor.java:153)
    at org.apache.ws.security.processor.UsernameTokenProcessor.handleToken(UsernameTokenProcessor.java:66)
    at org.apache.ws.security.WSSecurityEngine.processSecurityHeader(WSSecurityEngine.java:396)
    at org.apache.cxf.ws.security.wss4j.WSS4JInInterceptor.handleMessage(WSS4JInInterceptor.java:281)
    at org.apache.cxf.ws.security.wss4j.WSS4JInInterceptor.handleMessage(WSS4JInInterceptor.java:100)
    at org.apache.cxf.phase.PhaseInterceptorChain.doIntercept(PhaseInterceptorChain.java:263)
    at org.apache.cxf.transport.ChainInitiationObserver.onMessage(ChainInitiationObserver.java:122)

But if the remove ${username} and ${password} and provide the username and password directly then it runs fine .. I am not getting how to make it to read the username and password from the properties file .. Please help .. Is there a way to implement ws-security reading from a proprties file ???

Answer 1

Try using:

username1=username
password1=password

and:

<ss:user name="${username1}" password="${password1}" authorities="ROLE_ADMIN" />

as there's maybe an issue with properties with same values as names.

Answer 2

Thanks to David... This was a strange issue and the working solution as David said is :

<ss:user name="${username1}" password="${password1}" authorities="ROLE_ADMIN" />

Where I cannot use the key as username or password

UPDATE I found that the error is caused by the fact that the property " userName " is overridden by the Windows environment variable " USERNAME ".
ref:- https://support.mulesoft.com/s/article/ka434000000TOoDAAW/Bad-credentials-error-when-configuring-the-Spring-Security-Manager-with-properties