Issue in applying SSL selectively to Login JSP Page--Session getting lost.

Question

Hi,
I am facing some issues with SSL configuration on my web site running on tomcat 5.5. I am using jdk 1.5 and form based authentication with JAAS framework.
The SSL configuration is working perfectly when applied to complete web site, but starts giving problem when applied selectively to some JSP pages. At present I am trying to apply SSL just on the login page.
When the login screen loads up, the URL in the browser has a protocol "*https*", as expected, but it doesn't gets changed to "*http*" once the user has successfully logged in. Why is the automatic change from https to http not ocurring?
Also I want to know which is the default page, tomcat will direct the logged in user to, once successfully authenticated using form based login; Is there any way to change this default page to some other page. It looks like that tomcat automatically directs to index.html , once the user has been successfully authenticated, but I am not so sure. My index.html page is having 4 frames; the source of these frames are different JSP pages, which are not under SSL.
My aim is to apply SSL just on login.jsp so that password doesn't travel in clear text. Once the user is authenticated he should see index.html and the address bar's URL should change it's protocol from https to http.
Please, find below the code in my web.xml
<security-constraint>
<web-resource-collection>
<web-resource-name>CWA Application</web-resource-name>
<url-pattern>/about.jsp</url-pattern>
<url-pattern>/admin_listds.jsp</url-pattern>
<http-method>DELETE</http-method>
<http-method>GET</http-method>
<http-method>POST</http-method>
<http-method>PUT</http-method>
</web-resource-collection>
<auth-constraint>
<role-name>*</role-name>
</auth-constraint>
<user-data-constraint>
<transport-guarantee>NONE</transport-guarantee>
</user-data-constraint>
</security-constraint>
<security-constraint>
<web-resource-collection>
<url-pattern>/*login.jsp*</url-pattern>
<http-method>GET</http-method>
<http-method>POST</http-method>
</web-resource-collection>
<auth-constraint>
<role-name>*</role-name>
</auth-constraint>
<user-data-constraint>
<transport-guarantee>CONFIDENTIAL</transport-guarantee>
</user-data-constraint>
</security-constraint>
<login-config>
<auth-method>FORM</auth-method>
<realm-name>CWA Application</realm-name>
<form-login-config>
<form-login-page>/login.jsp</form-login-page>
<form-error-page>/login.jsp?error=true</form-error-page>
</form-login-config>
</login-config>
<welcome-file-list>
<welcome-file>login.jsp</welcome-file>
</welcome-file-list>
My login. jsp has below code:
<form name="login" method="POST" action='<%= response.encodeURL(*"j_security_check*") %>' >
<tr>
<td width="100%">
<table width="260" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="1">
<tr>
<td align="left" valign="top" rowspan="4"><img src="images/space.gif" width="15" height="5"></td>
<td align="right" class="login-user" nowrap ><p>User name: </p></td>
<td align="left" valign="top"><input maxLength="64" name="j_username" size="20"></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right" nowrap class="login-user"><p>Password: </p>
</td>
<td align="left" valign="top">
<input maxLength=\"64\" tabindex="2" type="password" name="j_password" size="20">
</td>
</tr>
</form>
The entries in my server.xml are following:
<Connector port="8080" maxHttpHeaderSize="8192"
maxThreads="150" minSpareThreads="25" maxSpareThreads="75"
enableLookups="false" redirectPort="8443" acceptCount="100"
connectionTimeout="20000" disableUploadTimeout="true" />
<Connector port="8443" protocol="HTTP/1.1" SSLEnabled="true"
maxThreads="150" scheme="https" secure="true"
keystoreFile="${java.home}\lib\security\cacerts" keystorePass="changeit"
clientAuth="false" sslProtocol="TLS" />
I have gone through the http://forums.sun.com/thread.jspa?threadID=197150 and tried implementing it; The filter as explained in the thread does gets called but the session values are still lost.
Please note I am using javascript to go from secure "https" to "http" once the user has successfully logged in The javascript code is as below:
top.location.href="http://localhost:8080/qtv/index.html." ;
If I use response.sendRedirect("http://localhost:8080/qtv/index.html") for going to non-secure mode, the index.html page does not gets loaded properly. (Please note that my index.html is made of *4 frames*, as explained earlier. This is a legacy code and frames can't be removed).
The reason for index.html not getting loaded properly is that the Address bar URL does NOT change its URL and protocol from https (https://localhost:8443/qtv/index.html ) to "*http*" (http://localhost:8080/qtv/index.html) when esponse.sendRedirect() is used ;this is the default behaviour of response.sendRedirect(). And because the protocol in address bar is https, index.html is not able to load the other JSP's in it's frames because of cross-frame-scripting security issues (The other JSP's to be loaded in frames are are NOT secure as discussed earlier).
Please let know if any way out.
Thanks,
Masaai

Answer 1

Hi
try to set the maximum interval between requests
eg:
session.setMaxInactiveInterval(6000);
vis