Bonus Spring Security Questions and Answers

30. How Spring security handles user authentication?

Spring security handles user authentication by verifying and managing credentials, filters. Spring Security has UserDetailsService, this service takes the username and returns an object with the user details.

31. Explain potential web application vulnerabilities and how Spring Security mitigates them?

Spring Security protects against common web application vulnerabilities like:

• SQL injection
• Cross Site Scripting (XSS)
• Cross Site Request Forgery (XSRF)

Spring Security mitigates them through filters and Content Security Policy.

32. How to implement Spring Security with in-memory user storage.

To implement Spring Security with in-memory user storage, follow the below steps:

Step 1: Add Starter dependency in XML file.

 spring-boot-starter-security

Step 2: In Spring Security configuration, enable in-memory authentication.

auth.inMemoryAthentication()

Know more about Spring Security – In-Memory Authentication

33. Explain @PreAuthorize and @PostAuthorize annotations.

• @PreAuthorize: It is used to secure a method before it is executed.
• @PostAuthorize: It is used to secure a method after it is executed.

Know more about Spring Security – Annotations

34. How to troubleshoot common Spring Security errors?

To troubleshoot common Spring security errors,

• Enable debug logging
• Check Dependencies
• Thoroughly check error messages
• Check roles and authorities
• Password encoding Verification
• Check Session Management

35. Explain Salting and its usage.

• Salting is a process in Spring Security to combine random data with a password before password hashing.
• By increasing its uniqueness and complexity, it improves Hashing.

Note: Salting is automatically applied since Spring Security version 3.1.

Spring Security is a highly flexible and customizable security framework designed for Java applications, particularly those developed using the Spring Framework. It offers extensive security services for enterprise-level Java EE-based software applications. At its Core, Spring Security is concerned with two vital aspects of software application security: authentication, which involves verifying users’ identities, and authorization, which involves determining the actions that users are allowed to perform.

In this article, We will look into 30+ Spring Interview Questions and Answers tailored for both freshers and experienced professionals with 1, 5, and 10 years of experience. Here we cover everything about Spring Security Interview Questions including the basics of authentication and authorization, configuration strategies, cross-site scripting prevention, securing REST APIs, and best practices for using OAuth2 and JWT with Spring Security.