How to fix Tomcat WARNING: An attempt was made to authenticate the locked user?

Question

I am using Tomcat 7 with for Spring and JPA Application, database MySQL. Everything is working fine.but sometime realm.LockOutRealm authenticate problem will arise. I also used connection pooling in my application like:

persistence.xml:

<properties>
      <property name="hibernate.connection.username" value="---"/>
      <property name="hibernate.connection.driver_class" value="com.mysql.jdbc.Driver"/>
      <property name="hibernate.connection.password" value="----------"/>
      <property name="hibernate.connection.url" value="jdbc:mysql://----------?autoReconnect=true"/>
      <!--Connection Pooling c3p0 configuration-->
      <!--Minimum number of JDBC connections in the pool. Hibernate default: 1-->
      <property name="hibernate.c3p0.min_size" value="5"/>
      <!--Maximum number of JDBC connections in the pool. Hibernate default: 100-->
      <property name="hibernate.c3p0.max_size" value="20"/>
      <!--When an idle connection is removed from the pool (in second). Hibernate default: 0, never expire.-->
      <property name="hibernate.c3p0.timeout" value="300"/>
      <!--Number of prepared statements will be cached. Increase performance. Hibernate default: 0 , caching is disable.-->
      <property name="hibernate.c3p0.max_statements" value="50"/>
      <!--idle time in seconds before a connection is automatically validated. Hibernate default: 0-->
      <property name="hibernate.c3p0.idle_test_period" value="300"/>
</properties>

and realm in server.xml looks like :

<!-- Use the LockOutRealm to prevent attempts to guess user passwords
           via a brute-force attack -->
      <Realm className="org.apache.catalina.realm.LockOutRealm">
        <!-- This Realm uses the UserDatabase configured in the global JNDI
             resources under the key "UserDatabase".  Any edits
             that are performed against this UserDatabase are immediately
             available for use by the Realm.  -->
        <Realm className="org.apache.catalina.realm.UserDatabaseRealm"
               resourceName="UserDatabase"/>
      </Realm>

      <Host name="localhost"  appBase="webapps"
            unpackWARs="true" autoDeploy="true">

        <!-- SingleSignOn valve, share authentication between web applications
             Documentation at: /docs/config/valve.html -->
        <!--
        <Valve className="org.apache.catalina.authenticator.SingleSignOn" />
        -->

I search on net but couldnot find solution about this. is there any one on brute force attack and if there is than what is the solution of this.

Error log in Catelina.out in is:

Mar 02, 2013 3:28:34 PM org.apache.catalina.realm.LockOutRealm authenticate
WARNING: An attempt was made to authenticate the locked user "tomcat"
Mar 02, 2013 3:29:49 PM org.apache.catalina.realm.LockOutRealm authenticate
WARNING: An attempt was made to authenticate the locked user "tomcat"
Mar 02, 2013 3:31:04 PM org.apache.catalina.realm.LockOutRealm authenticate
WARNING: An attempt was made to authenticate the locked user "tomcat"
Mar 02, 2013 3:37:25 PM org.apache.catalina.realm.LockOutRealm authenticate
WARNING: An attempt was made to authenticate the locked user "admin"
Mar 02, 2013 3:38:47 PM org.apache.catalina.realm.LockOutRealm authenticate
WARNING: An attempt was made to authenticate the locked user "admin"
Mar 02, 2013 3:39:58 PM org.apache.catalina.realm.LockOutRealm authenticate
WARNING: An attempt was made to authenticate the locked user "admin"
Mar 02, 2013 3:46:31 PM org.apache.catalina.realm.LockOutRealm authenticate
WARNING: An attempt was made to authenticate the locked user "coyote"
Mar 02, 2013 3:52:49 PM org.apache.catalina.realm.LockOutRealm authenticate
WARNING: An attempt was made to authenticate the locked user "manager"
Mar 02, 2013 3:59:03 PM org.apache.catalina.realm.LockOutRealm authenticate
WARNING: An attempt was made to authenticate the locked user "administrator"
Mar 02, 2013 4:06:38 PM org.apache.catalina.realm.LockOutRealm authenticate
WARNING: An attempt was made to authenticate the locked user "root"
Mar 02, 2013 4:07:52 PM org.apache.catalina.realm.LockOutRealm authenticate
WARNING: An attempt was made to authenticate the locked user "root"
Mar 02, 2013 4:09:17 PM org.apache.catalina.realm.LockOutRealm authenticate
WARNING: An attempt was made to authenticate the locked user "root"
Mar 02, 2013 4:10:35 PM org.apache.catalina.realm.LockOutRealm authenticate
WARNING: An attempt was made to authenticate the locked user "root"
Mar 02, 2013 4:11:47 PM org.apache.catalina.realm.LockOutRealm authenticate
WARNING: An attempt was made to authenticate the locked user "root"
Mar 02, 2013 4:13:02 PM org.apache.catalina.realm.LockOutRealm authenticate
WARNING: An attempt was made to authenticate the locked user "root"
Mar 02, 2013 4:14:17 PM org.apache.catalina.realm.LockOutRealm authenticate
WARNING: An attempt was made to authenticate the locked user "root"
Mar 02, 2013 4:15:34 PM org.apache.catalina.realm.LockOutRealm authenticate
WARNING: An attempt was made to authenticate the locked user "root"

> Hibernate: select

---------------------------------- 
javax.persistence.PersistenceException: 
org.hibernate.exception.JDBCConnectionException: could not execute query

(DelegatingConstructorAccessorImpl.java:45)
    at java.lang.reflect.Constructor.newInstance(Constructor.java:525)
    at com.mysql.jdbc.Util.handleNewInstance(Util.java:409)
    at com.mysql.jdbc.SQLError.createCommunicationsException(SQLError.java:1118)
    at com.mysql.jdbc.MysqlIO.send(MysqlIO.java:3321)
    at com.mysql.jdbc.MysqlIO.sendCommand(MysqlIO.java:1940)
    at com.mysql.jdbc.MysqlIO.sqlQueryDirect(MysqlIO.java:2113)
    at com.mysql.jdbc.ConnectionImpl.execSQL(ConnectionImpl.java:2568)
    at com.mysql.jdbc.PreparedStatement.executeInternal(PreparedStatement.java:2113)
    at com.mysql.jdbc.PreparedStatement.executeQuery(PreparedStatement.java:2275)
    at com.mchange.v2.c3p0.impl.NewProxyPreparedStatement.executeQuery(NewProxyPreparedStatement.java:116)
    at org.hibernate.jdbc.AbstractBatcher.getResultSet(AbstractBatcher.java:186)
    at org.hibernate.loader.Loader.getResultSet(Loader.java:1787)
    at org.hibernate.loader.Loader.doQuery(Loader.java:674)
    at org.hibernate.loader.Loader.doQueryAndInitializeNonLazyCollections(Loader.java:236)
    at org.hibernate.loader.Loader.doList(Loader.java:2220)
    ... 39 more
Caused by: java.net.SocketException: Broken pipe

Answer 1

The warning above means that you fail to authenticate the user tomcat more than once. Tomcat suspects that it is brute force attack on the user tomcat.

What authentication you use in your application? What login-config you use in web.xml of the application?

The default configuration of resourceName "UserDatabase" is the file conf/tomcat-users.xml. Did you change the configuration of resourceName "UserDatabase"?

You can find the configuration of the resource UserDatabase in the file server.xml:

<Resource name="UserDatabase" auth="Container"
              type="org.apache.catalina.UserDatabase"
              description="User database that can be updated and saved"
              factory="org.apache.catalina.users.MemoryUserDatabaseFactory"
              pathname="conf/tomcat-users.xml" />

By default all users are commented. To be able to work with users from the XML file you should uncomment. Then, you will be able to login with user tomcat:

<tomcat-users>
  <role rolename="tomcat"/>
  <user username="tomcat" password="tomcat" roles="tomcat"/>
</tomcat-users>

Best regards,

Michael

Answer 2

_{(To the 16k visitors to this page:}

Since this is on SO, I'll assume readers are developers.)

This error indicates that you have a script / user trying to login with an incorrect user/pass. Fixing this is simple, simply add the correct user/pass pair to the file ApacheTomcat\conf\tomcat-users.xml and restart the server.

Also ensure that you have the role properly set. E.g. if you're sending basic HTTP auth requests to localhost:8080/manager, you'll need the manager-gui role:

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'?>
<tomcat-users>
  <role rolename="manager-gui"/>
  <user username="foobar" password="foobar" roles="tomcat,role1, manager-gui "/>
</tomcat-users>