Authentication and Authorization

Welcome to the final lesson in securing your WebSocket endpoints! Today, we'll dive into how to authenticate users and authorize their actions.

Authentication is about verifying who a user is (e.g., logging in). Authorization is about determining what an authenticated user is allowed to do (e.g., access admin features).

Both are vital for preventing unauthorized access and ensuring data integrity in your real-time applications.

When using Spring Security, it cleverly bridges your existing HTTP session authentication to your WebSocket sessions. This means if a user is already logged in via your web application, they are automatically authenticated for WebSocket communication as well.

Spring associates the authenticated user's Principal (representing the user) with their WebSocket session, making it easy to identify who is sending or receiving messages.