Spring Security Interview Questions You Should Prepare

Spring Security is a highly customizable and potent security framework. It provides end-to-end authentication, authorization protection against commonplace attacks, and other security features to Java Spring-based enterprise applications. 

This article focuses on Spring Security interview questions that’ll help you nail your next interview!

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In this article, we’ll cover:

• Top Spring Security Interview Questions and Answers
• Basic Spring Security Interview Questions
• Sample Spring Security Interview Questions for Practice
• Spring Security Interview Questions for Experienced Professionals
• FAQs on Spring Security Interview Questions

Top Spring Security Interview Questions and Answers

We’ll begin with some sample Spring Security interview questions and answers to get a basic idea of what to expect.

Q1. In how many ways can dependency injection be done?

Dependency injection can be done in three ways: Setter, Interface, and Constructor Injection.

Q2. List the modules of the Spring framework.

Test, AOP, Web, and Data Access are the modules of the Spring framework.

Q3. Name some security annotations that can involve SpEL.

Some of the security annotations that can use Spring Expression Language or SpEL are @PreAuthorize, @PostAuthorize, @PreFilter, and @PostFilter.

Q4. What are some important filter classes for Spring Security?

Some important Spring Security filters are AnonymousAuthenticationFilter, FilterSecurityInterceptor, and ExceptionTranslationFilter.

Q5. What is the front controller class in Spring MVC called?

The DispatcherServlet class serves as the front controller class of Spring MVC.

Spring Security Interview Questions Basics

Now, here are some sample Spring Security interview questions. See if you can solve them:

1. Describe and explain the use of the following in Spring Security:

• Intercept-URL pattern
• FilterChainProxy
• DelegatingFilterProxy
• Principal
• Spring Security authentication 
• Spring Security authorization
• ProviderManager
• AbstractSecurityInterceptor
• JWT
• Spring Security Filter Chain
• salting 
• Hashing
• AuthenticationManager 
• SpEL
• Method security 
• OAuth2 Authorization code grant type 
• OAuth2 
• OAuth2 Client Credentials Grant
• OAuth2 Password Grant
• SecurityContext
• SecurityContext Holder 
• Session management
• Digest authentication

2. Differentiate between the following in the context of Spring Security:

• ROLE_USER and ROLE_ANONYMOUS in an intercept-URL configuration.
• @PreAuthorize and @Secured
• @Secured and @RolesAllowed.

Sample Spring Security Interview Questions for Practice

Here are some Spring Security interview questions. Ensure you can solve them before your interview:

• Explain the types of advice in AOP.
• Talk in detail about the View Resolver class?
• Tell me some advantages of Spring AOP.
• Explain the Spring Security Architecture using Spring Boot.
• What’s a public key feature?
• Describe the usage of the Spring Boot Security AuthenticationHandler class.
• Explain the role of MVC in Spring.
• Does the order in the intercept-URL pattern matter? If yes, what’s the correct order?
• Talk about some essential features of Spring Security.
• What are some predefined filters used in spring security, and what do they do?
• How does the security filter chain work?
• Which is the most widely used view resolver class?
• Explain auto wiring in Spring.
• What’s JCA in Java?

Spring Security Interview Questions for Experienced Professionals

Let’s move a step further with some technical Spring Security interview questions for experienced professionals:

• How would you configure Spring Security using Spring MVC?
• How would you configure Spring Security using Spring Boot?
• How would you implement the OAuth2 Client Credentials Grant using Spring Boot Security?
• How would you implement the OAuth2 Authorization code grant type using Spring Boot Security?
• How would you configure DelegatingFilterProxy?
• How would you implement Spring Boot and Basic Authentication?
• How would you refresh an expired JSON Web Token using Spring Boot Security?
• How would you implement JWT using Spring Boot Security
• How would you implement OAuth2 Password Grant using Spring Boot Security?
• How would you create a Custom Login Page using Spring Boot Security?
• How would you configure Spring Security with in-memory configuration?
• How would you do authentication against database tables using Spring Boot Security?

We hope that this list of Spring Security interview questions will help you crack your tech interview. To prepare better, practice some mock interviews and read our guide to 12 key preparation tips to crack an interview.

FAQs on Spring Security Interview Questions

Q1. Does the spring framework perform weaving at compile time?

The spring framework does not perform weaving at compile time. It performs weaving at runtime.

Q2. Do you think the Spring framework supports all the join points?

No. The spring framework only supports the process execution join points.

Q3. What are the types of Spring Security?

Some Spring modules that provide security to the Spring-based applications include Spring Security, Spring Security OAuth, Spring Cloud Security, Spring Security SAML, and Spring Security Kerberos.

Q4. Why is security needed in applications?

Applications are now often accessible over multiple networks, connected to the cloud, and may be used on a shared network. Applications need security to counter any vulnerabilities to security threats or breaches.

Q5. What is the advantage of Spring Security?

Spring Security is portable and offers servlet API integration. It provides configuration support to Java and thorough support to tasks like authorization and authentication.

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