Detect critical base permissions that should not be in application roles
Existing permissions
Wildgrowth of characters used in user IDs can have negative effects. Set a bar on it by limiting the character set in the first place. In the SAP system, depending on the release of the SAP_BASIS software component, you can create users whose names may contain "alternative" spaces. In Unicode systems, there are different spaces, which are represented by different hexadecimal values. The usual space has a hexadecimal value of 20, but there are alternative spaces (wide spaces), which can be recognised, for example, as double width or not at all as character spacing. You can use these alternate spaces when entering the user ID by pressing the Alt key. For example, the key combination (Alt) + 0160 can create a space with a non-breaking space. You can also create a user whose ID consists only of alternate spaces. Users with such IDs will write all change documents, but the IDs can still cause confusion if, for example, they are not recognisable as a user ID or if it appears that no user is displayed for the change document. In addition, certain special characters may cause problems in other applications (e.g. in transport management). Therefore, we will show you how to prevent such problems by limiting the character set.
Depending on your SAP NetWeaver release status, you must include SAP Note 1731549 or a support package. After that, it is no longer possible to create new users whose names consist only of variants of spaces or non-visible special characters. Changes to existing users are still possible. The customising switch BNAME_RESTRICT, also included in SAP Note 1731549, allows you to control whether you want to allow alternate spaces at certain locations of the user ID.
Authorization objects
In 2020, there were 82,761 cases of computer fraud in Germany. Five years earlier, the number of cases was significantly lower - 23,562 cases - and have steadily increased from then on. The smaller the group of people with access, the smaller the risk of data falling into the wrong hands. Efficient and well thought-out authorization management plays a key role in minimizing risk and is a good way of protecting against unauthorized access, data misuse and industrial espionage. Without a coherent, well thought-out concept, the regulation of accesses and authorizations for the users or key users of an SAP system is a serious security vulnerability.
In the SU53 you get the entry of the user that is stored there, and this may be old. So it is better to let the user himself display the authorization error via the menu. Maybe you create a small docu for all your users how to display the error and where to send it, so a "Cooking Recipe: How To...". In the SU53 error excerpt, the first thing that is displayed is the authorization that the user is missing. So this object has to be analyzed. In the further part of the error message, the permissions assigned to the user are displayed. This information can be used to classify the user with his role set, where he belongs etc. Finally, in our case 1, we now have the missing authorization and must now clarify whether the user should receive this authorization or not. In addition the specialist department must be contacted, which has to decide whether the user receives the permission! It can happen that the problem reported by the user is not an authorization problem at all. Then the last authorization error is displayed in the SU53 area, which is not the cause of the error at all. Therefore, it is always good to have a screen image of the actual error message sent to you as well. It is not uncommon for developers to issue an authorization error of the type "No authorization for..." from their programs, but they have not checked this with a standard authorization check at all, so that the error is not an actual authorization error.
Authorizations can also be assigned via "Shortcut for SAP systems".
Encryption is intended to ensure the confidentiality of the data, i.e. that only the recipient of the e-mail should be able to read it.
The website www.sap-corner.de offers a lot of useful information about SAP authorizations.
The sample function module BTE for the event 1650 can be found in the FIBF transaction in the area of Publish-&-Subscribe interfaces (Environment > Information System (P/S)).