HTTP Basic authentication fails due to changed JBossWebRealm defaults (AS6->AS7)

The change of the JBossWebRealm allRolesMode property from authOnly to strict leads to HTTP Basic authentication failures. Accessing HTTP Basic protected resources always returns a 403 forbidden response when using the security-constraint configuration below which worked well under (JBoss AS4 and AS6).

The security-constraint inside the web.xml is defined as follws:

<security-constraint>
   <web-resource-collection>
      <web-resource-name>protected resources</web-resource-name>
      <url-pattern>/protected/*</url-pattern>
   </web-resource-collection>
   <auth-constraint>
      <description>any rolle allowed</description>
      <role-name>*</role-name>
   </auth-constraint>
</security-constraint>

Activating trace logging revealed the following message:

13:35:59,019 TRACE [org.jboss.as.web.security.JBossWebRealm] (http-localhost-127.0.0.1-8080-1) hasRole:RealmBase says:false::Authz framework says:true:final=false

In AS6 the meaning of <role-name>*</role-name> was determined by the allRolesMode property of the JBossWebRealm which was configured in jbossweb.sar/server.xml and set to authOnly (= Allow any authenticated user) by default.

In AS7 the default of allRolesMode seems to be strict (= Use the strict servlet spec interpretation which requires that the user have one of the web-app/security-role/role-name).

The workaround to add all security-rolles in the web.xml described in one of the forum references (https://community.jboss.org/message/617196#617196) is no viable option for applications with a large number of dynamically changing roles.

So please provide a configuration option for the allRolesMode property to allow for changes of the default behavior and ease the migration from earlier JBoss AS versions.