Assertion fails with invalid xml character error

Products

• CA Single Sign On Federation (SiteMinder)
• CA Single Sign On Agents (SiteMinder)
• CA Single Sign On Secure Proxy Server (SiteMinder)
• SITEMINDER

Issue/Introduction

An Assertion Generator Plugin (AGP) is in use and has been working without issues for a long time, however, some users are no longer able to access the application and instead receive a 500 error.  In the Policy Server trace log the following message is logged:
Error happens in running the plugin customization method. Leaving Assertion Generator Framework. Exception: java.lang.Exception: java.io.IOException: The character ' ' is an invalid XML character

Environment

All Supported Policy Server releases

Cause

When viewing the log message in a simple text editor or in Splunk, the invalid character was shown as a space, however, copying and pasting the log message into a different application revealed that the invalid character was .

Resolution

This character, , (question mark in a box) is not a valid XML character.  Remove values like these from any user attributes that need to be included in the assertions.

Additional Information

There are several xml validation tools available on the web.  Use one of them whenever there is a question regarding the xml validity of a character or of the document as a whole.