I have a Ruby on Rails application which redirects users to the start or login page if they end up at a resource they are not authorized for.
For that, it redirects through a 302 Found.
This does not feel right to me, as for example a successful creation of a resource via POST also returns a 302, with the only difference being that it redirects to the created resource.
On the other hand, it does not seem possible to redirect a user without returning a 30X status code (401/403 in this case).
Am I missing something here, or am I already doing it correctly and this is just the way to go?
Well I'd say that it depends of the context, for an API I'd go for you way, if the user is trying to reach an endpoint without authentication or without enough permissions, I'd return a 401 or 403 respectively.
But for a web application without a separated frontend app, you've no choice to tell to the browser where it has to go next and the only way of doing this is to use redirections (that are only 3xx HTTP codes => https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Status#redirection_messages).
Related
I am trying to create my very first Azure Logic App that simply makes a http post request every hour to a website that has MVC ASP authentication. Whilst setting up the http Logic App action I am using the Basic option to enter the user details.
When it is run, the Logic App keeps failing and returning a 302 (redirect) error; I guess this is because the http post is getting redirected to the account login page.
I have run a test by carrying out a Logic App action to run a http post on a url from the same site that doesn't require user authorisation and it works.
I have also read that I may be able to add configuration to the Logic App action using the Run After rules, but for some reason this option is disabled for my action.
I'd appreciate it if someone with any knowledge in this area, could provide some possible direction.
Thanks.
I have a route in my application that returns results from an LDAP query. I'm using a privileged account for this as it needs to return information that a regular account can't access.
Is there a way to deny users access to this route if they're not using it via one of the application's views? What I'm trying to prevent is a someone reverse engineering it and building their own app to gain access to the PII.
There is no reliable way to say this request originated from this view vs. this request originated from (e.g.) the command line.
An HTTP URL request doesn't have a verifiable source of origination. There is a "referrer" HTTP header which is intended for saying where the previous request originated, but it is not for security and completely spoofable, and not even always included in the request.
Somehow you'll need to authenticate the request. Don't invent your own way. Use devise or some other tested tool to build an authentication strategy, and figure out how to modify your application to work with existing conventions of HTTP request authentication (secure token, cookie based auth, etc.)
Whats difference between Redirect() and RedirectPermanent(). I had read some articles, but I don't understand when we must use Redirect() and RedirectPermanent(). Can you show a pieces of example.
The basic difference between the two is that RedirectPermanent sends the browser an HTTP 301 (Moved Permanently) status code whereas Redirect will send an HTTP 302 status code.
Use RedirectPermanent if the resource has been moved permanently and will no longer be accessible in its previous location. Most browsers will cache this response and perform the redirect automatically without requesting the original resource again.
Use Redirect if the resource may be available in the same location (URL) in the future.
Example
Let's say that you have users in your system. You also have an option to delete existing users. Your website has a resource /user/{userid} that displays the details of a given user. If the user has been deleted, you must redirect to the /user/does-not-exist page. In this case:
If the user will never be restored again, you should use RedirectPermanent so the browser can go directly to /user/does-not-exist in subsequent requests even if the URL points to /user/{userid}.
If the user may be restored in the future, you should use a regular Redirect.
RedirectPermanent is 301 and Redirect is 302 status code
They send different response codes to the browser. 301 is a permanent redirect, 302 a temp one. The end effect is the same, but if the client wants to index links (the most common client that does this will be search engines) then a permanent redirect tells the client to update its records to ignore the old link and start using the new one. A temp redirect tells the client that the page is redirecting for now, but not to delete the old link from its indexing database
I have a web application that I am trying not to recompile since there is little documentation and the environment is a little sensitive.
With that in mind, all I am trying to do is hijack the authentication mechanism to redirect to one of a couple replacement websites. To that end, there is an authentication service and an authentication controller. The website redirects to /auth/login when the user comes unauthenticated.
In the views folder I have built an alternative /auth/login_new.gsp and from there can authenticate the user and get a redirection back to /auth/redirect.gsp at some frequency but not 100%. That redirect page takes a value from the DB and redirects the user to the correct follow on website. When I run authentication from /auth/login, the site ignores the redirect request to /auth/redirect.gsp.
I had set the show pages for all the different controllers to window.location.href="/auth/redirect.gsp" but I can't get it to go there 100%. I have also reset the layout/domain.gsp file to gut the other functionality of the site and script redirect as well. I was getting errors with duplicate redirect attempts, but now I just go to a dead/gutted homepage...
Any suggestions on how I can dodge the recompile?
Thanks
Leif
I am writing web application I am not sure what is the correct response to unauthorized request. For user it is convenient when server response with 302 and redirects him to login page. However somewhere deep inside I feel that 401 is more correct. I am also little afraid if the 302 cannot be misinterpreted by search engines.
So how do you response to your unauthorized requests?
Edit
I am using ASP.NET MVC. This is not important from theoretical point of view. However ASP.NET form authentication use 302 approach.
I also like the behavior when user is redirected after successful login to the page he was requested. I am not sure if this can be implemented with 401 approach easily.
I think the correct response is entirely dependent on the context of the request. In a web application intended for human (not machine) consumption, I prefer to either redirect to login if the user is not authenticated and render an error page if the user is authenticated, but not authorized. I won't typically return an unauthorized response as it contains too little information for the typical user to help them use the application.
For a web service, I would probably use the unauthorized response. Since it is typically consumed by a program on the other end, there is no need to provide a descriptive error message or redirection. The developer using the service should be able to discern the correct changes to make to their code to use the service properly -- assuming I've done a good job of documenting interface usage with examples.
As for search engines, a properly constructed robots.txt file is probably more useful in restricting it to public pages.
401 seems grammatically correct, however a 401 is actually a statement presented back to the browser to ask for credentials - the browser would then expect to check the WWW-Authenticate header so that it could challenge the user to enter the correct details.
To quote the spec.
The request requires user
authentication. The response MUST
include a WWW-Authenticate header
field (section 14.47) containing a
challenge applicable to the requested
resource. The client MAY repeat the
request with a suitable Authorization
header field (section 14.8). If the
request already included Authorization
credentials, then the 401 response
indicates that authorization has been
refused for those credentials. If the
401 response contains the same
challenge as the prior response, and
the user agent has already attempted
authentication at least once, then the
user SHOULD be presented the entity
that was given in the response, since
that entity might include relevant
diagnostic information. HTTP access
authentication is explained in "HTTP
Authentication: Basic and Digest
Access Authentication" [43].
If you do a 302 you at least guarantee that the user will be directed to a page where they can log in if non-standard log in is being used. I wouldn't care much what search engines and the like think about 401's.
Send a 401 response, and include a login form on the page you return with it. (i.e. don't just include a link to the login page, include the whole form right there.)
I have to agree with you that the 401 result is actually the correct response.
That said why not have a custom 401 page which is well designed and shows the unauthorised message as well as a link to the login page, which you could have a 15 second javascript countdown to automatically send them there.
This way you give the correct 401 response to a bot which is told that the page is restricted but a real user gets redirected after being told that they are accessing a secured resource.
Don't bother about the search engines if your site is mainly used by humans. The ideal approach when a user reaches a protected page is to redirect them to a login page, so that they can be forwarded to the protected page after successful login.
You cannot accomplish that with a 401-error, unless you are planning to include a login form in the error page. From the usability point of view, the first case (302) is more reasonable.
Besides, you could write code to redirect humans to your login page, and search engines to 401.
How are the search engines going to be indexing the secured pages in the first place? Unauthorized users, such as bots, shouldn't be getting that far in the first place IMHO.