Azure requires Scope in client credentials grant - oauth-2.0

I have 2 registered apps in Azure AD - one is a webapi that receives a webhook from SendGrid with an access token. The other is the registration of the SendGrid app so that it can request a token using Client Credentials grant. Admin consent has been granted for the exposed API to the SendGrid app registration.
In SendGrid's webhook configuration on their server (the service is in beta), we are asked for client_id, client_secret and token endpoint. We also configure the web api resource url that it will eventually send the token and its webhook data.
In Azure identity platform, Scope is required but in the RFC it is optional. SendGrid does not configure nor send the scope. So these implementations appear not to be able to work together.
2 questions:
If you do not send a scope to some other RFC compliant token endpoint, presume this means the requester can be authorized but the jwt has nothing for audience?
If according to the RFC scope is not required, can the resource server check "this was meant for me"?
I understand we can validate the issuer and any extra claims but it seems odd that one of the validations that is emphasized most in Azure AD, Auth0 documentation etc is "audience" yet the RFC allows the scope to be missing in the token request. One of the answers here again emphasizes this requirement.
I wondered if a scope could be configured in the client app registration manifest if it is missing in the request but could not find anything that looks like that.
Thanks in advance for insights.

I'm not sure if this will fix your issue, but have you tried on the app registration with the expose an api configured, under it there is a authorized client applications section, try adding the other app registration id in there. I have anecdotally seen that even without requesting the scope, it will return that scope in the token.

Related

Extending OAuth2 MS AD access_token data

I am missing some understanding of OAuth2 access_token hope someone can explain or guide me to what I am missing.
I am using Microsoft Azure AD as an authentication provider for my application, I used the returned id_token after successful authentication to extend it with some additional data custom to my application (to facilitate authorization).
I am doing this throw JWT.sign, I decode the data from id_token and add data then I sign it using a secret key saved at the server.
My question is, can I do the same for access_token? When I tried to do so, I get unauthorized.
Am I doing something wrong? Or this is not possible? And why is this happening, I don't find any request made to MS to validated my new signed access_token.
You should never change tokens issued - this is not a correct thing to do. But your point about using domain specific claims is totally valid - all real world systems need these for their authorization.
OPTION 1
Some specialist providers can reach out at time of token issuance and contact your APIs, to get domain specific data to include in tokens. See this Curity article for how that works. I don't think Azure AD supports this though.
PRIVACY
It is best to avoid revealing sensitive data in readable tokens returned to internet clients. If you include name, email etc in ID tokens or access tokens this may be flagged up in PEN tests, since it is Personally Identifiable Information and revealing it can conflict with regulations such as GDPR.
Curity recommends protecting access tokens by issuing them in an opaque reference token format - via the phantom token pattern.
OPTION 2
An option that would work fir Azure AD is to adopt the following approaches:
Look up extra domain specific claims in your API when an access token is first received, then cache results for further API requests with the same access token. See this Azure AD Code Sample class of mine for some code that builds a custom ClaimsPrincipal. Note that the API continues to validate the JWT on every request.
If the UI needs extra domain specific claims then serve them from your API, which can return both OAuth User Info and domain specific data from its ClaimsPrincipal to the UI. See this API controller class for how that looks. Personally I always do this and never read ID tokens in UIs - which should also never read access tokens.
Applications interacting with Azure AD, receive ID tokens after authenticating the users. The applications use access tokens and refresh tokens while interacting with APIs.
The id_token is a JSON Web Token (JWT) which has user profile
attributes in the form of claims. The ID Token is consumed by the
application and used to get user information like the user's name,
email.
The Access Token on the otherhand is a credential that can be
used by an application to access an API.
So if you need application to access api, there the access token is used and you may follow the suggestion steps provided by Tiny Wang
Similar to id tokens, access tokens are also signed, but they are not
encrypted. As per IETF OAuth (RFC 6749) standard specification ,
access token can have different formats and structures for each
services whereas, id token should be JWT format.
To validate an id_token or an access_token, your app has to validate
both the token's signature and the claims. To validate access tokens,
your app should also validate the issuer, the audience, and the
signing tokens.
So in production application, you should get id token by specifying
“id_token+code” or “id_token+token” as response_type to verify
whether the authentication is correctly succeeded. It means it uses
the id_token for authentication and “code” to exchange access_token
to access the resource for authorization.
In short id_token is used to identify the authenticated user, and the
access token is used to prove access rights to protected resources.
Refer this for the information regarding access token and id token.

Authenticating using Auth2 when there are several resources

I need to implement a single sign on of a user, which can get services from several different services.
When there was only a single service, the user could log in from the client side, send the request to a backend, gets a URL back to a JWT token issuer server, from which he can get a token which he sends back to the BE and he is now authenticated.
What is now changing, is that he needs to get more services. Each service has its own frontend and backend, but everyone are using the same issuer. Meaning there are both services with FE and BE, and also there is another general BE for the authentication.
What is the correct flow to authenticate in the scenario? Can the general BE issue a token for the client for each of the required services? Or should the BE respond the client with the services's BE url and let the client itself send an authentication token response from each service? Or something else?
I assume you mean OpenID Connect, since OAuth2.0 is not used for authentication and does not require the use of JWTs. Also, in your scenario there are not multiple resources, but multiple clients / relying parties.
Using the OpendID Connect Implicit flow, the issuer will eventually send an id token (JWT) to the user's browser. This JWT can be used to authenticate to a service. Each JWT will contain an aud (audience) claim to identify the service it should be used for.
Using the Authorization Code flow, the issuer will eventually send an authorization code to the user's browser. The user will send the code to a service, and the service will send the code plus its client id to the issuer in exchange for an id token (JWT) and an access token.
In both cases, the service identifies the end user using the iss (issuer) claim, and verifies the JWT by checking the signature, expiry and audience.

Azure AD client credentials flow permission grants

When using Azure AD client credentials flow, should the oauth2 endpoint (of azure ad) produce a bearer token if the client application has NOT been granted permission to access the requested resource? I was certain it used to error in this case, but I'm now seeing different behavior (a valid bearer token is now provided even if the client application does NOT have permission to the resource application).
We have always allowed tokens to be issues between two services when using the client credential flow. This scenario is basically S2S between Daemon Services.
The important thing to note here is that the built in authorization model for AAD takes advantage of SCP and ROLE claims, which appear in the token and can help your API understand what permissions it has been granted by the user.
However, we want to also allow you, in this situation, to use your own authorization layer. For example, you could simply white-list the App ID of the client application to allow it to make S2S calls to your API, without the presence of any ROLE claims in the token. The token issuance behavior here enables this scenario.

OpenId Connect logout for stateless SSO

I am trying to implement OpenId Connect for SSO in one of my projects. However, I am a bit struggling with the case where I would like to validate OpenId JWT token on Resource Server side to make it stateless. If user tries to logout, authorization Server will know about the user logout (Accordingly OpenId Connect Session Management spec). But how should Authorization Server tell Resource Server that the user's token is not valid anymore? It is a case when user after log out out goes to Resource Server with his OpenId token and gets access. That is weird and I could not find any solution across Internet. Please help me to organize stateless security with central logout.
You can use Token Introspection endpoint to determine whether the access token passed is valid or not. The resource server can make a call to OP's introspection endpoint to validate the token before giving access to the resource. In order to effectively validate the token, the resource server should :
Be a registered client with OP and have Same / similar Scope as SPA app (Implicit flow app) to validate the scopes passed to it and
Have access to Introspection endpoint
The are more details in the above linked Spec for further understanding.
P.S. The answer that I wrote earlier has some other relevant references.
you can use jwt bearer flow, where you can pass ID token/Assertion token to OP in order to generate access token.

oAuth2 Mobile App Grant

I'm building a native Mobile App that connects to a REST API.
I'm looking at this demo oAuth App to use as a guide for my Authentication/Authorisation layer.
When the user comes to the App for the first time I want to provide them with a username and password box.
After they hit submit I want to the App to be supplied with an access token, and a list of permissions (scopes?) that the user is permitted to perform.
I've read lots about the oAuth2 specification but am confused as to which flow to use.
I can't use the Resource Owner Password Credentials Grant because I can't trust the Native App with the Client Secret.
I don't want to use the Implicit Grant, as I don't want to present the user with a "Do you authorise this App?" web window.
I've looked into the JWT Bearer flow, and think it might be what I need as it doesn't require the Client ID/Secret. However I can't find any examples where this flow returns permissions (scopes?) that the user can perform.
Edit #1:
I am confused as to the use of Scope. The specification says-
The authorization server MAY fully or partially ignore the scope
requested by the client, based on the authorization server policy or
the resource owner's instructions. If the issued access token scope
is different from the one requested by the client, the authorization
server MUST include the "scope" response parameter to inform the
client of the actual scope granted.
If the client omits the scope parameter when requesting
authorization, the authorization server MUST either process the
request using a pre-defined default value or fail the request
indicating an invalid scope. The authorization server SHOULD
document its scope requirements and default value (if defined).
From that can my Client request a list of ALL Scopes, and then the Authorization Server give a Response with the ones the User actually has?
Thanks for your help, Tom.
You list two assumptions about OAuth 2.0 flows that are not true:
the Resource Owner Password Credentials Grant can be used with a public client i.e. a native app that doesn't have a client secret
usage of the Implicit Grant does does not imply that it requires explicit consent; that is to the discretion of the Authorization Server implementation; in an enterprise setting or a setting where the same party controls the client and the Authorization Server, that may be omitted
But since the Implicit grant comes with security considerations, for native apps it is typically better to use the Authorization Code grant.
Scopes are a way for the Client to request certain permissions. The Resource Owner can grant the Client permissions that relate to these scopes (explicitly or implicitly). Since the Client will change its behaviour based on what permissions it gets, it is assumed that there's some shared understanding between Client, Resource Server and Authorization Server about what Scopes related to. There's no predefined semantics in the OAuth 2.0 specification, it is up to the implementation.

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