I'm looking to add 2 factor login to my Silex app.
However, I'm having some road blocks on how to get this working correctly.
my biggest sticking point is having the firewall not fully log the user in and instead direct them to a page to confirm their identity.
I've thought about using Symfony Guard, but looking at the documentation, I didn't see anything that would let me prevent the user from being logged in.
I don't have any code yet, at this point, I'm just tying to design the flow and after I have a concrete execution plan, I was going to then begin writing code.
I remember reading a blog post about doing this in Sf2, but I cannot find it now. Here's the gist:
the login part is the usual one
create a listener for the controller event, and redirect to the 2FA controller unless the user has a role (ROLE_GOOGLE_AUTHENTICATED or similar) and unless the user is requesting that route
on that url render a form and check if it's a post, and if the code verifies add that role to the user
I'm sure you can adapt it for silex. You can also check the bundles that exist for Sf2 on how they work exactly.
Related
This question pertains to the Visual Studio generated code that you get when you open an ASP.NET MVC application in Visual Studio Community 2015 RC.
In this generated code, what is the purpose of the actions SendCode and VerifyCode on the AccountController?
I have read their code but the time investment it requires to read this code and look up the meaning of the functions called within these from the MSDN -- all of which I have done -- and then open their views to see what they do, and then look for references of where they're called -- is too much for the benefit. Microsoft left so many comments in this generated code elsewhere. They could have left a few comments explaining the workflow of these actions and told us where they're meant to be (and are currently) called from.
One big reason for confusion is: these actions aren't called or redirected to from anywhere else.
Anyway, my understanding is that they're there to ask a visitor who has just registered on the website with his email address, to verify his email address by requesting that he be sent a code.
But then in the source code for the SendCode action, there's this drop-down in the code that gets the registered two-factor authentication providers in the View (which I have only seen by reading the code. I haven't been able to run this action because it isn't called from anywhere and I don't know how to get to it with the right arguments).
This leads me to suspect that this has to do with two-factor authentication by email and/or phone.
But two-factor authentication by phone is already covered in the ManageController.AddPhone action and the ManagerController.EnableTwoFactorAuthentication, right?
It seems like one needs an old priest and a young priest to understand what's in the generated code.
Could someone please tell me what these two actions are for and where are they (supposed to be) called from? What's the entire workflow for these two actions?
I believe these methods are in place if you wish to implement signup validation logic. For example, a user signs up to your website and you require them to validate their information (usually email address) before approving their signup.
So the flow would be:
User signs up
System creates user but doesn't activate account yet
System sends email to user email with validation link (AccountController.SendCode())
User opens email
User clicks validation link which navigates to validation page on your website
Page validates user information (AccountController.CheckCode())
If validation is successful, account is activated
If validation is not successful, error message is displayed
I'm not sure if you've seen this post already but it outlines how you can implement something similar using SendGrid as your email provider.
the purpose of sendcode and verifycode is in case you want to leverage MFA (multi factor authentication). hence, after login, you would be redirected to send code where you decide whether to send a code via i.e. mobile or email and once the code is sent, you get to verify code to enter the code you requested to complete the process.
Let's imagine I have following scenario
User receives an email that there is a new item waiting for her
Clicks on a link and is able to either confirm or reject item (details skipped)
Can then access a list of all her items
The trick is that I would like to allow all this happen without user signing in but then limit access to other parts of the website (like sending an item to another user)
How I see it is that:
when user clicks a link she is signed in but only on tier 1 - with access only to confirm/reject action and read only to index of items (that's when Devise session is created)
when user wants to access other part of the website the sign in page is presented
when user comes to the website just by typing in the url http://example.com and wants to access own account she is asked to sign in.
after sign in session is "promoted" to tier which allows full access
after some time of inactivity session is downgraded to tier 1 for security reasons
My inspiration comes from how Amazon works - you can access in read-only most parts of the account but before performing any destructible actions you need to sign in.
Does anyone have any experience with such approach or can share some blog posts, etc?
I didn's find anything on SO and Google mostly returned things about two-factor auth which is not the case here.
I also understand that there are security concerns with links in email.
I have implemented a very similar behavior few months ago. I don't have very interesting resources to show you but I can explain a bit how you could organize or think about the problem to solve.
Description
For the problem you state, it looks like once you have identified a user, you have two different states you can give him:
limited access (perform certain actions, read most of the resources, etc)
full access (allows them to do anything they would normally do).
Having stated that, what you need to do is figure out in which cases you will give a user each access state (for example):
signing in with email token -> limited access
password -> full access
authentication_token -> full access
omniauth -> full access
After that, you will need to save this information in the user session. This should be done anytime the user is authenticated, as you will know what strategy was used to authenticate the user.
To know if a user can or cannot perform an action you will need two things, know what the user can do, and the current "access state". Depending on those you will decide wether the user is allowed or not to perform a certain action.
Whenever a user can't perform an action and is logged in with limited access you should bring him to the flow for verifying his crendetials. This flow is pretty simple, almost like a sign in but just with the password. Once you verify his crendetials you can upgrade his authorization to a full access one.
Implementation details
I recommend you to create a Authorization model which will represent the "access states" that I mentioned. This model will have to be serialized in the session so you should be able to build it from a simple structure and serialize it again into that structure. The simplest the better (a boolean flag, an array or maybe a hash). For the case mentioned, it looks like a boolean would do the job.
Regarding implementation details, I recommend you implementing this with a Warden after_atuhentication callback.
You could implement this with CanCan by creating you own Ability that would be built with an Authorization instance and a User instance.
I think you're confusing authorization and authentication. Devise is an authentication solution, meaning it handles the "proof me you are who you say you are" part. Authorization is the "Ok, I know who you are, now let's see what can you do". Devise doesn't provide an authorization system beyond the simple "logged/not logged". If you need a more complex authorization system, use an authorization gem. CanCan is very popular.
I have an app I'm writing in rails 3 w/ cancan and devise. I'm curious if authorizing post actions on your controllers is necessary or helpful from a security standpoint? Assuming all my controller actions require authentication w/ devise (ie user must be logged in).
I can see why I need authorization through cancan on my controller actions that use GET's since a user can simply input the url they wish to visit freely and this must be locked down. However, with posts the user must post the data from a form, which is protected against an xss attack with a token.
In this case would it be safe to assume that if i limit the visibility of, say, a button in my view with cancan that the user wouldn't be able to submit a form maliciously?
Thanks alot
EDIT:
Thanks for the quick answer guys. As it has been pointed out below a malicious user can forge a form post using tools such as firebug and thus authorization is necessary.
What would be the best way to simulate this type of interaction (a user posting to an url with a form they've hacked) using capybara / cucumber?
Thanks again.
A user can submit a POST request regardless of whether they are on your website or not. You're correct in thinking that the security token will help prevent XSS, but I would add authentication in for other methods of attacks.
A good (free) ebook to read if you're concerned about security is the Ruby on Rails Security Guide. It outlines all common forms of malicious attacks and even explores some of the lesser used (but just as effective) methods. It also gives great solutions on how to make your application more secure.
You should validate a users authorization in the controller.
With simple tools like FireBug, you can edit the content of a form manually and even add more text fields or similar. The XSS protection won't help you with that.
The user would still be able to generate the button (any method from using Firebug to changing browser code would do) on client side and send the form. If I remember correctly tokens are sent in HTML header co it wouldn't be a problem to forge the form.
I'm think something like Facebook apps here. User generated pieces of code that people can write to interact with my app.
I understand how an authenticated API works, but this seems a little more complicated because not only does the APP have to authenticate itself (with a regular api-key) but the USER using the app has to be authenticated somehow too, without giving the app free reign.
I've been reading a bit here to see how FB does it: http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/index.php/How_Facebook_Authenticates_Your_Application
And it looks like you have to pass a signature in addition to the api-key along with every call, but I'm having trouble wrapping my head around how this gets generated and used on the other end (my server).
Figure there must be a simple explanation of this out there? Thanks!
P.S. I'm building a Rails app if there are any applicable gems/plugins.
This may be what I need:
http://github.com/phurni/authlogic_api
Did you have any success with authlogic_api? I'm working on the server-side for a Steam game, where users are logged in through Steam, so I'm only responding to REST calls from the client (no user login required). The rdocs for authlogic_api give some brief set-up info, but I'm struggling with what to do in the application_controller to restrict access; essentially the equivalent of this code from the authlogic example:
http://github.com/binarylogic/authlogic_example/blob/5819a13477797d758cb6871f475ed1c54bf8a3a7/app/controllers/application_controller.rb
I'm trying to setup a "private beta" for a site that I'm working on. The site uses open id. I don't want anyone to even browse the pages if they aren't part of the beta. What's the best way to implement this? Any suggestions?
For example:
When the site goes live, users will go to http://www.mydomain.com which will not require them to log in.
For the beta I want to restrict access. Users that go to http://www.mydomain.com will be redirected to a login page. Anyone attempting to access ANY PART OF THE SITE who is not authenticated will be redirected back to the login page.
I could stick [Authorize] attributes all over my controller actions, but that seems stupid.
If you're using ASP.NET MVC, it comes with authentication/authorization out of the box. You should be able to use that to setup authentication on your site.
Alternatively you could setup app server settings - IIS lets you setup username/password on a specific site it's serving, regardless of what the actual application may do. If you have access to the app server this might be the best solution.
If you're using IIS6, you can setup authorization easily. Right-click on your site > Properties > Directory Security Tab > Authentication and Access Control > Edit, and enter a username/pwd of your choice. Done.
The real question is how are they being invited to the private beta?
You could setup a password which drops a cookie much like serverfault.com does.
OR
If you know who you are inviting: you could add them to the system before hand using the email/login information that you already know about them (assuming you are inviting them via email)
I have implemented a function in a web application a while ago where we go the possibility to block access to the full website unless the user was an administrator (which in our case meant that the user account was a member of a specific group in Active Directory).
It was based on two things. First, all pages in the web application inherited not directly from the Page class, but from a custom page class in our web application. Second, we had a value like this in the appSettings section of web.config file:
<add key="adminaccessonly" value="0" />
The custom page class would check that value when loading. If it was not 0 it would redirect to a page (that did not inherit the same custom page class, though) informing the user that "the site is not available right now". If the value was 0 the page would load as usual.
In that application we used this to be able to take the site "offline" when we deployed a new version, giving us some time to verify that all was good before we let in the users again.
Best way are invitation system (based on invitation code) or manually confirmation access after create profile in your system. imho
Or you could host the site on a private server, and set up a VPN to use it. Depending on your resources and needs this may be the easiest and most secure way to do what you want without modifying your codebase.
OR alternatively you could use Apache or IIS to force authentication on access to the website directory. Keeping the authentication info in .htaccess for a while.
Even though you use open id authentication, you may still need some form of authorization mechanism. The simplest form would be a user-roles system in your database that assigns different roles to users
In your case, just assign the private_beta role to your private beta invitees and ensure you your authorization mechanism that all users have private_beta privilege before they may continue.
If you don't want to provide authorization for the public site (where everyone can do everything, once authenticated), then, you may only need to do a quick-and-dirty post-processing (for private beta only) on your open_id authenticated users to check them off a short list (which you can store on a text file.