AccessDeniedException for authenticated user - spring-security

I got a server with exposed remote service and methods annotated with ROLE_ROOT. Few clients are connected to this server, authorization is done by username/password.
At some point after hours (or even minutes) of work, server suddenly returns AccessDeniedException for all clients. Clients are trying to reconnect, successfully authenticating (username/password are ok), but still getting Access Denied. Looks like user has lost his ROLE_ROOT.
After 2-3 attempts client is able to do 10-12 calls to secure method, but then again receives AccessDenied.
Does anyone has any idea what can be the problem here and where should I look?

Related

Is possible to decline all old access tokens?

I am developing an android mobile client and signing with oauth2 to our server that is written in c#. Everything is working well, until the server is rebooting.
I'm crashing every call to the server.. at first I've thought that my access token is not valid anymore. but after I've decided to have my own local server I saw that my calls do reach the server and they crash inside because of some static lists of tokens and user data that the server team developed and obviously getting cleared after restarting the server.
I've told them to recreate their lists of data and access tokens, but no luck for me there..
My question,
I'm not so good in server-side and oauth2 developing but i'm pretty sure there is a solution for what i want. I've tried searching for few hours without success. My thought is - To make the server decline all old access tokens from previous run of the server - and i will get unauthorised code in my client (Now i'm getting just crush in server that i don't know why and how to react in my app) Something like - Each time the server restart it will have a random seed and will create its access tokens with this seed.
Is there something like this ? or some other "Not so much work" solution for the lazy server-side team :)?
The service that is issuing you the OAuth token is also the service that needs to revoke tokens. There is nothing inside a token that you can change to invalidate it that would also not corrupt it.
If your server is crashing because you are sending it unknown / invalid tokens, this is a serious problem. The first step than anyone will do (should do) is to validate the token. Evidentally they are not. Security requires attention to detail and having a server crash due to tokens is a security problem (Denial of Service).

Am I doing this whole API, client app, Oauth/OpenId Connect thing right?

I have some programming experience, but only with PHP and Java enterprise systems. But now I have some ideas about a web app in my new job. Since I am new at this, I would like to share how I have done the whole API in a server, browser app and authentication with Google’s OpenID Connect (I read a lot about Oauth and OpenID Connect, most helpful source was this: https://developers.google.com/identity/protocols/OpenIDConnect).
Server: Laravel - hxxps://coolapp-api.mycompany.com
Client: Angular - hxxps://coolapp.mycompany.com
TL;DR version:
1) User goes to hxxps://coolapp.mycompany.com, gets an Angular app login page. Types in their email, clicks “Sign in with Google”;
2) The app sends the email to hxxps://coolapp-api.mycompany.com/api/sign-in. The server redirects the user to hxxps://accounts.google.com/o/oauth2/auth with all the needed parameters;
3) The user logs in to their Google account, gives my app permission if it’s their first time, and Google redirects them to my server at hxxps://coolapp-api.mycompany.com/sign-in/google/callback. The server checks everything, and if it’s all correct, it creates a JWT token and send a redirect to the client app at hxxps://coolapp.mycompany.com/login/callback?token=JWT-TOKEN
4) The client app gets the token, stores it in local storage, and sends it to the server with every API call
More detailed version:
1) User goes to hxxps://coolapp.mycompany.com, gets an Angular app login page. Types in their email, clicks “Sign in with Google”;
2) The app sends the email to hxxps://coolapp-api.mycompany.com/api/sign-in. The server creates a state token and stores it in cache, associated with the email received. Then the server creates Google’s oauth URL and sends it to the client in the response body. I tried to do it with a HTTP redirect, but Google’s server was responding with an CORS error. The Angular app reads Google’s url from the response and goes there.
3) The user logs in to their Google account, gives my app permission if it’s their first time, and Google redirects them to my server at hxxps://coolapp-api.mycompany.com/sign-in/google/callback?code=AUTHCODE&otherstuff. The server sends the code it received (and all the other needed parameters) to hxxps://accounts.google.com/o/oauth2/token. It receives a id_token with that user’s email and basic info. This app is not public, so I don’t want anyone with a Google Account logging in, only the clients whose emails I added to the server database. So now the server checks if the user’s email in the token is in the database. If it’s not, it sends the user a HTTP 401 - Unauthorized. Then the server checks the state token in it’s cache associated with the email received. If it’s equal to the one received with Google’s redirect, then the server creates another JWT token, but now signed by my server. Finally, it sends a HTTP redirect to hxxps://coolapp.mycompany.com/login/callback?token=JWT-TOKEN with the new token.
4) The client app gets the token, stores it in local storage, and sends it to the server with every API call
Some comments:
Everything is HTTPS;
I added the strictest CSP policies I could to my Laravel server and Angular client;
Currently the app only supports Google’s sign in, while it is in development. Later on I’ll add more.
I made that my server only checks if the user’s email is in the database after they logged in with google because I like that idea that a non-authorized user should have no information about anything. If I made that check before it, during the first round trip, anyone could type an email and discover if that email has an account in my system;
On the last step, when my server sends the JWT token to my client app, I tried sending the token within a cookie, but since my API and my client app have different domains, my client app couldn't read the token. Sending it in the url was the only solution I could find. I tried logging in a popular app that uses Oauth and they did it this way too.
So my question is:
Am I doing something wrong, unsecure, weird?
Thank you all very much
1) Entering an email address every time a user wants to log in is tedious. And it's not needed if the user is already logged in at Google. The user should just click the "Log in with Google" button and get logged in without entering anything. The state parameter can be a random string - not related to the user's email in any way.
2) If you want your backend to process the redirect from Google (using the auth code flow - the backend has the client role in OAuth2 terms), the backend should also initiate a redirect to Google - not by sending data containing the redirect URL. To achieve it, after clicking the "Log in with Google" button, perform a whole page navigation (instead of an XHR request) to /api/sign-in and if the backend returns HTTP 302, the browser will correctly redirect to Google.
3) You should perform request validation (the state parameter) before getting tokens and checking whether the user exist.
On error (access denied), you can consider redirecting the user to an error page with error details instead of returning HTTP 401, since the HTTP code will cause a generic error screen to be displayed to the user. If you want to keep using HTTP codes, I think HTTP 403 Forbidden would be more appropriate.
4) Consider using sessionStorage instead of the localStorage. The sessionStorage gets cleared after closing a browser/tab and it's not shared among tabs. It makes it safer and it allows users to use different identity in different browser tabs.
The tokens your backend issues, is their validity time limited? Is the user required to get a new token after some (short) time period? If not, valid token vales may stay in the localStorage and browser's page history, which can be a security problem.
You can consider using your own OAuth2 auth server (such as RedHat Keycloak) which would accept Google (and later some other providers) for authentication and it would also issue access tokens accepted by your backend.

identity server token for webapi authorization error

I have a number of web api services created that need to get the authenticated user.
I have gotten the id server v3 working such that I can enter /core and /connect/token and my client gets a token and is passing it back to the server.
single iis server running all of the web app and web services and id server.
when I add the token authentication package I am getting an error that the well known configuration can not be found.
I am looking for what I need to change to make this work so that api calls get an authenticated identity.
I think this is a startup problem but I have my app.map() first and then the app.UseIdentityServerBearerTokenAuthentication() after.
so do I make it wait fro the first to complete ? async ? await ?
ok I am slow, I found an option to delay load the metadata and that fixed that.
now the api calls show that the user is authenticated.

Does the Box API OAUTH protocol work from behind a firewall?

I am investigating the possibility of integrating Box API calls from an internal application that sits behind our firewall (it is not exposed to the outside world).
So the question is, if we fire off an authentication request to Box with a callback URI, does Box post back directly to the specified call back URI (so essentially its initiating a new request from Box to the client), or does it send a request back to the client who made the request (standard HTTP request/response), and expect the client to redirect to the call back URI with the tokens?
This might sound an odd question, but during my investigation it appears this is how the Twitter OAUTH protocol works, and if so would help us a lot as we don't want to open up the firewall to the outside world.
See here for info: https://dev.twitter.com/discussions/5801
EDIT: Just found this which seems to suggest that the client will always initiate the request, never the server: https://stackoverflow.com/a/6116736/811108
Many thanks in advance.
A typical user journey for OAuth on Box would like like this:
User's browser requests www.someboxapp.com and the user clicks a login button
User's browser requests the Box authentication URL which begins with https://www.box.com/api/oauth2/authorize
User authenticates on the Box authorize webpage and then the Box site sends a 302 redirect header back to the users browser. This header tells the user's browser to request the the redirect_uri configured by www.someboxapp.com
User's browser requests the redirect URL on www.someboxapp.com - e.g. http://www.someboxapp.com/oauth/redirect_uri
The Box Application running on www.someboxapp.com makes a POST request to https://www.box.com/api/oauth2/token to complete the authentication and get an access token for using the Box API on behalf of the user.
What this means is that if you are running a Box web app on your internal network - you need to make sure that the webserver running the application and the users' machines can connect to https://www.box.com/api/oauth2/
If www.someboxapp.com only exists on your local network - that is fine - the Box API does not need to connect to this host.

SignalR - The connection id is in the incorrect format when using Windows and Anonymous authentication

I use SignalR 1.0.1 as a chat core for ASP.NET MVC3 application. Using IIS 7.5
There are two methods in MVC controller which provides access to chat views:
1. First method is public, allowing anonymous users to chat - no authorization.
2. Access to second method is restricted with [Authorize] attribute, for domain users - chat agents.
There is no explicitly specified authorization in the Hub.
For this scenario I involved both Windows and Anonymous authentication on IIS.
I also implemented custom Role Provider, which operates only in memory - not persisting anything to database.
What happens is that using '[Authorize]' attribute in controller method leads to responsing 500 from Hub, both when call is coming from authorized view, and the anonymous one:
Request (send is Hub method for sending messages):
http://localhost:8101/signalr/send?transport=serverSentEvents&connectionToken=VIXEZzWQSn5SNlA8RUy4iaOPDFdvuPBjMvFBiG2FLfvfxF347XHwtapsEV5ndU4OEI0Xb64W2ZRXTqwBiL2CXg2_JlTaTJ2RnVOj4bjvx6tQaYhAqTaXs9k2853GYqzd0
Response:
The connection id is in the incorrect format.
Server stack trace:
at Microsoft.AspNet.SignalR.PersistentConnection.GetConnectionId(HostContext context, String connectionToken)
at Microsoft.AspNet.SignalR.PersistentConnection.ProcessRequest(HostContext context)
at Microsoft.AspNet.SignalR.Owin.CallHandler.Invoke(IDictionary2 environment)
at Microsoft.AspNet.SignalR.Owin.Handlers.HubDispatcherHandler.Invoke(IDictionary2 environment)
at Microsoft.Owin.Host.SystemWeb.OwinCallContext.Execute()
at Microsoft.Owin.Host.SystemWeb.OwinHttpHandler.BeginProcessRequest(HttpContextBase httpContext, AsyncCallback callback, Object extraData)<br/><br/>
But notice, that connecting to Hub works fine, returns 200 OK:
http://localhost:8101/signalr/connect?transport=serverSentEvents&connectionToken=dYOwFxa1mkgdpzw-jitRpWq9oxRlrTet8U_dAzWjFQEdGNJfVXeG7Op0NZZwvznxeNdJCuPT75CKzQqI9HRPThV3uEDt-Z2qtIl9E02gF481&connectionData=%5B%7B%22name%22%3A%22chathub%22%7D%5D&tid=9
I found little similiar thread here on stackoverflow:
signalr The connection id is in the incorrect format
from which I understand, that when invoking my Send method, the Hub is processing request with Identity different than the one used to connect to Hub, OR Hub's GetConnectionId finds, that user is actually not authorized - but how it checks that assumption, when there is no authorization specified on the Hub itself?
Can someone put some light on this?
Thanks in advance :)
SignalR signs both your connection id and your Identity together in order to create a new connectionToken every time you start a new connection. This connectionToken is then sent to the SignalR client as part of the negotiate response.
Every time you make a request to SignalR, whether it be a connect, reconnect, or send request, SignalR verifies that your connectionToken matches both your client's connection id AND Identity.
The connectionToken is essentially a CSRF token used in order to prevent attackers running third-party websites from surreptitiously making SignalR requests on behalf of shared clients. Obviously this doesn't help if you've enabled SignalR's cross-domain support, but the connectionToken still works the same in this case.
Taylor's answer was correct. You should stop and then start your SignalR connection when your client's Identity changes. This will force a new negotiate request which will give your client a new connection id with a new connectionToken signed with your client's updated Identity.
P.S. The server-sent events connect request isn't failing because it was established before your client's Identity was changed. The connectionToken is only checked at the request is received, but server-sent events keeps the response open indefinitely.
That's all true what you said and it actually takes place in my issue.
But I also found the the root cause:
One of main assumptions during design was to allow both anonymous users to use the chat without need to sign-in and the back-end users (agents) to sign-in to restricted area of chat using their Windows credentials.
So on the IIS manager I enabled both Anonymous authentication (allowing anonymous users to use the chat) and the Windows authentication (allowing agents to access using their Windows credentials).
MVC application is configured to use Windows authentication - the [Authorize] attribute mentioned in question, but only to restrict access for agent's view of chat.
What actually happens with above configuration is:
1. When client (agent) requests restricted View (let's say it's /Chat/Agent) the [Authorize] attribute initializes authentication (Windows)
2. Client-side Javascript requests Negotiate, what generates connectionId and binds it with client's Windows Identity
3. Here is the tricky part: Because Hub not uses any authentication explicitly, calling send method does not result in any authentication request - IIS Anonymous authentication takes precedency before Windows authentication, and send request is sent with anonymous Identity - but in Hub actual connectionId is related to Identity passed in point 2.
This scenario leads to situation you described - connect is called with different Identity than send and Hub returns The connection id is in the incorrect format.

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