I am building an ASP.net MVC web application and I am starting to look into security.
What would be the best way to identify the user on subsequent requests (after they have logged in). I'm thinking of some form of authentication token or maybe using a cookie?
Ive read about Forms-Based Authentication but I'm not sure what would be a good approach?
This is a very broad question and there are many ways to answer it. I would recommend that you learn the basics of identity and access in ASP.NET by reading each topic in the ASP.NET Identity section and understanding what options you have. At a basic level, you need a mechanism to register users in a repository/database of some sort, validate their credentials when they log in, and a way to persist their user session in a browser (such as via a cookie). All of this is discussed in that section with examples.
The good news is that there are many valid authentication options that are pretty easy to implement and don't require you to be an expert on security. You can create/maintain your own member database, use Windows authentication, outsource authentication entirely to external identity providers such as Facebook/Google/Azure Active Directory/etc, and so on. The new tooling in Visual Studio 2013 also makes this much easier for you to manage. I would highly recommend you familiarize yourself with all of these options before jumping in and writing any code.
Related
This is not like other questions you might find similar. My issue is way bigger.
Scenario:
I have 3 websites. All of them have a common database for authentication and stuff.
Problem is that i will need to expand to 2 more sites, which means more maintenance in login screens and so on. So i will dedicate time to make a "central website" to manage users, access, etc.
Also, Need to implement OpenId for Microsoft Works accounts (ie, Azure tenants).
DDBB User Model: (Simplified)
All users are in the same central database. Which does not contains
anything non-user related.
User is personal on all applications.
Users can have different Roles
Each "User-Role" is mapped to an application, a server and a
database.
Problem:
Created a site in AspNet Core, without any authentication done so I can do it myself since I found that mapping Aspnet Identity tables was no-go because of incopatibilities and overriding is way to complicated, specially when dealing with Managers.
So, Tried and got working a simple Authentication page using HttpContext.Authentication.SignInAsync and CookieAuthentication. Which works well and there is no need to use any of the Identity's implementation (which is not compatible with my backend).
But then I added UseOpenIdConnectAuthentication to have the OpenId auth, but I have no idea how to use it since its suposed to work out of the box when using Identity and when checked documentation they use this code in an controller action: signInManager.ConfigureExternalAuthenticationProperties and I do not have any SignInManager since Im not using Aspnet Identity.
Questions:
Is coping the source of ConfigureExternalAuthenticationProperties to make it work in my site an aceptable solution?
Should I continue to override all SignInManager methods and also probably implement other classes to make Aspnet Identity work with my model?
Tried Mapping the properties to my columns just to test it out and it gave me non debuggable errors, which i dont like to even think about the problems this can give me in the future. For example one error was that it coudnt parse byte[] to string.
How can I implement Microsoft Work Accounts authentication and Database authentication in the same AspNet Site?
Bonus topic
Recently I feel like programming is becoming Configuring instead of coding. Is it just me? Are we now Professional Configurers?
Thanks
My team currently uses WebForms for projects, but I'm trying to convince everyone to switch to MVC. One of the problems that I'm running into is with authentication. I can't figure how to to implement our login process to work with MVC.
Our authentication is done via mostly a web service (we pass username & password and are told if it is valid or not), but occasionally we use ActiveDirectory for logins.
Right now we are using sessionstate to store information about the logged in person. How would I translate this to ASP.NET MVC? I've read a lot about various things -- Claims, Roles, MembershipProvider, IProvider, ASP.NET Identity, OWIN, but ASP.NET has been evolving so rapidly that I'm afraid that I'm reading old information on StackOverflow.
Right now we are using sessionstate to store information about the logged in person.
Don't do this. Ever. Not in WebForms, or MVC. It's highly insecure and easily spoofed. Session should never be used for anything to do with Authentication or Authorization. Plus, Sessionstate is volatile, and IIS can dump your session at any time, losing synchronization with your authentication.
The solution to your problem is very simple. You already have the authentication in your web service (though I question whether this would be secure either, given your Sessionstate authentication methods, but that's a different argument). All you need is the Authentication portion, which is easily provided by FormsAuthentication to set the cookie to allow logins.
You Validate against your service, if you succeed, you call FormsAuthentication.SetCookie(), and then you add [Authorize] to all the MVC action methods you want to protect. It's really that simple.
If you need to have information available about the user, then you would create a custom IIdentity and/or IPrincipal implementation that provides that information, making it secure (secured by encrypted cookie) and easy to access.
The "dream" is to use WindowsAuthentication for an intranet site. However, we need to hit a 3rd party service to determine if the user has "permission" to use the site, thus "Roles". I have seen many examples that show how to add roles to the identity but they are all on "per request" basis. I don't want to do that. I would like for the user to hit the site once, I determine if the user has the permission, and add the role to the identity. The identity (with the role) sticks around for the session. I also don't want to have to cache users and their permissions. Is this doable or am I missing something?
Thanks.
The solution is to write your own Authentication and put caching in the middle. It is really easy to do as I have two methods of doing it.
Pre ASP.NET MVC 5
http://tech.pro/tutorial/1216/implementing-custom-authentication-for-aspnet
ASP.NET MVC 5+ OWIN
http://www.khalidabuhakmeh.com/asp-net-mvc-5-authentication-breakdown-part-deux
My posts describe the basics of writing your own authentication, but it is pretty easy to integrate a third party service once you understand the basics. Hope that helps :)
I am developing MVC application and want to use WIF & Claim based security.
However I am very disappointed with the way login is perfomed. I mean redirection to STS login page and then redirecting back to my page. That is not user-friendly at all.
I want to implement login page in my application (it fact it will be popup dialog). Than using Web API I want to be able to perform STS request and get security token and initialize WIF infrastructure (Principle etc).
Is it a good way to go with?
Did anybody do something similar?
Does anybody have some samples of what I am trying to do?
I just worry that I don't have control over the STS login page layout & style.
Also I will have mobile application and must perform login using Web API service.
What can you advice?
Thanks
Well - you can do that of course. This does not need to be WIF specific. Call a service, pass credentials - and when OK set the login cookie.
But if you want SSO you have to make a user agent roundtrip to the STS - otherwise you cannot establish a logon session.
Consider using MembershipReboot membership provider which uses claims-based security and is not based on microsoft's traditional membership provider.
It does not have a documentation, but in the zip file you can find 2 sample projects that uses MemebershipReboot provider, which explains all you need to know about it.
In fact after reading this blog post today, I decided to use this approach in my current project. I'm still struggling with it now and I'm so excited !
In addition to Ashkan's recommendation Brock Allen provides solid documentation about how to implement MembershipReboot in association with IdentityServer. You can find that their is a way to configure a custom implementation Here. Also their are a few tutorials on vimeo from Dominick Baier (leastprivilege) that will provide a full walk through on getting started! I hope this helps!
I feel a bit overwhelmed right now with how to approach building an SSO solution for a project I'm taking on. I understand that I need a centralized login site, but, I'd like input on what framework I should be using to achieve this. I've been reading a bit about Windows Identity Foundation (WIF), but, the lack of documentation and code samples is quite disappointing. DotNotOpenAuth sounds like it has much more usage by the community than WIF, but, I'm not sure if that's the right framework for me to use given that I am not going to be letting third-party accounts be used for logging in.
There are multiple user data stores to take into account as well; active directory and a SQL Server database.
I really don't care what framework I use so long as it's simple and intuitive; I don't want an overly complex solution. Documentation and samples are also a plus! I already have experience with creating custom role providers and membership providers; those were a breeze and easy to do.
Here is a very quick visual of the structure I'm dealing with:
Refer: Claims Based Identity & Access Control Guide and Identity Developer Training Kit. There's WIF samples there.
In terms of what you want to achieve, ADFS v2.0 will get you most of the way but it can only authenticate against AD. For SQL server, use IdentityServer and then federate ADFS and IdentityServer.
Have a look at SAML. It is designed to address SSO. You may also want to look into OpenID.
There are enterprise products out there, such as CA Site Minder or IBM Tivoli for this kind if thing. They are not cheap because building a custom solution for this will be quite a feat.
If you are .NET based - then .NET 4.5 (which includes WIF) is the way to go.
But the framework will be you simplest problem. Building that kind of security infrastructure is hard. Have a look at both the book and idenitity server from nzpcmad's answer as a starting point.
As far as cross-platform goes, SAML tends to lead the pack. There are many implementations (java, php, perl). As Dominick (#leastprivilege) mentioned, if every application is .Net based, WS-Fed via WIF is the way to go. (btw, Dominick is the man when it comes to WIF - definitely hit his blog and forums up if you plan on exploring that route)
OpenId and OAuth are alternatives that you will hear about. They are somewhat less secure (the trust is in the user, rather than the infrastructure) and you will find that you will have to build a provider in order to support sign-in using your own user store.
Regardless of the route you choose, be prepared to do a lot of reading and learning. Check out the wikipedia articles above for a nice overview of how these technologies work, and don't be afraid to ask questions..