Best way to handle authentication on .NET WCF Web API - oauth

I'm mildly familiar with DotNetOpenAuth and OAuth in general, but in terms of Web API development, what is the best way to lock down a web service in terms of the following criteria:
Ease of implementation
Interoperability/compatibility with end-user facing platforms (iOS, Android, Win Phone, Flex...)
Whether or not it is clearly standards-based (like OAuth for example)
Thanks!

please take a look here: OAuth 2.0 in Web API
Inside the WebApiContrib project there are also Basic Authentication samples which is straight forward but it should not be used without SSL.

The DotNetOpenAuth .zip download includes a sample WCF service that is protected by OAuth.

There are a couple of wcf web api implementation to handle authentication on internet. I have done one as well # http://misaxionsoftware.wordpress.com/2011/07/29/secure-restful-web-service-by-wcf-web-api-no-https-seriously/
Note: code is based on Preview 3, some class name has changed in Preview 5.
The idea of implementation is ensure secured communication without SSL.
It's easy to construct. The function is transparent to your service because all the work is done in message handler. You don't bother to call the authenticate function in your service method.
Compatible with end-point where RSA encryption is supported.
Standards-based, hmm... Standards varies from case to case...

Related

Can I use AEM as OAuth 2.0 client?

Does Adobe Experience Manager support OAuth 2.0 as a client? I mean AEM connecting with an external application which plays a role of authorization server and resource provider.
I could not find any examples of such usage - AEM is usually presented as an authorization server and resource provider for other client applications.
AEM provides an number of authorization integrations. Maybe you can switch to SAML, which works pretty good out-of-the-box. I once integrated AEM with Keycloak with good results (but using SAML).
Regarding OAuth most documentation is dominated by AEM as an OAuth provider. They integrated Apache Oltu (which is end-of-life anyway).
But AEM provides an OAuth client as well. But it needs a custom extension for each provider. Out-of-the-box are only implementations for Twitter and Facebook available. But there seems also Github and IMS (Identity Management from Adobe Managed Services) to be available.
Please check also Package Share. But I don't know what is available there. And you probably need support from Adobe, to judge the quality and usefulness of such packages.
If you have to implement your own Provider-Extension, the best starting point I found was here:
https://aemcorner.com/adobe-granite-oauth-authentication-handler/
You are basically free to build whatever you want, as AEM is basically nothing else but a Java application. But you might want to keep in mind, that the standard applications of AEM are delivering rendered HTML from the dispatcher in the end. You want to have as little load on the publishers as possible.
So, when authorisation of resources is a technical- or business concern, you might need to dive deeper into SPAs or at least async loading of resources as JSON.

how to implement oauth2 on java restful services

I need help with oauth2.0 and java restful (jersey), any help would be appreciated, I need to find way how oauth2 would be implemented. Here's the scenario, We have a web based application, now, there are clients engage to it. They're planning to have an API (Restful service) so that it will be consumed on mobile devices(android and ios). (They can login using mobile and update their accounts etc.).
Now, my problem is how will I integrate oauth2 for its security using java and how will I create Authorization server.
I used to have the same question and end up building an open-source project: srb4j, which is also based on Jersey and OAuth2.
Srb4j has implemented both token endpoints and resource endpoints for you. You can adopt a lot of its code to your own existing system.
# Sorry for this advert, but it may help you...
java-oauth-server is a new authorization server implementation in Java (JAX-RS, Jersey, Jetty) which supports OAuth 2.0 and OpenID Connect.
The implementation is DB-less, because authorization data (e.g. access tokens), settings of the authorization server itself and settings of client applications are stored in the database on cloud. Therefore, you don't have to set up a database server before starting the authorization server.
Just 4 commands for downloading and starting the authorization server.
git clone https://github.com/authlete/java-oauth-server.git
cd java-oauth-server
vi authlete.properties
mvn jetty:run
The source tree of java-oauth-server is very small and customization points are abstracted as SPI (Service Provider Interface), so it will be easy to incorporate the authorization server implementation into your existing web service.
The implementation supports RFC 7636 (Proof Key for Code Exchange by OAuth Public Clients). It is a new specification (released on Sep. 2015) about a countermeasure against the authorization code interception attack. If you want to expose Web APIs to mobile applications, I recommend that you look for an implementation that supports RFC 7636.
An explanation about RFC 7636 with graphical figures is here.
I ended up using this library https://github.com/BrightcoveLearning/oauth-client-examples/tree/master/amber-java and works like a charm, thanks to the author.

Authentication for MVC4 Web Api

I'm trying to secure my MVC4 Web Api. Actually, I just really need an identity provider with some light security. My service is similar to twitter, from a security standpoint, there's not a lot of private data, but the service does need to know the userid for the caller.
It's also important to know that the web service will only be consumed by mobile devices right now, although a website may accompany it at some future point.
S.O. and the internet have led me to Thinktecture.IdentityModel, but man it seems complex and I can find exactly zero documentation or samples. I also haven't yet had a pleasant experience with claims-based authentication. I don't have a claims server, token provider, or anything like that, and it seems like you would need that to use this method. This all seems far to heavy for my situation.
I've also read about people implementing their own HMAC solution (https://github.com/cuongle/WebAPI.Hmac) or using OAuth (https://github.com/maksymilian-majer/DevDefined.OAuth) but these also seem a bit complex (I've read that OAuth without the helper class is enough to make the best developers cry, and I'm not the best). Janrain looks like it might work, but it looks like you have to pay for more than 2,500 authenticated users per year ...
What is the best way to implement a simple identity provider and security for Web Api?
Thanks!
I have attempted to answer a similar question to this before Create an OAuth 2.0 service provider using DotNetOpenAuth where I highlighted the Thinkecture Identity Server. The Setup instructions not too difficult (IMHO) The installation video is here and should help a lot.
I have updated my older answer with this too but there is also a fairly lightweight O-Auth 2.0 implementation example here Sample code here http://code.google.com/p/codesmith/downloads/detail?name=OAuth2.zip&can=2&q=#makechanges
Have you also read this well articulated question here Authenticating requests from mobile (iPhone) app to ASP.Net Web API (Feedback requested on my design)
Well, security is hard :)
As for Thinktecture.IdentityModel -- this is a token processing library (among other things) that you'd use in your WebAPI application. You'd use this so you don't need to do the logic to accept tokens (basic auth, SAML, SWT, JWT). Claims are just a side-effect.
If you're looking for an identity provider, then the sister open source project Thinktecture.IdentityServer is in beta for version 2. It's an identity provider that supports a custom database and issues tokens. The project URL is:
http://thinktecture.github.com/Thinktecture.IdentityServer.v2/
In response to the problem of finding example code as documentation, consider the samples folder in the Thinktecture github repo: https://github.com/thinktecture/Thinktecture.IdentityModel.45/tree/master/Samples
(Why do you need more reputation to comment on SO than to answer?)

What is the recommended Binding to use with Silveright and iPad clients

I am starting a new product that will require a .NET based server (using WCF) hosted on Azure. I would like to have basic authentication and security features. The clients are all "rich" UI but are not neccessarily microsoft ones.
We intend to have the first client application written in Silverlight, but we want to keep our options open to implement clients for iOS and Android in the future. So we do not want to use WCF specific features but rather protocols that are easily available on other enviroments.
Of course, with the Silverlight client, we hope to get as much done for us automatically as possible. We intend to only communicate through web services.
Which bindings are recommended for such a scenario?
How would you implement security? (assuming we need basic security - Users being able to log in with encrypted user and password and perhaps some built in basic role management althouh this is optional).
Suggestions?
You could use WCF to implement a REST interface
The binding would have to be a basicHttpBinding (to be open to all platforms) and using SSL to secure the line.
Managing credentials could be done using tokens to be passed back and forth after authentication. Much like a http session. You could pass the token using a cookie but the token could be part of the API or Headers as well. See this Best Practices for securing a REST API / web service
This would grant you the power of .NET and WCF without losing interopability.

MVC RESTful Service Authorization

I am in the process of re-writing some very outdated .NET 2.0 SOAP web services for my company. So I am rewriting them using MVC3 RESTful. This method would simplify the usage of our services for our client base (over 500 clients using our current SOAP services) who are on multiple platforms and languages.
I am looking for a BETTER method of authorization for the RESTful services, than what the previous developer used for our .NET 2.0 SOAP web services (he basically just had the client pass in a GUID as a parameter and matched it in code behind).
I have looked into oAuth and I want to use it, HOWEVER, I have been told, from my superiors, that this method is TOO complicated for the "level" of clients that connect to our services and want me to find another simpler way for them to connect but still have authorization. Most of our clients have BASIC to no knowledge of programming (either we helped them get their connection setup OR they hired some kid to do it for them). This is another reason that the superiors want a different method, because we can't have all 500+ (plus 5-10 new clients a day) asking for help on how to implement oAuth.
So, is there another way to secure the MVC3 services other than passing a preset GUID?
I have looked into using Windows Authentication on the services site, but is this really logical for 500+ clients to use?
Is there an easy and secure method of authorizing multiple users on multiple platforms to use the MVC3 RESTful services that a end-client can implement very easily?
Thanks.
If you don't want anything too complicated, have a look at Basic HTTP Authentication. If you use it over SSL then it should be safe enough and also easy enough to implement for your clients. The Twitter API actually used this up until a few months ago when they switched to OAuth.
You want to distinguish between authentication and authorization. What you are looking for is authentication and indeed as Caps suggests, the easiest way may be to use HTTP BASIC authentication along with SSL to make the password is not compromised.
You could look into other means of authentication e.g. DIGEST or more advanced using ADFS or SAML (ADFS could be compelling since you're in .NET). Have a look at OpenID Connect too - it is strongly supported by Google and has great support.
Once you are done with that, you may want to consider authorization - if you need it that is - to control what a given client can do on a given resource / item / record. For that you can use claims-based authorization as provided in the .NET framework or if you need finer-grained authorization, look into XACML.
OAuth wouldn't really solve your issue since OAuth is about delegation of authorization i.e. I let Twitter write to my Facebook account on my behalf.
HTH

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