I’m building a webservice and having some troubles witch option I should choose. Therefor I was hoping someone could point me in the right direction. I found many articles but none of them have more or less the options then I want.
What I want the webservice to do:
Client should get a WSDL derived from the ASMX file. Within that service there is one unauthenticated webmethod called “Authenticate(string Username, String Password)” that returns a custom AuthenticationSoapHeader. The AuthenticationSoapHeader is exactly and preferably same as the System.Web.Security.FormsAuthenticationTicket class that is used in the webapplication.
http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/4398/Authentication-for-Web-Services-using-SOAP-headers
http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/27365/Authenticate-NET-Web-Service-with-Custom-SOAP-Head
I’m thinking of using the articles above to implement this and changing the username password combination for a ticket that will be encrypted including a datetime stamp to expire the ticket. My questions.
Would this be considered a best practice? If not, what better option do I have.
Is using WSE3 “Microsoft Webservice Enhancement” necessary?
Is WCF a better option if your kinda new to webservices?
The soap requests go over Https SSL and do not need further encryption on the client side. Thank you in advance.
Best regards,
Danny
I can't answer all these questions, but I can answer a few: IMO WCF is all you need as a tool set for this project, based on your description. WCF has a number of different flavors (http, TCP, etc.) and each has several different options for how you implement security.
WCF has options for user/pwd authentication, or you can construct a custom method, or you can construct a Login() function that takes a UserID and Password as parameters, returning a boolean. There are also options that allow you to authenticate BEFORE the main program receives the request. That's what the built-in UserID/Password authentication does.
If you implement SSL on the host, assuming you're using an http-centric binding, you won't need anything on the client side for encryption as the WCF software will take care of that, once you have both the Host and Client software configured properly. In effect, your WCF client app will behave like a browser, handing all the nasty cert stuff under the covers.
WCF also lets you a) run your web service as a stand-alone windows service (called "self hosted"), or b) allows you to configure your web service behind IIS, which has some advantages. WCF will also provide a WSDL for your clients if needed.
There are some other nice things about WCF; if 10,000 concurrent users hit your web service at 8 am on Monday, WCF automatically queues the requests it can't handle, processing them in order as it can. I've slammed our testing web service with numbers like that, and the program never broke down, processing >150 logins and file uploads / second. WCF is also works fine with Java, iOS and Android.
Related
I have to come up with an integration process to allow existing system to use external data providers. The system is a medical timetable web site, using ASP.NET MVC, that allows the patients to schedule their appointments to doctors.
As far as I go you can see on a figure below:
All the providers must expose my contract ISuperIntegration which will be develop by me. I won't be developing External service 1 and External service 2, they will be developed by other companies.
Here the issue comes: basing on the concept of that I could require the way providers should setup their services to communicate with my website properly, I want to forbid for another third party clients consume "External Service 1" and "External Service 2", Or at least make it difficult to do that.
Here is a list of stuff I am setting:
ISuperIntegration interface. It contains operations related to my domain such as GetSchedule, GetDoctors and so on.
Transport protocol. I don't want it to be complicated so I'm thinking about using HTTP.
And could define some general recommendations but they could be easily avoided.
At the moment I'm thinking of using HTTPS with certificate authentication. It would require the implementer to setup their infrastructure so my web site could properly consume the data.
If I would go with basic HTTP, the implementer would just leave their service to be easily consumed by anyone else, which I don't want.
I hope my question is clear. Will be happy to give any other explanations you want.
I'll really appreciate any your responses, commits. Thank you!
I'd always use HTTPS for things like this. Let's just say that's the cost of doing business. You simply cannot have anyone with a sniffer grab that kind of traffic out of the sky. There's a reason why all banking etc. use HTTPS for things that should be secure.
Apart from that, web services have pretty standard mechanisms for security, I'd recommend looking at OAuth over HTTPS. There are plenty of implementations for that.
If your talking about basic web sites, I'd use a standard security mechanism as well like group based security (which boils down to a username + password). Again, there are plenty of implementations for that.
Basically my main word of advice is: don't go inventing stuff when it comes to security. If you're not an expert, you're probably going to get it wrong, and end up with something that can be intercepted by a third party or (much) worse.
You have several options:
Basic authentication over HTTP.
PRO. Easy to implemet
CON. UserCredentials was going in clear text throuh the network
Implement WS-Security with WCF. For example, they can sign their requests.
PRO. Easy to implement with WCF
CON. Java clients can faced with problems
You can force clients to use HTTPS.
CON. You should setup your web server.
You are like Oracle, they want people to develop in Java language but they also want to forbid competitors to run the Java compiled code on non Oracle's virtual machines, or at least make it difficult to do that :)
So you can do the same by protecting your interface with patent or copyright law. However, I doubt that it is patentable or copyrightable :)
Considering the privacy sensitivity of the data, IMHO it must be encrypted while in transport. Hence HTTPS not HTTP.
Authentication of your service to those providing services to you: well essentially it's up to them, not up to you who they expose it to, similarly how they want it protected is their call. Now assuming you do have a way to make them do the right thing...
Client certificates aren't that expensive nor prohibitive in setup to get up and running. But you do need to register the client certificate (every time it is renewed!) with the server in order to get the needed authorisation (just recognizing it's a valid cert isn't enough: anybody can apply for a (validly signed) certificate ...) .
But all that is relatively painless and rather well documented around the web, and it can be done on almost any platform of choice.
As several people mentioned these earlier you can't guarantee that those external companies will expose your service with specific security settings, it's up to them.
If you are responsible for developing MVC application and WCF service you can only force someone to use specific security settings on the layer between your WCF services and those External 1 and 2 providers.
Btw, here is a good tutorial that can be useful if you want to improve your knowledge about how to configure WCF security.
How External Services expose your service it's up to them. Just image that this is normal web 'proxy' behavior.
Maybe the architecture which your company adopted it is not the best for this solution
i need to build this architecture and i need some orientation on "how should i build". I've read many docs and examples but i can't find and figure how to do trying to be efficient and secure:
External app (android app, ios app) where users, after a login, can access to their personal info and manage the account (updating personal data, showing personal documents related to their account and much more). The username / pwd input must be done only 1 time.
A public wcf service will receive their actions and will call to a another internal wcf service. It will work like a 'bridge'.
The internal wcf service will get the request and do the operations needed (logical and db operations). This will return data to the external wcf service and this one to the client (obvious).
UserName/PWD are stored in a database.
WCF services can only be accessed with the correct credentials and are IIS hosted.
So i find many problems/questions:
I don't know HOW and WHERE should I build the AUTH (internal, external, both?). How can i manage a session between wcf services and app clients to avoid sending credentials every time?
The client app needs to send credentials every time? This means every service requires to SELECT the database for checking the username?
SOAP? Rest Services? It doesn't care? (on internal wcf, external wcf, both?).
I need work with asp.NET sessions or i really don't need? I don't see how services that needs username/pwd that are called frequently and repeatedly are efficient without old asp.net sessions.
Thanks for your help and orientation.
Regards!
If someone interested... seems Routing Service seems to fit for my design and can solve my problem after some tests i have done.
I am new to web services so I created a web service to replace my current in-app DB transactions. I wanted things to be safer so that is why I went this way.
When using a free packet sniffer, it instantly grabs my web service ASMX call. The problem with this is that using a program such as fiddler they can easily see the data going back and forth and even worse set up a auto responder.
Is there a way to hide the calls being sent to the web service to hide from packet sniffers? Or at least make it more difficult to see the calls?
Expose it over a secured channel (such as SSL) only for transport level security.
Alternatively, you may choose to implement WS-Security to validate the identity of the callers, sign the payload or encrypt the payload (partially or fully); or any combination of the above.
Here is an article that talks about this in the context of ASP.NET: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc188947.aspx
I need to call a .NET SOAP webservice in a secure way. It must be secure in such a way that others can't call the WebService methods, and also it should not be possible for "the middle man" to understand the content of the messages.
The caller will also be a .NET webapplication installed on another IIS.
I can design the webservice methods as I want, so no restrictions there.
I have been researching HTTPS/SSL with certificates, but I don't know if it actually solves my problems in a good way? For example, it would be anoying if the certificates has an expiration date, although it's not a showstopper in any way.
So how would I go about this in a good way..?
Thanks for any help.
As #BrokenGlass said, SSL only encrypts the traffic between points. It doesn't handle securing individual functions from usage without authorization. Here is a good article on just such a topic using SOAP headers:
How to: Perform Custom Authentication Using SOAP Headers
This can be mixed with any form of authentication except Windows Integrated. To use Windows authentication, you'll need to have a separate library which accesses the Active Directory through the DirectoryServices namespace.
Assuming you control the infrastructure then keeping the server that is providing the web services behind a firewall so it's accessible only from the web servers and implementing IPSec should provide the necessary security.
From the software point of view, this article contains all you need to know about protecting the service interactions.
HTTPS/SSL works fine. Just make sure to renew your certificate in time to avoid warnings and messages for your client.
I need to call a .NET SOAP webservice in
a secure way. It must be secure in
such a way that others can't call the
WebService methods, and also it should
not be possible for "the middle man"
to understand the content of the
messages.
HTTPS/SSL only solves the "middle man" part of what you want to achieve. You would still need proper authentication in place on your web service. You could do this i.e by using the built in Forms authentication and providing a Login method that returns your authentication ticket.
I am relatively new to the WCF world so my applogies for the newbie question. I am currently designing a layer of WCF services. One of them is an authentication service, so I came up with the following authentication mechanism:
IUserService.TryAuthenticateUser(string username, string password, out string key)
Basicly the user tries to authenticate and if successful - he/she receives a sessionkey/securitykey/whateverkey... the key is then required for every other "WCF action" e.g.
IService.GiveMeMyFeatures(string key);
IService.Method1(string key);
This mechanism looks extremely intuitive for me and is also very easy to implement, so what bothers me is why I cant find similar WCF examples? This unique key (which is practically a session key with wcf-side expiration and all) can then by used from the various applications, according to the application's architecture: for ASP.NEt it can be stored in a cookie, for Winform/WPF/Mobile I guess it can be stored in the form-class in a field and so on...
So here comes question number 1: What do you think of this method?
I also read, that I can use the build-in ASP.NET Authentication Services (with membership providers etc... if I understood correctly). From architecture point of view I dont really like this method, because when authenticating from an ASP.NET page the workflow will be like this:
ASP.NET -> WCF -> ASP.NET Authentication Service -> Response
In this scenario one could also bypass the WCF layer and call the auth. service methods directly from the asp.net page. I know that by going thru the WCF layer for every authentication request I will lose some performance, but it is important for me to have a nice, layered architecture...
And here is question number 2: What are the advantages/disadvantages of this method over the first one, and why is it so popular, when from architecture point of view it is kinda wrong?
I also read, that I can send user credentials for every WCF method call and use the built-in mechanism to authenticate and respond properly to the request.
Q3: What do you think if this method?
And to sum up - obviously there are many authentication methods, but which one do you think is best and most generic (considering that the WCF services will be called from asp.net/wpf/mobile/etc...)?
Thanks is advance :)
The reason you can't find examples it's not best practice - it's turning something that should be stateless, web services, into something stateful, and something that will not load balance well at all.
As web services already have standard username and password facilities, supported by almost every SOAP stack (excluding Silverlight) that's the way to go. You can use the standard .NET role based security model to protect your methods with this approach as well.