I've written a website that requires log in using openauth/openID on top of MVC5, using the instruction http://www.asp.net/mvc/tutorials/mvc-5/create-an-aspnet-mvc-5-app-with-facebook-and-google-oauth2-and-openid-sign-on
I've found this technique to be very simple and actually enjoyed the process
Now I'd like to add a REST API that is accessed from a C# application running on a remote PC, such that the applications user interacts with an application and not a browser
What is the technique for doing this? Does C# provide an easy way to pop up a browser such that the authentication happens, cookies collected, but then control is given back to the program?
Actually, there are more oauth2 flows and some of them are better suited for different types of applications.
Specifically, there is authorization code grant flow which is for passive clients (browsers) and it involves showing the logon ui from the identity provider.
However, there is the resource owner password flow which basically consist in passing the username and password in the request and getting the auth token right back. This flow is great for desktop/mobile/native apps where you can even have a custom logon ui at the client side.
There are no native libraries, however implementing oauth2 is possible with the DotnetOpenAuth library.
Related
I'm working on building a series of micro-services using Aspnet Core. A mobile application, desktop application and web-application will consume the services over Http REST APIs.
For user auth, I'm utilizing the Aspnet Core Identity platform, but I'm exposing the creation of user accounts via a REST API. The clients make a REST call with the credential information and my API uses the Microsoft Identity APIs to provision the user. The user would be authorized to hit the individual resource servers with an auth server using IdentityServer4.
I have two questions that I've not been able to find clear guidance on from a security stand-point. Should the Aspnet Core project that utilizes Microsoft Identity for user creation be in an independent Aspnet Core project from the project that handles auth via IdentityServer4? Are there downsides do separating the two out that I need to consider?
The Microsoft Identity API has template and Razor Views that can be used to handle the auth from a server-side perspective, including redirects on account creation or sign-in etc. If I'm doing everything via SPA or Client-side native apps, is there anything wrong with just providing a POST API that accepts the user information, creates the account via UserManager<T> and returns the UserId?
I want to provide a dedicated sign-in page, similar to FB/Google/Twitter etc for Auth to happen across any app that wants to authorize a user for my services. I don't typically see account creation as part of the OAuth process though. Is it typical that you would allow for redirects to an account creation page, that redirects back to a client upon successful account creation or is that process typically just used for Auth via OAuth flows?
I would suggest to consider using one service for IDS4 and ASP.NET Identity since they can be integrated and give you the full functionality you're looking for(auth, and users management).
IDS4 has examples and good documentations regarding that.
To me, I think separating them would be an over engineering.
one example: when IDS4 generate access token for a user, you should get claims, roles and validate username and password, all of that are stored in ASP.NET Identity.
So for more details you can check the docs of Identity Server 4: http://docs.identityserver.io/en/latest/quickstarts/0_overview.html
or it's my pleasure to check my little blog post that I tried to give some more detailed and step by step.
https://feras.blog/how-to-use-asp-net-identity-and-identityserver4-in-your-solution/
Start with IDS4 link because it might be enough :)
The main point when thinking about security management UI is how to secure that UI. And the most safe approach for today is cookie-based auth with same-site cookie (the way, MVC uses by default). Consider that when and if selecting serverless SPA pattern. For management purposes-app having strict backend is much more secure than token-based access to distributed api-s.
Regarding the application hosting, #VidmantasBlazevicius is absolutely right, there is no the only strategy: hosting all the services in one app is simpler, so it better fit lo to middle loaded systems. But with raise of the number of users and authentication requests, you might want to scale, and separating management UI from authentication is one of the ways to handle that.
I've been tasked with enabling authentication and authorization for our project's api. The main goal is to protect the methods from misuse, however we also need to enable a developer from another company to call the methods in their code.
Being new to authentication and authorization I'm overwhelmed with the many different options available for .NET etc. Some techniques look promising until you read that they pass credentials in plain text (basic auth?) or have other issues etc... I'm just looking for a reliable and safe approach.
I'm using IIS to host the web api, and I have seen that one such option is to authenticate at the 'host level'. My supervisor has mentioned this is the preferred approach.
I have looked at many threads and videos regarding authenticating in IIS. From what I can work out, such a solution alerts the user that a certain action requires authentication and to enter their credentials.
My issues are as follows:
Given the other developer is not a member of our domain, how can they authenticate using their (windows?) credentials. Is there an alternative to windows authentication?
How will requiring authorization on certain api actions impact the function of the site normally? I.e. will I have to pass valid credentials to the api in my code, for each request?
Overall I'm just a bit uncertain on how this all works and I appreciate any advice given.
Here's a bit of a back story, feel free to skip to the problem below.
We have a handful of web applications exposed to the outside world (as opposed to ONLY on our internal business network) and these applications are using HTML5 for the offline capabilities. We also had IIS configured for Windows Authentication ONLY (no outside parties use our applications), thus we were issuing the challenge directly against our AD. With a recent update to Chrome for iOS, it broke the NTLM authentication (instead of prompting for use credentials, it just displayed a 401 unauthorized exception page) so we started looking at alternative solutions.
We figured we could leverage our current external ADFS/O365 access thus the user experience would be the same across all external facing applications (not just web apps).
We ended up adding OWIN to our WebForms app to use ADFS authentication and it works from a perspective of you can see the redirect to our external login page and then back to the web app. However, there is an additional problem. To get this to work, we had to DISABLE Windows Authentication in IIS and ENABLE Anonymous Authentication. Also, in the Web.Config in <system.web> we added <authorization><deny users="?" /></authorization>
PROBLEM
Since our applications are using HTML5 and are available offline, we are also using Web API to handle the push of data from the client device to the central system. When we moved to our "SSO type" solution, the POST methods in Web API started crashing. Turns out the line HttpContext.Current.User.Identity.Name stopped working.
How can I get the current authenticated [signed in] user when the user returns to the network and sync's their data? I'm not even sure what the best approach is here, I've tried a few different suggestions from SO and Google, but none seem to work. How does one get the current user in Web API with Owin using Federated Services?
I am investigating how IdentityServer 3 works and I still have problem to fully understand.
In general concept is clear to me but still I am not sure how to implement this on real project.
This is basic example that I am trying to implement in my case: link
I have web api project and I want to call my api methods from any client (mvc, wpf, phone…)
So I need implementation that is suitable for all clients.
If I understand well (and probably I am not understand completely), I should have 3 projects:
Client
Api
Project that host IdentityServer
And all projects should have required stuff like on picture:
Steps on picture:
Get token
Return token
Call api
Check if Token is OK
If Token is fine than return data else show error
My questions are:
Is my thinking about how this works ok?
Where I making mistakes?
Is this example good enough for my case? Am I missing something
important?
Do I have to create project that host IdentityServer, or this is
needed just for example code ?
Does IdentityServer host project must be console application that
communicate with api and client(like in example), or in real world
this is done differently ?
Should project that host identity server be aware of Clients and
Users ?
Should some other project except host identity server project be aware of Clients and Users ?
What is diference between implicit and hybrid flow, what I need in my case and why?
How do I create my own login view? I want have html page for login if I use web client, but to have wpf login view if I use wpf, also different view for mobile client.
EDIT:
I think that I need Resource Owner flow . I supose that resource i view where user type user name and password.
Your basic flow is correct, with Identity Server acting as your authorization server and your client and web API separate.
You should host Identity Server in its own project to ensure it is separate from any other logic which has the potential to introduce security concerns. How you host it is up to you and your use case. Typically you would see it hosted within an ASP.NET project on an IIS Server.
Identity Server must be aware of clients and users in order to authenticate them. The only other projects that should be aware of your identity store (users) is any applications that concern things like admin, user registration, etc. The client store would only ever be used by Identity Server.
Views can be modified using the Identity Server templates or by introducing your own ViewService. See the docs for more info: https://identityserver.github.io/Documentation/docsv2/advanced/customizingViews.html
Regarding flows, the Resource Owner flow is OAuth only, so there will be no authentication (log in page), only authorization (server to server).
We are building a web application that also includes webAPI's. These WebAPIs needs to be exposed to other applications as well (other internal application on different subDomain or 3rd party application). We are thinking of using OpenId Connect, so that not only we will be able to give access_token but also id_token for authentication.
Now the question is 'Should my main application also use openId connect' for authentication/authorization. I am not in favor of this. As per my understanding, only external applications should use openid connect to use main application's resources. And internal applications (main as well as application on different sub-domain) can work with regular cookie based authentication.
For instance, main application is MyWebApp.com (this includes webapi as well). Other internal applications are maps.MyWebApp.com, admin.MyWebApp.com, payroll.MyWebApp.com.
Other 3rd party application could be OtherWebApp.com.
Please suggest.
"Should my main application also use openid connect?"
Advantages
- paves the way for single sign on
- modularizes your authentication so you're not implementing different authentication solutions.
- you have the option of using the same Web api from your main app. (although you could just use the oauth2 client credentials flow and simply skip the openid connect authentication part)
Disadvantages
- if you only had one client app then this could be overkill
- you're adding complexity to the app by making it depend on an authentication server app (but modularizing has advantages too)
I don't know your scenario completely but I'm inclined to say yes. Although, I'd definitely turn off the consent screen from oauth2 for your trusted main app. If you don't use openid connect for authentication, it shouldn't be too hard to convert your main app to use it later