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Connecting or Accessing Okta LDAP Interface using c# .NET Client

I have a client which uses Okta LDAP Interface facility. We have a LDAP v3 tool which connects with AD, Open LDAP other LDAP v3 supported servers.
We want to integrate Okta LDAP Interface into our tool as it is LDAPv3 Compatible. Our Code is based on .NET framework + C Sharp.
We are facing some issues/challenges while connecting with Okta LDAP Interface.
We use System.DirectoryServices by Microsoft library provided by microsoft currently. But facing issues with LDAP Interface.
For StartTLS/389
I get the error :
Unwilling to perform. LDAP Error Code 53
More: A secure connection cannot be established. To admin: This service requires TLS. LDAP
For SSL/636
Error: The server is not operational.
Links:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/system.directoryservices?view=netframework-4.8
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/system.directoryservices.directoryentry?view=netframework-4.8
https://ldapwiki.com/wiki/LDAP_UNWILLING_TO_PERFORM
var oktaLDAPPath = "LDAP://dev-506668.ldap.oktapreview.com:636/ou=users,dc=dev-506668,dc=oktapreview,dc=com";
var un = "uid=*******,dc=dev-506668,dc=oktapreview,dc=com";
var pass = "*******";
var filter = "((objectClass=*))";
try
{
using (var userDirectoryEntry = new DirectoryEntry(oktaLDAPPath, un, pass,AuthenticationTypes.SecureSocketsLayer))
{
using (var directorySearcher = new DirectorySearcher(userDirectoryEntry, filter) { PageSize = 100 })
{
directorySearcher.FindOne();
}
}
}
catch (DirectoryServicesCOMException dex)
{
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
}
Thanks

Update: So I did some testing for myself. I see what's going on.
If you do a DNS lookup on dev-506668.ldap.oktapreview.com, it gives you a CNAME result to op1-ldapi-fb96b0a1937080bd.elb.us-east-1.amazonaws.com.
A browser will use the IP address of the CNAME, but still make the request with the host name that you originally gave it. However, for some reason, when starting an LDAP connection, Windows is using the CNAME to iniatate the connection.
In other words, Windows is changing the request to LDAP://op1-ldapi-fb96b0a1937080bd.elb.us-east-1.amazonaws.com:636. But then it receives the SSL certificate which has the name *.ldap.oktapreview.com and it panics because that doesn't match the name it used to make the request (op1-ldapi-fb96b0a1937080bd.elb.us-east-1.amazonaws.com).
I verified all of this using Wireshark, monitoring traffic on port 636. The SSL Client Hello is using op1-ldapi-fb96b0a1937080bd.elb.us-east-1.amazonaws.com instead of dev-506668.ldap.oktapreview.com.
I don't know of a way to make it not do that. DirectoryEntry has no way to override how it verifies the SSL certificate either. LdapConnection does, which you can see here, but it might be a little harder to work with. I've never used it. (you probably should do some verification of your own and no just return true like that example does).
This might be something you can share with Okta Support anyway.
Original answer:
It sounds like your computer does not trust the SSL certificate that is used on the server. To verify this, I use Chrome. You have to start Chrome like this:
chrome.exe --explicitly-allowed-ports=636
Then you can put this in the address bar:
https://dev-506668.ldap.oktapreview.com:636
If the certificate is not trusted, you will get a big error saying so. You can click the 'Advanced' button to see the reason Chrome gives for it not being trusted. But Chrome will also let you inspect the certificate by clicking on "Not secure" in the address bar to the left of the address, then click 'Certificate'.
There a couple reasons it might not be trusted:
The fully-qualified domain name you are using (dev-506668.ldap.oktapreview.com) doesn't match what is on the certificate. If that's the case, you might be able to just change the domain name you use to match the certificate.
The certificate is not issued by a trusted authority. It could be a self-signed certificate. If this is the case, then you should see an "Install Certificate" button when you view the certificate, which you can use to explicitly trust the certificate. See here for screenshots, starting on step 3. This will only apply to the current computer.

I recently ran into this issue and was pointed to the following solution:
Add the following registry value then restart the server and see if it fixes the issue.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\LDAP\UseHostnameAsAlias
DWORD, set the value to 1
See https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/an-error-occurs-when-you-try-to-establish-ssl-connections-to-the-nodes-by-using-the-alias-name-from-an-ldaps-client-computer-that-is-running-windows-7-or-windows-server-2008-r2-49b6ee93-2c68-a892-8133-612d208dd1b1 for more details.

Access denied for user 'root'#'localhost' (using password: YES) in Visual Studio

Kindly bear with me. I am a Microsoft SQL Server person with loads of Visual Studio experience, but I need to get something done using a MySQL database.
I am trying to create a little tool here that will allow our developers to quickly update database records, and I am using Visual Studio to create a small Windows Form to do this.
In a Microsoft SQL Server connection string, I could write something like this:
Server=myServerAddress;Database=myDataBase;User Id=username;Password=password;
In a MySQL connection string, there appear to be multiple other options, but the first one looks basically the same:
Server=myServerAddress;Database=myDataBase;Uid=username;Pwd=password;
When I attempt to open the MySQL connection from my PC, I get the exception listed in the title (actually, it shows the Uid value and the IP Address of my PC instead of localhost, but I am hoping more people will recognize the error easier this way):
public static void MySQLi_Connect() {
m_err = null;
var str = Properties.Settings.Default.ConnStr;
try {
m_conn = new MySqlConnection(Properties.Settings.Default.ConnStr);
m_conn.Open();
} catch (MySqlException err) {
ErrorLog("MySQLi_Connect", err);
}
}
I did a search, and it seems that the Uid on MySQL needs to be granted access from the specific IP Address that the connection is being made from.
Further, I found this on the mysql.com doc pages:
If you do not know the IP address or host name of the machine from which you are connecting, you should put a row with '%' as the Host column value in the user table. After trying to connect from the client machine, use a SELECT USER() query to see how you really did connect. Then change the '%' in the user table row to the actual host name that shows up in the log. Otherwise, your system is left insecure because it permits connections from any host for the given user name.
A few things:
It looks like I can connect to MySQL by using a % setting in the Uid jp2code, but MySQL says I need to change that back right away to remove system vulnerability.
Microsoft SQL Server did not seem to require this - or, if it did, I simply never was slapped in the face with this vulnerability issue like MySQL is doing.
Now, I ask:
If this is going to be a tool used by different developers on different PCs, is it common practice to turn the blind eye to this horrendous system vulnerability?
Is this not really as big of a concern as MySQL is making it appear?
What is the best way to continue with a Windows Forms application that needs to connect from various locations? Obviously, I do not want to continuously be adding more entries for a particular application every time another developer wants to use the tool or someone tries to run it from a different PC.

You can configure the security of your MySQL server as strong as you like, usually you dont connect users but applications. So if you have your root user without password in production environment is your fault. Usually developers have access to development environment, so this is not a big deal.
Of course try to have as many users as roles you need, for your example I think one user is enough. In production use a secure config file for save a secure password and set you mysqlserver restricted.

I was having the same issue and I found out that the password wasn't correct.
GO to your sql command line and type the code below:
mydb in the line below is the name of the database you are working on.
passwd in the line has to match the password you have in c# code so in your case "password"
grant all privileges on mydb.* to myuser#localhost identified by 'passwd';

Like OP says you can wildcard the hostname portion. I used this on our dev-server (not recommended for production servers):
update mysql.user set host = '%' where host='localhost';
Then I had to restart the server to make MySQL use it (propably I could just have restarted the MySQL service).

.Net's Directory Services throws a strange exception

I have a small C# solution used to check users credentials. It works fine for two of my teammates, but on my PC I get an exception.
The relevant code:
PrincipalContext context = new PrincipalContext(ContextType.Domain);
if (context.ValidateCredentials(System.Environment.UserDomainName + "\\" + usr, pwd))
return true;
else
return false;
And the exception is:
DirectoryOperationException, "The server cannot handle directory requests.".
I tried creating context with the explicit server name and the 636 port number, but this didn't help as well.
Any ideas?

I had this problem too using IIS Express and VS 2010. What fixed it for me was a comment on another thread.
Validate a username and password against Active Directory?
but i'll save you the click and search... :) Just add ContextOpations.Negotiate to you Validate Credentials call like below.
bool valid = context.ValidateCredentials(user, pass, ***ContextOptions.Negotiate***);

I had this issue: things were working on my dev machine but didn't work on the server. Turned out that IIS on the server was set up to run as LocalMachine. I changed it to NetworkService (the default) and things started working.
So basically check the user of the app pool if this is running on IIS.

I had to just create a new app pool and assign it .NET 2.0, then assign the new app pool to our web app, and it started working. We had .NET 3.5 SP2, so the hotfix wasn't ideal for us. Since the WWW service is usually Local System, I questioned that too. But since it was .NET and security related, I gave a shot at the app pool first and it worked.

Perhaps you need the hotfix?
FIX: DirectoryOperationException exception
And you are an Admin or the id that your service is running under is an Admin on your PC right?
I take it you already looked into this:
System.DirectoryServices.Protocols
"You may receive a less than helpful DirectoryOperationException(“The server cannot handle directory requests.”) what isn’t quite so amusing about this is that it didn’t even try to communicate with the server. The solution was to add the port number to the server. So instead of passing “Server” to open the LdapConnection, I passed “server:636”. By the way, LDAPS is port 636 – rather than the 389 port used by LDAP."
Good point, I wouldn't expect that Win7/.NET 3.5 would need that patch. How about the info provided in this question:
Setting user's password via System.DirectoryServices.Protocols in AD 2008 R2

How should I validate a user's credentials against an ADAM instance over SSL?

Apologies in advance as I haven't had much experience with directories before.
I have an ASP.net application, and I have to validate its users against an Active Directory Application Mode instance running on Server 2k3. I was previously attempting a connection with DirectoryEntry and catching the COMException if the user's credentials (userPrincipalName & password) were wrong, but I had a number of problems when trying to bind as users who weren't a member of any ADAM groups (which is a requirement).
I recently found the System.DirectoryServices.AccountManagement library, which seems a lot more promising, but although it works on my local machine, I'm having some troubles when testing this in our testbed environment. Chances are I'm simply misunderstanding how to use these objects correctly, as I wasn't able to find any great documentation on the matter. Currently I am creating a PrincipalContext with a Windows username and password, then calling the AuthenticateCredentials with the user's userPrincipalName and password. Here's a very short exert of what I'm doing:
using (var serviceContext = new PrincipalContext(
ContextType.ApplicationDirectory,
serverAddress,
rootContainer,
ContextOptions.Negotiate | ContextOptions.SecureSocketLayer,
serviceAccountUsername,
serviceAccountPassword)) {
bool credentialsValid = serviceContext.ValidateCredentials(userID, password, ContextOptions.SecureSocketLayer | ContextOptions.SimpleBind)
}
If the user's credentials are valid, I then go on to perform other operations with that principal context. As I said, this works for both users with and without roles in my own environment, but not in our testbed environment. My old DirectoryEntry way of checking the user's credentials still works with the same configuration.

After a very long morning, I was able to figure out the problem!
The exception message I was receiving when calling ValidateCredentials was extremely vague. After installing Visual Studio 2008 in the test environment (which is on the other side of the country, mind you!), I was able to debug and retrieve the HRESULT of the error. After some very deep searching in to Google, I found some very vague comments about "SSL Warnings" being picked up as other exceptions, and that enabling "SCHANNEL logging" (which I'm very unfamiliar with!) might reveal some more insight. So, after switching that on in the registry and retrying the connection, I was presented with this:
The certificate received from the remote server does not contain the expected name. It is therefore not possible to determine whether we are connecting to the correct server. The server name we were expecting is ADAMServer. The SSL connection request has failed. The attached data contains the server certificate.
I found this rather strange, as the old method of connecting via SSL worked fine. In any case, my co-worker was able to spot the problem - the name on the SSL certificate that had been issued on the server was that of the DNS name ("adam2.net") and not the host name ("adamserver"). Although I'm told that's the norm, it just wasn't resolving the correct name when using PrincipalContext.
Long story short; re-issuing a certificate with the computer name and not the DNS name fixed the problem!

"Access Denied" when trying to connect to remote IIS server - C#

I receive an "Access Deined" COMException when I try to connect to a remote IIS 6 server from my C# application that is running under IIS 5.1.
Any ideas? I am experiencing all the same issues with the original questions.
Update - 4/1/09
I found this solution (http://www.codeproject.com/KB/cs/Start_Stop_IIS_Website.aspx) that consists of a window application connecting to an IIS server to start and stop web sites. I am able to run it on my workstation and connect to the IIS server.
Ugh....why can I run this stand alone application but not my ASP.NET application?
Original
I receive an "Access Denied" COMException when I try to connect to IIS from a remote machine using the DirectoryEntry.Exist method to check to see if the IIS server is valid.
string path = string.Format("IIS://{0}/W3SVC", server);
if(DirectoryEntry.Exist(path))
{
//do something is valid....
}
I am a member of an active directory group that has been added to the Administrators groups to the IIS server I am trying to connect to.
Has anyone experience this issue and know how to resolve it?
UPDATE:
#Kev - It is an ASP.NET application. Also, I can connect without an username and password to the remote server through IIS6 Manager.
#Chris - I am trying to connect to the remote server to display the number of virtual directorys and determine the .NET framework version of each directory. See this SO question.
#dautzenb - My ASP.NET application is running under IIS 5.1 trying to connect to an IIS 6 server. I can see fault audits in the security log for my local ASPNET account on the remote server. When I try to debug the application, I am running under my domain account and still get the Access is denied.
UPDATE 2:
#Kev - I was able to establish to create a DirectoryEntry object using the following overload:
public DirectoryEntry
(
string path,
string username,
string password
)
But, all of the properties contain a " threw an exception of type 'System.Runtime.InteropServices.COMException'" while I debug the app.
Also, the AuthenticationType property is set to Secure.
UPDATE 3:
The following two failure audit entries were in the remote IIS server's security event log every time I tried to establish a connection:
First event:
Event Category: Account Logon
Event ID: 680
Log attempt by: MICROSOFT_AUTHENTICATION_PACKAGE_V1_0
Logon account: ASPNET
Source Workstation:
Error Code: 0xC0000234
Second event:
Event Category: Logon/Logoff
Event ID: 529
Logon Failure:
Reason: Unknown user name or bad password
User Name: ASPNET
Domain: (MyDomain)
Logon Type: 3
Logon Process: NtLmSsp
Authentication Package: NTLM
Workstation Name: (MyWorkstationId)
Caller User Name: -
Caller Domain: -
Caller Logon ID: -
Caller Process ID: -
Transited Services: -
Source Network Address: 10.12.13.35
Source Port: 1708
Impersonation is set to true and the username and password are blank. It is using the ASPNET account on the remote IIS server.

If it is an identity problem, you could try setting your IIS 5.1 application to use Integrated Windows Authentication, and then add the following to you web.config on your IIS5.1 web site under system.web to enable impersonation.
<identity impersonate="true"/>
<authentication mode="Windows" />

Since this is an ASP.NET application, it runs in an Application Pool of IIS. This Application Pool runs using a specific user("Local System", "Network Service" or another user).
Does this user have enough rights to connect to a remote server ?
See MSDN for more info.

This looks like it may be a double-hop issue. If you are impersonating the current user of a website using NTLM, that impersonation is only valid on that server (your IIS 5.1 server in this case). If you try to connect to another server using the web site, you are actually going to have issues as it cannot pass the token to another server that was used during impersonation. The same is true if you are debugging your site through your machine, going to another box. Your local machine is authenticating you, but it cannot impersonate you to another server.
All of the solutions I have used in the past require you to hard code the app pool to use an account that has permissions, set the annony. account to a domain account with permissions on the other machine, or use a windows service running on the IIS 5.1 machine, under a domain account, to connect to the other server.
If you are using Kerberos, this wouldn't apply, but AD uses NTLM by default.

Where exactly are you trying to read too? Is it in under the same path as your application?

When I had this problem, I found that simply authenticating my self on a Windows file share solved the problem. From experience, I think that WMI/ADSI/COM doesn't have great support for not-already-authenticated users. I believe this issue occurs when you're not associated with a Windows domain.

If it is indeed a NTLM doublehop issue you could use the SETSPN utility to create service principal named instances for your target IIS servers.
Then you could go into Active Directory, and then allow the computer object (basically the NETWORK SERVICE or LOCAL SERVICE principals) to delegate its credentials to a correctly registered SPN.
Then you could hop-hop-hop all over the place! But, be warned! People can hurt themselves on sharp pointy things when you enable double-hop!
Good KB articles to read:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929650

I believe that DirectoryEntry.Exists silently ignores any credentials supplied and uses the creds of the authenticated user. This seems to match the behaviour you've described. For AD work, we never use it for this reason.

I'm sort of stumped at the moment as to why you can't get this working. There is a temporary work around you could try. When instantiating the DirectoryEntry object you could use one of the following constructor overloads:
public DirectoryEntry(
string path,
string username,
string password
)
Documented at: MSDN: DirectoryEntry Constructor (String, String, String)
...or...
public DirectoryEntry(
string path,
string username,
string password,
AuthenticationTypes authenticationType
)
Documented at: MSDN: DirectoryEntry Constructor (String, String, String, AuthenticationTypes)
As it happens I'm building a test AD environment on my virtual server box for a new project to do similar stuff. When I get it up and running I'll have a play around to see if I can reproduce the problem you're encountering. In the meantime let us know what happens if you try these constructor overloads referenced above.
Update (In answer to Michaels comment):
For reasons that evade me just now, we couldn't use DirectoryEntry.Exists() in a particular scenario, there is this snippet of code that gets called now and again in one of our apps:
public static bool MetabasePathExists(string metabasePath)
{
try
{
using(DirectoryEntry site = new DirectoryEntry(metabasePath))
{
if(site.Name != String.Empty)
{
return true;
}
return false;
}
}
catch(COMException ex)
{
if(ex.Message.StartsWith("The system cannot find the path specified"))
{
return false;
}
LogError(ex, String.Format("metabasePath={0}", metabasePath));
throw;
}
catch(Exception ex)
{
LogError(ex, String.Format("metabasePath={0}", metabasePath));
throw;
}
}
You could replace the constructor with one of the ones from above. Admittedly it's a stab in the dark :).