Manually set cookie value to disable Anti-forgery Token? - asp.net

I still don't understand how the Anti-forgery Token works in MVC.
From the MSDN.
Anti-Forgery Tokens
To help prevent CSRF attacks, ASP.NET MVC uses anti-forgery tokens, also called request verification tokens.
The client requests an HTML page that contains a form.
The server includes two tokens in the response. One token is sent as a cookie. The other is placed in a hidden form field. The tokens are generated randomly so that an adversary cannot guess the values.
When the client submits the form, it must send both tokens back to the server. The client sends the cookie token as a cookie, and it sends the form token inside the form data. (A browser client automatically does this when the user submits the form.)
If a request does not include both tokens, the server disallows the request.
Here is an example of an HTML form with a hidden form token:
<form action="/Home/Test" method="post">
<input name="__RequestVerificationToken" type="hidden"
value="6fGBtLZmVBZ59oUad1Fr33BuPxANKY9q3Srr5y[...]" />
<input type="submit" value="Submit" />
My question is that since we can find the hidden token value easily by looking the source code (F12 in any browser). Then can we manually set the cookie by going to the Developer Tools (Ctrl-Shift-J or Tools -> Developer Tools) -> Console and the you can enter javascript command:
document.cookie="keyofcookie=valueofcookie"?
Then we cam manually set the tokens same therefore to disable Anti Forgery technology?

That cookie is HttpOnly and it cannot be set from javascript since all latest browsers implement HttpOnly. Also, both cookie token and form token contain different base 64 encrypted information. Decryption will be server side stuff.
Moreso, These tokens are not compared for equality. They complement each other for data. Also, you did not read the complete article. MVC has its own methods to validate token as well..
Check if the link below helps.
https://www.codeproject.com/Articles/793384/ASP-NET-Anti-Forgery-Tokens-internals

As the documentation says:
Anti-forgery tokens work because the malicious page cannot read the
user's tokens, due to same-origin policies. (Same-origin policies
prevent documents hosted on two different sites from accessing each
other's content. So in the earlier example, the malicious page can
send requests to example.com, but it cannot read the response.)
That means, copying the cookie value and using it to any different location will not work because of the said policy.

Related

How are authorization tokens stored / recreated by the browser?

I am Looking at the Network activity of this page: https://helm.csod.com/ux/ats/careersite/4/home?c=helm&lang=de-DE.
Specifically at the post request with the Name: "search". Its using an authorization token.
tldr: How is the following authorization token stored on the Client side?
Goal:
I would like to understand how the browser (client-side) stores this authorization token. I dont Need to get the data or know how to scrape with selenium or sthg. I would just be interested in the mechanics behind.
What i tried:
I find the token in the page source: view-source:https://helm.csod.com/ux/ats/careersite/4/home?c=helm&lang=de-DE.
It seems like there is an object csod created in /player-career-site/1.15.4/pages/home.js.
then the key is stored in csod.context.
Finally, csod.player.initialize(csod.context) is called.
Unfortunately, i failed digging in the Code and finding These function as there where too many Matches for initialize and my js are skills too bad.
As storage i am only Aware of the Cookies. It might be transformed / encrypted and stored in the cookies? But how is it then restored to the "original" token, before being added to the request Header?
This seems to be a CSRF prevent method.
The token is created with a key in the back end, it stores the original key in a session and sends the token to the client side.
When the client sends a request, the token is posted with the data as a header or with the data, then the back end gets the stored key in the session, generate the token with the same method and compare it with the posted token. If they are equal there is no problem, access granted.
It is not necessary to restore as you can't decrypt that depending on the algorithm (sha256, md5, etc)
And the browser don't do that, as it can be manipulated, there is no sense to.
The token sent here is JWT(JSON Web Token). This is a widely used standard authentication mechanism.
You can create your own token in any languages like JS, Java, PHP, Python, etc.
I am adding a basic authentication flow:
Let's say a user comes on a form. Enter his email & password.
Now an HTTP request is being sent to the server with credentials. The backend server checks the details and if successful, then returns a response containing the authentication token.
Most of the time this token is stored in localstorage and sometimes in cookies.
Now for every request the token is picked from the stored location and sent in the header.
On the backend, it is checked if the request header has the details or not. And then respond accordingly.
At last, whenever someone logs out then that token is removed from the front end.
I hope it helps! Let me know if you have any queries

OAuth 2 Authorization Code - how long is it valid?

In Webserver Grant Flow
After I obtain the Authorization Code from the authorization authority (after the user has authorized my access) how long is that code usually valid form?
The reason i am asking is, can my webserver store that code and use it in later sessions to retrieve a new access token without the need for the user to re-authenticate again? Should that be the flow?
FYI my goal is make requests from Adobe Analytics and Google Analytics on behalf of my customer. So i would want to ask my customer for authorization once until he revokes my access.
Speaking strictly of Google Oauth. There are three types of codes or tokens you should be aware of.
Authorization code
Access token
Refresh token
Authorization code is return when the user clicks accept to your application accessing their data. This code is used to exchange for an access token and a refresh token. This code can only be used once and is extremely short lived 10 minutes I believe.
Access tokens are used to access private user data. They are valid for approximately one hour.
Refresh tokens are used to gain a new access token when the access token has expired. For the most part refresh tokens do not expire however if it has not been used for six months it will no longer be valid and of course the user can always remove your access.
Answer: No storing the authentication code would be pointless. You will need to store the refresh token. make sure you are requesting offline access of your users.
I cant help you with adobe analytics however I suspect it is similar this is standard Oauth protocol we are talking about.

How to store temporary data (like cookie) in Paw javascript extension

I'm working on javascript based extension for Paw REST Client - OAuth2 authorization with grant_type:password.
So I send the username and password and receive access_token and refresh_token. Here I want to store somewhere the tokens (with ttl 60m) using only javascript (and this method must be allowed by Paw's engine).
Are there any ways to do this and which of them is best?

how does ASP.NET validate anti-forgery token

I wonder how does ASP.NET check if an anti-forgery token is valid or not? Like where is ASP.NET storing those tokens? And how are they stored?
The short version is that a generated token is stored in 2 places: (a) cookie (b) hidden form value. When the form is submitted, these 2 values are compared against each other to determine if they are valid. For further reading:
http://www.asp.net/web-api/overview/security/preventing-cross-site-request-forgery-(csrf)-attacks
http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/793384/ASP-NET-Anti-Forgery-Tokens-internals
A stepwise explanation that is more clear than the accepted answer imho (from https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/aspnet/web-api/overview/security/preventing-cross-site-request-forgery-csrf-attacks)
The client requests an HTML page that contains a form.
The server includes two tokens in the response. One token is sent as a cookie. The other is placed in a hidden form field. The tokens are generated randomly so that an adversary cannot guess the values.
When the client submits the form, it must send both tokens back to the server. The client sends the cookie token as a cookie, and it sends the form token inside the form data. (A browser client automatically does this when the user submits the form.)
If a request does not include both tokens, the server disallows the request.
The above description is not all what is done, in case of AjaxRequest the antiforgery, specifically in get requests, will not usually send the Form with the hidden value for comparison, instead you will need to set a header value with the same content of the cookie via javascript.. the header name that you should set is by default X-XRF-Token header [related to angularjs] ... of course you will need to disable CORS or enable it for only specific domains to protect the APIs, SAMEORIGIN also need to be set to avoid clickjacking ..

ASP.Net and Facebook: Logging-in via ASP.Net

I want to enable Facebook authentication and the FB-Graph in my website, which already has forms authentication. Using http://multitiered.wordpress.com/2010/08/05/getting-started-with-the-facebook-c-sharp-sdk/, I was able to figure out how to login server-side.
However, the problem with this approach is that a secure cookie will not be created, since the call returns the authentication code in the querystring via a callback. This means that the user will have to login every time.
I can see two ways around this:
Store the access token in a secure cookie manually
Instead of the above approach, use the FB JS API to login - this stores a secure cookie with the access token automatically
I would prefer not to use the second approach, as I would like the login code to be server-side.
Which would be the better approach? Am I missing something?
I use the JavaScript method to first authenticate the user, the JS SDK then writes an encrypted cookie (called "fbs_[YourAppID]") when a connected user hits your page; using one of the many Facebook c# SDKs, this cookie can be decoded using your application secret giving you the user ID, oAuth token, expiry date etc.
Then I hook into the AuthenticateRequest event of my .NET application, check the presence of the cookie, decode if it found, and then find a user who has been assigned this facebook ID (your user table must have a extra field for storing the ID of their facebook account).
If a match is found, I write a normal forms authentication cookie for this user, then .NET will recognise them for all future requests. If no user is found, then this is a brand new user who has just connected. Use the SDK again to query the graph API using their oAuth token, get things like their name/email etc and create a new account, then issue a authentication token as normal.
By writing a normal authetication cookie, the user will stay logged into to your site for all requests, just as if they were a normal user.
One side point, when using email address, check for duplicates, and check for the facebook cookie in all requests. For example, an existing registered logged in user may have just connected.

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