As the question states I would like to check what type of user is logged in by using data annotation
[Authorize(Roles="Admin")]
I have seen multiple questions and tutorial but none of them explain it clearly or use older mvc.
Is there a simple way to achieve that without using the stock authentication system provided with individual account authorization?
I simply do have a table for users with usernames passwords etc.
You have to deal with two things Authentication and Authorization.
Authentication
You can authenticate users using Owin forms Authentication or the old fashioned Forms Authentication if you prefer.
Authorization
For authorization you can create a custom Role Provider if you want to use Roles (as your did in your sample code) or you can use Claims Authorization.
This article is from 2013 but I successfully followed it to implement a custom role provider in my MVC5 application.
Related
I need a good advise and wanted to know whether a solution is feasible or not. Right now one of my customer has a common login application which is based on Forms authentication(ASP.NET) using membership provider. All internal users use their AD credentials to logon and external users use custom username and password. Both are wrapped via Forms authentication. Now the new proposal is to replace this Forms authentication with ADFS. I have gone through various articles over internet and not able to come to a conclusion. Let me list my findings so far with ADFS extension points.
1) It is possible to add a custom attribute to ADFS claims by the approach mentioned in https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/cloudpfe/2013/12/27/how-to-create-a-custom-attribute-store-for-active-directory-federation-services-3-0/.
2) It is possible to add a second level of authentication( or multifactor authentication) via the approach https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/jenfieldmsft/2014/03/24/build-your-own-external-authentication-provider-for-ad-fs-in-windows-server-2012-r2-walk-through-part-1/. Here I understand that after first level authentication done by AD then only our external provider will come into picture.
So I have a general question that is it really possible to achieve what I am looking for with ADFS. Please let me know.
This is based on where the user accounts are stored. If both internal and external users are in AD, you can just redirect to ADFS.
If internal is in AD and external is in an untrusted or other LDAP source, using ADFS 2016 you can link to both these account stores and still offload authentication to ADFS.
If external is in SQL, you can either use a virtual directory in front to project it as an LDAP store (previous option) or use IdentityServer.
If externs is something else, you'd need IdentityServer.
Thanks //Sam (#MrADFS)
Yes - you can add a custom attribute store.
Yes - you can add a custom authenticator.
A better way might be to use thinktecture's IdentityServer 3.0 for the ASP.NET Identity part and then federate IdentityServer and ADFS.
I am relatively new to uisng ADFS (in ASP.NET) which is what my company wants to use and just have a few basic questions about that:
Am I correct there is no explicit "Authorize" call you can do like with ASP.NET Membership Providers? Unless you on a domain it presents you with a login screen and once you enter credentials it does validation and returns back a token with claims information.
Can you configure some forms to allow anonymous access like you can do with Forms Authentication?
Thanks.
Yes, you can setup pages in your app that don't require authentication. It works exactly like you'd do with Forms Auth.
On #1: in a claims based model, your app relies on an external system to authenticate users and receives evidence that the user is valid in the form of a token. You can completely automate this (using WIF and config files), or you can explicitly trigger the authentication process. In any case, your app won't be responsible for validating legitimate users anymore. It is a responsibility that it delegates to the STS (e.g. ADFS). That's why apps are called "relying parties".
I'd suggest you read the first couple chapters of the A Guide to Claims based Identity for a better understanding of the underlying principles.
I am going to setup a custom role provider, but I don't have a very good idea of how it works behind the scenes.
[Questions]
What is the difference between setting roles in a form authentication ticket and using a custom role provider? Which is better to use?
If I create a custom role provider can I user role names in the web.config to allow / block users?
Thx!
1- Not sure that there is a "better" choice, that has to do with the requirements of the project. I created a role provider based on Windows Authentication rather than Forms Authentication for an internal project because I didn't want to create a bunch of AD groups and I wanted Windows Auth to allow users into the site. As far as what does it do, it interacts with authenticated users to define who is allowed in what areas of the site.
2- Yes.
some additional info
As I understand it "forms" is just a method to authenticate users. Is this correct?
But what "membership" really is I don't know. I've written a custom membership provider but I still don't really see what "membership" is about it if I'm using a custom user table and custom roles table.
So what is forms?
And what is membership?
"Forms" authentication is using the ability to use a form to authenticate a user through them entering a username and password. This is in contrast to using Windows authentication.
"Membership" is a way of storing information against a certain user once they have been authenticated and are logged into the system.
Hope this helps.
By "forms" it means we use a web form to facilitate authentication. Where as Membership gives us built-in way to validate and store user credentials.
As far, as I understand:
Forms is a method to identify requests. it's provide mechanism to store and check authorization cookies in a secure way.
Membership is a "backed" service for forms, that verifies provided credentials across SQL, ActiveDirectory and others.
All our inhouse projects use Active Directory authentication and impersonation as this is the accepted security policy for the company.
I currently have a scenario where I need to store user profile information, and I would like to use the built-in Profile Providers which is standard in ASP.Net. I've previously used this happily with Forms Authentication, however I can't find any helpful information on how to implement this when using Windows Authentication.
Is there any way I can get just the Profile Provider working with Windows Authentication out of the box?
Will I be forced to create a custom profile provider?
The data will be stored in the database, not in Active Directory. However if the latter is possible some guidance would be appreciated.
Notes
I don't need to use the Role provider, this is handled by AD.
I am not sure if I need to implemented the AD Membership provider to get the Profile Provider to work.
you can just use the standard SqlProfileProvider. As username, use the Context.User.Identity.Name property. ASP.NET will create a user entry in it's standard tables himself to keep track of it. The role provider also works in combination with windows authentication. See this link for more information: http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/pages/Recipe_3A00_-Implementing-Role_2D00_Based-Security-with-ASP.NET-2.0-using-Windows-Authentication-and-SQL-Server.aspx
if you enable and configure the profile provider in the web.config, you can use it like this:
ProfileBase profile = ProfileBase.Create(Context.User.Identity.Name, true);
profile.SetPropertyValue("MyProfileProperty", propertyValue);
profile.Save();
Good luck!