I am working on application whose details are as follows:
Its 3 tier architecture. Web Tier (ASP.Net MVC) -- Service Tier (ASP.Net WebApi 2) -- Database Tier(MS SQL 2014).
Application will also have native mobile apps as clients which will consume Service tier.
Service Tier (Web API) uses individual username/password in conjunction with OAuth for authentication and authorization.
User details are stored using ASP. Net Identity system. ASP. Net Identity database tables are in same database as that of application database.
There will be no direct calls from clients i.e. web or mobile apps to database and every request has to go via service layer.
Users of web client and mobile apps will be authenticated against asp.net identity database which is part of application database.
I have partially implemented above architecture however facing one challenge i.e. once user is authenticated, OAuth token will be issued from service layer which will be valid for one day. But how and where should I securely store this token in Web Client (ASP.Net MVC app) so that user needs to login only once in day and not for every single request that it makes.
One option I can think of is once user is authenticated and token is received in web client then store it in in-memory session storage and use it for further requests. However down side of this is, it will reduce scalability of application and will require sticky sessions in load balanced environment.
Is there any better way I can handle this situation? Also want to validate above architecture if its correct architecture?
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An ASP.NET web-forms based application, follows form authentication, maintains user session in DB for stateless model across the servers(F5 DR). Planning to replace the session management with JWT token based to avoid db hits and to meet future API development but the UI (aspx) will be remain as it is.
Question: When it comes to ASP.NET webform which would execute all the requests at server side,posting a token between browser (client) and IIS (server) could be server-side processing (managed in ASP.NET context but not like a SPA), I assume it may behave like an in-proc session, that means it would NOT meet stateless model requirement across the servers. Any suggestions? Does token-model not suit for asp.net web app?
I've been assigned to find a way of implementing SSO in our products. We have several Winform applications and one asp.net 4.0 web app (not MVC).
All the products are built using .Net 4.0, the web app is ASP.NET 4.0.
Some of the Winforms are commmunicating with our API via web services (asmx) and some uses our API directly. The web app is using the same API as well. We offer a set of web services (asmx) that uses the same API to external clients.
Currently we have our own authentication implementation (user, password, roles) in our systems and we would like to replace that with SSO. Or can these two authentication regimes co-exist somehow? The Winforms are used in intranets and the web app is used both in intranets and we also hosts the web apps for clients (accesible from the Internet).
The users are created in our system, but at the same time we import users from Active Directory using our own tool. Active Directory is really the primary user source.
I have read about Windows Identity Foundation and I wonder if I can use that to implement SSO. But what I don't understand is how to use WIF in the winform applications when they use the API directly.
What I would like to achieve is to remove all user administration from our system and use Active Directory as the user source. I guess that means using ADFS 2.0 to create claims, etc.
I can use .Net Framework 4.5 in this implementation (I know that WIF is now a first class citizen in .Net Framework 4.5).
Do you have any advices how to do this? Is WIF the best alternative to achieve SSO across winforms applications and web apps?
There is a way to get the WIF authentication cookie from within the WinForms application.
To do it, you just host the WebBrowser control and point it to the login page of your web application. Assuming the web application is federated with the ADFS2, the web browser control will automatically follow the flow - it will redirect to ADFS and stop there to show the prompt for user credentials (ADFS2 in Forms Authentication mode) or just authenticate using NTLM/Kerberos (ADFS2 in Windows authentication mode). Then the web browser will redirect back to your application.
This is where you hook your code. You just add a handler to the web browser's navigation event and you check when it comes back to your application AFTER ADFS2.0 authenticates the user. You can then call the InternetGetCookie method in the WinForms app to get all the authentication cookies issued by your application and you can close the window which hosts the web browser.
At this point, you have all authentication cookies issued by WIF (the SessionAuthenticationModule) for your application. You can now call your application web services and inject cookies into http calls. The web server will correctly recognize users as authenticated which means that all you have to do is to add proper authorization to your web services (the PrincipalPermission on your web methods should do).
An alternative approach would be to expose WCF services from your web application and guard them with WS-Federation active authentication. The downside of this approach is (in my opinion) that if your identity provider (ADFS) is further federated with yet another identity provider which DOES NOT necessarily implement WS-Trust/WS-Federation then the active authentication will probably fail (because the other identity provider does not implement it) while the passive scenario will still work (a bunch of redirects will sooner ot later end with a page which requires user to provide the credentials but the flow of authentication protocols between consecutive identity providers does not matter).
I have an internal LOB Silverlight client that uses business logic in a self-hosted WCF service (cross domain).
I'm thinking of using ASP.NET AuthenticationServices. How would I set this up with my self-hosted WCF service?
Call ASP.NET AuthenticationService from Silverlight to authenticate user? But this would not protect my self-hosted service...
Send username/password in every request from Silverlight and in my self-hosted service call ASP.NET Authentication Services? (Feels a bit backwards?)
Call ASP.NET AuthenticationService from Silverlight to authenticate user, send username/password in every request from Silverlight to allow logging etc, and use some other means to protect my service?
Is there some way to glue this together or is ASP.NET AuthenticationService not meant to be used when having a self-hosted WCF service?
All of the research I've done on the WCF Authentication Service indicates it's usage is for same-domain (RIA-like) applications. It sets the HttpContext.Current.User and creates a user session, so you can restrict your other WCF endpoint in some subfolder of the hosting website and control access via the web.config file. In this scenario, you can use the log the HttpContext user. If you plan to do things cross-domain, I think you'll find you need to use a combination of Transport (HTTPS) and Message security in the WCF binding configuration. This basically means your 2nd bullet point is true and you'll need to set the Username/Pw on the service client credentials (using Windows Auth or forms auth) and all WCF to send them across the wire with each message...
I've got 3 different clients accessing my ASP.Net service layer. I'm in the process of moving the Silverlight client to RIA services and I'd like to consolidate my authentication code if possible. I use a custom table in my database to store user credentials and profile information.
Can an ASP.Net Membership Provider be used for RIA, MVC and Web Service applications? Or is there an easier way?
WCF: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms731049.aspx
RIA: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee707353(v=vs.91).aspx
ASP.Net MVC: http://www.asp.net/mvc/tutorials/authenticating-users-with-forms-authentication-cs
I got myself tied up in knots a bit trying to use the same auth mechanism for RIA and a WCF REST & SOAP endpoints; RIA is a WCF endpoint at the end of the day. However consuming a RIA service is more comparable to using an MVC app; call a login service after which the browser or Silverlight app automatically attach a cookie to all subsequent requests which will be authorised by the ASP.Net membership provider.
Conversely clients of the WCF SOAP and REST services there are better ways to authorise requests rather than force them to call a login service, extract the cookie and attach it to all future requests. The above link for WCF actually describes a mechanism where the username and password are set for every request. In practice a lot of public web API's require a single header with a secret key to be set.
My conclusion is that I'll use the same membership provider for ASP.Net MVC and RIA but a different mechanism for SOAP and REST WCF services.
My scenario is a 3-Tier app where the data tier is a SQL Server database, the middle tier is a WCF application hosted in a Windows Service and finally the presentation is an Asp.Net MVC application.
As usual, the middle tier is the one that performs all of the business logic. Access database, define business rules.. etc.
Okay, so far so good! BUT now here's question: How do you handle security in such a scenario? I mean, the user has to log in on the ASP.NET application, but I want to authenticate it not only in ASP but in the WCF middle tier as well, since a WCF service is supposed to be accessed by more apps.
I want the user to log in on the Asp.Net application and let WCF know the credentials as well. Is there some kind of session in WCF in which to specify a logged in user?
How do pros handle security in this case? I know you can secure the WCF services with message security, but how do Asp.Net and WCF sync on a single logged user? I want to secure WCF operations depending on the user for authorization means.
I would suggest looking into using an approach like HMAC (Hash Message Authentication Code) for your security, or a similar token-based approach. The idea would be to sign your requests to your WCF layer which can be used to authenticate the request and identify the user making the request.
The essential elements would be a token and a shared secret of some sort used for signing each request. The token would allow you to identify the user on the WCF end, and lookup the shared secret to verify the request. You can also added timestamps / nonces to prevent replay attacks and such.
I've used this approach for some REST services built on WCF - with the added benefit that clients do not need to store usernames and passwords, just the security tokens used for communication. In your case you'll need to sort out how to exchange the tokens between the ASP.NET layer and the WCF layer, but it would provide you a unified authentication method for any consumer of your WCF services.
Have look here for UserName Password authentication.
ASP.NET Web Site + Windows Forms App + WCF Service: Client Credentials //for insights