what is the use of hashedToken inside meteor.user - meteor

Hi I am a newbie to Meteor and I would like to know what is the use of hashedToken generated inside the Meteor.user object.
In Meteor documentation it is explained that the services object,
containing data used by particular login services. For example, its reset field contains tokens used by forgot password links, and its resume field contains tokens used to keep you logged in between sessions.
When I check the localstorage, Meteor.loginToken seems different from the hashedToken.
so my question is,
1.what is the difference between Meteor.loginToken generated in the local storage and hashedToken generated inside the service object?
2.Also why do resume.loginTokens inside service object is an array?
Any help is appreciated...

So a loginToken is a string of characters that can be left on the computer similar to a cookie token. You don't want to leave the actual username and password on a computer so the token is used instead.
The token is then used to authenticate to the server and log-in in place of a username/password.
There are a multiple of them in the array because you can be logged in on many devices at the same time. Each would have their own token.
The reason the tokens are hashed is an extra measure of security on the database. The tokens on the client are sha256 hashed and matched up to the one on the already hashed database ones to try and log in the user automatically.
The reason they are hashed is so no one can use them as loginToken localStorage form to login as a certain user by copying it from the database and pasting it as a localstorage logintoken. Its similar to a plaintext password being able to be used to log in a user.

Related

Does createCustomToken(aUID) logout users currently authenticated with that same aUID

TLDR; Can multiple different users be authenticated and retain authentication via a generated custom token IF that custom token for each of those users is being generated always by the same UID? That is, User1 gets custom token generated by UID1 (via createCustomToken(UID1)) and then signed-in with signInWithCustomToken(), THEN User2 gets and signs-in with custom token generated using UID1, then User3 same thing etc etc, can ALL these users happily remained logged-in and experience no interruptions despite these other users being authenticated in this identical manner?
Long Version:
Ok, so I am trying to create a link-sharing system wherein a user who navs to this link can access a specific subset of my project's Firebase resources.
I have already tried using Firebase's signInAnonymously() to do this, but I dont like the way that Firebase does this for a whole host of reasons I dont want to get into.
The way i want to accomplish this is by:
generating a unique link (really a Firestore unique doc ID with some access data stored in that doc)
having the unauthenticated user navigate to some landing page, calling the cloud function and passing that unique link (lets call it a UID now)
cloud function, upon recieving this UID, will createCustomToken(UID), returning the token back to calling user
and the user will authenticate themselves with signInWithCustomToken(returnedToken) and access provisioned resources
Now, that is all well and good, but my question is:
If two (or any amount more people) people navigate to that same link and therefore pass and create token with the same UID, will they all be ok to continue happily using Firebase resources? Or is it because they got tokens created for them which utilised the same UID a sort of token-conflict is made, and therefore any next user who authenticates in this manner will revoke the previous user's auth token.
I havent been able to try this, and it seems like every question asked about these custom tokens relates to the generation and expiry time of them, which I understand. I wish the Auth docs were more clear on the mechnics and pitfalls of using Custom Tokens. I also havent been able to try it myself as it would be quite alot of refactoring, and was hoping someone could give me a straight answer to this.
Yes, a user can login on multiple devices without affecting other sessions at the same time irrespective of which auth method you use.
I'm not sure what the unique links are but it's not a good idea to pass the UID itself around if you function just takes a UID and returns a custom token as UIDs are pretty short and just a random string. It might be best to add a custom signed JWT in the links that contain the UID in payload so you can verify them before creating Firebase Custom Tokens.

ASP.Net Core 2(.1.2) - Save user data without having to trust the client

I'm currently working with ASP.Net Core 2.1.2 and I can't find a solution for my problem.
Currently I'm building a controlpanel together with Angular 5.
The data for a user is stored in a MySQL database.
To have access to the controlpanel you have to login - and the server will load some data. Important is the admin-level (1-?) - some actions are only allowed for admins with atleast a level.
For the authentication I'm using JWTBearer, which gets sent by the client at every HTTP action as header. But in some methods I also want to check the admin-level.
Now where can I store data for the client, like his admin-level?
Is it safe to save it with a Claim? But then wouldn't it be possible for the client to modify it clientside and send a "custom" header?
I also tried to put the data in a dictionary and use the (HttpContext.)User (of type ClaimsPrinciple) as the key, but that won't work because User is always different at every Request.
Is there any safe way to store the data for a User?
You can safely store your admin-level information in a Claim, unless you're worried that someone can read it. It's not possible to modify a Claim in JWT, because its value is signed by key which only you should know and after the modification this token will be invalid. Read this article to get more information about JWT

Add extra field on login form

I'm using FOSUserBundle in my Symfony3 app. I have been requested to add an extra layer of security to the login page.
Let's say I get a custom key string (saved on the user computer) with JQuery.
I need to grab that key, and then send it along with the user credentials for verification to Symfony. That key will be stored in the database (I was thinking a new column in the user table) and when the user tries to log into the app, if there's no key or the key is different, it will give an error.
I read the documentation, and the closest topic to my needs is this one.
Except that I have to compare the token I send with the one in the database.
Thanks in advance for any help!

Simple temporary authentication without a username or password

I need to add some authorization/authentication logic to an existing web form. Essentially, a user will enter their email address, then I check that email address against an existing database, and if it exists I send an email to that address containing an activation link to the web application. Once the user clicks that link, I want their client to be considered "authorized" for a short amount of time (like their browser session, for instance). They can then access certain pages until their authentication expires.
This would be extremely easy to do using custom ASP.NET forms authentication, but after doing some research there seems to be many more options today in terms of authorization/authentication. Things like ASP.NET Identity 2, Katana/OWIN, and more, it is getting to be quite overwhelming.
I'm looking for suggestions on the simplest way to currently implement something like this in an MVC4 application. I should be able to upgrade the application to MVC5 if necessary.
This is essentially the same process most password resets use, so you can pretty much approach it the same way:
Create a table to track these "authentications". You pretty much just need a column for the token, a column for a datetime, a column for a boolean. The datetime can either track the creation date and time of the token, which you'd then use in your code to calculate if it's too old based on your desired time frame, or you can track the expire date and time of the token and then simply check in your code if that expire date has passed or not. The boolean would track whether the email address has been confirmed, via having followed the link with token in the email you send out.
In your initial form, you collect the email address and combine this with a salt and one-way encryption to produce a token. You send the email with a link that includes that token. Save the token and the appropriate datetime value in your table.
On the page the user goes to after clicking the link, you use the token from the URL to lookup the matching row in your table, check the date value, and set the boolean to true for confirmed. Then, store the token in Session.
On each subsequent request, check 1) there's a token in Session and 2) that that token is still valid (lookup it up in the database and check the datetime and confirmed status). If the token doesn't exist or is no longer good, delete the row, remove the token from Session, and redirect the user to the original email address collection form. Otherwise, allow the user to view whatever content is there.
The simplest way, is to have a database table for the users, and do checking for user authentication and if it's use FormsAuthentication.RedirectFromLoginPage, The identity framework gives you more options for security and encryption also for group and role management.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ka5ffkce(v=vs.110).aspx

ASP.NET MVC 2 using Authentication

Here is my problem if i can call it that way.I have implemented authentification with custom memebership provider in asp.net mvc 2.0.Everything works well but i have one problem.When user log in he provides its username and password and i check this through databse in MSSQL then i validate user and pass and use FormsAuthentication to set only UserName as profile information.
But when that user wants to create new item(lets say for sale or something) that belongs only to him and can be listed with other items that user created i can use this username(in FormsAuthentication) check it in database and connect that item to appropriate user with foreign key but that works if username is unique so i need additional informations like ID column from database table "user" to store and use it later so what is the most secure and "best practice" way to store additional information of user and use it later because username as i mentioned must be unique in database and it is not enough information about logged user.
Couldn't you store the User object (or whatever additional info you have) in the Session? or using a cookie at the client side (if you need to persist the login state even after the user closes his browser etc)? Let me know if you need specific examples.
EDIT: After reading your comments, if you are looking for a "secure cookie" solution have a look at this: http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/13665/HttpSecureCookie-A-Way-to-Encrypt-Cookies-with-ASP
I use it to store the user's id (only his id). When I retrieve this cookie I load the user given his id. Some in-memory caching allows me to avoid loading the user on each request.
But just wanted to clarify that the session object seems great for what you are trying to do + you dont have to worry about security (for the average app that is).

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