I want to use password expiration policy. For users who want to login into the website we can check the password on authenticate event of login control. But what about users who has already logged in and won't be cached by login page. In this question, it is suggested that handling HttpApplication.PostAuthenticateRequest event that is not a good approach.
I'm thinking about handling session_start() event. For each user this fires once and we can check if user password is current or not. But I don't know if an already logged in user visits th site after some days would this event fires or not?
Are you sure you want to log users out just because the password has expired? The logon cookie expiration and password expiration are separate concerns.
I don't see anything wrong in maintaing the login cookie until it expires by itself and then forcing the user to change his/her password upon next logon. Just make sure you don't issue cookies with too long expiration period and sooner or later all your users will have to relogin. And this is where you catch possible password expiration.
Note also, that checking the expiration on each request (it doesn't matter if it is PostAuthenticate or PreHandlerExecute) could be just impossible. If your site relies on external authentication source, you just can't go there and check the password expiration. Imagine asking Google or Facebook (if your users authenticate there) whether the password expired or not. It is just not easily possible (or not possible at all).
Related
This is a general question regarding web session management.
What is the best practice approach to managing session timeout?
Assume a system where a user logs in, a session is created on the server, and a token identifier is sent back to the client (via httpOnly cookie).
If the user attempts some access-based check where the session is validated, presumably it makes sense to update an expiry time on the session in the DB. Does this also mean that when this happens, we should update the expiry time on the session token cookie to match?
This seems like the most obvious solution to me, but constantly rewriting the cookie seems like a lot of overhead.
Any insight into best-practice approaches is greatly appreciated. Thanks!
How to manage session timeout to keep user logged-in, prevent he/she from accidental logout?
To keep user logged-in, it is not necessary to constantly rewrite the cookie. All you need to do is making the session token cookie's expires as Session, then as long as browser is open (client keeps using your site), the session token cookie is valid. Server does not need to know the session expires time (as there is no pre-defined session expires time any more), not mention store it in DB. After user close the browser, the session token cookie is cleared, and session is terminated (invalidated).
Normally, there will be a "session timeout" setting in server, such as session-timeout in Struts2, which kills the session if client doesn’t make any request after some time.
How to make session "validate" even if user closes the browser? That is, how to implement the "remember me for 1 week" feature?
To implement this feature, a new token cookie is used (e.g. RememberMeToken). When user login successfully (possibly enable the "Remember me" checkbox on UI), server will generate a unique random token and store it in DB (together with its expires time for security reason), make it belong to user account. This RememberMeToken cookie's expires time is pretty long (1 week for example), and will be sent back to browser together with login response.
When user close the browser and re-visit the site later (or the user is inactive for long time and the session is killed in server side), server checks session token cookie and find it's missing/invalid. At this point, RememberMeToken will be checked and compared with token stored in DB, if there is a match, server will make auto-login operation for corresponding user, and return generated session token cookie to browser. This all happens in backend, client user won't feel anything.
After 1 week since user enable the "Remember me" checkbox on UI and login, the RememberMeToken cookie is expired, and user need to login again if he/she opens browser and visit the site.
I think that internal mechanism of authenticaton should set a cookie with a token and store the same token on a server and next on every request compare the tokens from the cookie and on the server and if they are equal then user is logged in. I don't know where a server stores token, maybe in Session or something else (not persistent), but I'm sure that after the server's restart the server's tokens's store should be cleaned up therefore a user with an old cookie can't be authenticated. But in a practice after I restart my server a user is still authenticated and have access to pages because User.Identity.IsAuthenticated returns true. It seems to me wrong. Even if I remove this user from my DB (I use Membership) because I don't want this user have access anymore and restart my server, the user is still authenticated. Can anyone explain this?
Source of answer
Here is how authentication process works.
You setup some stuff in your web.config around where the login page is, how long the login is good for and whether or not to use sliding
expiration (should the time be extended if the user is active on your
site)
User comes to your site, enters their username and password.
That information is posted to your server. You take that information, verify that it is correct (authenticate). If it is
correct, the server then issues an encrypted cookie known as the
FormsAuthenticationTicket Note - this could have a different name in
the new Identity stuff, but the same principle.
The cookie's contents includes items such as the user name and expiration date of the login.
On each request, the server looks at the cookie collection for the authentication cookie. If found, it decrypts it, reads the values and
determines if this is still a valid cookie (expiration time). Once it
has the user information from the cookie, the server can use this
information to determine if the user is authorized for the resource
requested (look up by username).
If the cookie is not present, or has expired, or When the user logs out, the cookie is deleted from the cookie collection. Now, if the user tries to go to a resource that is for authorized users only, then the user is redirected back to the login page.
Hope this helps.
I am creating an asp.net web application with "Remember Me" option during Login and it has an Edit Profile module where users can change their passwords. Here is the scenario.
I logged into the website from Machine A clicking "Remember Me". So I am logged in and since a persistent cookie is created I dont need to login the next time
until my forms authentication times out.
I logged into the website from Machine B using the same account details I used above and from this machine, I changed my password. In this case How can I make the user in Machine A to login again? (Since my credentials have changed). The same scenario can happen if someone gets any user's credential and uses the application.
Thanks
You have to save the last credentials modification date in your database.
When a user try to consult a page of your website, you have to check the date specified in the cookie.
You can also make an AJAX system that verify each minute if any changes are done and, in that case, verify the validity of the credentials.
If the latest date is the "last credentials modification", then delete the cookie and ask the user to log by himself.
When a user logs in through my login page, I authenticate them using FormsAuthentication, and set some Sessions that holds user specific info, like UserID and RoleID. I set site content based on these values.
The problem is when the session expires and the user is still signed in - things are messed up, because the session is null but the user is still signed in.
How can I keep them in sync with each other, so the session only expires if they're signed out or vs.
Thank you.
When the session has ended (Session_OnEnd) in global.asax, you can kill the forms authentication cookie. Doing so will redirect the user to the default page (or login page depending on how you set it up) upon any subsequent requests. You should also kill the authentication cookie when user has manually logged out - same effect.
To kill the authentication cookie:
FormsAuthentication.SignOut();
I have a ASP.NET website where after a specific user action, I have to issue a new AUTH cookie almost identical to the one the user already currently has. I'm having trouble finding out whether the current AUTH cookie is supposed to be persisted or not. Any ideas on how to do this?
If the cookie expiration isn't set, then it's session.
If you are trying to discover it's life via the browser, you can use firebug with the firecookie plugin. Or the web developer tool will also enumerate all the cookies on a page.
Any cookie that is not session will have Expires field. If you send it into feature date - you will get it "permanent" until the time expires. If you want to maintain "permanent" cookie status you would refresh it on next user login and shift it further into the future. One month is usually enough