We have a FluorineFx / ASP.Net application which uses forms authentication to identify the current user. To use these credentials in FluorineFx, we use FluorineContext.Current.User.Identity. When I log in the first time, the current context neatly reflects the right identity.
When I log out, I perform a FormsAuthentication.SignOut() and a Session.Abandon to invalidate both the user credentials and the session. But when I log in again as another user, FluorineContext.Current.User.Identity contains the credentials of the previous user, while the ASP.Net application has the right user credentials. When I rebuild my application, the FluorineFx credentials are reset to reflect the right credentials again.
Does anyone have an explanation for this, and/or how to fix this?
Because the Session reset works, and the user's identity doesn't, it's not an authentication cookie problem. I still haven't found a good solution for this problem, and decided to store the current user's identity in session. The session variables are encrypted and are updated on each call to make sure the right credentials are passed along.
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We are using Gigya to authenticate the user which will provide us with user Id and email. Then we pass the user detail to our CRM Web Service which will return the user data from CRM.
We then need to create a session for the user so that we can identify whether the user is logged in or not. If not logged in then redirect to Gigya for login/register etc.
Now, given that we are not using any ASP.NET Membership or similar, I'm thinking how we are going to secure the member pages. One way I can think of is store the user detail in session. Then check if user detail exists in session, if doesn't exist prompt for login.
I'm also thinking whether:
I can use FormsAuthentication.SetAuthCookie or similar to create a asp.net session
Or is there better way to achieve this.
Also, if I use FormsAuthentication.Logout will it clear all my session and cookies even though I'm not using asp.net membership provider?
Goal:
To be able to create a session for the user
Able to authorize user based on user role which we get from CRM.
Able to logout the user on Lout button click.
First, and this is very very very important from a security perspective.
Authentication != Session.
They are different concepts. Second,
NEVER USE SESSION for AUTHENTICATION
see first rule. FormsAuthentication has nothing. Zero. Zilch. Nada. To do with session management. Nor does it have anything to do with Membership or credential verification. All it does is store a cookie that ASP.NET can decode to verify that the user is authenticated or nor. This cookie is set by your application when it has validated the users credentials.
FormsAuthentication.Logout() does not clear sessions, because as I already said, they have nothing to do with each other. You have to clear the session by calling Session.Abandon().
Session is about storing data for a user, and is not secure. Session is volatile, and IIS can discard it whenever it feels like, for any reason, at any time. You cannot depend on Session to be there from request to the next.
Authentication is encrypted, and strictly about proving the user has been authenticated.
Authentication can transcend sessions. It can be good for hours, weeks, months... Your session is only good for the time you are currently there (if IIS doesn't kill it earlier).
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.
I use ASP.NET Form Authentication method in my project to keep login information as user id in user's cookie like the below code. It works well without any problem.
FormsAuthentication.SetAuthCookie(userInfo.id.ToString(), model.AutoLogin);
But the problem occurs when user use automatic login and then he change his password. In some site, I see it will force you to re-login when you change password. It's quite easy for forcing current page to log out and re-login again.
But I don't find any nice idea for forcing other auto-login cookie in other browser to login again. I have some quite ugly idea for doing that but I don't like it.
Keep latest change password date in user data.
Put it in authentication cookie like the following code.
FormsAuthentication.SetAuthCookie(userInfo.id.ToString() + '|' + userInfo.ChangePasswordDate, model.AutoLogin);
Do you have any better idea for solving this question that work with ASP.NET and ASP.NET MVC?
Thanks,
The authentication cookie contains only the encrypted username. So either you really force the user to re-login by signing him out (FormsAuthentication.SignOut) or you do nothing in which case the old cookie is still valid, still authenticated but his password was changed in the datastore so that next time him tries to login he will need to use this new password.
I am using
FormsAuthentication.SetAuthCookie("username", true );
so that a helpdesk person could impersonate another person's ans go in and see what the account looks like. I as wondering if there is a way my code can determine that this session is running through impersonation (so that I can block a couple of pages and flash a sign saying "You are impersonating this user: username)?
The best thing to do here is make sure the helpdesk users have to be logged in as themselves before they go to the page that allows them to impersonate another user.
At that point, either save a session variable or send a second cookie down to the browser that identifies who they really are and any other info you need to keep up with. I prefer storing this in session variables because it is more secure and you remain in control of the information on the server.
The rest of your code would work mostly like it does now responding as if the user really were the one they impersonate, but any code that needs to test for impersonation can read the session or alt cookie to know if they are impersonating or not.
Our SSO login process uses Forms Authentication against a custom user store in SQL Server.
One of our new security requirements is to only allow an account to have one active session at a time. So any time a user logs in, we will check to see if the login credentials are already active, and preferably prevent the new user from logging in again until the other session ends. Alternatively we could force the other session to end, if that would be easier to implement.
Is there a simple way to do this with Forms Authentication? We've considered a custom approach where we track each session in the database, but it would be a lot of work and we'd probably have to modify all of our applications to detect the session_end, which I'm hoping to avoid. I figure there has to be something in Forms Auth that handles this.
I've seen the MembershipUser.IsOnline() method, which seems ideal, but we're not using a Membership provider.
UPDATE: Just to be clear, I do not need to check whether the current user is logged in, I need to know if somebody else is already logged in using the same account.
Try this:
System.Web.HttpContext.Current.User.Identity.IsAuthenticated
If I understood you correct, you would need to store the last activity state based on the user id.
Membership.IsOnline() is implemented by checking the LastActivityDate property persisted in the membership database.
So somewhere, you would need to track user activity.
You could maybe implement a httpmodule that updates a timestamp for user activity.
If the HttpContext.Current.User property is not null then they are logged in. And Identity.IsAuthenticated is true.