I have two projects, one is the API, the other one is the Client to consume the API. Both are .net core 3.1. The API project has been developed inspired by this post:
https://jasonwatmore.com/post/2021/06/15/net-5-api-jwt-authentication-with-refresh-tokens#users-controller-cs
and it has JWT Authentication with refresh token and some methods with Authorize attribute.
My problems starts in the Client project. The API projects emits access token and the client should use it accessing the protected API.
I can authenticated in the API, but when the client receives token (access token and refresh token), it store it in authentication cookie and in the refresh token cookie.
My doubts are:
Is this approach correct?
how can i manage that the access token expires and use the refresh token to get a new one? Do cookies need to be regenerated?
In future development i will add Facebook auth and client auth.
If is needed more details or some implementation let me know.
Thanks in advance.
Related
I have an ASP.NET Core API as back-end for an Angular SPA front-end. I am using Cognito as an Identity provider and want to create an OpenId-Connect authentication using authorization code flow which would mean that all the secret credentials will be stored in back-end.
The authorization flow should be like this (standard OpenID Connect flow):
FE application calls /authorize endpoint and is redirected to Cognito hosted UI.
After entering credentials FE receives an authorization code.
FE calls BE with authorization code.
BE calls /token endpoint and receives accessToken and refreshToken.
BE Returns accessToken to FE and sets refreshToken as httpOnly cookie(for this not sure, I may store it in Redis cache).
Then, FE with each request will add Bearer AccessToken to authenticate. When AccessToken is close to expiration, it will be updated using refreshToken.
I was experimenting with this example but here application used an Asp.Net Core cookie for authentication and ignored accessToken and refreshToken. I was authenticated even after accessToken was expired. Also, there's not much documentation on how ASP.NET cookie works.
So, now I am thinking about having my custom BE endpoints and use IdentityModel helper methods but not sure if it is a good practice to handle authentication like this.
/Login - gets AccessToken and RefreshToken
/Refresh - updates AccessToken using RefreshToken. FE will call it manually when accessToken will be close to expiration.
So, is there a "recommended" way to handle this scenario nicely with IdentityModel without writing custom implementation?
Also, as far as I know, it is quite common to store refreshToken in httpOnly cookie which will be added to each request sent to BE but then I don't see the point of having an accessToken when I already have refreshToken added with each request.
Isn't it better to store refreshToken inside BE for performance and security reasons?
Authentication is a part of every application so I believe there should be some in-built framework functionality for authorization code flow as well.
You are describing a Backend for Frontend approach, which is a good architecture. Make sure you separate the specialist API that deals with OAuth from general business APIs.
RECOMMENDED WAY
Curity have an approach that provides state-of-the-art security for SPAs, here are some links:
Token Handler Blog Post
Code Example
Code Example Doc
We may add a .Net token handler at some point, but it should not matter what tech is used, since the idea is for the specialist API to be something you plug in rather than code.
STORING REFRESH TOKENS
My personal preference for SPAs is to use AES256 encrypted HTTP only cookies. This fits nicely with goals of avoiding OAuth plumbing in applications and enables the token handler to be stateless and easier to deploy + manage.
I'm learning identityserver4 and can't understand some stuff.
Shortly: I want to authorize end-users with email and password on ASP.NET MVC client side (it will send user credentials to the token server to get tokens), and I don't want third-party clients to retrieve data from my API resources.
As I understood from the documentation:
implicit flow is used for SPA (js clients) and uses id_token to authorize users. I can store id_token in my browser.
client credentials flow is used for trusted apps (like ASP.NET MVC client) to authorize clients and uses access_code. I can store access_code inside my app.
So looks like I need a hybrid flow.
In the documentation I read that I need to use AddOpenIdConnect() method and
Technically the tokens are stored inside the properties section of the cookie.
So my questions:
If the id_token can be stored in the browser, why is it not safe to store the access_token there too ?
As the docs state, the tokens are stored inside the properties section of the cookie. It's confusing, because some guides says, that it's not safe to store access_token there. So where I should store access token in my ASP.NET MVC client?
Am I right, that AddOpenIdConnect() configures my ASP.NET MVC app to retrieve access_token automatically from the token server? And if yes - in which moment should I authorize users with email/password and how to combine all tokens inside one JWT on my ASP.NET MVC client's backend when I will send requests to api resources ?
Today you should not use the Implicit Flow and it has been deprecated as of Oauth 2.1. What you should use is the authorization code flow with PKCE. PKCE is a security enhancement for the authorization code flow.
So as of OAuth 2.1 you only have two main flows:
Authorization code flow, for a MVC client to login a user to the client
Client credentials flow, for API->API communication where no human is involved.
To answer your questions:
If the id_token can be stored in browser, why it's not safe to store access_token there too ?*
The ID-Token is only used to create the initial user session and after that you can throw it away. It also only have a short life time of 5 minutes by default in IdentityServer.
As the docs state, the tokens are stored inside the properties section of the cookie. It's confusing, because some guides says, that it's not safe to store access_token there. So where I should store access token in my ASP.NET MVC client?
The tokens can be stored in your session cookie in ASP.NET Core and that's secure. It's protected / encrypted using the Data Protection API. However, the cookies can grow in size quite a lot if you do that.
Am I right, that AddOpenIdConnect() configures my mvc app to retrieve access_token automatically from the token server? And if yes - In which moment I should authorize users with email/password and how to combine all tokens inside one JWT on my ASP.NET MVC client's backend when I will send requests to api resources?
AddOpenIdConnect only handles the initial login and retrieving the first ID and access token. It does not handle refreshing of the access token using refresh tokens. For that you can add the IdentityModel library.
Today when you use the auth code flow, you redirect the user to IdentityServer and you let the user login there instead of passing the username/pwd from you browser to identityserver.
I am new in asp.net core and want to implement authentication and authorization in WEB API 2 project. I am little bit confuse to use basic authentication, bearer token, JWT token or any other. please suggest more preferable
Thanks
Basic auth is as the name suggests, very basic and not very secure, it uses base64 encoding of the username and password so you must use HTTPS if you use it, but best is not to use it at all.
A bearer token is a type of token which effectively gives access to a resource to the "bearer" of the token. Both basic and bearer are used in an HTTP Authorization header.
You can have different formats of bearer tokens, one of which is JWT - JWT is the industry standard so I recommend you use it, and therefore you'll be using bearer tokens.
This article is a good starting point to look into all this in the context of asp.net core. See also this video series and this article goes into more detail about JWT validation.
Edit
To answer your questions in the comments:
OAuth is a standard for users to delegate permissions to apps or websites to access their resources, for example when you allow some web app to post on your behalf to your Facebook feed. Various tokens are used in this process and they're very often JWT. OAuth2 adds authentication via OpenID Connect.
OWIN on the other hand is a standard for web servers which decouples IIS and ASP.NET with the aim of allowing ASP.NET to run on other web servers which implement OWIN and other frameworks generally to run on OWIN compatible servers if those frameworks are OWIN compatible.
Auth0 is an identity platform which can do OAuth and allows you to use JWTs, generally it handles your identity and SSO. IdentityServer is another identity platform with some similar features.
I'd still recommend starting with the articles I linked at the top, don't worry too much about OWIN, and read more about OAuth to determine if you really need it. If you do, I'd recommend IdentityServer.
ASP.NET Core 2.0 and above Web API authentication and authorization
Bearer type JWT Token based authentication
[Authorize(AuthenticationSchemes = JwtBearerDefaults.AuthenticationScheme)]
Please implement as following below post
https://fullstackmark.com/post/13/jwt-authentication-with-aspnet-core-2-web-api-angular-5-net-core-identity-and-facebook-login
We are current building a collection of back-end ASP.NET Core microservices. These services will not be accessed directly from the front-end application, but rather accessed through an ASP.NET Core API gateway. We are using IdentityServer4 for the OpenID Connect server. I have been able to setup the UseJwtBearerAuthentication middleware to have API gateway validate the JWT bearer token (access_token) against IdentityServer4. I would like to be able to have the API gateway inject the id_token, based on the access_token, into the requests made to the back-end services that may need to know the end-user.
Is there a way to configure the JWT middleware to retrieve the id_token when validation the access_token or do I need to manually call the OpenID Connect server in the API gateway?
You don't use id_tokens at APIs - they are for clients.
If you want to have access to certain identity claims, either include them in the access token (by configuring the ScopeClaims on the resource scope), or use the access token to contact the userinfo endoint which in turn will return the identity claims.
The JWT middleware performs standalone verification, it does not contact the identity server to verify or retrieve anything. You'll have to make an additional call.
Does anyone have a complete example of using JWT bearer tokens with ASP.Net Core RC2 Identity? Preferably showing how to create the token also.
Thanks,
Paul
You may use OpenIdDict - a simple implementation of AspNet.Security.OpenIdConnect.Server.
Here and here is an example and article of using OpenIdDict.
Here is a discussion in Identity repo about JWT token authentication in ASP.Core
The official packages developed by Microsoft for ASP.NET Core only
support OAuth2 bearer token validation.
I'm personnaly using IdentityServer4 in ASP.NET core RC2 as an authentication app using JWT Bearer token. (very good Samples available) https://github.com/IdentityServer/IdentityServer4
For example : I have 3 projects (apps) in my solution
Login (IdentityServer4) that authenticate users and give them a JWT token when authenticated
API that is registered in IdentityServer4 as a consumer (Scope) for JWT tokens. Token attributes (Claims/Roles) are validated when accessing controller methods.
Web front end (Only HTML/AngularJS) that store the token and send it when sending a request (in the HTTP header) to the API. The front end is registered as "Client" in the Login
The big advantage to have an isolated Login app is that you can create as many API/front-end you want as long as you register them so they can communicate each other securely with the JWT token.
The samples available there https://github.com/IdentityServer/IdentityServer4.Samples are very straigtforward. If you have any question related to this project, feel free to ask.
I've ASP.NET Core 1.1 as backend and angular as front end solution with JWT bearer tokens. tokens can be easily created by lib.
https://github.com/Longfld/ASPNETcoreAngularJWT
I have a full example for ASP.NET Core with JWT auth: https://github.com/wilsonwu/netcoreauth
By the way, the database is SQL Server.