I am looking to build a custom front end application to facilitate release management. I want to integrate with Azure Dev Ops using the client libraries.
Is there a non-interactive way of authenticating other than a PAT that will expire? I don't want to use delegated access because I will control the permissions from the app.
Is there a non-interactive way of authenticating other than a PAT that will expire?
AFAIK, I am afraid there is no such a non-interactive way of authenticating except PAT.
There is a similar issue on github:
All the authentication method for accessing Azure Devops service is
interactive except one(which still needs interaction through user
specific device like mobile).
There is no good way to do auth towards the devops api for a
non-interactive service. They all require user interaction or a fake
And you could vote and comment the user voice Support for non-interactive service access via service principals..
As workaround, you could use a PAT, and extend its period to one year.
Hope this helps.
user service account or similar.
Related
Not sure how to go about doing this; I'm not looking for B2C, I don't want my users to sign in. I just want my Xamarin app to be able to access an Azure AAD protected API. In other words, I want to authenticate the app itself with the Azure Active Directory, to access an Azure AAD protected API. From what I've found on the internets, service principal to service principal auth is discouraged when using mobile apps and I've not really found a way to do it service to service anyhow.
Any suggestions on how to properly do this? Links with tutorials would be great.
Thanks!
Azure does provide the ability to generate a client ID which you could have sent from your application and checked. Microsoft talk about this in this article. You will want to be careful with how you store this ID in your app as if someone were to steal this they would be able to access your API. Along with that you'd also want to make sure that your connection between your app and server is secured with a pinned SSL certificate so it cannot be man-in-the-middle'd.
Another interesting approach is software attestation where some service checks various aspects of your app to ensure that it is your app. Full disclosure, I work for a company which does this. See Approov. We take a fingerprint of your app and our SAAS checks that this matches at run time. We then issue a token which your app can use to prove that it is the real app.
I'm currently developing a API to commercialized in a B2B SAAS fashion.
The goal is to authenticate the worker of the company. We have an SDK that should be able to do that. There is the possibility to force each user to set credentials specific for our service, but that will hurt integration with companies applications.
The idea would be to have some kind of authentication (client independent) that make it easier to authenticate users.
The question is: There is a easy way to create an automatic process that does not depend on the client type of authentication methods, for this type of task?
Thanks in advance.
Have you taken a look at Azure AD? It specifically supports multi-tenant scenarios.
Tenants can use Azure AD Connect to sync their on-premise directory to the cloud. Clients can use ADAL to acquire a token which your service trusts. The issued token contains a tenant-id claim indicating via which tenant the user logged in.
Just to add to MvdD answer, in Azure AD support three ways to sign in:
Federated Single Sign-On enables applications to redirect to Azure AD
for user authentication instead of prompting for its own password.
This is supported for applications that support protocols such as SAML
2.0, WS-Federation, or OpenID Connect, and is the richest mode of single sign-on.
Password-based Single Sign-On enables secure application password
storage and replay using a web browser extension or mobile app. This
leverages the existing sign-in process provided by the application,
but enables an administrator to manage the passwords and does not
require the user to know the password.
Existing Single Sign-On enables Azure AD to leverage any existing
single sign-on that has been set up for the application, but enables
these applications to be linked to the Office 365 or Azure AD access
panel portals, and also enables additional reporting in Azure AD when
the applications are launched there.
Here's the scenario
3rd Party App, with a back end. Customer uses the app.
Back end needs to access user's exchange information, assumedly via EWS
Back end is running in our datacenter/cloud, not customers.
Cannot require local administrator involvement
Want to avoid storing username/password in our back end.
Want to support both Office365 and on-premise.
I believe this is currently impossible, but wanted to verify:
Impersonation would be a great way, but requires Administrator
Token based authentication is not used for this. It is for a mail app to use for SSO to the backend, not for the backend to access Exchange.
OAUTH would be ideal, but is a) for Office365 only currently b) requires a portion of the back end to be hosted by Azure c) The Azure install has to be linked to the Office365 install and is for the local administrator only.
Is my analysis correct? Any options I've missed?
You're mostly correct. OAuth is currently for Office 365 only, so that would rule out on-premise. However, with OAuth you do not have to host your back-end in Azure. You would need an Azure tenant to register your application, but the app itself is not required to be hosted in Azure. If you use EWS, then even with OAuth you will need some admin involvement, because EWS requires a permission scope that requires the app to be registered in the target tenant, users can't consent using a registration from another tenant.
If you use the REST APIs, which are in preview, you wouldn't need an admin's involvement, users could consent for themselves. That would get you almost where you want to be (assuming the REST APIs provide the data that you're after), but wouldn't support on-premise.
So to add to this mostly correct answer from Jason:
using pure rest, you need only create a "multitenant" application and users can self-consent.
You can also use an OAuth token to authenticate to EWS - but only if the delegate Full Access To Mailbox is selected. This also doesn't require admin consent but is a big scope (but necessary because EWS doesn't understand scopes)
I've been scratching my head over this issue for over a week. We have a web app that we would like to implement SSO for. SSO with windows active directories of our clients (i.e. we essentially need to authenticate against our clients' active directories without much trouble)
The only thing I am 100% sure about is that I will needed a security token service that will have to communicate with an Identity Provider. My question:
Which service is most suitable for the above scenario (AD FS? OpenID & OAuth 2.0? SAML 2.0 and shibboleth?)
How will I connect to the active directories of the clients? Maybe I'm not understanding how the STS is to be used, could anyone clarify? I'm working with an Azure Web App
Will there have to be a different IdP for each client? Will the client have to do more than just give us standard information? What would this info be?
...should I be using Windows Identity Foundation?
HELP :( ... this is an SOS
If anyone could clarify at all, I will forever be grateful. I normally upvote anything I find helpful and accept whichever answer is the best so feel free to answer with what you think might be useful in helping me understand how I can achieve what I am after.
These are the three options I know:
As you mention one option is ADFS this solution means that your customers should install and expose Adfs. ADFS means Active directory-Federation Services, so in this case your application needs to speak WS-Fed (not oauth). Typically if the user is inside the LAN adfs uses integrated auth, if not it will prompt credentials.
WAAD is a new service from Azure, it allows companies to expose their directories to use in cloud applications. With this approach your customers need an account in Azure, create a directory and use the dir sync agent. Your application will talk SAMLP with WAAD.
Auth0 is an authentication broker that allows developers to use social but also enterprise identity providers like AD but also google apps, waad, adfs, salesforce, etc. if your customer only has AD you will provide him an msi for a windows service, that will bridge the company AD with your auth0 account, you can have as many AD as you want. Your application speak oauth with Auth0. This agent supports kerberos authentication as well. The following graph explains this solution:
Disclaimer: I work for Auth0.
WIF doesn't support SAML or OAuth.
Your application is in Azure.
Suggest add WIF to the application and then "bind" to Azure Active Directory. In VS 2013, use the "Change Authentication" feature for this.
Make the application multi-tenanted.
Each customer has their own tenant. User DirSync to sync. each customer AD with their AAD tenant. (That gives same sign-on). Adding ADFS to each customer gives single sign-on.
However, the customers will probably push back on this because of perceptions around security.
We are looking to host our product on Azure- the intent behind using Azure is that we get to focus on the core product, and are fine with the standard cloud features that Azure offers without needing to understand too much of the internals- not exactly the power users!
One thought was that if Azure had an authentication functionality- profiles, logins, password reset/ reminder etc, it would save us time from building what is essentially a commodity
Any guidance on this?
Azure offers the Access Control Service, which is a Federated Authentication service. It's already preconfigured with support for Live ID, Google and Yahoo authentication, but you can also add your own security token service (such as ADFS).
Windows Azure does not have a built in login feature. However,App Fabric Access Control Service(ACS) does; see the ACS tutorial here for example usage.