We currently have Azure Active Directory with several thousand users in Active Directory. What does IdentityServer4 provide that I cannot get with connecting my .NET and/or Java apps to AAD alone? Can AAD provide me with an auth token that can be used to access the front-end app as well as the back-end API?
The key benefit is control (you can model your clients and resources and taylor your UX as you see fit) and the ability to use it as a federation gateway. E.g. if you need to support multiple customers many of which may want integration to their own IDP.
Related
I have a need to implement Open ID Connect in an ASP.NET Core 5 web app for authentication at an organization. I cannot test against the identity provider as this org has their own internal one.
I thought Open ID Connect (oidc) was a standard - yet when I look at docs and sample code for the various providers around, they all either have something provided with ASP.NET or I have to install their package.
For example, to use Google, the ASP.NET Core docs say to use services.AddAuthentication().AddGoogle(). For Facebook, it says to use .AddFacebook().
For Auth0, it wants me to install the package Auth0.AspNetCore.Authentication.
Is it not possible to just add OIDC authentication to my app and have it work with any OIDC provider and just change a configuration file to specify the authority URL, Client ID, Client Secret?
I'm confused about why I need these provider-specific calls and packages.
Architecturally, tieing an app to a single form of authentication is entirely wrong, as you suggest. These packages have limited use, perhaps for very simple use cases.
The original OAuth 2.0 spec from RFC6749, from 2012, describes how the OAuth framework is designed, to externalize difficult security from your apps:
The client only implements a code flow
It redirects to an authorization server (AS)
The AS can authenticate users in a myriad of potential ways, including many identity providers
After authentication (and possibly consent) the AS issues tokens to your apps
Tokens enable authorization in your APIs in a myriad of potential ways
Once you've implemented a code flow in your app, your set of users can potentially login in many ways, with zero code changes in the app:
Password sign in (a default option)
Multi-factor authentication (in a dynamic way potentially)
Cloud platform identity providers (for engineering staff)
CRM identity provider (for client focused staff)
SAML identity providet (for users from business partners)
Webauthn, Passkeys and Digital wallets (for some of your customers)
Unless you have a very good reason, stick to OpenID Connect standards based code flows in clients. You can do all of the above using the Microsoft libraries. Auth0 have good libraries also - just make sure you use the standards based ones.
OpenID Connect is an open standard that organisations use to
authenticate users. IdPs use this so that users can sign in to the IdP
From this blog.
And about the OIDC protocol, it allows you to authenticate users, and is designed for users to sign in many websites with only one account, usually it's a social/work account. This is only a protocol and you have to use an implement such as Google/Azure authentication to allow your users to sign in with their specific account.
By the way, since the implements are from different companies, so the configuration in our codes are different and they required different nuget packages like Microsoft.Identity.Web. For example, when using Azure, we need to set such as client id, client secret, tenant id, domain, redirect url... in appsettings.json.
I got absolutely confused when trying to understand the differences between MicrosoftAccount, AzureAD and OpenIDConnect authentications.
I am trying to build a .Net Core MVC app that allows some users to authenticate with local accounts, but some with Microsoft accounts. I do need to have a local user in DB for both types of authentications as I have some custom authorization mechanisms built on that.
I started with creating the app from template and selected "local accounts" authentication. Then I added the MicrosoftAccount authentication according to this tutorial (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/aspnet/core/security/authentication/social/microsoft-logins?view=aspnetcore-3.1). This is using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Authentication.MicrosoftAccount and seems to be working fine.
However, when I create a new app from template and select "work or school account" authentication I can see it uses a different library - Microsoft.AspNetCore.Authentication.AzureAD.UI. It seems to do the same thing. I can see there are events I could hook into to connect the AAD user with my local DB.
Looking through the web I found some other tutorials that were using OpenIDConnect for the same purpose.
How are those methods different? Which one should I use and why?
In future I would like to be able to query the user's directory for a list of other users. Would that requirement be easier met with either of those three methods?
MicrosoftAccount: This is the login with a general Microsoft account, using OAuth2. This is also what Microsoft will refer to as “private account” and useful when you want to authenticate someone just using their Microsoft login as an external authentication provider. This is similar to how you would sign in to sites with your Google account.
AzureAD: This is the sign in to a specific Azure tenant. This is often understood as a “work or school account” because it doesn’t sign people in using a public account but rather some account bound to some organization. Usually, you would have an Azure tenant where you have direct users (or configure it to allow external users) but you want to control access through that Azure AD.
OpenIdConnect: This is the general OpenID Connect protocol which you can use to sign in with many different authentication providers because it is a protocol that many of them will support. You can use OIDC to sign in to either of the above (and many other services) but that will require you to do some more configuration as you will need to figure out specific addresses for example.
You can always use the OpenIdConnect or the OAuth authentication scheme to authenticate with most authentication providers but those are the “manual” schemes which will require you to configure additional things. All the other authentication schemes, including MicrosoftAccount and AzureAD but also the other ones like Google or Twitter build on top of those protocols and come preconfigured so that you do not need to set up much else. So those are mostly for convenience and for more specialized support.
So when you want to authentication through Microsoft or Azure, then you should choose MicrosoftAccount or AzureAD. Which of those depends on where you want to authenticate with. If you have an Azure AD, then you should use that.
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.
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 have several apps Deployed on Google Apps Marketplace using OAuth 1.0 protocol. According expiration OAuth 1.0 in Google Platform we are trying to migrate all the apps to new OAuth version but we are facing some difficulties regarding background request to Google Admin SDK Directory API.
In our apps we need to request for Domain user accounts, groups and other stuff related Email Domain structure. Until OAuth 1.0 we have been doing this with 2-LO (Two-Legge OAuth) so basically once Admin gave us access we can impersonate request for domain using this mechanism.
After reading all Google Documentation about Google API, Oauth Mechanisms and stuff, and after trying some code test hypothesis too, we haven't figured out yet how can we managed the same concept with OAuth 2 because of the following:
Using Web Server Oauth 2 Strategy simply will not work because in that scenario we would be getting a Domain user Access to Admin SDK. If we keep their access/refresh token pair to later querying Admin SDK and the user is deleted because Domain change it Admin we will be disconnected from flow.
I supposed in that case the best choice was Service Account strategy. The problem with this scenario is the user has to manually configure access to the App in their Admin Console according to the Google's document domain-wide delegation authority (https://developers.google.com/+/domains/authentication/delegation#create_the_service_account_and_its_credentials). This is really awkward for us since we were managing all application installation interactively and we don't want to remove User Experience facilities.
Finally, my questions are:
Is there any way to do domain-delegation authority with OAuth 2 with no manual user configuration, full interactively?
Is there any way to do this without needing user email, which in fact is one of the parameters in Service Account Oauth2 Strategy?
Must we keep 2-LO Authentication for this scenario and do OAuth 2 only for installation Google Marketplace part?
Any comments or guide will be wellcome.
Best,
Certainly - in the latest update to the Google Apps Marketplace, the act of installing an App means the admin doesn't need to do an additional manual step.
You need a way to impersonate a user in a Service Account. Depending on how you implement your application, you might need to utilize the Directory API.
OAuth1 is going away eventually so I recommend you use OAuth2 throughout to simplify your code complexity.