I'm trying to authenticate users with the SAML protocol.
So far I have two applications in two different identity providers (Auth0 and OneLogin) to test. I also have my service provider.
What I'm trying to do is authenticate users without redirecting them to any Identity Provider login form.
Something like this:
The user tries to log in to my application (made in React)
My server provider receives the request made by the user and sends
the credentials (username and password) to an identity provider
using the SAML protocol.
The identity provider validates the credentials, if they are
correct, return a SAML assertion to my server provider; otherwise,
it will return an error.
Depends on the identity provider's response if the content is sent
to the user or not.
I know that it is not the intended use of SAML, but I want to know if there is a way to do it and how it will be possible.
Any help or advice will be well received, thank you.
That's not how SAML works and I'm not aware of any SAML identity providers that accept the user's name and password.
It is possible to include the user's name in the SAML authn request sent to the identity provider but there's no provision for including a password.
I think there are a number of security considerations if you were to prompt a user for their credentials for one web site (ie the identity provider) at a different web site (ie service provider).
Using SAML SSO, if the user isn't already authenticated at the identity provider, it will prompt the user to login.
Related
We have a website which we use to download our invoices from. We want to automate this process.
We do have username and password given to us to login to this website.
When I check network trace through developer toolbar, its clear that they are using SAML based authentication.
Questions is, can I automate this authentication just using Username/Password I have? or Does Identity provider has to allow this automated authentication from their side?
I could find their Identity providers URL, but passing Post request to IDP to get SAML response is not working (Was hoping to receive SAML assertion)
If IDP does not accepts only username, where does passwords come into picture? Does Service provider validates password before requesting assertion?
We are trying to find unattended ways to get these invoices.
I have an app where we take care for the authentication, meaning - we store the usernames and their passwords.
Now, I want to add an SSO option to the app.
Obviously, for normal user, the password field on the User model is required. What is the best practice regarding users coming from SSO login? (they must be saved in my db anyway, but do not have password)
**The app is written in RoR with devise and devise-saml-authenticatable (with Azur AD as my IdP) but my question has no relation to it.
They don't have a password that you have access to... that's the point of single sign-on, the identity provider handles all of that. You tagged SAML, so I'll speak to that, but this is broadly true for other SSO systems.
You are the Service Provider (SP). They get redirected from the Service Provider (your app) to the Identity Provider (IdP), log in, and are returned to your application with a SAML Assertion. Because there is a trust relationship established between the SP and IdP, you inherently trust the assertion from the IdP (so long as the certificates, etc.), so the user doesn't need to provide you with a username. Their "credential" is the SAML assertion.
Since the password isn't needed, it doesn't need to be set. If your DB schema requires that field be non-null, alter your schema, or load it with random data when you provision their access.
Note: SAML is for authentication, not authorization.
Is SAML an authentication mechansim. ? I have seen this being written in many places.
As per my understanding SAML is not an authentication mechanism but a way to exchange authentication and authorization data between a service provider and an identity provider. ?
Both Service provider and identity provider have to be SAML compliant or basically understand SAML to take part.
Authentication can be done by any means like oAuth, Form etc. and then SAML exchange happens.
Best Regards,
Saurav
Actually SAML is a internet standards based technology to achieve web-based single on.
The actual authentication, which happens at the SAML IdP is out of scope of the specification.
However sometimes implementors do no accurately distinguish between SSO and authentication.
Chapter 1 from SAML Technical Overview, a document published in 2008 and still a good read:
The Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) standard defines a
framework for exchanging security information between online business
partners.
...and then Chapter 4 in the same doc
SAML consists of building-block components that, when put together,
allow a number of use cases to be supported. The components
primarily permit transfer of identity, authentication, attribute, and
authorization information between autonomous organizations that have
an established trust relationship
SAML (Security Assertion Markup Language) is an identity federation protocol.
(1) Traditionally a web application utilizes a local data storage (such as MySQL which is used to store username/password credentials) to accomplish the login authentication.
On the other hand, a web application can leverage a third-party SAML Identity Provider (IdP) to accomplish the login authentication if the web application has been integrated with a SAML Service Provider (SP).
(2) Usually a SAML IdP utilizes identity repository (such as OpenLDAP) to provide identity authentication for a SAML SP-enabled web application.
(3) A web application, which has been integrated with a SAML SP, outsources login authentication to a SAML IdP.
Without loss of generality, we assume that the SAML IdP has been configured with OpenLDAP.
A typical SAMP SP-intitiated authentication procedure can be described below.
(I) A user launches a web browser to access a SAML SP-enabled web application.
(II) The user is redirected to a SAML IdP which will prompt username/password login screen.
SAML SP sends a SAML request to SAML IdP.
(III) The user submits the username/password credential.
(IV) The SAML IdP leverages OpenLDAP to validate the username/password credential.
(V) The user is redirected back and logged in to the web application if the user has been authenticated by OpenLDAP successfully.
SAML IdP sends a SAML response token to federate the user identity (such as username) to SAML SP-enabled web application.
(4) How to build and run Shibboleth SAML IdP and SP using Docker container demonstrates how a SAML IdP utilizes OpenLDAP to provide identity authentication and then federates the user identity (such as username) to a SAML SP-enabled web application, thus accomplishing the login authentication for the web application.
Basically I just want to know how does StackExchange's single signon system work?
In the SE network you need to login only once in one of the websites to be automatically logged in to the other sites upon visiting.
How should I implement such a feature in my own network of sites?
I assume it uses the cookie which resides on the user's browser and then authenticates it with the originating site. If it is legit then it logs the user in automatically.
You have to implement SAML or oauth2 to allow sso on your network.
In case of SAML your child websites will be service providers or resource servers.
While you need to setup and identity provider.
The sequence of events will be like this.
1. User hits a url of songs website, this site is resource server and does not handle authentication.
2.To authenticate resource server will construct a SAML authrequest and redirects to identity provider after signing it.
Idp verifies the signature after receiving authrequest.
3. User will be presented with a login form, user has to end login credentials.
4. After user authentication idp will generate a SAMl token and redirect back to resource server.
5. Resource server will extract identity information from SAML token, resource server will login the user with session or cookie.
Depends upon which technology you are working in i have implemented it in php using simplesamlphp.
We are in a complex authentication environment and need to support authenticating against a number of disparate sources in applications we are developing. Since we don't want to be duplicating authentication code all over the place, we are looking at wrapping the various authentication sources with a single OpenID provider, and then having the applications all depend on that service.
The sources we have to allow authenticating against are things like Active Directory Username/Password, Kerberos, generic LDAP, external OpenID providers, etc.
For example, in the Kerberos case, when the user hits the OpenID provider's authentication page, if (s)he can be authenticated with Kerberos, and has already given permission to the requesting app, the user would be transparently authenticated as if a password was entered and passed back to the requesting app.
So, the question is, can we have create an OpenID provider that handles authenticating through all of these various methods? Does the provider have to implement how it authenticates the users in a specific way?
OpenID 2.0 specification do not specify how to authenticate users at the OpenID Provider there for it is vendor specific. So my answer is Yes, you can have an OpenID Provider that handles authentication through all those methods but you have to figure out how to, for example how to present the Kerberos tickets to the OpenID Provider is up to you to decide.