In AWS Cognito, I want to allow the user to login only after confirming both phone number and email. Is there any way similar to GetUserAttributeVerificationCode API call where I can get the code without requiring the AccessToken from the user ?
I am on similar situation where I want to send verification code through lambda. I tried post authentication lambda trigger to check if we get accesstoken but no luck(which is a good thing from security point of view)
So, unfortunately, there is no AdminGetUserAttributeVerificationCode or any other method that lets you send verification code to a user without access token. The idea behind that seems to be that only the logged in user should be able to send verification code to himself and not to anyone else.
May be this restriction is to prevent anyone(including AWS) to send mass verification codes to public without their consent (spamming).
Related
So I'm not quite understanding why this isn't working. Some background; We have a SAML identity provider in our user pool, its a registered identity in our identity pool as well which i see when i go to dashboard. I am pretty frustrated form the lack of central documentation for Amplify, it's incredibly difficult to find anything online and I just keep trying things I see and they don't work.
What I already have:
I already have it working in the sense that I get an access_token back from the SAML provider, and that all works fine. So I know it's working fine (the login part), but the issue I am having is basically updating Amplify to now have the user in session so we can take advantage of functionality within Amplify that lets you refresh tokens when they expire.
Essentially, this is the flow I am using, from different sources I've found online:
await Auth.federatedSignIn({ provider });
this line of code can either be google, facebook or our custom SAML one we made. I already know this works, bc again, I already get my access token. So now, this is where my confusion starts. Obviously this function call here will take the user away from the page, hence we cant await this call, or i mean, you can, but it wont return the user on page reload. Which is fine, that part makes sense. So I have a function when the component is loaded that checks to see if theres a access_token in the url hash, which works as well.
Now, the issue is, Amplify doesn't know we signed in. We have "logged in" in the sense that yes, we have a valid JWT token now from the url hash access_token but the local Amplify does not know that this user is logged in.
So this is what I am talking about with the lack of documentation, perhaps I am crazy but I can't find a central source for how to handle this anywhere. I figured, once we have an id_token perhaps we can take advantage of Amplify Auth's federatedSignIn but now instead of just passing in a provider, they do have an option to send in a provider name, an id token, and expiree time and a user object, as noted here
As you can see there's different ways you can use this function, so I figure now that I have the id_token back from the response, I can use this method to actually tell Amplify that yes I am indeed logged in. As such:
await Auth.federatedSignIn(
provider_name,
{
token: id_token,
expires_at: expires_in,
},
user
)
When this fires I get the following error:
issue with access token NotAuthorizedException: Invalid login token. Issuer doesn't match providerName
Now I have verified 100% that the providerName is correct. This is the SAME provider name we pass in the original federatedSignIn call. the id_token is also the jwt id_token we get back from the Cognito and the SSO provider. the expiree is also 3600 so im assuming thats valid, and if it wasnt, the error would be different. I am just lost as to what I need to do at this point.
How can I have amplify recognize a federated sign in user? Since all we get back is a access_token and im beginning to think im not using the federatedSignIn method properly.
I have a web application where people can upload files and I want a login for this so some functions can only be accessed by people who are logged in. I want to have one fixed pair of username and password, so there should be no option for users to create their own account (only the people who have the right information can access). I have a login paige where I proof with JavaScript if the fields are filled and if they are there should be invoked a lambda function to set the user to auth in Cognito to login. I created a fixed user in Cognito with username and password and I now want to proof if the entries of the fields are the same like the created user so that the user is logged in and can use the functions on the web app.
I read a lot of tutorials how to set up an authentication with cognito and lambda, but totally different to what I want to do. So I really have no idea how I can write the lambda function to do what I want.
Has anyone an idea how I can build up my plan or is it a bad idea like that?
Thank you for your help
you don't need the user/pass, in api gateway in the lambda method set the auth type to AWS_IAM, so only auth users will be able to call the lambda method... and then only that specific user will be able to call your lambda method.
inside the lambda method you can access
event.requestContext.identity.cognitoAuthenticationProvider
and
event.requestContext.identity.cognitoIdentityId
to get the user that was auth by AWS
I'm using the Instagram API and want to get the access_token in order to throw api requests over my own account. When I try to follow the first step and get the authorization code programmatically using RestTemplate I can't get it work.
String AUTHORIZE_URL = "https://api.instagram.com/oauth/authorize/?client_id=<CLIENT_ID>&redirect_uri=<REDIRECT_URI>&response_type=code";
String url = String.format(AUTHORIZE_URL, clientId, redirectUri);
String o = restTemplate.getForObject(url, String.class);
The response is the html code of the login page because Instagram requires the user to be logged in to check if the app is authorized (of course it is, since the app an the user belongs to my own account).
How can I authenticate before throwing that request so they return the code to my redirectUri and not complain about login?
Note: I tried simulating the request to their login form but it returned a 403 Forbidden.
NOTE: I already got a valid access_token, manually generated, and it works perfectly but I want to implement also a process to re-generate a new access_token automatically since they may invalidate it at any time in the future.
Even though our access tokens do not specify an expiration time, your app should handle the case that either the user revokes access, or Instagram expires the token after some period of time. If the token is no longer valid, API responses will contain an “error_type=OAuthAccessTokenError”. In this case you will need to re-authenticate the user to obtain a new valid token.
In other words: do not assume your access_token is valid forever.
Instagram is upgrading their APIs and the flows. Earlier we needed access token to bypass forced login screen. Since yesterday, they have removed that.
Now if you call this code, it will check if you are already logged in or not. If so, it will call the AUTHORIZE_URL of yours and will send a response code. The format will be either:
On success validation - http://your-redirect-uri?code=CODE
On error - http://your-redirect-uri?error=access_denied&error_reason=user_denied&error_description=The+user+denied+your+request
Now what I'm doing is I'm directly calling the above URL of yours every time. Now if the user is logged in, a response code will be sent to you, else user will be asked to login and validate your app and then the code will be sent. Technically, you are eliminating the possibility of the error case! So no need of overhead of storing access token in your database or verifying its validity.
Just try and check now what happens.
PS: If you want to check API behavior, simply type the URL on the browser and check what it returns! It helped me a lot while coding and debugging! :)
I know this is not the first time the topic is treated in StackOverflow, however, I have some questions I couldn't find an answer to or other questions have opposed answers.
I am doing a rather simple REST API (Silex-PHP) to be consumed initially by just one SPA (backbone app). I don't want to comment all the several authentication methods in this question as that topic is already fully covered on SO. I'll basically create a token for each user, and this token will be attached in every request that requires authentication by the SPA. All the SPA-Server transactions will run under HTTPS. For now, my decision is that the token doesn't expire. Tokens that expire/tokens per session are not complying with the statelessness of REST, right? I understand there's a lot of room for security improvement but that's my scope for now.
I have a model for Tokens, and thus a table in the database for tokens with a FK to user_id. By this I mean the token is not part of my user model.
REGISTER
I have a POST /users (requires no authentication) that creates a user in the database and returns the new user. This complies with the one request one resource rule. However, this brings me certain doubts:
My idea is that at the time to create a new user, create a new token for the user, to immediately return it with the Response, and thus, improving the UX. The user will immediately be able to start using the web app. However, returning the token for such response would break the rule of returning just the resource. Should I instead make two requests together? One to create the user and one to retrieve the token without the user needing to reenter credentials?
If I decided to return the token together with the user, then I believe POST /users would be confusing for the API consumer, and then something like POST /auth/register appears. Once more, I dislike this idea because involves a verb. I really like the simplicity offered in this answer. But then again, I'd need to do two requests together, a POST /users and a POST /tokens. How wrong is it to do two requests together and also, how would I exactly send the relevant information for the token to be attached to a certain user if both requests are sent together?
For now my flow works like follows:
1. Register form makes a POST /users request
2. Server creates a new user and a new token, returns both in the response (break REST rule)
3. Client now attaches token to every Request that needs Authorization
The token never expires, preserving REST statelessness.
EMAIL VALIDATION
Most of the current webapps require email validation without breaking the UX for the users, i.e the users can immediately use the webapp after registering. On the other side, if I return the token with the register request as suggested above, users will immediately have access to every resource without validating emails.
Normally I'd go for the following workflow:
1. Register form sends POST /users request.
2. Server creates a new user with validated_email set to false and stores an email_validation_token. Additionally, the server sends an email generating an URL that contains the email_validation_token.
3. The user clicks on the URL that makes a request: For example POST /users/email_validation/{email_validation_token}
4. Server validates email, sets validated_email to true, generates a token and returns it in the response, redirecting the user to his home page at the same time.
This looks overcomplicated and totally ruins the UX. How'd you go about it?
LOGIN
This is quite simple, for now I am doing it this way so please correct me if wrong:
1. User fills a log in form which makes a request to POST /login sending Basic Auth credentials.
2. Server checks Basic Auth credentials and returns token for the given user.
3. Web app attached the given token to every future request.
login is a verb and thus breaks a REST rule, everyone seems to agree on doing it this way though.
LOGOUT
Why does everyone seem to need a /auth/logout endpoint? From my point of view clicking on "logout" in the web app should basically remove the token from the application and not send it in further requests. The server plays no role in this.
As it is possible that the token is kept in localStorage to prevent losing the token on a possible page refresh, logout would also imply removing the token from the localStorage. But still, this doesn't affect the server. I understand people who need to have a POST /logout are basically working with session tokens, which again break the statelessness of REST.
REMEMBER ME
I understand the remember me basically refers to saving the returned token to the localStorage or not in my case. Is this right?
If you'd recommend any further reading on this topic I'd very much appreciate it. Thanks!
REGISTER
Tokens that expire/tokens per session are not complying with the statelessness of REST, right?
No, there's nothing wrong with that. Many HTTP authentication schemes do have expiring tokens. OAuth2 is super popular for REST services, and many OAuth2 implementations force the client to refresh the access token from time to time.
My idea is that at the time to create a new user, create a new token for the user, to immediately return it with the Response, and thus, improving the UX. The user will immediately be able to start using the web app. However, returning the token for such response would break the rule of returning just the resource. Should I instead make two requests together? One to create the user and one to retrieve the token without the user needing to reenter credentials?
Typically, if you create a new resource following REST best practices, you don't return something in response to a POST like this. Doing this would make the call more RPC-like, so I would agree with you here... it's not perfectly RESTful. I'll offer two solutions to this:
Ignore this, break the best practices. Maybe it's for the best in this case, and making exceptions if they make a lot more sense is sometimes the best thing to do (after careful consideration).
If you want be more RESTful, I'll offer an alternative.
Lets assume you want to use OAuth2 (not a bad idea!). The OAuth2 API is not really RESTful for a number of reasons. I'm my mind it is still better to use a well-defined authentication API, over rolling your own for the sake of being RESTful.
That still leaves you with the problem of creating a user on your API, and in response to this (POST) call, returning a secret which can be used as an access/refresh token.
My alternative is as follows:
You don't need to have a user in order to start a session.
What you can do instead is start the session before you create the user. This guarantees that for any future call, you know you are talking to the same client.
If you start your OAuth2 process and receive your access/refresh token, you can simply do an authenticated POST request on /users. What this means is that your system needs to be aware of 2 types of authenticated users:
Users that logged in with a username/password (`grant_type = passsword1).
Users that logged in 'anonymously' and intend to create a user after the fact. (grant_type = client_credentials).
Once the user is created, you can assign your previously anonymous session with the newly created user entity, thus you don't need to do any access/refresh token exchanges after creation.
EMAIL VALIDATION
Both your suggestions to either:
Prevent the user from using the application until email validation is completed.
Allow the user to use the application immediately
Are done by applications. Which one is more appropriate really depends on your application and what's best for you. Is there any risk associated with a user starting to use an account with an email they don't own? If no, then maybe it's fine to allow the user in right away.
Here's an example where you don't want to do this: Say if the email address is used by other members of your system to add a user as a friend, the email address is a type of identity. If you don't force users to validate their emails, it means I can act on behalf of someone with a different email address. This is similar to being able to receive invitations, etc. Is this an attack vector? Then you might want to consider blocking the user from using the application until the email is validated.
You might also consider only blocking certain features in your application for which the email address might be sensitive. In the previous example, you could prevent people from seeing invitations from other users until the email is validated.
There's no right answer here, it just depends on how you intend to use the email address.
LOGIN
Please just use OAuth2. The flow you describe is already fairly close to how OAuth2 works. Take it one step further an actually use OAuth2. It's pretty great and once you get over the initial hurdle of understanding the protocol, you'll find that it's easier than you thought and fairly straightforward to just implement the bits you specifically need for your API.
Most of the PHP OAuth2 server implementations are not great. They do too much and are somewhat hard to integrate with. Rolling your own is not that hard and you're already fairly close to building something similar.
LOGOUT
The two reasons you might want a logout endpoint are:
If you use cookie/session based authentication and want to tell the server to forget the session. It sounds like this is not an issue for you.
If you want to tell the server to expire the access/refresh token earlier. Yes, you can just remove them from localstorage, and that might be good enough. Forcing to expire them server-side might give you that little extra confidence. What if someone was able to MITM your browser and now has access to your tokens? I might want to quickly logout and expire all existing tokens. It's an edge case, and I personally have never done this, but that could be a reason why you would want it.
REMEMBER ME
Yea, implementing "remember me" with local storage sounds like a good idea.
I originally took the /LOGON and /LOGOUT approach. I'm starting to explore /PRESENCE. It seems it would help me combine both knowing someone's status and authentication.
0 = Offline
1 = Available
2 = Busy
Going from Offline to anything else should include initial validation (aka require username/password). You could use PATCH or PUT for this (depending how you see it).
You are right, SESSION is not allowed in REST, hence there is no need to login or logout in REST service and /login, /logout are not nouns.
For authentication you could use
Basic authentication over SSL
Digest authentication
OAuth 2
HMAC, etc.
I prefer to use PUBLIC KEY and PRIVATE KEY [HMAC]
Private key will never be transmitted over web and I don't care about public key. The public key will be used to make the user specific actions [Who is holding the api key]
Private key will be know by client app and the server. The private key will be used to create signature. You generate a signature token using private key and add the key into the header. The server will also generate the signature and validate the request for handshake.
Authorization: Token 9944b09199c62bcf9418ad846dd0e4bbdfc6ee4b
Now how you will get private key? you have to do it manually like you put facebook, twitter or google api key on you app.
However, in some case you can also return [not recommended] the key only for once like Amazon S3 does. They provide "AWS secret access key" at the registration response.
I have a problem authenticating users for my new Symfony2 application.
This applications gets all the info through an API, so no database is used. When a user goes to login page, he introduce the user and password in the login form. Then, I have to authenticate him using an API call. This API call returns "false" if it's not a user, and return a token key and a token secret if its a correct user. With this token key and secret, during the user session, I can make all the API requests I need for rendering all the pages of the application. Once the user session is over and token key and secret are erased, the user has to login again.
I don't know really how ti implement that. I read this http://symfony.com/doc/current/cookbook/security/custom_provider.html and that http://symfony.com/doc/current/cookbook/security/custom_authentication_provider.html, and I'm still so lost... :(
Can any one help me?
Thank you so much :)
If you want to write custom authentication you have found the correct links. As an example you can see the implementation of the OAuth authorization HWIOAuthBundle. But keep in mind that this type of authentication creates a user on your system. If you do not use a database, you must make a request to the API every time user send a request.
First you need to understand that there is no magic. On every request symfony checks if url matches one of the specified firewalls (see secutity.yml). Listener that fired you can see in the firewall factory. If matches are found, the action switches to the corresponding AuthenticationListener. Listener attempts to authenticate the credewntials by creating Token, which is sended to AuthenticationProvider
$this->authenticationManager->authenticate(new UsernamePasswordToken($username, $password, $this->providerKey));
in AuthenticationProvider
public function authenticate(TokenInterface $token) {
...
}
AuthenticationProvider try to get user via UserProvider. In case of success, Token stored in the session. On subsequent requests, ContextListener comes into play first, checks the session, extract token and send it to AuthenticationProvider similar.
In general terms, the scheme looks like that. More info you can find examining the source code of Symfony Security component.
Really good starting point is a UsernamePasswordFormAuthenticationListener. It just take login and password from request and make simplest UsernamePasswordToken.
protected function attemptAuthentication(Request $request)
{
...
}
Good luck!