TFS 2015 Agent creation and usage - tfs-2015

I have downloaded agent zip file and configured agent on the build machine. To authenticate agent Microsoft provided four ways PAT,Integrated,Negotiate,Alternate.
PAT should be used for Team Services they said but I don't understand how it works.
I have authenticated using negotiate but here agent is going to offline once build completed and I am manually using power shell making it run.
I am using previously XAML build definition and new to this can some one help how to make agent online continuously.

Compared with common alternate credentials, PAT is more secure.
When your 3rd party tool prompts you to sign in, you can provide your alternate credentials for authentication purposes, and it stored the credentials for later retrieval that may you don't want the tools to do some actions.
For non-Microsoft tools that integrate into Team Services but do not
support Microsoft account or Azure AD authentication interactions (for
example, Git, NuGet, or XCode), you need to set up personal access
tokens by using Git credential managers or by creating PATs manually.
You can also use personal access tokens when there is no "pop up UI"
such as with command-line tools, integrating tools or tasks into build
pipelines, or using REST APIs.
Personal access tokens essentially are alternate passwords that you
create in a secure way using your normal authentication, and
PATs can have expiration dates, limited scopes (for example, only certain REST APIs or command line operations are valid), and specific
Team Services accounts. You can put them into environment variables so
that scripts do not hardcode passwords. For more information, see
Authentication overview and scopes.
See use-personal-access-tokens-to-authenticate for details.
Once you create a PAT you can use it pretty much anywhere your user credentials are required for authentication. If you use a PAT for a 3rd party tool only to find out later that it is acting maliciously, you can deactivate that specific PAT and it immediately becomes invalid. You can also apply one or more scopes to a PAT so you can, for example, limit access to reading work items and nothing else.
Please reference below articles to understand the PAT:
https://roadtoalm.com/2015/07/22/using-personal-access-tokens-to-access-visual-studio-online/
http://blog.devmatter.com/personal-access-tokens-vsts/

Related

Login another salesforce org from salesforce record page

I was wondering if it was possible to login to different salesforce environments (Sandboxes, scratch orgs, production env, etc) using either Apex/LWC/Aura (or anything that I can make a quick action to). For example, I have a list of credential records, with the username and password, and I would like to have a login button that creates a separate tab that can automatically redirect to that specific instance and log in.
Currently, if a user wants to login to a particular instance, they have to either go to test.salesforce.com or login.salesforce.com (depending on if it's a sandbox or production) manually, then copy the password and username in. The ideal situation is to have a login button that can do this automatically from the record page where the username and password is located.
I think previously this could have been accomplished through the URL, but salesforce has recently patched this out due to security concerns. Is there another good way to do this?
It sounds like you're trying to solve two specific challenges:
Your users need to be able to manage very high volume of credentials.
You need authentication to survive password resets.
The clear solution, in my mind, is to use the OAuth Web Server flow to execute initial authentication and then store the refresh token that results from this flow. This token survives password resets, and may be used more or less indefinitely to create new access tokens - which users can then use to log in via a frontdoor link.
There's an out-of-the-box tool that does this already: the Salesforce CLI. You can authenticate orgs to its toolchain, name them, and subsequently access them with a single command (sfdx force:org:open). Users that prefer a GUI can access the exact same functions in Visual Studio Code.
If you're hellbent on doing custom development to handle this use case, you can, but you need to be very careful of the security implications. As one example, you could implement an LWC + Apex solution that executed the relevant OAuth flows against orgs and stored the resulting data in an sObject, then allowing users to click a button to generate a new access token and do a one-click login.
But... if you do this, you're storing highly sensitive credentials in an sObject, which can be accessed by your system administrators and potentially other users who have relevant permissions. That data could be exfiltrated from your Salesforce instance by an attacker and misused. There's all kinds of risks involved in storing that kind of credential, especially if any of them unlock orgs that contain PII or customer data.
One of the two best answers for that (the other one being 'pure Apex' and relatively more complex) is using Flow.
"You can use a login flow to customize the login experience and integrate business processes with Salesforce authentication. Common use cases include collecting and updating user data at login, configuring multi-factor authentication, or integrating third-party strong authentication methods.enter image description here"
"You can use login flows to interact with external third-party authentication providers by using an API.
For example, Yubico offers strong authentication using a physical security key called a YubiKey. Yubico also provides an example Apex library and login flow on GitHub. The library supplies Apex classes for validating YubiKey one-time passwords (OTPs). The classes allow Salesforce users to use a YubiKey as a second authentication factor at login. For more information, see yubikey-salesforce-client.
You can also implement a third-party SMS or voice delivery service, like Twilio or TeleSign, to implement an SMS-based multi-factor authentication and identity verification flow. For more information, see Deploy Third-Party SMS-Based Multi-Factor Authentication."
learn more here: enter link description here

Google Cloud Run - Understanding of Authenticating end users

I have a web application which runs until now with cloud run, but without access restriction. Now it should be available only for certain users.
I read https://cloud.google.com/run/docs/authenticating/end-users and also tried both
mentioned ways: Google-Sign-In and the "Identity Platform" tutorial.
If I understand correctly, you have to program the actual user handling yourself in both variants. For example, determining which email addresses have access to the application, etc.
I was looking for a declarative way where, ideally, I only maintain a list of permitted email addresses and the "cloud run application" is only "magically" linked to this. With the result that only these users get access to the web application. That doesn't seem possible?
Ideally, the actual application should not be changed at all and an upstream layer would take care of the authentication and authorization, possibly in conjunction with the "Identiy Platform".
Best regards and any hint is welcome
Thomas
Let me add some sugar to this to better understand all these.
A Cloud Run application is packaged by you, you maintain the source code, if this is a website, placing a login button and handling authentication is your job to accomplish.
A Cloud Run system which is running all this on a hardware, it doesn't "look into" or handles your application code outside of the "code". Simply put it doesn't know if it's a Java or Python code and how to handle authentication out of the box for you - but read further.
If you require a simple way to authorize look into API Gateway it can be placed "before" Cloud Run. It might not be exactly your use case. These exists only for "API" designed services.
That upstream layer you need is the managed Identity platform, but the CODE should be assembled by you and deployed inside your Cloud Run service. The code will be the UI driven part, the authorization logic is handled by the Identity Platform so it reduces the amount of development time.
Your users would sign up using a dedicated registration page, and sign in by entering their emails and passwords. Identity Platform offers a pre-built authentication UI you can use for these pages, or you can build your own. You might also want to support additional sign-in methods, such as social providers (like Facebook or Google), phone numbers, OIDC, or SAML.
Look into some of the advanced examples to get a feeling how authorization can be customized further: Only allowing registration from a specific domain you could reuse one of these samples to maintain that shortlist of users that you mentioned.
In addition to #Pentium10's answer, you can also make all users authenticate to your app somewhat forcibly. (Imagine you're building an internal portal for your company, or an /admin panel for your app that only certain users/groups can access.)
This sort of use case can be achieved by placing Cloud Identity-Aware Proxy (IAP) in front of your Cloud Run service. That way, all requests go through this proxy that validates the caller. This is not like Identity Platform in the sense that visitors don't create accounts on your website (they use existing Google accounts or other IdPs like ActiveDirectory, or whatever you configure on IAP).
I have a little tutorial at https://github.com/ahmetb/cloud-run-iap-terraform-demo/ since IAP+Cloud Run integration is still not GA and therefore not fully documented.

Switching from O365 basic authentication to modern authentication using powershell

I have a powershell script to get the audit logs of O365 tenants. Basically, this script will give me the users who is accessing the PowerBI platform, usability, memory consumption,etc. This is currently having the basic authentication. I need to convert the basic authentication to modern authentication in the current script. As per the current implementation,I see the registry key has been added as per the basic authentication.
I have googled and could see, I need to install the EXO V2 module and try using the Connect ExchangeOnline. But I am not sure of whether, i need to add the registry key for modern authentication? Also, it will be great if someone can help me with process flow of how to proceed in here. What are the steps , I need to follow to ensure that the modern authentication is working as expected. I have tried out all the options but I could not achieve the output. Please help me here as I am new to powerShell.

Cyber-Ark Privileged Identity Management API

Do anybody know if there is any sort of API available for Cyber-Ark Privileged Identity Management to integrate it with an enterprise applications?
I think the answer might be 50% yes, 50% no. Definitely Cyber-Ark offers web services and an API for their Vault objects, so you should be able to retrieve passwords from the Vault from a trusted application. There is a paragraph of sales information on Cyber-Ark's website:
Cyber-Ark's comprehensive SDK provides an interface to the Vault objects that you can use to develop custom solutions that work with the Vault. Cyber-Ark provides a variety of SDK such as Command Line Interface, ActiveX API, .Net API and Web Services API
But beyond working with their Vault objects, I'm not entirely sure. I'm currently looking for more information on their Vault web services, and I think I need to register to be a Partner to get that information. I'll post a follow-up if I learn anymore.
You are suppose to purchase an API license per server to have read-only access to the vault for authorized applications.
They provide Java, C#, etc. libraries and you place authorization key material on the server to enable it access.
It is called CyberArk Application Identity Manager, an entire sub-product.
The only reference I could find:
http://lp.cyberark.com/rs/cyberarksoftware/images/ds-application-identity-manager-10-20-2014-en.pdf
CyberArk created Conjur. It is open source and free. It contains its own Vault and is intended for dynamic Application Access Management. In particular, Conjur and its upgrade Conjur Enterprise should secure the complete DevOps pipeline. The paid version can be integrated with the Vault solution (the PAS Core solution of CyberArk).
For static applications, CyberArk has the Credential Provider, Central Credential Provider and ASCP (I forgot the full name of it now). These solutions are agent based while Conjur is agentless. Because they are agent based, they are only intended for environments with comparatively slow changes as an agent needs to be installed on every server in order to provide the credentials from the Vault.
These solutions have REST API, CLI and SDK capabilities.

Creating a custom STS-IP with WIF and why not

I have a need to implement a STS-IP server for our web applications and services. The server will need to issue SAML tokens for the following scenarios:
Business partner submits their SAML token which is converted to a SAML token with the claims required for our applications. This token is used to access our Web Applications and Services.
Our public facing applications need to have a user sign in (via forms authentication) and then access our web applications and services with a SAML token.
Our clients (without a STS trust) needs to authenticate with our STS-IP server, get a SAML token, and use that token to access our WCF services.
In all 3 scenarios, we need to have custom claims on the SAML token that our applications and services use. The thought is once we identify the user, we would look up their authorization in our back-end systems and attach claims.
In these scenarios, you can assume the back-end authentication store is a custom implementation with authentication stored in Active Directory and authorization stored in a database.
So my thought has been, we need to create a custom STS-IP server using something like Windows Identity Framework. But I have also been reading that you should not do this because it can take some time.
Can I use an off-the-shelf STS-IP server? Everything I've seen is a mapping between one system to another (SAML to SAML or AD to SAML).
Why will it "take a long time" to build a production ready STS-IP ? I built one using WIF very easily, but I guess I don't understand the risks in doing this.
In terms of "It will take a long time", the documentation showing how to do this is very poor. See here: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/Geneva/thread/257d93be-165e-45a6-a277-fc7ed2286e7d/
Anyhow, you'll simply need to look over the code samples that Microsoft provides: Google for Identity Developer Training Kit. That should help you get started.
Why are you not considering using ADFS? If the backing store for authentication is AD, then ADFS is probably a good candidate to evaluate.
Before writing you own STS, you may want to check out this blog and closely review the features that you may need in the STS. Just because you can build one yourself, doesn't always mean you should.
extending adfs to multiple identity and attribute stores
They "why not" is relatively simple: Why take weeks to build something that will probably only handle a single use-case when you can put in off-the-shelf STS in a day that will cover all sorts of things your company may come up with? Building it yourself will also require you to become an expert in SAML (which is probably not the best us of your company's time).
Check out --
http://www.pingidentity.com/our-solutions/pingfederate.cfm
Good luck -- Ian
Agree with #eugenio - why not use ADFS?
ADFS can only authenticate against AD as discussed but it can derive authorisation attributes from AD / LDAP / SQL server
The nuts and bolts for an STS are available in VS 2010 plus the identity tool kits. A simple STS can be quickly prototyped.
There are some examples available. StarterSTS is already mentioned plus SelfSTS.
The hard part is getting the security right especially if this will be part of a production system. As per "Steve on Security" Build your own Directory Federation Service:
It may sound like I think it’ll be a
synch to develop this system and have
it work securely, but in reality there
is a lot that will need to go into it
to protect the network, the employees,
and the data this could possibly
interact with. It is tough to develop
applications securely. It is far
harder to develop secure applications
whose sole responsibility is security
related.
That's the reason that all the samples on the Internet have disclaimers in bold:
Do not use in a Production environment