Dropwizard extend #Auth interface - authentication

Does someone know how I can extend the dropwizard interface? Now it just have the required option, but I need to add rights for the anooteted method.
For example:
I have a user admin and a normal user. Both can authenticate and reaches my #auth annotated ressource. But I want to allow some (not all) http method request just for admins and dissalow for normal user. How can I do this outside of ressource? Something like
#Auth(required = true, right="admin", httpMethod="POST") User user)
#Auth(required = true, right="normalUser", httpMethod="GET") User user)
#Auth(required = true, right="masterOfTheuniverse", httpMethod="*") User user)

As annotation inheritance is not supported by Java; you can't.
I had a similar case so I had ended up copying the relevant classes from dropwizard and modify as I wished. I've combined AuthFilter with OAuthCredentialFilter as I didn't need the abstraction, and used my own class instead of Authenticator<C,P>.
Note: I've just realized, they have rewritten the #Auth logic using RequestFilters for the next release which looks more flexible and could meet your needs (I might just migrate to that too). The current version (0.8.x) uses Factorys, which you can find at Java8 implementation. Also the Auth annotation which is not in the master branch anymore.

Related

ASP.NET Core Custom Authorization

I need to implement role based authorization on a .NET 5 API but the thing is that we don't want to decorate all the controllers with attributes and a list of roles, because all that configuration will come from either a config file (JSON) or an external service (TBD), in a way that roles will be mapped to controllers and actions and we would want to have something that centralizes all this logic, in a similar way we did before with Authentication Filters and Attributes.
I've been reading that now the idea from MS is that everything is handled with policies and requirements, but I don't know how to fit all that into our desired schema. Most of all because I don't see (or can't see) how can I access the Controller and Action's descriptors to know where I'm standing when I perform the authorization process.
Is there any way to achieve this on this new model?
EDIT: I found a way to get controller and action descriptors in order to do part of what I intended. Based on some other questions and articles I read and some tinkering on my own, I got the following:
public class AuthorizationFilter : IAsyncAuthorizationFilter
{
public Task OnAuthorizationAsync(AuthorizationFilterContext context)
{
var descriptor = (ControllerActionDescriptor)context.ActionDescriptor; //<<-- this is the key casting :)
var ctrlName = descriptor.ControllerName;
var actionName = descriptor.ActionName;
var userPrincipal = context.HttpContext.User;
//DO STUFF AND DECIDE RESULT TYPE BASED ON USER CLAIMS AND CURRENT CONTROLLER AND ACTION
context.Result = new ForbidResult();
context.Result = new UnauthorizedResult();
return Task.CompletedTask;
}
}
Then I could add this filter the following way:
services.AddControllers(x => x.Filters.Add<AuthorizationFilter>());
This way I could achieve something similar as before with ASP.NET MVC 4/5, but from what I can read, the .NET Core team tried to go away from this path by implementing the IAuthorizationRequirement and AuthorizationHandler<T> mechanism to replace all that, so my doubt remains: is this the correct way to do it in the new .NET Core 3.x / .NET 5 architecture? Or is there some other way I'm overlooking on how to get and process the controller/action being executed and pass it along to an AuthorizationHandler?
What you are looking for is called externalized authorization also referred to as attribute-based access control. In this model:
authorization logic is decoupled from the application
authorization logic is expressed as policies that build on top of attributes
attributes are key-value pairs that describe the subject, the action, the resource, and the context of what's going on (A user wants to execute an action on an object at a given time and place)
authorization is decided based on those policies in a logical central point (logical because you could very well have multiple instances of that central point colocated with your app for performance reasons). That logical central point in abac is known as the Policy Decision Point (PDP)
authorization is enforced based on the response back from the PDP in the place where you want to enforce it. This could be at a method level or at an API level or even a UI level: you choose. The component in charge of enforcing the decision is called a Policy Enforcement Point (PEP).
There's one main standard out there called xacml and its developer-friendly notation called alfa that will let you implement attribute-based access control. It's worth noting this model and approach is applicable to any app (not .NET-specific at all).

In AspNetCore, what is this currently called and can I encapsulate it?

I'm currently making a library that interacts with a particular API that requires an oAuth OIDC connection/token and I'd like to make something that makes that particular part easier for users of this library so they don't need all this custom code.
What is this currently called and is there an example of code?
I ask because from trying to get this work, the documentation is ALL OVER THE PLACE. It looks like this particular process has undergone significant changes multiple times as things went on from before netcore to netcore2 and now netcore31.
Both AddAuthentication and AddOpenIdConnect are extension methods.
An extension method allows you to "add" methods to a type without having to modify the type directly - the methods aren't actually added to the type, but we can call them as if they had been. This is useful in situations where you'd like to extend the behaviour of a class created by a third party but don't have access to the source code.
As for what the particular pattern in question is, whilst there is no canonical name, it's merely a way of encapsulating the configuration of services and dependencies for your application.
AddAuthentication is an extension method of IServiceCollection, which is services type. AddAuthentication has a return type of AuthenticationBuilder, and AddOpenIdConnect is an extension method for AuthenticationBuilder. This is the implementation of AddOpenIdConnect, but as you're looking to encapsulate the configuration, you could probably do something like this:
public static class OpenIdConnectExtensions
{
public static AuthenticationBuilder ConfigureOpendIdConnect(
this AuthenticationBuilder builder)
{
return builder.AddOpenIdConnect(options =>
{
options.SignInScheme = IdentityConstants.ExternalScheme;
// Do whatever else you need.
});
}
}
And call it as follows:
services
.AddAuthentication()
.ConfigureOpendIdConnect()
Middleware, on the other hand, is code that executes as part of a pipeline in order to process requests and responses. The middleware sits in the middle of receiving requests and sending responses, hence the name. This allows you do things such as always adding certain headers to responses without that logic being split across your application. As you correctly mentioned, you see these being applied via calls such as app.UseXyz().

Obtain servlet user credentials (password) after login, e.g. from j_security_check

I need to access the user's password in a Jetty application after authentication, and can't figure out how.
I am migrating a set of web pages away from basic authentication in an embedded Jetty servlet application. I cannot, however, completely remove basic authentication from all of the services that these pages call, so I need to forward the user credentials in some cases, which means storing and later retrieving the user's password.
I introduced forms authentication to the root context via the standard markup in web.xml, which works fine but I can find no way of getting the user credentials programatically. As far as I can tell there is no way to place a Filter on j_security_check to intercept and store the form parameters in the session state. Jetty provides all the user credentials in the session state but this is in a container-specific key and although the application is currently tied to Jetty I would strongly prefer a container-agnostic solution. Here are some specific questions that I've tried to formulate after going down a number of seemingly dead-end streets:
How can I obtain the user's password after login? Even if I moved the services away from basic authentication I would still need to perform some secondary action such as obtaining a token, in which case I would still need their credentials under my control for a brief period.
Assuming I can't obtain the user's password directly, perhaps I can leverage something in the container to store the credentials. I can implement my own LoginService that wraps the actual implementation, but that class does not have access to the HttpSession or Request objects. Where is the proper place to do this?
If I need to implement a custom login solution, I'm not quite sure where to start...the FormAuthenticator has a lot of complicated session state management that I would like to preserve and not reproduce willy-nilly, and I would still prefer to defer to the container standard as much as possible. Is there some standard method for extending or overriding the j_security_check logic?
I finally found one solution, for anyone else attempting similar - and I've found quite a few other posts from confused devs, and some badly hacked together workarounds. I believe this one is correct, although you must do the URL filtering yourself and it leaves open the question as to why this is possible, if indeed j_security_check should be exempt from this type of interception for security reasons, as is claimed many places online. Perhaps I am merely exploiting an unknown gap in the Jetty security measures, so I will leave this question open for a while to see if there is a more robust or explicit solution.
ServletRequestListener allows you to latch onto the j_security_check post request before it is fully initialized. There you can get both the form parameters and the session object. So in the end it was just a matter of exhausting every possible servlet-related class in Jetty until I found one that would give me access to the j_security_check request. Some code:
public class PreAuthenticationRequestListener implements ServletRequestListener {
public static final String USERNAME_KEY = "USERNAME";
public static final String PASSWORD_KEY = "PASSWORD";
#Override
public void requestDestroyed(ServletRequestEvent sre) {
}
#Override
public void requestInitialized(ServletRequestEvent sre) {
HttpServletRequest request = (HttpServletRequest)sre.getServletRequest();
if (request.getRequestURI().contains("j_security_check")) {
final String username = request.getParameter("j_username");
final String password = request.getParameter("j_password");
HttpSession session = request.getSession();
session.setAttribute(USERNAME_KEY, username);
session.setAttribute(PASSWORD_KEY, password);
}
}
}

JEE6 application session scoped objects

I'm still pretty new to JEE6 having come from a Servlets + JSP style of development on legacy systems. In the applications I worked on we would just throw objects into the various supplied scopes (request, session and application) keyed on a constant String. For example, the User object that represented the currently logged in user would be in the session scope keyed under "current_user".
I've done the same in our new JEE6 application, when the user logs in the User object is bound into the session scope. I'm wondering though if there is a better, more EE, way of handling this?
The problem I'm having is that now I've got the User stored in the session it's awkward to get access to it again. I can get it via JNDI look up or with a few lines of boiler plate code involving FacesContext but neither are very elegant.
Rather than boiler plate code all over the place (the User object is need in a few places) it would be great if I could just get the object injected into a field or method. After all there can only be one object in the session bound to a particular name so there shouldn't be any ambiguity about what I'm asking for. Is this possible?
Maybe the CDI could be of any help?
Could you define the way you achieve the User object into one, main method?
If so, and you're working with Java EE 6 environment, you could use the Producer method. Something between these lines:
public class ClassWhichCanAccessUserObject {
#Produces
public User produceUser() {
User u = ... // get the user as you do it right now
return u;
}
}
Then in the place you want to use this class you just Inject it (in the field or method) and use it:
public class MyLogic {
#Inject
User u;
}
You need to remember to add the beans.xml file to your classpath, as without the CDI will not work for your module.

MVVM on top of claims aware web services

I'm looking for some input for a challenge that I'm currently facing.
I have built a custom WIF STS which I use to identify users who want to call some WCF services that my system offers. The WCF services use a custom authorization manager that determines whether or not the caller has the required claims to invoke a given service.
Now, I'm building a WPF app. on top of those WCF services. I'm using the MVVM pattern, such that the View Model invokes the protected WCF services (which implement the Model). The challenge that I'm facing is that I do not know whether or not the current user can succesfully invoke the web service methods without actually invoking them. Basically, what I want to achieve is to enable/disable certain parts of the UI based on the ability to succesfully invoke a method.
The best solution that I have come up with thus far is to create a service, which based on the same business logic as the custom authorization policy manager will be able to determine whether or not a user can invoke a given method. Now, the method would have to passed to this service as a string, or actually two strings, ServiceAddress and Method (Action), and based on that input, the service would be able to determine if the current user has the required claims to access the method. Obviously, for this to work, this service would itself have to require a issued token from the same STS, and with the same claims, in order to do its job.
Have any of you done something similar in the past, or do you have any good ideas on how to do this?
Thanks in advance,
Klaus
This depends a bit on what claims you're requiring in your services.
If your services require the same set of claims, I would recommend making a service that does nothing but checks the claims, and call that in advance. This would let you "pre-authorize" the user, in turn enabling/disabling the appropriate portions of the UI. When it comes time to call your actual services, the user can just call them at will, and you've already checked that it's safe.
If the services all require different sets of claims, and there is no easy way to verify that they will work in advance, I would just let the user call them, and handle this via normal exception handling. This is going to make life a bit trickier, though, since you'll have to let the user try (and fail) then disable.
Otherwise, you can do something like what you suggested - put in some form of catalog you can query for a specific user. In addition to just passing a address/method, it might be nicer to allow you to just pass an address, and retrieve the entire set of allowed (or disallowed, whichever is smaller) methods. This way you could reduce the round trips just for authentication.
An approach that I have taken is a class that does the inspection of a ClaimSet to guard the methods behind the service. I use attributes to decorate the methods with type, resource and right property values. Then the inspection class has a Demand method that throws an exception if the caller's ClaimSet does not contain a Claim with those property values. So before any method code executes, the claim inspection demand is called first. If the method is still executing after the demand, then the caller is good. There is also a bool function in the inspection class to answer the same question (does the caller have the appropriate claims) without throwing an exception.
I then package the inspection class so that it is deployed with clients and, as long as the client can also get the caller's ClaimSet (which I provide via a GetClaimSet method on the service) then it has everything it needs to make the same evaluations that the domain model is doing. I then use the bool method of the claim inspection class in the CanExecute method of ICommand properties in my view models to enable/disable controls and basically keep the user from getting authorization exceptions by not letting them do things that they don't have the claims for.
As far as how the client knows what claims are required for what methods, I guess I leave that up to the client developer to just know. In general on my projects this isn't a big problem because the methods have been very classic crud. So if the method is to add an Apple, then the claim required is intuitively going to be Type = Apple, Right = Add.
Not sure if this helps your situation but it has worked pretty well on some projects I have done.