IP authentication for library - authentication

I have very abstract description of the project. Ok, publisher wants to give access to several books to some library. He gives access by IP range (common method in publishing business, as I understand). So, users who will go to the library and use library's computers and browse book catalog can download these books.
Now question. This system should work if user login to the library from home computer (actually system like this already exists and I don't understand how it can work). And problems begin. User login to the library, but he will have his own IP address obviously. What can I do to give this users access to the books if I know only IP address range of the library.
I see 2 methods:
use "HTTP referer" field from the request. Which is very insecure
use third-party authorization meсhanism. I don't know exactly how I can do it, so I will appreciate any help
It looks like I'm trying to do pretty the same thing as this user -https://stackoverflow.com/questions/18999304/using-ip-to-identify-institution-school-university-library-etc
Anyway I found several references of IP Range authorization for libraries and universities. So, somehow it works. Can you explain how does it work for people who use their home computer?

Related

Best way to password-protect folders on IIS

What is the best way to password-protect a folder on IIS with a single set of credentials to be shared by a group of users?
Our hosting service offers Plesk, which in turn offers a "password-protected directory" function, but some of our clients have HTTP authorization disabled, so they get an automatic 401.4 error with no prompt for credentials.
I've looked into Forms authentication but this seems cumbersome to set up for the numerous separate domains at issue.
The protected content is not super sensitive, we just don't want it easily accessible to the public. Many of our users do not use the site frequently and we don't want to implement individual credentialing for everyone (we do have that in place for more sensitive sections) just so they can view current project reports or meeting minutes.
On sites I don't control, but am just a user, that do the same things as mine, it is a big pain to have to look up a username and password twice per year just to view a meeting agenda (yes, browser could remember but they also have a 4-month expiration and lots of us are on different devices all the time).
Is Forms authentication the way to go? Took a several hours for me to get it set up and working, with all sorts of settings not well documented in a single place.
(I had previously asked about how to disable Basic Auth on the client side, was told more than once it's not possible - but it is, via client/browser registry keys)
Thanks.
It's perfectly fine to use forms authentication. All you need to do is navigate to the folder or file you want to protect, then go to Authorization Rules. Add a deny rule for anonymous users, when users who are not logged in try to click on any file in that folder, they will be redirected to your login page. You can find a lot of guides on forms authentication in Google, you can refer to the following:
https://learn.microsoft.com/zh-CN/troubleshoot/developer/webapps/aspnet/development/forms-based-authentication
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/iis/application-frameworks/building-and-running-aspnet-applications/how-to-take-advantage-of-the-iis-integrated-pipeline

Howto create knowledge base from Wiki, URL behind a login

Need to create a knowledge base from a Wiki,however, the wiki is behind a login. What is the best way to feed a login protected URL into QnAmaker?
I've tried logging in in another tab on the same browser, but QnA maker simply shows the login content. I've quickly reviewed the QnA site howtos and searched stackoverflow. I'm sure folks have solved this issue but I haven't found any guidance.
If you have a link to online solutions, that would be wonderful.
Thanks...Steve
QnAMaker uses a service on its own server to scrape FAQs, which is why you can't login yourself and then try to scrape.
If you're able to whitelist IP addresses so the QnAMaker service doesn't have to login, QnA Maker Management Service uses the following IP Ranges:
West US: 13.91.0.0/16
East US: 52.191.0.0/18
Otherwise, your FAQ would have to allow login via URL. If this is possible, it's likely something like:
http://username:password#example.com/, or
http://myserver.com/~user=username&password=mypassword
The other option would be to manually copy the site to a supported file (like PDF or Doc) and then upload it.

Authentication of someone who wants to hire us for a penetration test

I want to start a penetration testing company and I already have the website (Created in html, css and PHP)
A website owner/ sysadmin who wants to hire me for a pentest can contact me via mail. He has to say with website he owns and wants to get tested by me.
But there is one problem
If somone claims to be the owner of www.example.com but he isn't and I test it, then the actual owner didn't gave me permission and that's illegal.
And if I give the report with the vulnerabilities to the person who claims to be the owner of the site, then he can just send a mail to the real owner and he can act like he found the bugs.
So how can I prevent this from happening? (by the way: a web penetration test from my "company" costs about €50-100 with is really cheap)
Should I ask for the website files as authentication? (server side files included because only the website owner has access to server-side files like PHP)
Thanks in advance
That isn't really a programming question, but an interesting one.
You may ask website owner to put some specific file to the website directory, so it will be accessible by requesting it directly in web browser.
You also may create a client software that will automate this process and made sure that the access to this test file is not blocked by redirect rules.
Basically, that's how Let's Encrypt ACME challenge works.
Check out this link - https://letsencrypt.org/how-it-works/

Google OAuth 2 works only from localhost [duplicate]

I'm trying to set a web service that needs the user's Google Latitude info, so I'm using Google OAuth to get the user authorization stuff.
However, when trying to set the redirection URI in the Google APIs Console for a web application client ID I get a message error if I try to set it to 'http://PUBLIC_IP/'.
I need to test it with non local users (thus localhost can't be used), so I would like to know if having a web domain is mandatory in order to use Google's OAuth. If not, how can I solve this issue?
This is not currently supported. I filed a feature request and will update on progress.
Update: Essential app verification activities have continued to make support of IP address-based apps unlikely. These verification activities are necessary to provide protections against abuse of user accounts. In addition, the cost of setting up dedicated domains has been reduced significantly since this feature was requested. Please read other responses here about possible options.
You can use xip.io to work around it.
For example: '192.168.0.50.xip.io:3000' will resolve to '192.168.0.50:3000'
I ran into this issue too and so I entered a URL with a .com extension and also entered it into my /etc/hosts file. Works like a charm.
It totally sucks that my entire app now has to be developed on an apparently 'live' domain though.
I used my public hostname. It helps if you have a static IP address. I used http://www.displaymyhostname.com/ to get my hostname. I plugged it straight into the Authorized JavaScript origins field when I created a new Web Application Client ID.
P.S. My hostname looked something like this: 111.111.111.111.static.exetel.com.au
You can use a dynamic DNS. I used ddns.net which offers a free solution. Basically, you enter your FQDN as this: yourcompany.ddns.net as your domain. When looked up for an IP address, the .net domain points to ddns; when ddns.net is looked up, it looks up in its database for your company, returns the IP. So mine looks like this: https://wigwam.ddns.net and everything works fine. You don't need to buy a domain, you can substitute your known IP, and Google is happy with that.
Your IP must be static, of course.
Yes, as of now you still need to have a domain name to use Google OAuth in your application. If you have a static public IP and don't want to buy a domain name, you could use a free subdomain from FreeDNS to link to your public IP. Seemed to work well enough for me with a Django app.
Echoing what Breno said in response to his earlier comment:
Apologies for the lack of updates here. Essential app verification activities have continued to make support of IP address-based apps unlikely. These verification activities are necessary to provide protections against abuse of user accounts. In addition, the cost of setting up dedicated domains has been reduced significantly since this feature was requested. Please read other responses here about possible options.
You can read more about Google's app verification requirements [1] and Google's policies requiring secure handling of data [2].
[1] https://support.google.com/cloud/answer/9110914?hl=en
[2] https://developers.google.com/identity/protocols/oauth2/policies#secure-response-handling.
xip.io is not working anymore as an alternative you can use nip.io the same way for example:
10.0.0.1.nip.io:8000 will resolve to 10.0.0.1:8000
It seems like xip.io is down, but there are alternatives such as sslip.io and nip.io. However, I couldn't get either of these to work.
I ended up hosting the main file server on the main machine, and ran said server on a 192.168.1.xx IP address. I then ran servers on each of the test machines (including a second server on the main machine), all of which were on the localhost address. Any requests that the localhost servers received were then passed off to the 192.168.1.xx server, which allowed testing on all of the devices.
This should also work with public facing IP addresses.

Can a public IP address be used as Google OAuth redirect URI?

I'm trying to set a web service that needs the user's Google Latitude info, so I'm using Google OAuth to get the user authorization stuff.
However, when trying to set the redirection URI in the Google APIs Console for a web application client ID I get a message error if I try to set it to 'http://PUBLIC_IP/'.
I need to test it with non local users (thus localhost can't be used), so I would like to know if having a web domain is mandatory in order to use Google's OAuth. If not, how can I solve this issue?
This is not currently supported. I filed a feature request and will update on progress.
Update: Essential app verification activities have continued to make support of IP address-based apps unlikely. These verification activities are necessary to provide protections against abuse of user accounts. In addition, the cost of setting up dedicated domains has been reduced significantly since this feature was requested. Please read other responses here about possible options.
You can use xip.io to work around it.
For example: '192.168.0.50.xip.io:3000' will resolve to '192.168.0.50:3000'
I ran into this issue too and so I entered a URL with a .com extension and also entered it into my /etc/hosts file. Works like a charm.
It totally sucks that my entire app now has to be developed on an apparently 'live' domain though.
I used my public hostname. It helps if you have a static IP address. I used http://www.displaymyhostname.com/ to get my hostname. I plugged it straight into the Authorized JavaScript origins field when I created a new Web Application Client ID.
P.S. My hostname looked something like this: 111.111.111.111.static.exetel.com.au
You can use a dynamic DNS. I used ddns.net which offers a free solution. Basically, you enter your FQDN as this: yourcompany.ddns.net as your domain. When looked up for an IP address, the .net domain points to ddns; when ddns.net is looked up, it looks up in its database for your company, returns the IP. So mine looks like this: https://wigwam.ddns.net and everything works fine. You don't need to buy a domain, you can substitute your known IP, and Google is happy with that.
Your IP must be static, of course.
Yes, as of now you still need to have a domain name to use Google OAuth in your application. If you have a static public IP and don't want to buy a domain name, you could use a free subdomain from FreeDNS to link to your public IP. Seemed to work well enough for me with a Django app.
Echoing what Breno said in response to his earlier comment:
Apologies for the lack of updates here. Essential app verification activities have continued to make support of IP address-based apps unlikely. These verification activities are necessary to provide protections against abuse of user accounts. In addition, the cost of setting up dedicated domains has been reduced significantly since this feature was requested. Please read other responses here about possible options.
You can read more about Google's app verification requirements [1] and Google's policies requiring secure handling of data [2].
[1] https://support.google.com/cloud/answer/9110914?hl=en
[2] https://developers.google.com/identity/protocols/oauth2/policies#secure-response-handling.
xip.io is not working anymore as an alternative you can use nip.io the same way for example:
10.0.0.1.nip.io:8000 will resolve to 10.0.0.1:8000
It seems like xip.io is down, but there are alternatives such as sslip.io and nip.io. However, I couldn't get either of these to work.
I ended up hosting the main file server on the main machine, and ran said server on a 192.168.1.xx IP address. I then ran servers on each of the test machines (including a second server on the main machine), all of which were on the localhost address. Any requests that the localhost servers received were then passed off to the 192.168.1.xx server, which allowed testing on all of the devices.
This should also work with public facing IP addresses.