I need that in a Intranet application that is made with Play Framework 2, the credentials that the users have for authentication can also be used to authenticate to the database and that every statement sent to it also uses this credentials.
In other words, to each user of the application corresponds a database user and password.
Thanks in advance.
This means you won't be able to use the connection pool, and instead you will create a connection-per-request sort of, right? No built in support in play for this, but probably not very hard to do yourself.
The exact solution depends on how you will access your database (Slick, ANORM, something else?) but basically you will have to create some abstraction that takes auth and creates a database session that your database interacting code will use.
Related
Sorry for may be simple question. I not experienced with server-based apps developing.
I study Azure recently and create simple mobile application that connect to azure database. Its make some trivial operations on tables like add items and make SQL select queries. Now I want add authorisation to app and restrict some operations with tables in db based on it. What is best way to do it? I think it's a good idea to write backend on azure server with authorisation-based rules but I don't find out about it from Azure documentation. For example what I want to achieve:
Not authorisation mobile app user restricted to make any modifying operations and can select only predefined columns.
Authorisation user can make add/update operations on some tables based on user info(uid/login etc...).
If I create database rules on frontend(mobile app) side its not difficult to write another app that have possibility to make anything with database in bypass of my app. Isn't it?
If I create database rules on frontend(mobile app) side its not difficult to write another app that have possibility to make anything with database in bypass of my app. Isn't it?
This is very true; security shouldn't be (just) in the frontend. Make sure your backend is set up in such a way it checks the access rules each time someone tries to do something in the backend.
Now, as far as your question goes: please implement an API that connects to your database. With each and every client directly connecting to your database, you will lose all control. If you implement an API in front, you can do stuff like caching and asynchronous processing if you need to.
When implementing the API, you can have the GET methods be unsecured, while POST, PUT and DELETE use a (for instance) JWT token retrieved from Azure Active Directory. This repo and the presentation it links to might give you some reference.
I am working on a project that allows a user to create a user to create app keys or secrets so that specific services can be used by external clients. A user can create multiple secrets that they can choose to use across multiple clients.
For this I am planning to create a decoupled auth server that will use identityserver4.
What really holding me back is that I am not sure whether or not I should create an API layer at the auth server. The reason I am considering API at auth server is so that I can create sort of an admin portal client that will give the users a front-end for creating, renewing, and accessing their app keys/secrets. Even the admin portal is going to be a de-coupled angular application.
There are two things that are holding me back at the moment:
I am not sure if it's a good or safe idea to serve this data via
an api layer. From what I understand, identityserver will not be able to provide functionality that allows me to access a list of a user's clients through an endpoint but please correct me if I'm wrong and there's a better way to approach this.
I know we can easily create new clients and persist it into the database with identityserver4 and I am planning to use ClientCredentials grant types for user clients, but is there a link at the database and identity level between a user and a client? Or will I need to create that functionality by myself?
So far I've looked but I have not bee able to find examples that are similar to my situation with identityserver4
Sorry for the noob question, I am just getting into identityserver and web security in general so many of these concepts are still very new to me.
For number 1, I would say yes you can create an API layer to server data. If you check the IdenttiyServer4 AdminUI, Rock Solid has also use the admin API behind the UI. But you must consider encryption, TLS and other security mechanism to keep this safe.
AFIK for number 2, there are no links at identity level between a user and a client. You have to create that by yourselves.
Basically, you need a system that supports Multitenancy. I have achieved that by adding a TenantId field in the AspNetIdentity user table. And also added the tenant Id to claim list.
Please do not hesitate to correct me if i am wrong.
Is it possible that a website uses the models of another lavarel website to access the database, without the first website having the sql credentials hardcoded. But with the credentials to log into the second lavarel website hardcoded.
This way the first website doesn't have to have the sql credentials on it's ftp server, but can still access the databases through the other website (with their personal login of that website).
If that is impossible, I am wondering, is there a way to access a databases without having to hardcode the credentials anywhere.
UPDATE (the actual problem)
Only a part of the database should be visible to a particular user, so i can provide different users with different credentials and they all see something different in the database
What you are talking about is an API. So you'd build out the entire infrastructure on the first website, then on the second website, it would make some kind of calls to the first website to get back the information it needs, usually using some kind of credentials or access token.
This way, you can allow anyone in the world to communicate with your website, kind of like how Facebook, or Twitter does.
As far as accessing your database, you would need to tell your app somewhere the credentials to use, so technically, you do need to hardcode them somewhere as they can't just magically make up some credentials somehow to access a database.
if your different users are defined:
use laravel model/db event to replicate the data to a database by
user.
Or sync each database with a cron job..
These have benefits to avoid security transport problems.
I wish to create a functionality that is very similar to facebook or pokerstars if you have used them before. Basically the apps require the user to login and their information can be accessed from both browsers and native and web apps.
How can I go about achieving this? Please advice on what services to research on to accomplish this. To my current understanding. I would be creating the website in html and php and creating a webservice using RESTful protocols and hosting them on amazon aws servers. I can then connect to these servers in the native apps? I am not very clear on how the native apps will interact with the servers
If you know of any particular protocol or a better server hosting service please let me know.
If I'm interpreting your question correctly, you are looking for something like this:
The user starts either your browser app or your native app (perhaps a mobile app)
Since the user does not have an account yet, you present them with the appropriate dialog to create said account.
You then ask the "Identity Service" to create a profile for that user
The identity service returns a token for access
This is something we do in the mobile network industry all the time. Technically, we have TAC/ACS or HSS profile services, but in either case, it's the same thing -- a dedicated service and network process that:
Accepts connections from various clients (web, mobile, desktop...)
Has various primitives along the database CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) model
Answers requests the database
If you want a pre-configured solution, you could just use any networked database with a RESTstyle connector for example (MongoDB maybe?) But you could also just through this in a process that talks to a NoSQL or SQLLite database. The end result is the same.
For commercial solutions, I might like at OpenStack as you can run your code on it and they have identity brokers you might be able to CoOpt.
Personally, I'd just have a datastore running on a cloud somewhere like Amazon's EC2 which answers RESTful requests such as:
Create a user with a given profile set, return a unique token
Delete a user given a token
Update elements of the profile for a given token
I'm leaving out the necessary things like security here, but you get the idea.
This also has the advantage that you can have a single identity service for all of your applications/application services. The specifics for a given application element are just sub-fields in the profile. This gives you, not only a common identity broker for web, desktop and mobile, but a single-sign-on for all your applications. The user signs in once and is authenticated for everything you have. Moving from site to site, now just became seamless.
Lastly, you place your identity management, backup, security token management, etc OUTSIDE of your application. If you later want to add Google Authenticator for second-factor authentication, you don't have to add it to every application you have.
I should also add that you don't want to keep the identity database on the direct internet connection point. Someone could make your life difficult and get ahold it later on. Rather, you want your identity server to have a private link to it. Then do something like this:
When the account is created, don't store passwords, store hashes -- much safer
Have your application (web or otherwise) compute a key as the login
In this case, the user might enter a username and password, but the application or website would convert it into a token. THAT is what you send across.
Next, using that token (and suitable security magic), use THAT as the owner key
Send that key to the datastore and retrieve any needed values
Encrypt them back into a blob with the token
Send the block
THe application decrypts the blob to get at values
Why do we do this?
First, if someone were to try to get at your identity database, there's nothing useful. It contains only opaque tokens for logins, and blobs of encrypted data. Go ahead -- take the database. We don't care.
Second, sniffing the transport gets an attacker nothing -- again, it's all encrypted blobs.
This means later on, when you have five applications using the broker, and someone hacks the network and steals the database, you don't care, because your users never gave out logins and passwords in the first place, and even if they did, the data itself is garbage to anyone without the user key.
Does this help?
Background research:
User Signup in Couchapp/CouchDB through jquery.couch.js or Otherwise
http://blog.couchbase.com/what%E2%80%99s-new-couchdb-10-%E2%80%94-part-4-security%E2%80%99n-stuff-users-authentication-authorisation-and-permissions
https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/COUCHDB-1175 - specifically "Ari Najarian" 's posts
Question:
To paraphrase the SO question I posted above:
"Essentially I want to have a signup form for registering an account in couchdb for a couchapp. This would entail creation of a new user in the couchdb _users database, and the creation of a new database, with the new user assigned the role of database admin. All that requires server admin credentials."
The answer to the previous question involved using an external separate server that was logged in to couchdb as admin to monitor couchdb and modify couchdb as desired in response to certain data events coming from a client.
My question is - is that the only way? Doesn't that defeat the whole purpose of couchdb's 2-tier web stack? Is there some way to modify a couchdb database from within a validation function which checks for "type == user" document while "internally"/separately logged in as an admin maybe?
I apologize if there is some straightforward way to do this and I just didn't find the right documentation.
Extra Problem Clarification:
There is the couchdb instance sitting at an internet address.
This couch database serves to a random client an html page and embedded javascript script that contains a signup/login form.
The client enters signup info (name, password) and submits
The JS script uses the XMLHttpRequest object to open a connection to the couchdb instance and sends...PROBLEM!
Problem #1 - If the credentials are stored in the code (to be sent as verification for new user database), then anyone could "view html source" and take over the database.
-OR-
Problem #2 - If credentials are not supplied and the request is sent anonymously, then a new user will be created in the _users database and a success reply message will be sent. But no new database was created for the user (and can't be without admin credentials) which the user can interact with for application-specific purposes (e.g. add/delete data). And - from the above couchbase blog link - if you have secured your database with roles/names against anonymous readers and validation functions to prevent anonymous writes, then an anonymous-made user account (e.g. a client who wants to register database space to use the app) can not do anything because an anonymous user cannot, for obvious security reasons, specify whatever roles they wish to have. Which means that the only way to have -functional- users is to create user accounts + associated databases as admin beforehand and then hand out these user credentials - so like a private invite system, yes?
To reiterate, is there any way, using ONLY couchdb and some combination of couchdb's authentication handlers, design document functions, client-side ajax, etc. for a connecting client to register and get a personal database (and ONLY that database obviously) they have access to and can interact with?
This isn't a PURE couch solution, but it's couch + node, and solves your problem:
Hi I haven't been around in awhile and didn't realize this was edited / link removed (plus policy of links not being answers! sorry...). I have been using couchdb on a project very similar to what you are trying to do, and unfortunately there is no way to do what you want to accomplish without tacking on another service to handle the admin-level access and creation of user database. Syncpoint-API can be used to facilitate this, but it is actually a nodejs service handling the signup/login and dedicated database setup.
So far though, Syncpoint has proven to not be 100% reliable and it does appear to be an abandoned project, due to CouchBase sucking all the r+d resources away from CouchDB dev.
I'm now moving to nodejs + socket.io as a transport layer, using node to handshake and assign a DB, and then further watching the couch _changes api on the server (via yet another node process) to then forward _changes through socket.io to the client. Also I have some "pure" couchapps running that serve public data mixed in with the private data.
My conclusion? CouchDB is a great product and has some great features, but for the more complex login/authorization schemes and other general application needs required in real-world dev, it's just not ready yet.