NetworkCredentials and Authorization in WebApi - authentication

I am having a few problems trying to connect to a ASP.NET webapi service (which I am running myself) from a sample console app using WebClient. The webapi is the typical sample site from MVC4:
public HttpResponseMessage Get()
{
return Request.CreateResponse(HttpStatusCode.OK, new string[] { "value1", "value2" });
}
The Controller is decorated with a custom Authenticate attribute:
public override void OnAuthorization(System.Web.Http.Controllers.HttpActionContext actionContext)
{
if (actionContext.Request.Headers.Authorization == null)
{
var response = new HttpResponseMessage(HttpStatusCode.Unauthorized);
response.Headers.Add("WWW-Authenticate", "Basic realm=\"localhost\"");
actionContext.Response = response;
return;
}
}
The client code is the usual:
var wb = WebRequest.Create("http://localhost:64921/Values");
wb.Credentials = new NetworkCredential("xxx", "xxx");
var aaa = wb.GetResponse();
Console.WriteLine(aaa);
Console.ReadLine();
Now, I know that the WebClient or WebRequest are supposed to wait for a 401 before sending credentials and that is exactly what I am trying to do here.
Needless to say with the setup above nothing works. I have gone into the IIS express config and changed the following:
<basicAuthentication enabled="true" /> (in the security section)
<add name="BasicAuthenticationModule" lockItem="false" /> (in the modules section)
The problem that I am having is that the 401 gets returned even before the server code is actualy hit. I mean that if I stick a breakpoint into the Controller or the Attribute they are not hit. The details of the error are the usual long text about error 401.2 which I reckon is something to do with IIS configs, but using IIS express and not the nice IIS I do not have a nice GUI to fix this. Can anyone help?
Thanks a lot!

In the IIS config, you have enabled Basic auth processing, so IIS returns the 401 if there are no credentials or the credentials are invalid.
If you want your code to do the basic auth processing, then you need to tell IIS to allow anonymous access.
EDIT from comments
If you ask IIS to do basic auth it will check credentials against Windows accounts. This will act before the server code runs, so the Custom Auth Filter will not be hit. In this case the headers returned will be correct and you will see the WebClient performing the double request (one anonymous, one with credentials). If the WebClient does not use a computer or domain account (with read permissions on the folder where the site is located), the request will fail.
If you want to do authentication/authorization yourself, you need to tell IIS express not to do any auth and then do it all yourself... this basically means leaving everything as it is in the config (in your case reverting the pieces of config shown in the question) and sending the correct headers, which you already do. If you debug, you will see the Authenticate filter being hit twice, the first time it will be an anonymous that will go inside the if and generate your HTTP 401 Challenge response, the second time it will have credentials in the form of a standard Basic Authorization header: Basic <BASE64_ENCODED_CREDENTIALS>

Related

Simple custom authenticator in JAX-RS

In JAX-RS (or Jersey) REST service, I'm trying to make custom authentication for my users in database.
Currently I have #GET annotated method which should interact with user asking for credentials just like it is done in Spring framework with authentication provider - no custom login form, just plain HTTP login with browser popup form.
Currently I can handle HTTP Basic Access Authentication provided in header, but I need to ask for credentials before accessing content interactively and then make token-based authentication on this base.
I have to keep the application light-weight but I don't know how can this "easy" task be done..
Edit: I found something in Wildfly configuration (I'm using 9 Final version) but I don't know how to use it for login using datasource..
If you already can handle HTTP Basic authentication, then you only need to get a a "login form" from the browser? We solved this by implementing an javax.ws.rs.ext.ExceptionMapper and overriding toResponse(Throwable ex). Our app throws a NotAuthenticatedException which gets mapped to javax.ws.rs.core.Response.Status.UNAUTHORIZED. Then we add a response header appropriately:
#Provider
public class RESTExMapper implements ExceptionMapper<Throwable>
{
#Override
public Response toResponse(Throwable ex)
{
//our application maps a not logged in exception to javax.ws.rs.core.Response.Status.UNAUTHORIZED in this Pair
Pair<Integer, ObjectMap> ret = buildResponse( unwrap( ex));
ResponseBuilder rb = Response.status( ret.left()).entity( ret.right()).type( "application/json");
if( ret.left() == UNAUTHORIZED.getStatusCode())
return rb.header( HttpHeaders.WWW_AUTHENTICATE, "Basic realm=\"YOUR SERVICE NAME\"").build();
else
return rb.build();
}
The important part is setting the response header if the user is not logged in, that makes the browser display the HTTP Basic Login Dialog.

ServiceStack - prevent unauthorized access to static files

I understand there is more than one way of handling service authentication/authorization, but I cannot make it work for static files.
Is there a way of configuring the behavior to be the same as with services; if not authenticated a request to index.html should redirect to login page the same as a request to secured dto/service.
I am currently looking into RawHttpHandlers but since it is too early in the pipeline how do I get the authentication setup in the apphost config?
thanks in advance
Gjergji
You would have to use IAppHost.RawHttpHandlers because that's the only custom handler in ServiceStack's Request Pipeline that gets executed before the built-in static file handling is accessed.
But you should still be able to access the Users Session with the available extension methods, e.g:
this.RawHttpHandlers.Add(httpReq =>
{
var isStaticFileRequest = httpReq.PathInfo.StartsWith("/static");
if (isStaticFileRequest)
{
var session = httpReq.GetSession();
if (!session.HasRole("TheRole"))
return new ForbiddenHttpHandler();
}
return null;
});
This handler simply checks if it's a request for a static file, in this case the path info starts with /static, and if is checks the user session if they have the required role, if not it returns a Forbidden request, otherwise it returns null to tell ServiceStack to continue executing the request.
Note: if it's needed you can access any registered dependency from outside of ServiceStack with HostContext.Resolve, e.g:
var authRepo = HostContext.Resolve<IAuthRepository>();

Reflection, WCF Web service, LoadFrom Assembly oh my. Issues with Network Credentials

I've created a WCF webservice, that can dynamically call other webservices/db connections with DLL's loaded with .LoadFile('from assembly'). Inside one of these assemblies, another webservice is called dynamically with a passed in network credential as follows:
WebClient client = new WebClient();
client.Credentials = this.networkCredential; //This credential is passed in
RequestStream requestStream = client.OpenRead(this.url);
//rest of code. The .OpenRead is giving 401 error (not authorized).
When I do this in debug mode from a test console application and creating the network credentials as follows:
NetworkCredential networkCredential = new NetworkCredential(<userid>,<password>,<domain>);
this works fine.
The failing code is providing networkcredentials as follows
System.Net.NetworkCredential networkCredential = System.Net.CredentialCache.DefaultNetworkCredentials;
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Unless you are using impersonation, DefaultNetworkCredentials attempts to use the credentials of the process running your ASP.NET website, not the credentials of the user accessing your site. In order to use the credentials of the user, you should wrap your call to the web services in an impersonation context.
var impersonationContext = HttpContext.Current.Request.User.Identity.Impersonate();
if(impersonationContext != null)
{
//call your webservice here. DefaultNetworkCredentials will be what you expect.
impersonationContext.Undo();
}
There are, of course, conditions. The user must be authenticated (can't be an anonymous user, unless the anonymous user also has access to your web service). Also, the code above is just an example - in production code there are quite a few other things to consider. Here is an msdn article that should help get you started.
FYI, the reason it works in development is most likely because your development server process runs as you, and since you have access to the web service, it succeeds.

how do you request a session from servicestack basic authentication, at /auth/basic?

I have set up a servicestack service with basic authentication using the first example, here:
https://github.com/ServiceStack/ServiceStack/wiki/Authentication-and-authorization
This automatically sets up a route: /auth/basic
However, I cannot find any information or examples on how to format a request to this URL (Variables/GET/POST/Auth Header, etc.).
I am able to access a simple service using the basic authentication credentials, so they are active and correct.
I have no custom authentication plugged in, just basic authentication.
I have tried:
Using a JsonServiceClient to send UserName and Password variables by GET or Json POST to /auth/basic, with and without an Auth header also containing the user & pass.
Using a browser to send GET requests with URL parameters of the user/pass, or as http://user:pass#localhost:123/auth/basic
I always just get "HTTP/1.1 401 Invalid BasicAuth credentials".
The only examples I can find involve some kind of custom authentication, and then /auth/credentials is accessed, but I want to use /auth/basic
I have looked at the code and it looks like it reads an Auth header, but the service does not accept one.
I am actually trying to get this working so I can then disable it and verify it is disabled (I want to require basic authentication for every request).
Questions are:
What is the correct way to call the /auth/basic service? I will take a servicestack client API example, specifications or even a raw http request!
How do you disable the /auth services altogether?
Many thanks.
What is the correct way to call the /auth/basic service? I will take a servicestack client API example, specifications or even a raw http request!
var client = new JsonServiceClient("http://localhost:56006/api");
var resp = client.Post(new Auth() { UserName = "TestUser", Password = "Password" });
This assumes you have also registered an ICacheClient and IAuthUserRepository (and added a user account)
The JSON format looks like this if you call into /auth/basic?format=json
{
"UserName": "admin",
"Password": "test"
"RememberMe": true
}
How do you disable the /auth services altogether?
Don't add the AuthFeature plugin to configuration.
You can also remove plugins
Plugins.RemoveAll(x => x is AuthFeature);
Putting the following in apphost config seems to do the trick.
//Disable most things, including SOAP support, /auth and /metadata routes
SetConfig(new EndpointHostConfig()
{
EnableFeatures = Feature.Json | Feature.Xml
});
I am a little suspicious about what this does to /auth however, because it returns an empty response, while most routes return 404.
So, would this truly disable the /auth functionality? As in, if someone formed a correct request to /auth/credentials, will it still return an empty response?

Using cookies or tokens with cross domain forms authentication

I am trying to implement authentication using jQuery and Forms Authentication on an ASP.NET MVC 3 web service. The idea is that I'll do a jQuery AJAX post to the web service, which will do Forms Authentication and return a cookie or token, and with each data access call, my web application (jQuery) will use that cookie or token.
What I have -
I have the AJAX call to the ASP.NET Web service set up, and I have the web service set up as follows:
public ActionResult Login(string userName, string password, bool rememberMe, string returnUrl)
{
if (ModelState.IsValid)
{
if (Membership.ValidateUser(userName, password))
{
return Json(FormsAuthentication.GetAuthCookie(userName, rememberMe), JsonRequestBehavior.AllowGet);
}
else
{
return Json("Authentication Failed", JsonRequestBehavior.AllowGet);
}
}
}
This is working so that if I make the AJAX call with correct credentials, I am returned a cookie in JSON, and if not, I'm returned the auth failed string.
What I don't know - What to do with the JSON cookie once I receive it back. I can store this in HTML5 local storage, but I don't know what part of it (or the whole thing) to send back with my data access calls, and how to interpret it and check the cookie on the web service side. If I shouldn't be using cookies, is there a way to generate and use a token of some kind?
For anyone else who happens to come across, here's how I solved it:
I realized that sending the cookie back via JSON was not necessary. By using FormsAuthentication.SetAuthCookie, an HTTP Only cookie is set, which gets automatically sent with AJAX calls. This way, the server is the only one responsible for the Auth cookie, and can verify the authentication with Request.IsValidated.