mvc4 webapi vs controller security (authentication and authorization) - asp.net-mvc-4

I'm quite new to asp.net mvc webapi technologies.
Scenario:
I'm desiging a mvc web application for enterprise. I'm aware that MVC controllers can have authorization and authentication via security attributes.
The web application shows various trends for household water consumption. The vision is to have this data accessible via mobile, tablets (you name it).
I'm wondering whehter WebAPI would be better off then controllers so that same API can be consumed by many devices.
Question:
The question I've with webapi is the security. On web application once user logged in controller knows the user's security profile etc. In case of devices how would the security work? Should all the clients must pass credentials and if it is how is secruity handled on server? Should we create one service account and provide to each clients?
Thank you, not sure if I explained well.

MVC Security is an overlay of standard ASP.Net Authentication/Authorization. The AuthorizeAttribute indicates that the user must be authenticated to access this resource. It looks at the User IPrincipal for IsAuthenticated and Roles
So this then becomes an ASP.NET authentication solution.
User Authentication - Straightforward using any of the mentioned methods in the first article.
Device Authentication - No generic answer for this and there really isn't a true secure way of authenticating a device. You can identify the device by passing unique data (device Serial) in the URL or HTTP Header.

Related

Configure asp.net core 2 web application to use authentication from a separate IdentityServer4 server

I have a working implementation of IdentityServer4 with custom user stores, etc.
I have an asp.net core web app that I want to require user login for certain pages through the IdentityServer4 instance with my site having full ASP.Net Core Identity functionality e.g. my razor pages accessing User etc.
I have been searching for 3 days and while the internet seems to have lots of resources available on very similar topics, they all do things a little differently. I feel like I just don't know the right keywords to search for.
I have been following many online tutorials such as JWT Authentication on .Net Core and all of the quickstarts on identityserver4.io but they all leave out crucial steps.
IdentityServer is an implementation of oidc, which means that it serves as an independent, central authentication point. Client apps should be unaware of users credentials. That's part of the responsibility of IdentityServer.
So the reason you won't find answers and you think steps are missing, is because you are not implementing oidc.
It is not possible to 'hide' IdentityServer when a user has to login there.
That leaves you with three options:
implement Resource owner password flow. In that case you can collect the credentials and send it to IdentityServer. Please note that there may be security issues when you use this.
Do not use IdentityServer but instead implement Asp.Net Core Identity.
Send information to IdentityServer to identify the client and use custom presentation for that client. In that case the url may be different but the look and feel remains the same.

Validate external token asp net core

I'm doing a mobile app in Xamarin Forms, which should be able to connect to an ASP.NET core web service (API). I also want the information on the web service to be secured by limiting it to Microsoft account signed-in users. The idea I had was to send the user's credentials and retrieve back the security token from the Microsoft graph within the mobile app. Afterwards, the user would send that same bearer token to the web service, which checks its validity, and grants the requested information only if the validation is successful.
I am new to web development, so first of all, I want to ask if I am using a good approach for my project (if not, what do you recommend?).
If it is, how should I set up the ConfigureServices function in my Startup class? When I include the [Authorize] tag in the controllers, the service crashes, telling me I should define an authentication scheme. I don't need authentication, only authorization (since authentication is done from the mobile app), Since these two are handled independently in asp.net core, I added a dummy jwt authentication scheme as a placeholder. However, when I send an http request with the security token from my mobile app, it gives me a 401 unauthorized error, telling me I'm sending an "invalid token" (this token works fine when connecting to the Microsoft graph).
I've searched in countless documentations, but all of them only consider scenarios in which the authentication is done within the web service, and not externally, like me.
Any help is appreciated

IdentityServer4 with optional External ADFS for some client configurations

So we are using IdentityServer4 for our web applications, all is good.
We have a new requirement from a client to allow them to perform SSO via their ADFS system using WsFederations, we already provide this for another one of our older web applications that is not tied into IdentityServer4 yet.
Ideally we would like to tie WsFedereration into IdentityServer4 so it is in one place.
Does anyone know if it possible to use IdentityServer4, so we redirect to IdentityServer4, identity that this particular client (possibly via an alternative URL), then IdentityServer4 authenticates against ADFS, collects the claims (probably basic, e.g. email/username/etc) , and we then supplement them with additional claims for access, and pass back to the web application.
What I'm trying to achieve ideally is to not change the existing Web Application, and to sort the plumbing at IdentityServer4, and the Web Application wouldn't know or care if this user was IdentityServer4 only or
IdentityServer4 + WsFederation. This would be useful for other clients across our applications to easily integrate in the future.
Alternatively I could deploy another version of the Web Application that authenticates directly with my clients ADFS system. However this seems a waste of server resources/maintenance for just one small client.
I had a look at the external options (where you click google on or near the IdentityServer4 Login Screen), is there a way to automatically redirect to the ADFS without event seeing the IdentityServer4 implemented Login screen.
Is this possible?
Thanks,
Jon
This was released 2017, see the example at
https://github.com/IdentityServer/IdentityServer4.WsFederation

Identityserver4 and Api Resource in same Asp.net Application

If i host my Identityserver4 and the Api in the same Asp.net Application.
What will be used for authentication for the API Controllers?
The Cookie from Identityserver or the token which i get from the oidc-client in my SPA application?
I my tests i can access the API, also if i didn't send the token within the angular http reqeuest as long as i have the Cookie...
But is this a correct and save way???
The MVC Controllers for Identityserver are protected with ValidateAntiforgeryKey, but not the API Controllers.
Does it make sense to host both in the same Application???
Edit:
In Details, the API is used for managing the IdentityServer.
CRUD Operations for Clients, Users, Resources,...
For example:
The IdentityServer is reachable at http://localhost:5000
I want build an Angular2 SPA Admin UI which is available at http://localhost:5000/admin
The reason for mentioning ValidateAntiforgeryKey is, because if i only use Cookie Authentication for the CRUD API i should also protect these API'S with ValidateAntiforgerKey, or?
It sounds like your API and Identity Server are two separate concerns and should be handled as two separate apps. This makes it a lot easier to maintain.
You need to set up an ApiResource and a Client where you add the ApiResource as an AllowedScope in your Identity Server configuration.
Then in your API app, you must add add the authentication middleware UseIdentityServerAuthentication.
The details are explained here:
http://docs.identityserver.io/en/latest/topics/apis.html
I can see you are mentioning ValidateAntiforgeryKey. This attribute is not used for protecting against unauthorized users, but to make sure form data is being posted from legitimate forms.

Cross platform ServiceStack Authentication

What is the best way to architect the following solution for authentication?
I have a standalone (not integrated with MVC) ServiceStack REST service layer. This service is the entry point to all my data. No data is stored on the client.
I have multiple clients (ASP.Net MVC 4 site, MonoTouch app, MonoDroid app, Silverlight app, MonoMac app, etc).
I would like to provide authentication (Facebook, Twitter, etc) at the service level, including storing the users in the MongoDBAuthRepository, but allow the clients to provide the login UI (do I want this?). For example, for the MVC site, I'd like to integrate the remote ServiceStack authentication service (including Facebook, Twitter), with MVC's authentication system. It seems like the actual authentication should occur on the service side, but the client side needs to hold on to the authentication response.
I've read the wiki, looked at SocialBootstrap, and read the forum, but I'm still confused as to how this is supposed to work in a distributed way.
For OAuth options like Twitter + Facebook your authentication should happen in a browser as they each require redirections from their respected auth provider to capture trusted verification from each user. Some mobile apps do this by embedding a browser widget for Twitter + FB Auth.
Once a user is authenticated with Twitter + Facebook and Credentials in the same authenticated session, ServiceStack's AuthProviders automatically merges all Auth info into the same account. So later you will be able to login with 1 auth provider but get access to info available on all 3. The SocialBootstrapApi project provides an example of this.