How to secure WCF service which an Android app will use?
Currently we are building an android app that will connect(by using SOAP) with a WCF service (made on another pc in console host)...
We actually want to secure this server so only people with right credentials can access the app?
How do we do this??? Do we need to use transport or message security... And can transport only use SSL or not??
And also is it better to use IIS for this or not..
Please help
Thnx
Start by configuring everything to use HTTPS (i.e., HTTP over SSL) so that your communication channels are encrypted. Then add some sort of login credential scheme so that clients authenticate to the server. The simplest is username and password. You can use Basic or Digest auth styles; both should be supported by both ends so the choice is up to you (and it's not so important which you choose since it is all inside HTTPS anyway).
All this is independent of which clients you use and which servers you use. (There's also various XML Security things that you can use with SOAP, but that's adding a lot more complexity for very little extra advantage; the big gain comes from going to HTTPS.)
Related
I have a microservices based web app. Microservices communicate with each other via a REST API exposed. I want an easy, yet secure solution to secure communication between my microservices. I've already used JWT protocol to secure my user-services communication but I can't figure out the best way to secure server-server communication.
Update:
I want an easy way to authenticate APIs. Is is a good way to hardcode key and secret or put them in configurations files and then use them to authenticate to an other end point?
I've heard about OAuth2 protocol but I'm afraid it's an overkill for my need.So What can be the easy and secure way to authenticate APIs?
You should use HTTPS in order to make communication between servers secure. As far as point to point security (transport layer security) is concerned this is the way to go.
But keep in mind that this still doesn't mean that you'll have message-level security (end-to-end security). Intermediaries (i.e. service agents or other services and applications) along the message path will be able to see what is in the message content while processing it.
REST relies on the uniform contract provided by HTTP, so you cannot use the advanced features of WS-Security as you would have with SOAP. The security features of SOAP provide a wider spectrum of options, so if security is key in your case, you should definitely check SOAP web services out.
Also, take a look at this question. It's relevant to yours and I'm sure you'll find it helpful.
Hope this helps!
I will build a cross platform application (WP8, IOS, Android) and those apps will use
my server to make API requests.
My server also will call different type of APIs (google, facebook, etc) and return some results.
And application owner does not has to be logged in to make those calls.
If there is man in the middle, he can track api calls and use it for his own usage drain my quota against api services I am using.
I only want phone who has application be able to make those calls.
What would be the best way to detect api calls to my server should come from my application?
You can use SSL to prevent man in the middle attacks but there really isn't a way that you can be 100% certain that you are communicating with your application.. You can make it harder to do by requiring some sort of access token or using custom encryption but if somebody can decompile your app they can do whatever they want.
In your specific case you should use HTTPS and in the client, not only check that you are using an HTTPS connection, but that the certificate presented by the server and its certificate chain are the ones you expect.
If you fail to do so, you could still perform a MITM attack. For example:
The MITM proxy could act as the client to the server and use an HTTP connection to serve the contents to the real client.
The MITM proxy could act as the client to the server and use a self-signed SSL certificate to present the real client an HTTPS connection.
I have a server with SSL certificate and would like to implement a WCF service with username authentication. Can anyone point me to a simple current example?
I find lots that use the 509 certificate and I don't understand why that additional piece would be needed. I don't think I want to give the certificate I have for the SSL to the client either.
I think to use SSL is just setting up the web.config appropriately with wshttpbinding and using https: in the uri that calls the service.
In this case I will have only one or two users (applications at the client actually) that need to use the service so I don't see the overhead for building a database for the store for lots of login credentials or anything like that. I've read you can pass the credentials in the request header. I hope I can just have the service itself check them without tons of overhead.
I'm really struggling to get how a simple authenticate can work for a service but I know I need something in addition to the service being SSL encrypted.
Edit: Hummm having read more I get the impression that using https binding for the message circumvents any notion of username credentials without something mysterious with certificates going on. I hope I haven't wasted money on the ssl certificate for the server at this point.
Can the IP of the requestor be used to allow the service for a known client only?
If you only need a couple of users, then use the inbuilt Windows authentication - create Windows user accounts, put the right security option in your binding config and you're done. If you're using SOAP from a non-windows client you'll have to perform some tricks to make it communicate properly (typically we found using NTLM authentication from PHP client required the use of curl rather than the PHP SOAP client library, but I understand that if you use AD accounts this becomes much easier).
WCF docs have a full description of auth options for you.
I am working on a small service accessed from a client on Windows Phone 8 and/or WinRT device that requires a moderate amount of security. My goal is to create a service that runs in Windows Azure.
My application requires authentication that verifies two things:
1) Authenticity of the client
2) User credentials of the client
Step 1) I need be certain to a fair degree that the application calling the service is, in fact, my client application.
Step 2) The user needs to have an account in the system that can be authenticated. I can implement the authentication by simply making a Login() method in the interface (unless there is a better way). However, for this, the communication between the client and the server needs to be secure as I do not want my username+password combo unencrypted.
My current view is that implementing it as a WCF service would probably be the way to go as I might have further interest into porting to other platforms on the client-side and a quick look showed me that this is somewhat supported.
However, as I am new to all these certificate shenanigans, my question is whether I can use self-signed certificates for securing my connection? Only my server and my client need to be able to verify the authenticity. Furthermore, any pointers to exactly how this is done in the WP8 + Windows Azure case?
Another deal is that assuming that a nifty hacker breaks open my program from the client hardware, can he take the certificate and use it to create his own client to login with (his) username/password and performing actions performed by my original client? Or is there a way to prevent this on the client side? In other words, can my server be sure of the authenticity of the client software based on having a valid certificate signed by me?
Step 1 is pretty much impossible. No matter what attestation method you use in code it can be duplicated in code by another programme.
Step 2 doesn't require WCF, although you can use it with basic auth. It's just as easy to expose a RESTful service with WebAPI which supports basic auth as well. Securing the communication is the same for either WCF or WebAPI - use SSL.
WCF does not like self signed certificates, and configuring it to use them does away with some of the security, depending on how you do it. Given that SSL certs from trusted CAs start at around $10 it would be a false economy not to get one. Azure webworkers support SSL certs, and support for Azure Web Sites is coming, although with no firm date.
Finally a client certificate in managed code can be reasonably easily extracted, so you cannot rely on it to identify client code.
First of all sorry for my English, its not my native language. I will try to describe my problem as much as I can.
I searched for a long time on the Internet for a solution where I can create a wcf service that can respond to requests of my clients with username and password required but without creating a certificate, using https or anything else that require a special configuration on the machine where my windows service will be installed.
Here is my point: I want to deploy an application to a lot of my customers. This application will have mobile devices and a server which will give some information to mobile device with the help of wcf. Each customer will have a server and many devices. I don't want that anyone on the web can have access to these information and for this reason, I must implement an authentication procedure with username and password for each request but I don't want to be forced to install a certificate, activate some https port on each machine when I sell a new copy of my application.
I've read that with wcf 4.0, there is a built-in system that can encrypt data and for this reason, I don't want the overhead of implementing anything else if possible.
My question is: Is that possible to have a secure solution considering my requirements and if yes, how can I do that?
If I really must create a certificate and use IIS, https or any other secure solution, it is possible to automate these things in a package that will be installed in a single click wizard into each server machine of my customers?
Thank you in advance for your time.
By default WCF doesnt allow transport of username credentials over http and hence have to use certificates to secure your transport layer. But if you are sure that you are fine with sending username credentials over the http channel then you can have a look at ClearUsernameBinding which gives you the flexibility of sending username credentials over http channel (consider the fact that someone can intercept your transport channel to get access to the credentials)
Also if you want to use certificates that have to be installed you can achieve that writing some code in c# and include that as part of your installation from your package. You can also configure everything from an msi like creating a virtual directory, deploying the application,etc..
what you are probably looking for is one of the wcf bindings that has message level security. You can put the user name and password into this message and not worry about them going across an http wire unencrypted(ie custom authentication). The defaults for WCF send user name and password as part of the http request in the header this is why it wants https.