Authentication for a Symfony2 api (for mobile app use) - api

I've developed a REST api for my Symfony2 application. This api will be used by a mobile app. Much of the functionality is done in the context of the currently authenticated user, ie:
$this->container->get('security.context')->getToken()->getUser()
I'm hoping that the mobile app will be able to post to the login action just like a traditional web form. If the credentials check out then Symfony2 does it's thing and sets a cookie (does this even work in the context of a mobile app accessing an api?). Then later api requests from that mobile phone will (hopefully) work with the native symfony2 security.context service container.
Would this work? I need to figure out this authorization process before I take the API to the mobile developers. If possible I'd obviously like to be able to use the native security.context service instead of building out a new auth system for the api that uses xAuth or something similar.
Thanks

I think you should do it stateless (without cookie).
I had the same problem, what i did:
in your app/config/security.yml, add:
security:
...
firewalls:
rest_webservice:
pattern: /webservice/rest/.*
stateless: true
http_basic:
provider: provider_name
...
Now you can make a request to your webservice:
class AuthTest extends WebTestCase
{
public function testAuthenticatedWithWebservice()
{
$client = $this->createClient();
// not authenticated
$client->request('GET', '/webservice/rest/url');
$this->assertEquals(401, $client->getResponse()->getStatusCode());
// authenticated
$client->request('GET', '/webservice/rest/url', array(), array(), array(
'PHP_AUTH_USER' => 'username',
'PHP_AUTH_PW' => 'password'
));
$this->assertEquals(200, $client->getResponse()->getStatusCode());
}
}

Here you are, How to create a custom Authentication Provider awesome article.
To Authentication to a Symfony2 application through api, you need use:
WS-Security

Yes Marc, jules is pointing to an example just to show you how to test authentication with http_basic.
To be RESTful you should avoid using cookies, otherwise just call it an API. About how secure is your authentication system you can go with http_digest over https or more secure signed request with api_key/api_secret approach.
Have a look here http://wiki.zanox.com/en/RESTful_API_authentication

Related

Identity Server 4, External providers and Web API

I’m in process of developing system which consists from such parts:
- Some services under gateway (Ocelot)
- Mobile client (iOS)
- Identity Server 4
Mobile client hasn’t been prepared yet, so I use Postman for emulating requests from it. My problem is implementation of Authentication with External providers, like Google. It’s my first experience of using IS 4, so I have some misunderstanding and difficulties. Excuse me, if my question is too abstract or if I miss smth obvious.
I successfully deployed IS 4 using all this tutorials and it works with Password Credentials flow in a proper way: I request IS for access token, sending user credentials, it returns token and I can successfully use it for access to my API methods.
Situation with External Providers are different. I’ve overviewed this tutorial (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/aspnet/core/security/authentication/social/google-logins?view=aspnetcore-3.1) and some other and add code from it to the IS project. I can successfully log in with Google, using a button on that IS4 web-page which goes with IS 4 Quickstart UI template. But no chance to work with API. As I understand in such workflow client-app should go for a token not to my IS as in example with a local user, but to the Google Auth provider. And I emulated it with Postman and got a strange access_token which has no data and it_token which contains username, email and so on. I try to use this id_token with requests to my API. The result is always 401.
Where I’m wrong? How should I build requests to API with token from Google? Or I have misunderstanding and there should be another flow: client goes to IS with specific request, IS goes to Google and then returns proper token to Client?
Here is configuration of authecation on the side of Web API app:
private void ConfigAuthentication(IServiceCollection services)
{
services.AddAuthentication(JwtBearerDefaults.AuthenticationScheme)
.AddJwtBearer(JwtBearerDefaults.AuthenticationScheme, options =>
{
options.Authority = "http://localhost:5000";
options.RequireHttpsMetadata = false;
options.Audience = "k_smart_api";
});
}
Here is config of Google-Auth on the side of IdentityServer:
services.AddAuthentication().AddGoogle(opts => {
opts.ClientId = "My google client Id";
opts.ClientSecret = "my google client secret";
opts.SignInScheme = IdentityConstants.ExternalScheme;
opts.SaveTokens = true;
});
This is how I get Access Token:
postman exampple
The tokens you get back from Google, is only used to Authenticate the user in Identity Server. Then after Identity Server receives those tokens, it sign-in the user and create new tokens (ID+access) that are passed to your client. you should look at using the authorization code flow in your client to authenticate the user and to get the tokens. then use the access token received to access your API.
do remember that the tokens received from Google are not used to give access to your APIs.

Servicestack Windows Universal Social Authentication

I am trying to implement social authentication from a c# client within a windows universal 8.1 app. When I post to the auth provider .../googleoauth for example the client fails. Fiddler is showing a 302 redirect so the deserialization fails n the response. The authentication flow works if I use a browser so I think everything is configured correctly, but of course could have missed something. If anyone has any insight or an example using social authentication providers from a c# client that would be much appreciated.
ian
The OAuth flow requires a browser to work in order to redirect the user to the remote OAuth website where they can approve access. So you'll need to launch the url in a WebView then capture the Session cookies after the user approves your application and is redirected back to your website.
The TechStacks Auth Example demonstrates this strategy using Xamarin.Auth component for Xamarin.Android.
Just in case anyone else was looking for a sample in UWP. This seems to be working for me. The CreateCookieContainer method for the most part simply loops through the cookies and adds them to a new container that is returned. Thanks #mythz again for the awesome work and support in ServiceStack
// Grab auth cookies from callback uri
var cookies = _httpFilter.CookieManager.GetCookies(uri);
var authCookies = cookies.AsEnumerable().Where(x => new[] {"ss-id", "ss-pid", "ss-opt"}.Contains(x.Name))
.Select(x => new Cookie(x.Name, x.Value, x.Path, x.Domain)).ToArray();
string sessionId = null;
var cookieJar = CreateCookieContainer(authCookies, uri, ref sessionId);
// Store the tokens for autologin
await DataServiceFactory.Instance.StoreSingletonSetAsync(authCookies);
// Set auth on the current client
_serviceClient.CookieContainer = cookieJar;
_serviceClient.SessionId = sessionId;

Middleware for secure API when user registered with socialite

I would like to let my users sign up for my laravelbased application using facebook or similar through socialite.
My users use a mobile app on their smartphones, which accesses the API of my app. Those API-routes are currently secured through the auth.basic middelware
Route::group(['prefix' => 'api/v1', 'middleware' => 'auth.basic'], function()
{
// ...
});
The app interacts with the api restfully through basic protected urls..
https://user:pass#myapp.com/api/v1/item/1
Now, how can i enable my users to access my protected api-routes, when they have registered through socialite? Is there a Package or a predefined middelware? Also, how would the URLs look like? Is it even possible to allow API calls with both, normally registered users and those being registered through socialite at the same time?
I see 2 best options in here.
Easiest is to use simple auth middleware in combination of logging in to the API at first before any other API calls
Secondly you can create custom middleware and include a token in your API call that authenticates the user. Example of such call after logging and getting token is below. Middleware gets the url param and checks if this is correct.
https://myapp.com/api/v1/item/1?token=123456

User authentication and login flow with Ember and JSON web tokens

I'm trying to figure out how is best to do authentication and login flow with Ember. I'll also add that this is the first web app I've built so it's all a bit new to me.
I have an Express.js backend with protected endpoints using JWTs (I'm using Passport, express-jwt and jsonwebtoken for that) and that all works.
On the client-side, I'm using Ember
Simple Auth with the JWT authenticator. I have the login flow working (I'm using the login-controller-mixin) and correctly see the isAuthenticated flag in the inspector after a successful login.
The thing I'm struggling with is what to do after login: once a user logs in and gets the token, should I make a subsequent call to get the user details, e.g. GET /me, so that I can then have a representative user model client side? These details would then let me transition to the appropriate route.
See this example in the repo for an example of how to add a property to the session that provides access to the current user.

OWIN/OAuth2 3rd party login: Authentication from Client App, Authorization from Web API

I am trying to create a Web API that allows the API's clients (native mobile apps) to login using a 3rd party cloud storage provider. I'm using the following general flow from Microsoft:
Here is what I am trying to achieve:
I am using the default ASP.NET Web API Visual Studio template with external authentication, along with the OWin.Security.Providers Nuget package for Dropbox login functionality, and the existing built-in login functionality for Google (Drive) and Microsoft (OneDrive).
The issue I'm having is that the built-in functionality all seems to do the authentication and authorization as part of one flow. For example, if I set up the following in Startup.Auth.cs:
DropboxAuthenticationOptions dropboxAuthOptions = new DropboxAuthenticationOptions
{
AppKey = _dropboxAppKey,
AppSecret = _dropboxAppSecret
};
app.UseDropboxAuthentication(dropboxAuthOptions);
... and navigate to this url from my web browser:
http://<api_base_url>/api/Account/ExternalLogin?provider=Dropbox&response_type=token&client_id=self&redirect_uri=<api_base_url>
I am successfully redirected to Dropbox to login:
https://www.dropbox.com/1/oauth2/authorize?response_type=code&client_id=<id>&redirect_uri=<redirect_uri>
... and then after I grant access, am redirected back to:
http://<api_base_url>/Help#access_token=<access_token>&token_type=bearer&expires_in=1209600
... as you can see the token is part of that, so could be extracted. The problem is that the client needs to be the one navigating to Dropbox and returning the authorization code back up to the Web API, and the Web API would send the authorization code back to the third party to get the token which would then be returned to the client... as shown in the diagram above. I need the ExternalLogin action in the AccountController to somehow retrieve the Dropbox url and return that to the client (it would just be a json response), but I don't see a way to retrieve that (it just returns a ChallengeResult, and the actual Dropbox url is buried somewhere). Also, I think I need a way to separately request the token from the third party based on the authorization code.
This post seems a little similar to what I am trying to do:
Registering Web API 2 external logins from multiple API clients with OWIN Identity
... but the solution there seems to require the client to be an MVC application, which is not necessarily the case for me. I want to keep this as simple as possible on the client side, follow the flow from my diagram above, but also not reinvent the wheel (reuse as much as possible of what already exists in the OWIN/OAuth2 implementation). Ideally I don't want the client to have to reference any of the OWIN/OAuth libraries since all I really need the client to do is access an external url provided by the API (Dropbox in my example), have the user input their credentials and give permission, and send the resulting authorization code back up to the api.
Conceptually this doesn't sound that hard but I have no idea how to implement it and still use as much of the existing OAuth code as possible. Please help!
To be clear, the sample I mentioned in the link you posted CAN be used with any OAuth2 client, using any supported flow (implicit, code or custom). When communicating with your own authorization server, you can of course use the implicit flow if you want to use JS or mobile apps: you just have to build an authorization request using response_type=token and extract the access token from the URI fragment on the JS side.
http://localhost:55985/connect/authorize?client_id=myClient&redirect_uri=http%3a%2f%2flocalhost%3a56854%2f&response_type=token
For reference, here's the sample: https://github.com/aspnet-security/AspNet.Security.OpenIdConnect.Server/tree/dev/samples/Mvc/Mvc.Server
In case you'd prefer a simpler approach (that would involve no custom OAuth2 authorization server), here's another option using the OAuth2 bearer authentication middleware and implementing a custom IAuthenticationTokenProvider to manually validate the opaque token issued by Dropbox. Unlike the mentioned sample (that acts like an authorization proxy server between Dropbox and the MVC client app), the JS app is directly registered with Dropbox.
You'll have to make a request against the Dropbox profile endpoint (https://api.dropbox.com/1/account/info) with the received token to validate it and build an adequate ClaimsIdentity instance for each request received by your API. Here's a sample (but please don't use it as-is, it hasn't been tested):
public sealed class DropboxAccessTokenProvider : AuthenticationTokenProvider {
public override async Task ReceiveAsync(AuthenticationTokenReceiveContext context) {
using (var client = new HttpClient()) {
var request = new HttpRequestMessage(HttpMethod.Get, "https://api.dropbox.com/1/account/info");
request.Headers.Authorization = new AuthenticationHeaderValue("Bearer", context.Token);
var response = await client.SendAsync(request);
if (response.StatusCode != HttpStatusCode.OK) {
return;
}
var payload = JObject.Parse(await response.Content.ReadAsStringAsync());
var identity = new ClaimsIdentity("Dropbox");
identity.AddClaim(new Claim(ClaimTypes.NameIdentifier, payload.Value<string>("uid")));
context.SetTicket(new AuthenticationTicket(identity, new AuthenticationProperties()));
}
}
}
You can easily plug it via the AccessTokenProvider property:
app.UseOAuthBearerAuthentication(new OAuthBearerAuthenticationOptions {
AccessTokenProvider = new DropboxAccessTokenProvider()
});
It has its own downsides: it requires caching to avoid flooding the Dropbox endpoint and is not the right way to go if you want to accept tokens issued by different providers (e.g Dropbox, Microsoft, Google, Facebook).
Not to mention that if offers a very low security level: since you can't verify the audience of the access token (i.e the party the token was issued to), you can't ensure that the access token was issued to a client application you fully trust, which allows any third party developer to use his own Dropbox tokens with your API without having to request user's consent.
This is - obviously - a major security concern and that's why you SHOULD prefer the approach used in the linked sample. You can read more about confused deputy attacks on this thread: https://stackoverflow.com/a/17439317/542757.
Good luck, and don't hesitate if you still need help.