How can I enable the encryption of an WCF (Windows Communication Foundation) Service with VB.NET?
Is it enough to add a certificate to a service an set <security mode=""> to "TransportWithMessageCredential"? Or is there any other settings needed?
If this is enough:
What's with the client? Maybe I'm wrong but I thought the client and the server need a certificate?!
The client can encrypt messages with the server public key. But how does the server encrypt messages to the client? Or does the client generate an symmetric encryptionkey and send it to the server?
It depends what type of end point you are using. If you are using an HTTP/HTTPS endpoint, simply having a server certificate is sufficient.
Related
There is a server with WCF client, which periodically initiates communications over internet with many WCF services installed on our clients computers. WCF services and WCF clients are hosted in Windows Service, current binding is basicHttpBinding.
Communication has to be over https with mutual authentication. Company ordered SSL certificate but it is not clear if this certificate can be installed on clients computers (because WCF service is there) without exposing a private key. Binding can be basicHttpBinding or wcHttpBinding with transport or message security but using certificates.
Is it possible to install service-side certificate on client computers and client-side certificate on our server? Should this architecture be re-worked so WCF service is on our server or it is possible to secure somehow this current solution?
Each computer involved requires it's own certificate. A certificate value for authentication relies on the uniqueness of the private key. The private key never leaves the host machine, and the certificate can be used to authenticate said machine (because is the only one in the world that posses that private key). As soon as you start distributing copies of a private key, security is pretty much compromised.
Normally such deployment rely on PKI infrastructure which can create certificates on-demand and sign them with a trusted key.
What product/protocol the certificates are used for is irrelevant. What kind of WCF HTTP binding you use it maters not.
I have created a WCF service with X.509 certificate. I took a reference from this article: http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/36683/simple-steps-to-enable-X-certificates-on-WCF. Now it requires a certificate to be sent along with request to the server in order to access the service. My question is that does using a X.509 certificate in request encrypt the message to be sent to the server or do I have to do anything more to do it?
A client sending a request to a WCF service should only require a public key to start off. If you have your service (and client) configured correctly, WCF should automatically handle the authentication / encryption before the transmission of your request content.
As I understand it, your client does not need a X509 cert.
i want to encrypt messages in a WCF scenario where the binding is tcp.NetBinding and the security is bound on transport.
I found out, that if i dont encrypt the messages, i dont have to make client credentialhandling between client and server.
But if i want to encryt, it seems that there has to be some kind of
client-authentication (Windows credentials, Certificate ...).
The WCF server wont start with credentials are set to Null and encryption is on.
Is it possible to encrypt messages between the client and the server without authenticating the client?
Thanks a lot
Yes, the scenario is called Transport Security with an Anonymous Client:
This Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) scenario uses transport
security (HTTPS) to ensure confidentiality and integrity. The server
must be authenticated with a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate,
and the clients must trust the server's certificate. The client is not
authenticated by any mechanism and is, therefore, anonymous.
The bare bones binding is setup as follows:
var binding = new NetTcpBinding();
binding.Security.Mode = SecurityMode.Transport;
binding.Security.Transport.ClientCredentialType = TcpClientCredentialType.None;
Also in this particular scenario, the security is provided by TLS over TCP to ensure confidentiality and integrity. Again all that is required is to have the client trust the certificate provided by the server. The client is not authenticated by the server and is therefore known as an anonymous client.
I have client server application which using WCF service with Transport security mode and NetTCP binding. I heard like Transport security is best for local intranet, not for internet. Now my scenario is I need to access WCF service over internet (from another country), but dont want to use Message security (cause it need to purchase and install certificate on server and each client). I want to use Transport security and also encrypt my data, so no one can hack it from internet.
So please someone guide me how can I encrypt my data with Transport security ?
Thanks
Transport is just SSL, so after the initial setup on the host and client sides, there's really nothing special to it. SSL will encrypt all the bytes starting at byte 0 and only the host that distributed the public key portion of the SSL cert will be able to decrypt the transmission since it and only it should have the private key part of the certificate.
SSL does present some potential problems if you have a load balancer or proxy fronting your service - i.e. if the proxy or LB server didn't begin the SSL transmission, it won't know what to do with the inbound message. But SSL encryption can be offloaded to a LB or proxy, so there are ways around that.
Here's a link to a stackoverflow question about SSL over WCF
Enable SSL for my WCF service
What's the easiest security mode for implementation in WCF when:
Both client and service are .NET applications.
Client and service are negotiating over internet.
SSL in not available.
Port 80 (web) is preferred for communication.
And Using a x 509 certificate should be the last option (same credentials in configuration file at both sides is preferred, if possible)
Security means a lot of things:
Authentication
Authorization
Confidentiality
Integrity
To name a few. You need to decide what are your requirements for each.
Since SSL is not available you must use message level security. But assuming machines do not necessarily live on the same windows domain you cannot use windows authentication and must use x.509 certificate, at least on the serve side. So:
<customBinding authenticationMode="usernameForCertificate" />
where the client authenticates with a username and the server with a certificate (client need to install this certificate).
You could also use a WSHttpBinding with all default settings except:
messageClientCredentialType=UserName
In which case client does not need to install the certificate, it gets it automatically in runtime via negotiation.
Both client and service are .NET applications.
Take a look here http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee707353(v=vs.91).aspx