My site is hosted on IIS but behind reverse-proxy (nginx). Hence Windows Authentication is not working (nginx does not support it by default configuration). So I want IIS to use Active Directory to check user credentials. But how to do this? I suppose to use cookie, but can't find how to force IIS to find user in Active Directory database.
I would be appreciated for any help.
UPD:
I don't want to use Windows Authentication. I only want IIS find user in Active Directory when user send credentials by simple POST-request from the login page.
It looks like there is no integrated solution and I simply should write it by myself.
Is there an advantage in using a trusted connection vs a sql login for web application? Is there any pros/cons from one to another?
I usually use Windows Authentication, which is more secure, with a service account. If you are doing an internal application within your own domain and you want to authenticate your users to the database server, you will need to set up delegation on that service account along with the IIS and SQL services. If it is outward facing or you aren't concerned with authenticating users to the database, you simply need to give the relevant permissions to the service account login in SQL. In either case, assuming your webserver is IIS, you would change the web application to run under the service account. This will encrypt and store the credentials on the webserver.
The main reason windows authentication is more secure is it makes use of the Active Directory infrastructure to authenticate users using encrypted messages between the servers. With SQL Authentication the credentials are passed across the network. If you do use SQL Authentication, you should make sure to encrypt the connection string portion of your web config, as you would embed the credentials including the password.
Is it generally possible to have a Microsoft Azure in the background to act as a SSO Authentication server for Apache auth?
The example is:
There are many users inside the Microsoft Azure
I have a Webpage on a Linux server served by Apache2
The webpage should be protected (exactly like basic-auth) by Azure (via SSO)
If the user is signed in into Azure and has rights, he can see the website
If the user is not signed in, he will be redirected back to Azure's login-page and after successful login will back to the webpage.
Is this generally possible?
If so what technologies/modules do I have to use for apache in order to speak with Azure?
Thanks for any hints towards the right direction.
Update
The Azure server is already fully configured. I just need to sort out the end on Apache.
I think what you are looking for is Azure Active Directory. it is an Identity as a Service product that supports modern protocols like OAuth, OpenID Connect. There's a client SDK called ADAL (Active Directory Authentication Library), but since it's standard protocols, you can integrate with other standard based authentication libraries. For example, the node.js tutorial shows how to use passport.
You didn't mention what web stack you are using but it's most likely listed here:
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/active-directory-developers-guide/
On a side note: if you can host your app on Azure Web App Service then it has built in integration with Azure Active Directory, so you can add a layer of authentication on top of your website without modifying your application code.
More info on that here: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/app-service-mobile-how-to-configure-active-directory-authentication/
Here's what I'm trying to accomplish: I have a website built on a CMS that can authenticate over LDAP. I would like for users to be able to use their AD usernames and passwords to authenticate to the website.
Basically I'm trying to understand if there is a good way to make Active Directory available externally through an LDAP connection. What options are there for this sort of thing?
Researching online I've found some suggestions to set up AD LDS on our DMZ and have it replicate with our internal Domain Controller. It seems like that would work, but I don't have a very deep understanding of AD LDS, so I'm not sure.
Is there some standard way of doing this? Or is it generally considered best practice to just set up a separate user database for external use?
If you already have all your "externally hosted website" users in your AD domain, you should be able to do LDAP authentication against any DC.
If you do not want your "externally hosted website" users in your domain, then setup a LDS instance. (But I would not put it in the DMZ. Just open a point-to-point path through the firewall to the LDS instance for port 636.)
-jim
After some theoretical help on the best approach for allowing a SaaS product to authenticate users against a tenant's internal Active Directory (or other LDAP) server.
The application is hosted, but a requirement exists that tenants can delegate authentication to their existing user management provider such as AD or OpenLDAP etc. Tools such as Microsoft Online's hosted exchange support corporate AD sync.
Assuming the client doesn't want to forward port 389 to their domain controller, what is the best approach for this?
After doing some research and talking to a few system admins who would be managing this, we've settled on an two options, which should satisfy most people. I'll describe them here for those who were also interested in the outcome.
Authentication Service installed in the origanisation's DMZ
If users wish to utilise authentication with an on-premises active directory server they will be required to install an agent in their DMZ and open port 443 to it. Our service will be configured to hit this service to perform authentication.
This service will sit in the DMZ and receive authentication requests from the SaaS application. The service will attempt to bind to active directory with these credentials and return a status to indicate success or failure.
In this instance the application's forms based authentication will not change, and the user will not be aware of the authentication behind the scenes.
OpenId
Similar to the first approach, a service will be installed in the client's DMZ, and port 443 will be opened. This will be an OpenId provider.
The SaaS application will be an OpenId consumer (already is for Facebook, Twitter, Google etc login).
When a user wishes to log in, the OpenId provider will be presented, asking them to enter their user name and password. This login screen would be served from the client's DMZ. The user would never enter their username or password into the SaaS application.
In this instance, the existing forms based authentication is replaced with the OpenId authentication from the service in the client's DNZ.
A third option that we're investigating is Active Directory Federated Services, but this is proprietary to Active Directory. The other two solutions support any LDAP based authentication across the internet.
Perhaps this might help…
This vendor, Stormpath, offers a service providing: user authentication, user account management, with hookups to your customers’ on-premise directories.
What about an LDAPS connection to the customer's user directory? They can firewall this off so that only your servers have access if they're concerned about it being public. Since it's SSL it's secure end to end. All you need from them is the certificate from their issuing CA (if it's not a public one). I struggled to get this working for an internal web project in the DMZ and there's a real lack of any guides online. So I wrote one up when I'd got it working:
http://pcloadletter.co.uk/2011/06/27/active-directory-authentication-using-ldaps/
Your best bet is to implement a SAML authentication for your SaaS application, and then sign up with identity providers like Okta or OneLogin. Once that's done then you can also connect it with ADFS to provide Single Sign On for your web application through Active Directory.
I'm just doing this research myself and this is what I've came across of, will have more updates once implementation is done. Hope this gives you enough keywords to do another google search
My understanding is that there are three possible solutions:
Installing something on the domain controller to capture all user changes (additions, deletions, password changes) and send updates to the remote server. Unfortunately there's no way for the website to know the initial user passwords - only new ones once they are changed.
Provide access for the web server to connect to your domain controller via LDAP/WIF/ADFS. This would probably mean opening incoming ports in the company's firewall to allow a specific IP.
Otherwise, bypass usernames/passwords and use email-based authentication instead. Users would just have to authenticate via email once every 3-6 months for each device.
I have to begin implementing this for an upcoming project and I'm seriously leaning towards option #3 for simplicity.