I have written a web application that is, typically, installed internally by customers (based on IIS/MSSQL server).
When a customer wants to provide external access to the application, we offer the following supported scenarios:
Publish the application in their DMZ (pretty standard deployment).
Use our own platform where we host the application in our own cloud infrastructure for them.
However, because I have more and more customers who misunderstand the requirements for publishing an internal application, I would like to add a "one click" way of providing that service.
My idea is to have a reverse proxy installed on the customer's web server that will connect to a cloud server we control. When the application starts, it will connect to our server, authenticate and maintain the connection. When a user wants to use the application, she will use an URL that directs it to our server (say https://myapp.mycompany.org/CustomerID or https://CustomerID.myapp.mycompany.org). The server will then lookup the list of connections from reverse proxy to find the one matching the customer ID and, if found, use that connection to relay the end user connection.
In essence, that is the same thing as what Azure Application proxy or TeamViewer do, only without the need for using Azure AD or TeamViewer.
Is there an existing framework I can use for building such a service ? I know I can write it on my own but that is quite a large development.
Related
I have a request to restrict the access (access control) to a small user community in GCP.
Let me explain the question.
This is the current set up:
A valid GCP Organization: MyOrganization.com (under which the GCP project is deployed / provisioned)
Cloud DNS (To configure domain names, A & TXT records, zones and subdomains to build the URL for the application).
Oauth client set up (tokens, authorized redirects URIs, etc.).
HTTPS load balancer (GKE -managed k8s service- with ingress service), SSL certificate and keys issued by a trusted CA.
The application was built using python + Django framework.
I have already deployed the application (GCP resources) and it is working smooth.
The thing is that, since we are working in GCP, all IAM users who has a valid userID#MyOrgnization.com can access the application (https://URL-for-my-Appl.com).
Now, I have a new request, which consists in restricting access (access control) to the application only for a small user community within that GCP organization.
For example, I need to ensure that only specific IAM users can access the application (https://URL-for-my-Appl.com), such as:
user1#MyOrganization.com
user2#MyOrganization.com
user3#MyOrganization.com
user4#MyOrganization.com
How could I do that, taking into account the info I sent earlier ?
thanks!
You can use Cloud IAP (Identity Aware Proxy) in order to do that.
Identity-Aware Proxy (IAP) lets you manage access to applications
running in App Engine standard environment, App Engine flexible
environment, Compute Engine, and GKE. IAP establishes a central
authorization layer for applications accessed by HTTPS, so you can
adopt an application-level access control model instead of using
network-level firewalls. When you turn on IAP, you must also use
signed headers or the App Engine standard environment Users API to
secure your app.
Note: you can configure it on your load balancer.
It's not clear in your question if your application uses google auth (but considering that you talk about org-restricted login I think so) - if that's the case you should be able to enable it without virtually touching anything in your application if you are using the Users API.
The best and easiest solution is to deploy IAP (Identity Aware Proxy) on your HTTPS Loadbalancer
Then, grant only the user that you want (or create a gsuite user group and grant it, it's often easier to manage)
We have an application which is hosted on the on-premises Windows server (IIS) server
now I created a windows server on azure and building a web app for it.where the application needs to authenticate the user by windows server (DC) using kerbrose protocol but I couldn't find any documentation regarding this from Microsoft's side
Is the above query possible to be implemented in the azure web app?
No, it's not possible. Windows Authentication is something for on-premise deployments. For Azure Web Sites Azure Active Directory is clearly the best option. Sync from AD to Azure Active Directory is also quite easy to setup.
If you still want to absolutely use Windows Auth and host your website on Azure, you can create Windows VM and host your website there. You then need to join the VM to your AD. To this, both VMs must be in the same network. So if your VM is on-premise you will need to create an site-to-site VPN.
For more information, follow this SO which also discussed about this.
If your intention is to join the VM hosting the website to a domain then as others have mentioned, this isn't possible.
However, doing Kerberos authentication itself within an Azure website isn't particularly difficult, but it does require manual implementation. Windows natively handles all of this for you on domain joined machines and and IIS exposes that functionality. Since you can't domain join you have to manually do all that heavy lifting and request and validate the tickets yourself.
This involves creating a service account in Active Directory and keeping the account password in sync. Once you have that you need to indicate to the browser that it needs to negotiate auth, which is done with the WWW-Authenticate: negotiate header on a 401 response. The client, if configured to send tickets, will send a ticket in the Authorization: Negotiate YII... request header on a subsequent response. At this point you need to shove that negotiate header and that original service account password into something that can validate Kerberos tickets. Windows SSPI will do this for you, but it's a pain. I built a library that'll do this for you: Kerberos.NET. YMMV with what works best for you.
All of that said, it may be more beneficial to switch over to a more modern authentication mechanism like OAuth/OpenIDConnect/SAML.
There are several ways depending on if you have to allow access to users who are associated with a on-premise Active Directory or not.
You should have a look at this service: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory-domain-services/
It will offer an Active Directory within Azure where you can domain join your VM to and then using Kerberos as authentication protocol (should work the same way like on prem).
The other option would be to create a new Active Directory within your Virtual Network (via 1 or 2 small Windows Server VMs where you create the AD).
The good thing if you are using Active Directory Domain Services would be that you could extend it to your on-prem Active Directory by synchronizing or federating your on-prem AD.
There are more informations regarding these scenarios here:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/hybrid/whatis-hybrid-identity
For a Azure App Service - Web App you would connect it to your Azure Active Directory (AAD) and use the hybrid identity model to allow users who originate from an on-prem AD access to it:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/app-service/configure-authentication-provider-aad
Hope this helps a bit, it is a rather complicated topic you are digging into.
Good morning everyone,
My apologies if this post is too similar to this post:
Dynamics 365 and Azure integration
but I am struggling to understand exactly what is needed in order to setup a web service on an Azure server that is consumable by a Dynamics 365 plugin. Based on my research it appears that it goes as follows but I would like to see if any knows of a better guide.
1.) Construct the web service as normal on the Azure Windows Server.
2.) Register a proper DNS Domain name (friendly-name) and route it to the Azure server.
3.) Secure that Azure server/URL with a certificate.
4.) Call the web service from my C# Dynamics 365 plugin.
Is that everything or might I be missing something critical? Thank you!
4 might be an issue, given you want to use certificate based security, not sure that will work, you might need to use another mechanism, e.g. basic user name and password. Otherwise looks okay.
Plug-in isolation, trusts, and statistics
Web access
Sandboxed plug-ins and custom workflow activities can access the
network through the HTTP and HTTPS protocols. This capability provides
support for accessing popular web resources like social sites, news
feeds, web services, and more. The following web access restrictions
apply to this sandbox capability.
Only the HTTP and HTTPS protocols are allowed.
Access to localhost (loopback) is not permitted.
IP addresses cannot be used. You must use a named web address that requires DNS name resolution.
Anonymous authentication is supported and recommended. There is no provision for prompting the logged on user for credentials or saving
those credentials.
We have this architecture:
Web Server: Web Application is deployed (html, javascript, css)
Application Server: WebApi is deployed
Problem is , I cannot make ajax request to reach Application Server because its behind firewall.
The Web Application is supposed to be used publicly to the internet users.
What changes should we do to make it work?
Should we move our Web Application to Application Server? But how would this be accessible on internet.
Thanks in advance for suggestions/advice.
You're going to have to put an exception in the firewall for the address of your web server... that way your web server can access the API but nothing else can (well, not quite nothing else - other stuff on that web server can but that can easily be solved by having your web app hosted on it's own/dedicated web server).
If your Web Application makes direct calls to the Web API endpoint (e.g. is a single page application that use a client-side javascript framework like AngularJS and/or it uses AJAX calls to your application server address), there is no way for your clients to access your API if you do not allow public access to your application server.
That's because your client resides inside your users web browsers.
You have to allow incoming connections to your Application Server through internet in your firewall.
Well, it all depends on how you look at things and how distributed your application should be (criteria like load, security).
In general, Web API might be just one more client (from your applications server perspective).
On the other hand, in robust/distributed system, you would have Web API only as an endpoint (controllers, mappers and things like that) that your mobile/ajax clients send requests to and then Web API communicates to Application server (where your business logic is).
Having Web API communicate to DB directly is not a good idea because as you add clients to application server (mvc, web api, services, etc...) then you have as many db access points as you have clients. So, its a code maintenance problem plus a problem of your view tier being aware of DB.
Ideally, you need Application server as a tier where all your business logic is and its the one that all your clients target (mvc web app, web api, desktop, services, etc...) and that is the one that should communicate to your DAL. Also, then you can set firewall rules on your application server to allow incoming traffic from trusted sources (your other servers) instead from the whole internet (ajax).
Good morning,
I have found that many of my customers have MS Access already installed on their PCs. Although Access is very limited as a data store, I have found that it is great for deploying low-cost front-ends for entry level customers.
I want to start renting a VPS, so I can host customer databases using Microsoft SQL Server 2008, which they can access using a locally stored Access front-end. I do have a few questions though:
In order to access the remotely hosted databases, and use the security features, would the VPS need to be set up as a domain controller, using AD DS? If I am hosting multiple customer databases, this is not an option.
What I envisage is being able to set up a simple MS Access front end, to access a MS SQL Server database on my VPS. For security, I would want the database to use the Windows account on the client machine to authenticate, and also to provide basic data change tracking.
Is this possible? Or, will I need to set up a server for each client and have it configured as a domain controller, etc?
You can have many databases on the same server, so for each client you d not need to setup a separate domain controller. Only the connection strings will be different.
You can use SSL for establishing connection with the remote server to make the process more secure. You can also make a few web services to play with the data (CRUD operations), this would also make things more manageable.
take care :)