What is the best authentication solution for a WebAPI/AspNet.Identiy 3.0-*/SPA architecture?
It seems that OAuth 2.0 JWT bearer token is a better approach vs coockies. But I could not find up to date examples with AspNet.Identity 3. Does anyone knows what to do in order to generate JWT with Identity?
Related
I am relatively new to REST Framework for django. I was creating a simple app to login the users and I tried using Token Authentication. My concern is the tokens are created for each users and they are fixed (Do not change with time) and basically 1 user has 1 token mapped to him/her.
In case of a database breach or when the token is compromised wouldn't it be very easy for the hacker to just login my sending the authorization header?
I have some experience with django default session authentication which seems much more secure when comparing to the htoken auth of REST Framework. REST Frameworks implementation seems a little flawed or am I missing something?
Which one should I use in a production application?
(Note:- I am asking specifically for Rest Framework's default implementation of token auth not general token authentication.)
In asp.net boilerplate, I'm wondering, why there is an encryptedAccessToken in the api/TokenAuth/Authenticate method? there is no documentation on this.
Also, the JWT is 1 day valid so:
-is it secure to have this long time JWT?
-what happen after JWT expiry? the client will have to re-login? there is no refresh token.
I need to develop set of microservices (rest APIs) which is to be used by web and mobile client, the microservices are sitting behind API gateway, I've to integrate with SSO (using SAML) for user's authentication, I understand that SAML token to oAuth2 token conversion has to be done so that I can verify auth token at API gateway and handle authorization there itself, but the piece which is not clear to me is that who will take care of conversion of SAML token to oAuth2 token, is it IDP who provide this functionality out of box or do I need to built up something of my own?
One possible solution which I'm thinking of is
User (from web/mobile) sign in via SSO
Gets SAML response from IDP
Send that SAML response to server to generate Auth Token
Server gets request to generate auth token, looks for SAML response and validate it against IDP
If SAML response is valid then generate auth token and send it back to client
On subsequent API request from client the token is passed as header which API gateway validates
The thing is I'm bit reluctant to implement SAML and oAuth thingy myself and looking for some ready made solution but couldn't find any, can someone please suggest of any library solving this problem, thanks in advance.
It feels like your approach is correct - it is the role of the Authorization Server (AS) to deal with SAML login integration for you. Only configuration changes should be needed, though of course you need to use an AS that supports SAML integration.
Your UIs and APIs will not need to know anything about SAML and will just use OAuth tokens. There should be zero code changes needed.
Most companies use an off the shelf AS - eg from a low cost cloud provider. My Federated Logins Blog Post summarises the process of integrating an IDP. The walkthrough uses AWS Cognito as the AS - and the IDP could be a SAML one.
I maintain a microservice that sounds like it could help you - https://github.com/enterprise-oss/osso
Osso handles SAML configuration against a handful of IDP providers, normalizes payloads, and makes user resources available to you in an oauth 2.0 authorization code grant flow.
Osso mainly acts as an authentication server though - we don't currently have a way for your API gateway to verify an access token is (still) valid, but that would be pretty trivial for us to add, we'd be happy to consider it.
My aim is to authorize browsable API(first app) using the JWT token generated(second app).
I have two apps created,
1. API - has all the data
2. Authentication - generate JWT tokens after validating the user.
Now, when I try to access the API after generating the token it says,
Authentication credentials were not provided.
Trying to access the API (passing the bearer whatevertoken)
I mean, is there a way to authenticate the Browsable API using JWT token? Instead of creating a user session.
Passing Authorization header as,
"Authorization: JWT token"
authenticates the user.
But, limits me to browse the API in a browser. Is there any way we can implement Browsable API using JWT authentication?
UPDATE
A thorough reading on
Authentication classes
Permission classes
Django settings
Helped in understanding the core concepts and apply appropriate solutions.
I'm considering using authenticated encrypted JWT tokens to authenticate / authorized access to an ASP.NET Web API application.
Based on what I've read so far, it seems to me like it is an option to generate JWT tokens from a token service and pass them to Web API via the http authorization header.
I have found some good code examples on implementing the JWT creation and consumption (Pro ASP.NET Web API Security by Badrinarayanan Lakshmiraghavan).
I'm trying to understand if I need a full OAuth implementation to support this, or if I can simply pass the tokens along in the auth header.
Assuming the tokens are properly encrypted and signed, is there any inherent security flaw in keeping things simple without having to use OAuth?
Trying to keep things as simple as possible for my needs without compromising security.
It is not that you must always OAuth when you use tokens. But given the fact that your application is a JavaScript app, you would be better off implementing a 3-legged authentication. Thinktecture identity server does support implicit grant. But if the client application getting access to the user credential is not a problem for you, your JavaScript app can get the user ID and password from the user and make a token request from a token issuer ensuring the user ID and password are not stored any where in JavaScript app (including DOM). This request for token can be a simple HTTP POST as well and it does not need to be anything related to OAuth. If your end user will not enter the credentials in the client application, OAuth implicit grant is the way. BTW, you don't need to encrypt JWT. TIS issues signed JWT and that will ensure token integrity. But if you are worried about the confidentiality, you can use HTTPS to both obtain the token as well as present the token.
It looks like you don't really need auth delegation as the one provided by OAuth. Isn't HMAC authentication enough for your scenario ?. With HMAC, you will not have to deal with JWT at all. This is an implementation I made for HMAC authentication for .NET
https://github.com/pcibraro/hawknet
Pablo.