This is a follow-up question to Is Forms Authentication as described in the Nancy docs susceptible to session hijacking?
I understand now how Nancy Form Authentication works and also the idea behind it, thanks to Steven Robbins' answer.
However, for my application that approach is not sufficient. It must not be possible to gain eternal access for an attacker if he manages to steal the auth cookie once. Thus, I'm currently investigating possibilities to switch to a session-based approach to authentication, so I can invalidate sessions when the user logs out and also after a fixed amount of time.
Nice thing about Nancy, such things can be customized!
My question is, does it make sense to reuse Nancy.FormsAuthentication for that purpose? One solution I have in mind is making the user identifier only temporarily valid. That way I would delete the GUID identifier from the user database when the user logs out, and create a new one everytime a user logs in.
I'm asking because the docs state:
It is also important to know that the identifier should be treated as
permanent for the user that it was generated for and will be reused
across requests and application sessions.
Are there any unwanted side-effects when I ignore that and make the identifier non-permanent?
Yes and no.
If you change it each time the user logs in then you are effectively logging the user out.
You could create a Session / Identity table which allows the same user to login multiple times (assuming that the browser is different) which would allow you to manage the timeout / extending the timeout on each authentication.
That would require no changes to the Forms Auth, you would simply change the IUserMapper to authenticate against your Session / Identity table rather than the user directly.
(hope all that makes sense)
Related
My question may be answered here, Are sessions needed for python-social-auth, but I feel as if I'd be making assumptions and would like to be positive regarding my understanding (NOTE: I'm not using django, I'm using mongo express react node, I'm guessing django might come with sessions built in or something). I followed this guide https://medium.com/hyphe/token-based-authentication-in-node-6e8731bfd7f2 to add token authentication and user login to my CRUD web app, works great, users are authenticated properly, routes are protected. However, everywhere I read about the fundamentals of session and session management states that "every web application in the world that maintains user data has to deal with sessions" (source: https://nodewebapps.com/2017/06/18/how-do-nodejs-sessions-work/). Currently, my react client uses setInterval to regularly check if the access token will expire soon enough to receive a new one via the refresh token. Is implementing sessions required for my app? If so, what is it that they add that I am missing?
It depends on the type of application.
If the resources being accessed using a token are not user specific, then sessions are not useful.
However, in a scenario where the resources are unique for different users (e.g. one has to sign in, etc), then it's wise to implement both sessions and access tokens.
Remember that tokens can also be saved within a session. Checkout 'express-session' to implement sessions in expressjs.
As an authentication, the application (Service-X) uses a third-party internal service (Service-Y), in which all the information about the employees is stored. All internal services of the company use SSO.
How to implement the ability to log in to Service-X if Service-Y is unavailable? (If I have already been authenticated in Service-X before this).
The remember-me feature that comes with Spring Security might be what you're looking for.
However, there are still quite a few limitations to this. If your cookies are wiped upon closing the browser, which is quite common in a lot of big companies, this won't work. Other than by the session cookie, you can't safely remember the user. You absolutely require Service-Y to be available to identify the user if his cookies have been cleared or have expired.
The main selling point of OAuth2 is that you sign in using Service-Y without Service-X knowing your username/password (unless the username is transmitted through the scope), so while you could ask the user to provide a password on the first time he signs in Service-X using Service-Y in case Service-Y goes down, which would potentially patch your issue, I really do not recommend it because it somewhat defeats the purpose of OAuth2.
Now, if you do take that suggestion despite me not recommending it, you should make sure that Service-X checks that Service-Y is down before allowing the user to sign in using the password he provided for Service-X.
Best case scenario, if your browser cookies aren't cleaned, go for the remember-me feature. I suggest you read the following: http://www.baeldung.com/spring-security-oauth2-remember-me
I am developing a web system in php using the laravel framework, I arrived at the part of authentication of users, where it is not allowed the type of user x access to page y. What is the best way to do this with laravel? I thought about creating a session and saving the id of the user, so every time he accesses a certain controller I check if he has access to the id or not. so I had some doubts.
Is this a good way to perform this authentication?
Is this really safe?
is there any way for the client to change my session?
What would be a better method for authenticating user access?
Laravel provides a very good authentication system out of the box. Even though Hacking is inevitable it provides very good protection and since Laravel is pretty popular framework you don't have to worry about the security part. if there is any security bug, patches will be available almost immediately.
And your second concern can a client can change the session ? the answer is NO, if you code it properly. session resides in the server unlike cookies, so there is no direct way for a user to change the session. if you follow good coding practices you are good to go.
And how do you limit userA from accessing pageB. This is a pretty common feature needed in almost all the applications. As of now Laravel does not provide an out of the box solution for this. but this is pretty simple, you can add a role column to the users table, and check whether user have appropriate permission in each page. Laravel keeps the user object in the session, and it is avilable via the auth() helper or Auth Facade. if you want a little sophisticated solution there is a package out there [entrust][1]. it seems a good choice.
You may want to read about
Authorization
Csrf Protection
Authentication
I hope I have addressed all your concerns
Laravel provides a simple way to authorize action thats purpose built for what you need:
https://laravel.com/docs/5.5/authorization
Passport by default allows the same user to login from multiple browsers and have unique sessions created. How can I configure it to destroy the first session when the user tries to create a second session?
Currently I'm using the 'Sessions' model to add the username to the record and upon subsequent login check by username if the sessions exists. But this increases traffic to the db. I'm thinking express must be doing it already or made to, keep the 'logged in users' information in memory so that the process can be simplified. I'd be thankful for ideas around how to achieve tweak with express for this purpose or any other workaround/suggestion.
Much thanks!
I saw that at least 4 users upvote this question, so I decided to create passport-strategy for that. The new strategy called passport-one-session-per-user. It's open source strategy you can access here: https://github.com/AminaG/passport-one-session-per-user
How to use it? add it right after session. For example:
app.use(passport.session())
var passportOneSessionPerUser=require('passport-one-session-per-user')
passport.use(new passportOneSessionPerUser())
app.use(passport.authenticate('passport-one-session-per-user'))
Not need for settings, or configuration.
How it is works?
The strategy, created an array that contain serializaed user objects, and sessionID.
Every time user logged in, the strategy check if the user already logged in. If so, it's flag the other session. The next time the user in the other session make a request, the strategy see the flag, and log the user out.
I'm thinking express must be doing it already or made to, keep the 'logged in users' information in memory so that the process can be simplified.
I believe the session model loggs the user in, and saves only that logged-in-ness in the session cookie. The server itself has no clue about who is logged in, but just checks this state in the (signed) session cookie provided by the browser.
You can write your own Passport.js strategy to handle it differently.
I'd like to secure access to resources in my web application, so I authenticate my users using the standard mechanisms and use server-side sessions to preserve the authenticated state.
I'd like to deploy across multiple systems in a load balanced configuration, but I don't want to start synchronising session state across my infrastructure. Are there ways (using either spec-driven facilities in Java EE or commonly available libs like Spring Security) of preserving the authentication state of a user without server-side sessions, for example by pushing the required state back out to the client? If so, are there additional risks I need to be aware of?
Update - I am using declarative security as per Java EE webapp specs and authenticating via an LDAP repository.
I'm not aware of a framework solution, but the following does work:
After the user successfully logged in you create a secured token and set it's value as a cookie. The token contains all information required (user ID, creation time, etc.) and is encrypted using some algorithm. So all nodes in your cluster can read the token, decrypt it and identify the user. Then you create a ServletFilter intercepting all requests, examining the token and set corresponding user credentials for e.g. ServletRequest.getRemoteUser() by using an HttpServletRequestWrapper.
One way to solve the problem. But you must take care, self-made security must be well-thought-out.
You can store some kind of token in a cookie after authentication, and manage session attributes yourself. E.g., have a database table whose primary key is the authentication token and stores user session data... Don't forget to implement a job to clean inactive "sessions".
As for what you should be aware of, keep in mind that cookies are something easy to access, steal, delete, disable, etc. The authentication token should be something strong and verifiable (hash a combination of the user ip + browser + rotating salt + some other things you can check for).
It is also wise to divide user authentications in two levels. "Has the cookie" and "just validated the cookie"... Let's say that "has the cookie" is a state that can be there for half an hour (or maybe more) which allows the user to navigate the site. "Just validated" state is for important operations, and should require the user to enter it's credentials again. The timeout for this "just validated state" shouldn't be much longer than a couple of minutes.
Keep in mind that I'm assuming that your site is not holding really sensitive data. For those situations I would recommend something such as two-way SSL authentication with external tokens or security cards plus rotating token devices plus biometrics authentication :D:D:D... I guess you see my point.
Cheers,
You can use an open id server to authentication thus separating your authentication and application logic.