I am designing my first dev tool with the Azure SDK (JavaScript), and I am having a difficult time understanding how to authenticate users in production so the dev tool can access the user's Azure account. The tool is going to retrieve metrics from all of the user's Azure Functions in their tenant to display React component graphs based on those metrics over time. The app will be run locally with an npm run command.
My entry point for using Azure Identity in my app was this blog post (https://devblogs.microsoft.com/azure-sdk/authentication-and-the-azure-sdk/). I like the way the DefaultAzureCredential is working in development, using the tenant for whichever developer is running it by using the AzureCliCredential. I want a similar functionality for production, but for the browser instead of Azure Cli. In other words, if a user is already logged in to Azure Portal, it will get a credential for their tenant. How do I go about this?
One of the things I tried was opting into the Interactive Browser of the DefaultAzureCredential as described in that blog post. But even though, I could see the browser method in the src (https://github.com/Azure/azure-sdk-for-js/blob/main/sdk/identity/identity/src/credentials/defaultAzureCredential.browser.ts), I couldn't figure how to opt into this when using the actual SDK. I couldn't find that method in the npm package in Azure Identity, and the documentation (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/javascript/api/#azure/identity/defaultazurecredentialoptions?view=azure-node-latest) didn't help me either. If this is the correct option for my use case, I would like to understand how to opt into it and use it.
Another thing I tried was implementing the InteractiveBrowserCredential. As long as I pass in a redirectUri with a port not already being used by my app, it did open another tab to tell me to login to the Azure Portal if I am not already logged in. This is exactly the user experience I would want in my app. However, after logging in the credential didn't actually do anything. The credential returned actually has a client Id equal to the application Id (04b07795-8ddb-461a-bbee-02f9e1bf7b46) of Azure CLI (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/azure/active-directory/verify-first-party-apps-sign-in) for some reason. This led me to look into the Interactive Browser Credential and find out that it is using the Authorization Code Flow (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/javascript/api/#azure/identity/interactivebrowsercredential?view=azure-node-latest). This flow doesn't seem right for my use case, since I have to register my app. I am not trying to grant users access to my app, but access to their own Azure account. Is InteractiveBrowserCredential what I should be using?
Next, I looked into all of the different authentication flows. None of them seem quite right for my use case though. The closest one I found was the client credentials flow (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/develop/v2-oauth2-client-creds-grant-flow) since I am authenticating the user to their own Azure account and not my app. However, even this one doesn't seem quite right because when I looked up how to implement that flow with Azure Identity (https://github.com/Azure/azure-sdk-for-js/blob/main/documentation/using-azure-identity.md#clientsecretcredential-and-clientcertificatecredential) I found out that I have to pass in the tenant Id. But the app won't know the user's tenant Id of the user before they log in. Which flow is right for this use case?
It seems like there is a gap in my understanding. How can I use the Azure SDK to implement an authentication flow that authenticates the user to their own Azure tenant (not authenticates them to my app) through the browser?
Thank you ShwetaMathur for answering this question in Q & A. Posting the same here to help Stack Overflow community members.
To access your application by Azure AD users, your application should also need to register in Azure AD.
Once your application is register, you can acquire the access token based on different OAuth flows which is needed to call various resources(Users in your case) or protected API based on your scenario.
Azure Identity TokenCredential provide various flows to obtain an access token based on different scenarios.
InteractiveBrowserCredential is one way to launches the system default browser to interactively authenticate a user and obtain an access token.
Using access token, you can retrieve user’s info or access any other resource in Azure tenant. The InteractiveBrowserCredential uses Authorization Code Flow to authenticate users for browser based applications and to access resources further.
Client credential flow is OAuth flow commonly used for server-to-server interactions that usually run in the background, without immediate interaction with a user and help to acquire the token and call protected web APIs.
Complete reference
Related
I want to develop a SaaS application on Azure and deploy to the Azure marketplace. This app will be able to obtain information about the user's network. (for instance VNET information). Ideally I would like to have a single-page application that would authenticate with the user who subscribed to the app, and then make calls on a backend API tier, which would make calls to Azure management API endpoints.
The Azure docs layout a number of scenarios of how apps could interface with AD. how-to guides
I believe what im trying to do most closely matches the "Build a web app that calls web APIs" flow, which is an example of OBO. My question is, is that really describing what im doing? Is "calls web APIs" really an example of invoking APIs on the microsoft azure platform?
So my understanding is that I would develop my own API app, that would accept requests from my client browser code, which would contain an oauth token, and then the API layer would derive another token to pass onto the Azure API layer?
Im trying to keep the architecture as simple as possible, but im afraid I may be misinterpreting the Azure docs.
OBO (On-Behalf-Of) allows you to exchange an access token that your API received for an access token to another API.
The important bit is that the access token must have been acquired in the context of the user and must contain user information.
The new access token will then also contain this user's info.
So it allows your back-end API to call Azure Management APIs on behalf of the current user.
This means your API can't do anything the current user can't do.
It is limited to the user's own access rights.
The other option for authentication is to use client credentials authentication,
where your back-end API uses only a client id + certificate/secret to authenticate.
In this case the token will not contain user information.
To enable this approach, the target organization's users would have to assign RBAC access rights to your app's service principal, so it can act by itself.
You could also build a flow in your app where you setup these RBAC accesses on behalf of the current user.
Personally, I would prefer to use delegated access (OBO) whenever possible, as it will block the user from doing things they cannot do.
Though on the other hand, service principal-based access allows the organization to control your app's access better.
I'm creating a React App that requires authentication into Azure Ad. This is simple enough through the Adal libraries. When a user now requests my app, they are redirected to the login page first to authenticate.
The next step in my app, is for logged in users to be able to create various Azure resources, e.g. VM's through a simple form page in the app. For this, I'm looking at using the 'azure-sdk-for-node'. My problem, is that users can belong to different subscriptions based on their region globally. There are cases that users are in more then one subscription and have the rights to create resources in whichever subscription they are assigned to.
I'm not sure how to do this with the node SDK, as you only have three methods to authenticate calls:
Basic authentication (requires username/password which is redundant because they are already signed in
Interactive login (same as above)
Service Principal (everone uses the same 'account' to call the REST api's.
Not sure what's the best way then to do this?
https://github.com/Azure/azure-sdk-for-node
I am trying to have two applications(app1 and app2) in Azure
AD B2C, which is configured for Web api and another application that is configured for mobile app.
I need my mobile app to talk to app1, get the access token, using the app1's application-id and scope. Then use the access token got from app1 to communicate with app2. I enabled SSO in tenant level in the policies but it still says "Authorization denied" for the access token provided.
How can I reuse the access token got from one application to be used in another application.
We have been trying to get through this limitation (or function as designed for security) of B2C AD from weeks.
However, Microsoft does not support it.
We did not want to display MS login page to mobile user on mobile login screen (UX gets compromised). But MS says there is no way possible to avoid it. See response from MS on support ticket.
For more information: Azure AD B2C: Requesting access tokens
You will also benefit reading authentication scenarios supported. We are after something similar to this what they call "Daemon or Server Application to Web API".
In this diagram, Server Application = to mobile application in our case. However you will notice that in this scenario it is assumed that the user is already authenticated (via interactive flow).
We tried to act smart, thinking we can write a Auth web API which mobile will hit to obtain token and then pass this token to our business logic API (secured by B2C AD). We obtained access and refresh token somehow, however the test web app (mobile app) when pass this access token to our business logic API, it fails to validate the token. B2C AD comes fighting for it. Our analysis is not yet complete.
However, I am certain what we are trying to accomplish is not supported in B2C AD.
Hope this helps (I would actually advise you to look for other solution). I will be happy if someone can suggest a way to solve this obvious business problem.
I am creating a new Azure AD B2C authenticated site to replace an older Forms Authenticated one. In the new site, I am asking the user to initially enter their email address so I can check if they exist in Azure B2C and send them to the appropriate sign-in page and if not send them to the older Forms Authenticated site.
The issue is I have when following Microsoft's tutorials, is that they show user management but they all require you to have logged in with your Azure account first and obviously this is not possible given the system I am trying to build. Is what I am doing even possible?
Thanks in advance!
MS tutorials: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/documentation/articles/active-directory-code-samples/
Sadly, it seems like this is not possible within the Azure B2C Preview.
From the limitations section (https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/documentation/articles/active-directory-b2c-limitations/) there is this paragraph which describes what I am trying to do:
Daemons / Server Side Applications
Applications that contain long running processes or that operate without the presence of a user also need a way to access secured resources, such as Web APIs. These applications can authenticate and get tokens using the application's identity (rather than a consumer's delegated identity) using the OAuth 2.0 client credentials flow. This flow is not yet available in Azure AD B2C preview - which is to say that applications can only get tokens after an interactive consumer sign-in flow has occurred.
So it seems like this is currently not possible. Hopefully it'll work once it comes out of preview.
Be careful with this, check if your site is not vulnerable to username enumeration:
http://www.troyhunt.com/2012/05/everything-you-ever-wanted-to-know.html
With the old users going to forms based authentication, you could call the Graph API to create the users in the B2C directory:
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/active-directory-b2c-devquickstarts-graph-dotnet/
Then the next time they can login through B2C
I have created an Azure AD native client application and have given delegated permissions to Azure Service Management API. Now, I'm able to invoke the service management API using my id from a Windows Phone 8.1 app using ADAL library. However, another user can't invoke operations on their subscription even though I add them as co-administrator in my directory. I get the token for the user but when I try to make an API call, I get 'Invalid token:A security token exception occurred for the JWT token'. Is there a way to allow another user to access details about his subscriptions using ADAL authentication from an AD app hosted in someone else's AD? I have searched for any related information for quite some time and I'd gladly take any help.
Here is what I interpret what you are doing.
You have a native app and it is connected to your tenant and it works fine for accessing service management APIs in your tenant/subscription.
You gave the app to a friend and they are trying to use it to access service management APIs in their tenant/subscription.
The suggestion above in the comment is on the right track, but you need to look at the steps for making your native application multi-tenant. This way, the AD service will know to look for the tenant for the authenticated user. Changing the url to use 'common' instead of the tenant id is one of the steps required. Here are a couple of posts to help with that transition.
http://www.cloudidentity.com/blog/2013/04/09/walkthrough-3-developing-multi-tenant-web-applications-with-windows-azure-ad/
This is a native client example of multi-tenant for a windows store app. I could not find one in the repo for a phone app. Hopefully, this gets you on the right track.
https://github.com/AzureADSamples/NativeClient-WebAPI-MultiTenant-WindowsStore