Scenario:
We have a MS SQL DB which holds content for various sites/apps - we plan to create a c# .net web api and then build in REST calls from our sites/apps (these are typically all client side code). Some sites/apps have a user login and some do not
Problem:
- how do we go about securing the api so only our sites and apps can access it
- how do we build in to cope with and without a user login
Any suggestions and thoughts welcomed
Generate JWT token for each app assign it to your Apps(Like APP secret), which call your rest API, using authorization header or create any custom header in API Call.
If you are not planning to open your webapi for 3rd party usage. One quick way could be
Create a certificate and deploy on all servers
From Server1, generate hash of sometext e.g. hello.
Send this hash to Server 2 in header or querystring.
At Server 2, validate this hash.
In case, there are plans to open webapi for 3rd party usage then secure your endpoints using oAuth. I would recommend using IdentityServer4.
I would like to develop a system that can help any developer to create an application based to my API.
My problem is authentication.
I have see (for example) as work google with your services; I would like create an system of oauth (private) such as google (concept) that an developer, after sign to my portal, get APP ID and APP SECRET.
When developer self create these credentials, can use for call API based to https.
My API are developed by nodejs and express system.
I say which way is more stable for create an system robust for this scenario.
Thanks for any support. Any idea is appreciate
You can try http://passportjs.org/, it can work as a middleware with express.
I would like to secure my Azure WebApi with 3rd party providers (FB, G+... I basically just need a valid email). Was looking at Auth0 and seems like it will do the thing paired with Jwt middleware in web api project, but I was wondering if the same can be done using Azure only.
Azure Web App authentication confused me a bit - it does not seem to give anything to my Asp.Net web app. I still have to configure all the middleware in Startup.cs and the app still works fine if I completely turn authentication off.
I could do the same thing Auth0 does - issue my own Jwt tokens based on access tokens from FB or G+ - but would like to avoid that.
Could you please point me to the right direction?
You have a couple options:
App Service Authentication
Configure the authentication via middle ware
App Service Authentication
The App Service Authentication does not require any code inside your application because your App Service has a gateway that inspects request for authorization. Depending on the setting you can either secure the entire site or secure individual resources (by using the [Authorize] attribute on the endpoint in MVC/WebAPI).
With the latest release you can control authorization on a site by site basis including manually triggering the sign in by navigating the user to the <yoursiteurl>/.auth/login/<provider>. By defualt the token store is enabled so you can make a request to <yoursiteurl>/.auth/me and get back information from the provider.
Middleware Authentication
This is the default way authorization happens in the Single Page ASP.NET Template. The middleware authentication uses OAuth/OpenId to secure the resources. This option does it at the application layer instead of at the gateway. If you are using ASP.NET Identity (from the single page project template) the email from the persons log in will automatically be stored in the Users table. The tutorial in the link above gives lots of details on how to get it working.
Make sure you use the [Authorize] attribute to trigger the Authorization in either case.
Hope that helps you get started in the right direction.
I have the following scenario:
1.- A web api project in Azure, that I want to secure using Azure AD (I don't mind Token, cookie, whatever, as far as it meets the entire scenario)
2.- An Azure web site in asp.net MVC, also secured by Azure AD. This website has to call the web api controller with SSO (I'm using same Azure AD in the entire scenario)
3.- Some JavaScript code running in a page in SharePoint Online, also calling the web api controller in any secure way (The Office 365 tenant is also using same Azure AD). If you don't know about SharePoint, let's say I have an SPA project where I can only use Javascript and html (no server side code).
Following some of the MS Azure AD samples and some blogs from Vittorio Bertocci I'm able to get the points 1 and 2 working fine, using OWIN and Oppen ID connect. However, seems impossible to achieve point 3. As I'm inside a page in SharePoint Online, I can only use javascript, and not any server side code. I'd like to get a valid token for the current user, that is already logged in SP, and remember that SP uses same Azure AD that web api site.
Can I call the Azure AD and get a valid token, just from client code?
I'm open to any possible solution. I can do whatever in the web api project. If you are thinking in a SharePoint app with an appPart, and the appPart calls the web api from server side code, I agree that will work, but it's an option that is not allowed at the moment :(
Many thanks.
I have similar needs. While waiting for a Microsoft sponsored solution we’re working on the following approach.
3) in Your solution (i.e. HTML page with JavaScript, hosted in SharePoint Online and running in Browser) will call Services in 1) (i.e. Web Api Service layer in Azure).
In Our case we only want to validate that the calls made from SharePoint Online (via users browser, i.e. JavaScript) originate from a correct Office 365 / SharePoint Online user in our tenant.
We are opting out of using the App Model as we only want some simple HTML / JavaScript pages in our Intranet and don’t want App Webs. The Web Api server side code is kind of our “Web Part” code behind.
Change to the solution after trying it out and having workable code:
The auth cookies are ReadOnly and cannot be used. Instead we have registered one metod in our service layer as App in SharePoint Online (via appregnew.aspx). That methods url (e.g. https://cloudservice.customer.com/api/authentication/token) is registered as App start page in the app manifest and is deployed to a site Collection.
Now we can call our App via https://customer.sharepoint.com/sites/devassets/_layouts/15/appredirect.aspx?instance_id={GUID} i a jQuery ajax call and parse the result. AppRedirect sends the correct SPAuthToken which we use in our service endpoint (i.e. App start page) to call back to SharePoint and check context.Web.CurrentUser. User email is then stored in Table Storage with a generated Token which we send back to the caller (i.e. the jQuery ajax call to app redirect).
That token is then used in all other service layer calls in order to be sure of who is calling our service layer and in some cases perform authorization in our service layer.
Note, You can use the same approach in order to store Refresh and AccessToken in your client and provide that in all calls to your service from your client and use those tokens in order to do App Calls back to SharePoint. This enables HTML UI in SharePoint host webs and server code using user context in Azure service layer.
To follow up, ADAL.js has recently been released, and the ability to use CORS with O365 APIs was recently added, enabling a scenario for script clients to communicate with services protected by Azure AD, such as your Web API.
http://www.andrewconnell.com/blog/adal-js-cors-with-o365-apis-files-sharepoint
UPDATE 2018:
This is now supported by SharePoint Online and the SPFx development model, and officially documented, for instance here
Consume enterprise APIs secured with Azure AD in SharePoint Framework
Being said that the work done meanwhile by Vittorio, Kirk, and their teams, but extending that also to Andrew that has delivered great samples, is awesome; that doesn't really fully reply the original question because one of the requirements is to don't run the component as Add-in Part.
If you try to use ADAL JS (which starts its own OAuth flow) hosting that directly in a SP page, that's not going to work, or anyway you can expect a weird behavior for the user (cause of client redirects happening on the browser).
The solution proposed by Peter Karpinski is interesting, and will work matching the requirements in the original question, but requires quite some complexity and additional management/resources.
This recent article provides an alternative solution similar to Peter's one, but requiring less 'extras' and somewhat simpler, also reusing user's SP identity.
Consuming Azure Hosted Web API from SharePoint Online using JavaScript and Office 365 identities
and doesn't either require the use of ADAL on the client side and the implementation of custom security provider / token issuer on the server side.
The identity (cookie) will be passed via properly handling CORS (documentation) on both sides.
However, as you can read in my comments to that blog, this won't work normally with IE due to its security zone implementation. You'll have to be sure you have control on IE security zones on the clients, or have an alternative solution specific for IE.
As of today AAD does not support the OAuth2 implicit flow (or OpenId Connect variants) hence you can't obtain a token from AAD using a user-agent (browser), regardless of whether you hit the wire handcrafting the protocol or using a library.
However keep an eye on future announcements, as this is an important scenario for us!
HTH
Cheers,
V.
update we now support the implicit flow on our server, and we released a library for helping you consume the new feature: http://www.cloudidentity.com/blog/2015/02/19/introducing-adal-js-v1/
Thank youi for r your patience!
The fact that you say you can use only HTML/JS let me guess you're having a SharePoint-hosted App.
Azure AD Authentication Library (ADAL) doesn't provide yet in this moment support for HTML5.
I've been looking since a while (almost one year) on how to implement something as you say; but I couldn't find any working solution, which doesn't make use also of some 'code-behind'.
I'd suggest you then to move to a Provider-hosted App, where you'll be able to have some C# code, and make use of ADAL to retrieve and reuse the OAuth token.
Also, I think is worth to look at this documentation page:
Choose patterns for developing and hosting your app for SharePoint
at section Match your hosting pattern with your development goals
thanks for your help.
Well, it's not a SP-Hosted App, but it's same scenario. It's just a SP page in SP Online, so I can only use JS code like in a SP-hosted app.
As I said in my question, I agree the Provider hosted app is likely the right (or at least, the unique) solution, but that means to build and app, deploy it, and add teh appPart manually to the page (is not easy to package in a WSP). So, this solution is quite hard, when you only want to make some AJAX calls and show some data.
However, after all that I've seen, I think we can't do anything else. I'm gonna wait some more days to see if someone know any weird workarround that could work, and if not, I'll mark your answer as valid.
Thanks again!
Consider the following (common) scenario. I will first try to specify how I understand a (nice) Web API should look like, using OAuth. Please do correct me if I got any of the flows wrong.
My API: the center of attention, all clients use this.
My Web App: Uses the API just like any other client would.
My Mobile App: Also uses the API, the same exact way as the web app. Users should be able to authenticate without opening a browser.
3rd party Web App: Also uses the API - however, the user/resource owner must grant permission for the app to do something. They do this by redirecting to my site (or opening a popup to it), logging the user in if necessary, and prompting the user for access.
3rd party Mobile App: Same requirements as the 3rd party web app.
The Question(s)
Should the API handle authentication and authorization?
How does the API know who (the resource owner that is using the client application), is using the API?
When a user is using my official clients, they should obviously not have to grant any permissions - my clients should have all permissions. How would I distinguish between my official clients, and 3rd party clients when calling the API?
Here is what I understand, and would do so far. This is where I really need help - getting this done right.
Official Web app
- Client attempts to `GET /api/tasks/".
- API says "who are you? (HTTP 401)
- Official web app redirects to login form.
> Bob enters his credentials.
- .. now what? Get an authentication token? Cookie?
Since the web app is just a consumer of my API, how would I manage the logged-in state? Should the web app do that?
Should the web app have direct access to the users database instead of verifying credentials against the API?
I am using .NET (C#) primarily, but I'd love an approach that is applicable to, say, Node JS based API's as well.
How would you go about this? Especially the client flows are a problem for me. The reason I ask, is that I have read that you should not roll your own security solution unless absolutely necessary, so if there are any standard-ish guidelines for this, do let me know. :)
Take a look at the new web API 2 oAuth stuff.
Basically fire up a new web API project and ensure you select to change the authentication.
Then, it's a simple case of calling the register controller. This then creates a token for you which can then be sent in the header of each request for that user.
Check out the API calls using fiddler and create some mock up accounts.
It's been awhile, but I thought I would document what I ended up doing.
I use DotNetOpenAuth. I have a database with clients, and they have a Trusted field - if this is set, it lets the client use the password grant, which automatically grants all scopes that have been predefined for that client.
The 1st-party web app uses plain cookie auth - exposing the client credentials in JS would be too risky.