Team,
I have recently migrated my azure classic portal resources to CSP subscription. I have successfully converted my azure cloud service to azure app website in the CSP subscription. But there is one thing i am not able connect. Its the third party API When we had the cloud service we had a .pfx uploaded to azure and in the code we use to create a uri which consists of the certifcate key + certificate secret key.
The certificate key is got directly from web.config. But the certificate secret key is got from EncryptedSettings.Appsettings("SecretKeyName").
This is basically got from the encrypted app setting done earlier by
https://eren.ws/2014/02/04/encrypting-the-web-config-file-of-an-azure-cloud-service/
But i am not sure what way should we implement on Azure website.
I have tried implementing the same but unfortunately it seems the secret key retrieval technique for cloud service is not the same as in the azure web app service.
When i debug the azure web site i can see that it gives the error as.
Failed to decrypt using provider ‘CustomProvider’. Error message from the provider: Value cannot be null.
Parameter name: keyObject
Can anyone please guide me ?
Rather than storing secrets in your config, you may wish instead to store them Azure KeyVault (which also gives you secret management capabilities etc) and then load the secrets at runtime.
KeyVault documentation:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/key-vault/
Specifically how to use keyvault with azure websites:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/key-vault/key-vault-use-from-web-application
And these days, don't bother with manual authentication to use keyvault, instead use "Managed Service Identity", here's a tutorial:
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/resources/samples/app-service-msi-keyvault-dotnet/
Interestingly the second tutorial does mention specifically using certificates for the purposes of authentication (against keyvault), you may wish to use this technique for yourself as a simplified way to get direct access to your certificate.
Related
We are using the email invite flow to get our users created in our Azure B2C. Currently we are reviewing our management of secrets in code and config, coming out of this work we are now using an Azure KeyVault.
Our ASP.Net website that previously had the cert loaded directly into the App Service is now referencing one in the key vault.
At the Azure B2C "Identity Experience Framework" end of the arrangement we have the “B2C_1A_IdTokenHintCert” policy key and that was created when we uploaded the certificate into Azure B2C. This breaks the approach of centralising the management of our certificates with KeyVault.
Is there a way of using KeyVault for the Custom Policy configuration?
In your particular scenario, you can expose your own metadata endpoint for id token hint validation in your App. That is what the sample does by default:
https://github.com/azure-ad-b2c/id-token-builder
You might then look for a way to reference the cert via key vault instead of uploading the cert to the app service. Eg reading the cert in your app via keyvault api.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/rest/api/keyvault/#certificate-operations
Could anyone provide some instruction on how you would go about assigning a Managed Service Identity to a Remotely-hosted Web app?
My application is registered in AAD to enable the use of authentication. I want to remove the appSecret from appsettings and store that in the KeyVault and access the KeyVault using the MSI.
I have looked at the MS docs and followed a few guides, but have not, as of yet, managed to successfully retrieve my secret.
In the first instance, I just wanted to store a secret and get that back, and once that was working, get the client secret using the same approach.
Managed identity only works when you host your app in Azure.
This is because it works as a local endpoint inside the Azure instances.
I have several versions of the same web app running on the same subscription service.
I have 2 logical environments. Dev and UAT.
I have WebAppDev and WebAppUAT.
I have two key vaults KVDev and KVUAT.
How can I configure the correct web app to use the correct key vault?
What process assigns the web apps to key vaults?
Edit:
I had assumed that the key vault would act like the secrets do when developing.
This
Tutorial
seems to suggest that the key vault can be used as a configuration provider. However, the web app is not accessing the key vault values.
Get the Object ID from the identity blade of the web app.
Find your azure key vault and create a new access policy using the Object Id of web app.
Alternatively use the following in the powershell cli.
Set-AzKeyVaultAccessPolicy –VaultName -ObjectId "" -PermissionsToKeys backup,create,delete,get,import,list,restore -PermissionsToSecrets get,list,backup,restore,recover
Follow this tutorial and copy the context from the Program.cs in the sample code.
Tutorial
Taking a different angle, the current questions and comments tackle the authentication to KeyVault.
However, it sounds like a more fundamental problem and that you need to vary your configuration per environment.
i.e. WebAppDev needs to be configured to use a KVDev URL and WebAppUAT needs to use KVUAT URL.
Assuming you are using App Service Plans; this documentation provides a mechanism to store environment specific configuration along with guidance on how to use it for your programming language of choice, you will need to refer to the Application Specific configuration section.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/app-service/configure-common
Configuring in the portal will get you so far, but over time you will likely wish to contain the configuration in a release management pipeline so you don't need to configure things by hand. Azure DevOps Pipeline is one such tool for this:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/pipelines/get-started/?toc=%2Fazure%2Fdevops%2Fpipelines%2Ftoc.json&bc=%2Fazure%2Fdevops%2Fboards%2Fpipelines%2Fbreadcrumb%2Ftoc.json&view=azure-devops
To get you started there is a specific deployment task which can aid in setting configuration for App Service Plans: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/pipelines/tasks/deploy/azure-rm-web-app-deployment?view=azure-devops
Over time I'd suggest rather than splitting configuration between a Release Pipeline and source control, instead having configuration which doesn't require deployment time modifications instead to stay source controlled in ARM templates, but that is an answer in it's own right so I won't confuse matters with too much detail.
If you want to access Azure key Vault by programming with SDK or REST API, then it would not be a problem. Because different key vaults have different DNS names. When you try to retrieve a secret or key in your code, you need to use its identify URL which contains its key vault DNS name. It will finally find the target key vault.
If you want to use key vault in web app with managed identity, you may refer to the tutorial: Use Azure Key Vault with an Azure web app in .NET
In that tutorial, you will enable the identity of a web app. And then you can assign access policy to that identity. In this way, the web app will be able to access the key vault with managed identity.
Let me give some details of my setup
I am building an asp.net core API app being hosted on Azure. I store my secret keys and stuff in azure keyvault. However, I have some AzureAddClientId and secret which is now stored in appsettings.json( to access key vault ). I have also committed appsettings.json to my git repo. However I know that is insecure. I use Azure DevOps for releases. So I'm thinking of doing the following. Please let me know your thoughts on this.
add appsettings.json to git ignore and share the file among developers.
add AzureAddClientId and AzureAADClientSecret to azure DevOps build pipeline as variables. ( Will devops automatically take the variables just as if they were in appsettings.json? )
Please have a look at using Managed Identities.
A common challenge when building cloud applications is how to manage the credentials in your code for authenticating to cloud services. Keeping the credentials secure is an important task. Ideally, the credentials never appear on developer workstations and aren't checked into source control. Azure Key Vault provides a way to securely store credentials, secrets, and other keys, but your code has to authenticate to Key Vault to retrieve them.
The managed identities for Azure resources feature in Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) solves this problem. The feature provides Azure services with an automatically managed identity in Azure AD. You can use the identity to authenticate to any service that supports Azure AD authentication, including Key Vault, without any credentials in your code.
I have written a very simple Azure Function in PowerShell. I have enabled it as multi-tenant which is also fine.
If I wanted to use : connect-msolOnline for example (in the PowerShell script) to connect to an office365 service, how could I get the account that you are asked to provide when you access the API which is secured by AzureAD so I can connect to the tenancy with account given .
Being asked to log on when you hit the API is fine (as it is multi-tenancy) but getting that credential to use in the PowerShell script is the problem I am facing.
Any ideas anyone?
Looking through documentation of Connect-MsolService, it expects PSCredential. For fetching and storing the account name and password you can use App Settings or another option is using Key vault.
Related documentation:
App settings: Deploying secrets to Azure
Key Vault: Getting Started with Key Vault