I have a site that runs with a NodeJS backend and a ReactJS frontend. All of the frontend logic takes place in the user's browser, and the frontend hits backend routes to get business logic. Currently, we authenticate users with passportjs. But, when the user logs in, he or she can still use something like Postman to hit all of the backend routes, many of which should be private. Is there a good way to make sure that only an admin or our platform can hit our backend routes? I think this would require some kind of admin privilege that is always given to the frontend logic, but I was wondering if there is a best practice.
Unfortunately, after passport (or other auth) on the client there's very little you can do to facade your services without establishing additional identities.
This is more in the app arch/design realm, so hopefully you're not too far along to refactor. If not, then I would suggest abstracting your services so you can secure them more granularly. E.g. layer your services so you can establish identity before making calls to certain private/secured business logic. A framework like this might do the trick: http://loopback.io/
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I have currently developed a backend app that has some important functionalities. I want to consume my backend endpoints from my frontend but I want to be sure that only my fronted calls the backend endpoint and no other. Currently anyone that access my web-app can take advantage of the functionalities (I do not require any user registration or authentication).
How can I be safe that my backend is not being called form other possible malicious attackers that may try to steal the functionalities of my backend?
I have read some other posts regarding solutions how to secure a backend app that do not require user authentication but none has a precise and secure way for that. Some say enabling CORS but during my experience I can say that CORS can be manipulated easily with the help of a simple browser plugin. (not speaking about mobile apps that do not consider it at all)
I would really appreciate if I would have some opinions in case of a web-frontend-app, mobile app and other backend systems that would try to call my API and how can I stop them.
Typical front-end authentication would be best (OpenID, ...).
If you want something different, you could check on your backend whether a specific header with a specific token is sent in the query. If it is not then you send back a 401 HTTP code.
This requires that your customers somehow get that token (through some registration process, probably) and then keep it long-term (it can be stored in LocalStorage but can be lost when cleaning up the browser)
OWASP Authentication is a good source of information.
I want to design a SPA which will have Frontend (React) and Backend-Rest API (Node.js, Express, Mongo DB). I am planning to have Single Sign-On in my application where users would be authenticating using MS-Azure AD, where a call would go to Azure AD from Frontend and in return I will get a token for that User which will be stored locally. After that, I want to call my rest API, for multiple GET, POST, PUT operations in the context of current user logged in on UI. Planning to deploy both frontend and backend on different servers so here I have two questions about securing my REST API.
CORS Implementation
User-Authentication on BE
Given the above requirements is it enough to have just CORS implemented or Do I need to again authenticate the User on BE?
Can somebody provide some best practice or experiences? Is there a lack in my “architecture”?
While CORS is definitely a consideration, it isn't Authentication (AuthN) or Authorization (AuthZ) which you need.
Depending on the number of users your application will have, how the back end will scale you might want to look at OAuth2.0 or stick with simpler session based auth but you will need something.
CORS on your back end will limit if a browser running an app on a domain other than yours to call your web services (it wont stop API requests from other tools).
AuthN - Your not logged in - go get logged in and come back to
me.
AuthZ - Controls what your users can and cant do. You might want to
enforce this at the resource level but you absolutely need to within
your business logic.
Further reading https://auth0.com/docs/authorization/concepts/authz-and-authn
Philippe from Pramgmatic web security has a free online course to get you started: https://pragmaticwebsecurity.com/courses/introduction-oauth-oidc.html Its very well paced and should give you some foundational knowledge. (It might let you write off OAuth for this use case but give it a go)
CORS will not perform any user authentication. You need CORS only when your client code is served from another domain than the backend you are talking too. If it is the same server to host static client files and backends REST endpoint, you don't need CORS. If you are unsure, then don't consider CORS at all and see if it works.
But you need authentication to know which user is which.
I developed my Heroku app that exposes APIs only (no UI) and it works fine.
But how can I restrict the APIs to certain authorized/authenticated users only?
I absolutely need an authentication layer to protect the app APIs and prevent unauthorized accesses. A sort of login(user, psw) call to use before an external system can start invoking my API.
But I don't find any reference in the docs, it only says that these are the main security best practices:
Heroku SSL
Force the use of HTTPS
Trusted IP Range
Any idea?
That's something you'll need to implement at the application layer and not something that Heroku provides. At it's simplest you could implement basic auth in your app so that the user would pass them with their request, a more complex solution would involve user accounts and oauth etc etc.
You could implement all the authentication logic directly in your app.
Alternatively, take a look Auth0, which basically provides you with authentication and identity management as a service. You can easily add Auth0 to your Heroku app as a free add-on via the Heroku Elements marketplace.
They have lots of different use-cases and associated walk-throughs, and they offer a very generous free-tier.
From your requirements, it sounds like you might want to look at Auth0 Machine to Machine applications, using the OAuth2 Client Credentials Grant. With that, your external system(s) would basically need to authenticate with Auth0 using a Client Id and Client Secret (that you could generate in Auth0 and supply to them). Then, they would access your API with a JWT that you could easily validate in your app (Auth0 will provide you with generated code in many different languages for you to do that very easily). Your API will then reject requests without a valid JWT (by sending a "401 Unauthorized" response).
This may all sound a little intimidating at first, but it's really worth going through the relevant Auth0 "quickstart". They really go out of their way to try to make it as easy as possible!
I am used to develop web apps using the Meteor JavaScript framework, which handles authentication. I am now developing for the first time a web app using a Node.js (Express) + GraphQL stack on the backend, with React on the frontend, so I have to handle authentication myself.
I read a lot of things about it, and I like the idea of token based authentication. I am thinking about using JWT, so I don't have to deal with sessions.
I know there are a lot of tutorials, but each one always has a sort of disclaimer like : "this tutorial is not production ready, use it for educational purposes only...". Every time I read something about authentication, it seems to be something so difficult to implement that I shouldn't implement it myself. But I don't want to use services providers like AWS Cognito, Google Cloud Platform because I want to keep my users data in my own system and database. I don't want to be tied to a third party provider.
I know how to generate jwt tokens, refresh tokens, how to verify them, etc... I am able to develop a working auth system, but I am never sure I do it in a secure and production ready way because of all those comments I can read on the Internet.
So, what would you recommend to implement a secured and production ready authentication system in a Node.js server without being tied to a third-party provider. Do you know any complete tutorial or documentation about it?
There are several approaches to implement authentication for an application.
Use a identity server manage by you
Use a fully manage service for authentication.
Use authentication middleware.
Write your own authentication solution.
If you are afraid in vender locking I would suggest to use an authentication middleware like PassportJS which will facilitate the abstraction of authentication strategy with its implementation.
On the otherhand writing your custom authentication can be challenging in terms of security, specially finding snd fixing these vulnerabilities.
I am starting to plan a web-app and Backbone.js will be a perfect fit for the client side. I have been planning on using node for the backend but this is open for the time being.
I need a way to secure the front-end app's connection to a database. I have had discussions with others on Quora but I think the thought process was too abstracted from the core problem.
I would prefer to be accessing the data by RESTful end-points, but I need to ensure only my app can talk to the API. I will have full control over both the front-end and back-end of the application. There is a possibility of other apps being built around the database (in a year or two), however they will be developed by me (i.e. not a public API) and these will probably use separate OAuth end-points.
Some notes on the app (may or may not be useful):
The app is planned to be offered in a SaaS model where companies subscribe and are allowed multiple users.
The data for each company needs to be secure and only accessible to members of that company.
All traffic (front-end and app to API) will be sent through SSL.
Any advice on the best way to do this will be greatly appreciated.
We have the exact same setup as you - SaaS model, multiple apps (mobile, web, etc) and when I followed your link, Miguel has the exact solution we use.
Token that is time stamped and sent to the client on auth. We store that hash token in a User Model and then every subsequent request we validate that token.
You can extend Backbone.Model with a BaseModel that appends the token to every server request by overriding Backbone.Sync
See here about how they extended a baseview and you can apply the same thing to a basemodel.