We have a SharePoint site on it's own domain and are debating using Forms Authentication or Active Directory. Really we would like the power of kerberos with the flexibility and transparancy of a forms authentication (like storing the users in sqlserver using sqlmembershipprovider in asp.net). Is there any way to force Active Directory to authenticate against our user store, or can we set up a kerberos authentication server that isn't active directory?
Thanks!
You might also want to look into using ISA Server to help you out: http://blogs.msdn.com/jannemattila/archive/2007/07/23/isa-moss-makes-life-a-lot-easier-for-fba.aspx
http://www.isaserver.org/tutorials/Configuring-ISA-Firewalls-ISA-2006-RC-Support-User-Certificate-Authentication-using-Constrained-Delegation-Part1.html
Maybe ADAM might be helpful for your scenario: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/adam/default.mspx
The problem with Forms authentication is that it misses some end user GUI controls like: change password, forgot password etc. We implemented it on a project and had to do a lot of coding to achieve good usability for the end users.
You might also consider using Forefront User Access Gateway (UAG). I have implemented multiple times and it works much better than ISA and in fact, bits are installed along with SharePoint for the User Profile Service - http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/server-cloud/forefront/unified-access-gateway.aspx.
UAG gives you better security and flexibility and it is 'SharePoint Aware'. Based on the technology developed by Whale Communications (purchased by MS), it provides a common gateway for all of your applications (in addition to SharePoint).
There is one 'gotcha' in the way UAG logs out however but I have the fix for you here: http://davidmsterling.blogspot.com/2011/08/sharepoint-logout-with-uag.html.
To date, 20 clients have moved from ISA to Forefront UAG and all love it.
David Sterling - http://davidmsterling.blogspot.com - http://www.sterling-consulting.com - http://www.sharepoint-blog.com
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I have been building quite a few MVC based websites locally and am finally ready to deploy the first, but, I am getting rather nervous.
During testing, I noticed several things that worried me - I am using the default forms authentication with a few tweaks (although nothing to the underlining security).
I noticed that if I created a user in one application and logged in, then launched another application... it would keep me logged in* as the user from the previous application. The user doesn't even exist in the new application!
* - I used [Authorize] on controllers, and was surprised I could just get straight in without any sort of authentication
I assume it is because the cookie is being set for localhost instead of the application/port (although, not too much I can do about this in development).
Based on this, how secure is the default authentication?
1. Is there anyway to check from the code that the user doesn't have a "faked" cookie? / Check the user has logged in from my application?
2. I was just wondering if there are any sort of check lists or anything I can go through before deploying?
Sort of - 3.As of writing this, For question 1. I am guessing I could add a column with a random number that is saved to the cookie, and then that number is checked every time any authentication is done... however, I did not want to start mucking around with the membership provider... but I think this could work. Is this a good idea?
Try using IIS on your machine instead of VS Dev Server. Solves your problem 1.
Other than that I don't think you will need any extra effort to make default membership mechanisms of asp.net to make more secure if of course you don't need a real custom things to do in your projects. These things are around for a while now and I think they have been well tested in terms of security.
You just need to remember to put [Authorize] attribute to right places. If not on your controllers put them to right methods.
Basic Web Authentication shouldn't be trusted for applications which contain truly sensitive information. That being said it's sufficient for most applications. Be sure to check your application as often as possible before and after release for XSS vulnerabilities.
Here is Microsoft's recommended "Secure yourself" list. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff649310.aspx
No matter how strong your authentication is, one small XSS mistake and a malicious user can do as they wish to your site, and your users data!
I recently read a good book: Worx Professional ASP.NET, it talks about these steps in more detail on securing yourself as well as exposing examples of problems. After reading this I was able to "deface and steal" my own sites information with relative ease, was a good eye opener on the importance of securing for XSS.
I have implemented some pages for my webproject. However, now I would like to add security.
I will have a couple of roles, like admin, user, other and some pages shall only be accessable for the admins, some for the users and so on.
If its intresting, Im using Hibernate for the database. I plan to store the roles and users in the database.
Can you help me to tell the best practice (if any) for a scalable solution for implementing the security in my webproject? Links, books or a good example is very grateful =)
Best regards
Apache Shiro is a new and supposedly very elegant and easy to use security framework.
Spring security may be suitable for your needs.
http://static.springsource.org/spring-security/site/features.html
BTW which IDE you are using?
You can undoubtedly visit OWASP web site..The OWASP web site provides you on every bit of information about the potential security attacks/threats to a web application..
The website will provide you all the information related to a particular attack/threat and also the possible solution to avoid the threat..
You can even download the ESAPI jar provided by OWASP which provides ample amount of functionalities to handle security attacks/threats. It will considerably reduce your development time.
Here's the link to the website
https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Main_Page
Based on the underlying technology you are using you will get relevant solutions to avoid attacks/threats.
Also you can store the names of the module or the URL in the DB and you can have a mapping between roles and the module. Based on the role of the user you can fetch the module and display respective modules to the user.
You can further visit this link for some more details on when to use SHIRO and when to use EASPI.
Apache Shiro & Java Security for Novicesenter link description here
But I am sure that after going through EASPI web site and few days of studying security attacks you can easily use EASPI to provide enhance security feature to your web application.
I have a webapp that requires security beyond that of a normal web application. When any user visits the domain name, they are presented with two text fields, a username field, and a password field. If they enter a valid user/pass, they get access to the web application. Standard stuff.
However, I'm looking for additional security beyond this standard setup. Ideally it would be a software solution, but I'm also open for hardware solution as well (hardware=key fobs), or even procedural changes (one time use passwords on a password pad for example).
The webapp is unique in that we know all our users ahead of time, and we create their username and password and give it to them. In this sense, we can be assured that the username and password are "strong".
However, our clients have requested additional security beyond this. Anyone have any ideas on how to add another layer of complexity to the security?
Our company used PhoneFactor and we absolutely love it.
We've also used Safeword Tokens in the past.
However, it's notthe only game in the book. I'd start by googling "Two factor authentication"
The OWASP guide to authentication is another good place to start. Actually, OWASP is the first place I'd look for ANY web security question.
Another option for additional security is to use a piece of physical 'evidence' such as a Smart Card: Protect Your Data Via Managed Code And The Windows Vista Smart Card APIs
There are lots of different areas that web apps can have their security improved on. Before getting started you need to determine what, exactly, your problem areas might be and what you want to focus on.
You might start this process by having a third party do Penetration Testing (PEN Testing) on your application. This should give a quick hit list of things you can take care of and, when you have a passing grade, is something to use in your sales literature.
Next you'll want to talk to your customers to understand what they mean by "more secure". Is it simply two factor authentication like David and Mitch mentioned or are they more concerned about things such as data in motion (ARP Poisoning, SSL, and the like), data at rest (everything from hard drive encryption to database encryption), authorization, impersonation (cross site and replay), personnel (ongoing background checks on who has access to the machines), etc..
The concept of security covers a lot of ground.
Even though there are many good CMS tools out there, I've decided to roll my own tools for my website to get some hands on experience. The only thing that is currently eluding me is how to add authentication to secure the administrative tools.
I'm the only one who will be using the administrative tools, so I don't need something as complex as a full-blown log-in and registration system. However, I also don't want to rely on security-through-obscurity and use random page names and such to hide the tools.
What are my options?
OpenID is probably your best bet.
To utilize it for one person as you suggest, just check the username that is authenticated. Yeah, that would amount to hardcoding, but if we're creating a system with only one valid login name, there's no need for anything more complicated.
But creating the alternative shouldn't be that bad. You could also just create a table of roles, and do a query against that table to see if the currently logged in user is an admin. If you want to be fancier later, you can later add different users and roles.
How the users and roles get into the table is up to you.
1) Simply use "WWW-Authenticate: Basic" see Wikipedia for an idea and the related RFC for details.
2) Enable SSL to ensure your cleartext password is encrypted.
SSL is quite standard on web servers. You can even self-sign your certificate.
This will depend in part on what platform will be used by you and your web host. A given platform will likely offer one set of choices that will be easier to access than others.
For instance, ASP.NET running inside of IIS offers Forms, Basic and Windows (NTLM) authentication, as well as certificate-based authentication with the ability to map client certificates to Windows users.
You could certainly implement another authorization schema in an ASP.NET application, and many do. But there happen to be this set of out of the box authentication schemes that you would not have to implement if this were your platform. I expect this is true of any other platform, including the Linux-based platforms.
Be sure to find out what's available out of the box, and what can easily be added, before writing your own.
We've talked about personal password management here but how do you guys manage your passwords at a company wide level?
I thought I'd report back after my week of searching...
I've settled on PassPack I've been using it for a few days now for my personal passwords and I'm a total fanboy.
They use the Host-Proof Hosting pattern so the only one that can access your stuff is you and if you forget your password they can't help you.
They have some nice Offline apps written with Adobe AIR and Google Gears.
But, best of all, they fit my "enterprise" requirement because an upcoming release will support sharing within a trusted group.
Plus, I learned about The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks in their forum.
We have managed to plan our company applications so they are mainly web based and open source or in-house developed. This then allowed us to use LDAP to hook into active directory for logging into our intranet. From there we modified the logins into various products we use (MediaWiki, Wordpress, SugarCRM etc.) so that if the user is authenticated in the intranet, they are automatically logged into these other products as well.
This has taken some time setting up the process and creating a script to set all the appropriate user details in each system when someone joins the company, however now we have a situation where everyone only has to remember one password, removing the need for managing a growing list of passwords.
Obviously this may not be viable in many companies, but now that we have it setup it was worth the effort.
We use Password Agent: http://www.moonsoftware.com/pwagent.asp
It stores everything from PC admin logins to website logins and product keys for products we all use.
We use Active Directory to store user credentials, and developed custom library for Desktop and Web
We are using KeePass application with success.
We create file per project and/or per business domain.
We share the password to appropriate KeePass file between people who should have access.
It's not the best solution. We also have Cyber-Ark software installed corporate-wide, but due to some strange configuration rules it does not work for us as good as the previous solution. It might be also related to the fact that we have an old version.
We maintain an in-house Lotus Notes database that stores absolutely everything from passwords to server change records. It is big, cumbersome, takes an age to load, and is generally not, uh, nice.
No, this is not a sane way to do it. :-|
Obviously I'm biased because I work there, but we use Enterprise Random Password Manager from Lieberman Software. Yes, we do actually dogfood our own tool in our own network. It has some nice features, like web accessibility with delegation, scheduled operation with retry, propagation to other things using accounts (services, COM+ apps, etc.), system/account discovery, Linux/Unix account management, etc.
I'm sure a salesperson could give a better pitch, but that I am not. I'd encourage you to check it out. :)
For passwords related to my work, I store them in a plain unencrypted passwords.txt file in my user storage area on the main company file server. Normally, other people in the company can't read files in my user storage area, so there is little risk of exposure. However, if something were to happen to me, then all my passwords for company related activities would be trivially available to others inside the company - just ask MIS.
This is a very different security model than what I use for my personal passwords, of course.
Just a heads up: Microsoft have a product managing credentials/passwords/identity across varied systems: Identity Lifecycle Manager
Secret Server is something that grew from an internal need (within our software company) to a viable product that is now used all over the world. It is web-based and allows you to store passwords and then securely share them with other users and groups (even AD users and groups). It is also able to actively reach out and change passwords on automatic schedules, even handling associated dependencies such as Windows Services for service accounts.
Enterprise Password Management (free 30 day trial).
Use Apache Directory Server, which is an LDAP-standard implementation.
You can manage the directory database using Apache Directory Studio so it's quite user friendly (or at least, admin-friendly).
Then you can hook the directory programmatically to any application that requires access to the credentials, LDAP client libraries are widely available on popular programming platforms such as Java, C++, PHP, Ruby, etc.
My business friend adviced me to check out Passwork (https://passwork.me). They use self-hosted version on own servers, i found out that Passwork also has SaaS.
So i and my colleagues store our company passwords in Passwork.
We had tried another enterprise pw managers before but weren't able to trust them.
We had a look at a product that had these features:
Can give access privleges to password using roles.
Handles delegation.
Logs access to passwords.
Can Randomize passwords.
Can automatically re-randomize a password X days after access to it.
Unfortunately, I can't couldn't it's name when I posted this... It was "Secret Server"