Token Request Validation in ASP.NET

Earlier this week during my TechDays presentation on Windows Identity Foundation, there was a part during the demo that I said would fail miserably after the user was authenticated and the token was POST’ed back to the relying party.  Out of the box, ASP.NET does request validation.  If a user has submitted content through request parameters it goes through a validation step, and by default this step is to break on anything funky such as angle brackets.  This helps to deter things like cross site scripting attacks.  However, we were passing XML so we needed to turn off this validation.  There are two approaches to doing this.

The first approach, which is what I did in the demo, was to set the validation mode to “2.0”.  All this did was tell ASP.NET to use a less strict validation scheme.  To do that you need to add a line to the web.config file:

<system.web>
<httpRuntime requestValidationMode=”2.0” />
</system.web>

This is not the best way to do things though.  It creates a new vector for attack, as you’ve just allowed an endpoint to accept trivial data.  What is more preferred is to create a custom request validator.  You can find a great example in the Fabrikam Shipping demo.

It’s pretty straightforward to create a validator.  First you create a class that inherits System.Web.Util.RequestValidator, and then you override the method IsValidRequestString(…).  At that point you can do anything you want to validate, but the demo code tries to build a SignInResponseMessage object from the wresult parameter.  If it creates the object successfully the request is valid.  Otherwise it passes the request to the base implementation of IsValidRequestString(…).

The code to handle this validation is pretty straightforward:

    public class WSFederationRequestValidator : RequestValidator
    {
        protected override bool IsValidRequestString(HttpContext context,
            string value, RequestValidationSource requestValidationSource, 
            string collectionKey, out int validationFailureIndex)
        {
            validationFailureIndex = 0;

            if (requestValidationSource == RequestValidationSource.Form
                && collectionKey.Equals(WSFederationConstants.Parameters.Result, 
                   StringComparison.Ordinal))
            {
                SignInResponseMessage message =
                     WSFederationMessage.CreateFromFormPost(context.Request) 
                     as SignInResponseMessage;

                if (message != null)
                {
                    return true;
                }
            }

            return base.IsValidRequestString(context, value, requestValidationSource,
                   collectionKey, out validationFailureIndex);
        }
    }

Once you’ve created your request validator, you need to update the web.config file to tell .NET to use the validator.  You can do that by adding the following xml:

<system.web>
<httpRuntime requestValidationType="Microsoft.Samples.DPE.FabrikamShipping.Web.Security.WSFederationRequestValidator" />
</system.web>

You can find the validation code in FabrikamShipping.Web\Security\WSFederationRequestValidator.cs within the FabrikamShipping solution.

What makes Claims Based Authentication Secure?

Update: I should have mentioned this when I first posted, but some of these thoughts are the result of me reading Programming Windows Identity Foundation.  While I hope I haven’t copied the ideas outright, I believe the interpretation is unique-ish. Smile

One of the main reasons we as developers shy away from new technologies is because we are afraid of it.  As we learned in elementary school, the reason we are afraid usually boils down to not having enough information about the topic.  I’ve found this especially true with anything security related.  So, lets think about something for a minute.

I’m not entirely sure how valid a method this is for measure, but I like to think that as developers we measure our understanding of something by how much we abstract away the problems it creates.  Now let me ask you this question:

How much of an abstraction layer do we create for identity?

Arguably very little because in most cases we half-ass it.

I say this knowing full well I’m extremely guilty of it.  Sure, I’d create a User class and populate with application specific data, but to populate the object I would call Active Directory or SQL directly.  That created a tightly coupled dependency between the application and the user store.  That works perfectly up until you need to migrate those users in a SQL database to Active Directory.  Oops.

So why do we do this?

My reason for doing this is pretty simple.  I didn’t know any better.  The reason I didn’t know better was also pretty simple.  Of the available options to abstract away the identity I didn’t understand how the technology worked, or more likely, I didn’t trust it.  Claims based authentication is a perfect example of this.  I thought to myself when I first came across this: “are you nuts?  You want me to hand over authentication to someone else and then I have to trust them that what they give me is valid?  I don’t think so.”

Well, yes actually.

Authentication, identification, and authorization are simply processes in the grand scheme of an application lifecycle.  They are privileged, but that just means we need to be careful about it.  Fear, as it turns out, is the number one reason why we don’t abstract this part out.*

With that, I thought it would be a perfect opportunity to take a look at a few of the reasons why Claims based authentication is reasonably secure.  I would also like to take this time to compare some of these reasons to why our current methods of user authentication are usually done wrong.

Source

First and foremost we trust the source.  Obviously a bank isn’t going to accept a handwritten piece of paper with my name on it as proof that I am me.  It stands to reason that you aren’t going to accept an identity from some random 3rd party provider for important proof of identity.

Encryption + SSL

The connection between RP and STS is over SSL.  Therefore no man in the middle attacks.  Then you encrypt the token.  Much like the SSL connection, the STS encrypts the payload with the RP’s public key, which only the RP can decrypt with its private key.  If you don’t use SSL anyone eavesdropping on the connection still can’t read the payload.  Also, the STS usually keeps a local copy of the certificate for token encryption.

How many of us encrypt our SQL connections when verifying  the user’s password?  How many of us use secured LDAP queries to Active Directory?  How many of us encrypt our web services?  I usually forget to.

Audience whitelist

Most commercial STS applications require that each request come from an approved Relying Party.  Moreover, most of those applications require that the endpoint that it responds to also be on an approved list.  You could probably fake it through DNS poisoning, but the certificates used for encryption and SSL would prevent you from doing anything meaningful since you couldn’t decrypt the token.

Do we verify the identity of the application requesting information from the SQL database?  Not usually the application.  However, we could do it via Kerberos impersonation.  E.g. lock down the specific data to the currently logged in/impersonated user.

Expiration and Duplication Prevention

All tokens have authentication timestamps.  They also normally have expiration timestamps.  Therefore they have a window of time that defines how long they are valid.  It is up to the application accepting the token to make sure the window is still acceptable, but it is still an opportunity for verification.  This also gives us the opportunity to prevent replay attacks.  All we have to do is keep track of all incoming tokens within the valid time window and see if the tokens repeat.  If so, we reject them.

There isn’t much we can do in a traditional setting to prevent this from happening.  If someone eavesdrops on the connection and grabs the username/password between the browser and your application, game over.  They don’t need to spoof anything.  They have the credentials.  SSL can fix this problem pretty easily though.

Integrity

Once the token has been created by the STS, it will be signed by the STS’s private key.  If the token is modified in any way the signature wont match.  Since it is being signed by the private key of the STS, only the STS can resign it, however anyone can verify the signature through the STS’s public key.  And since it’s a certificate for the STS, we can use it as strong proof that the STS is who they say they are.  For a good primer on public key/private key stuff check out Wikipedia.

It's pretty tricky to modify payloads between SQL and an application, but it is certainly possible.  Since we don’t usually encrypt the connections (I am guilty of this daily – It’s something I need to work on Winking smile), intercepting packets and modifying them on the fly is possible.  There isn’t really a way to verify if the payload has been tampered with.

Sure, there is a level of trust between the data source and the application if they are both within the same datacenter, but what if it’s being hosted offsite by a 3rd party?  There is always going to be a situation where integrity can become an issue.  The question at that point then is: how much do you trust the source, as well as the connection to the source?

Authentication Level

Finally, if we are willing to accept that each item above increases the security and validity of the identity, there is really only one thing left to make sure is acceptable.  How was the user authenticated?  Username/password, Kerberos, smart card/certificates, etc.  If we aren’t happy with how they were authenticated, we don’t accept the token.

So now that we have a pretty strong basis for what makes the tokens containing claims as well as the relationship between the RP’s and STS’s secure, we don’t really need to fear the Claims model.

Now we just need to figure out how to replace our old code with the identity abstraction. Smile

* Strictly anecdotal evidence, mind you.

Managing Identity in SharePoint

Yet another presentation on the docket!  I submitted an abstract to SharePoint Summit 2011 and they accepted!  I will be presenting on SharePoint and how it manages Identity.  More specifically, how SharePoint 2010 uses WIF to handle Claims based authentication and Federation.

Here are the details

Event: SharePoint Summit 2011, January 31st 2011 – February 2nd, 2011

When: 11:30 a.m. - 12:45 p.m. February 1st, 2011

Where: Four Seasons Hotel, Toronto

Abstract: Managing identities within an organization is relatively easy. However, as business changes, we need to be able to adapt quickly. Identity is something that often gets overlooked in adaptation. In this session we will discuss the Windows Identity Foundation and how SharePoint uses it to adapt easily to change.

Link: http://www.sharepointsummit2011.com/Toronto/conference_day2.htm#session_7_3

Changing the Identity Game with the Windows Identity Foundation

Similar to the TVBUG presentation, I will be presenting on the Windows Identity Foundation to the Metro Toronto .NET User Group.

Here are the details:

When: November 10th, 2010

Where: KPMG, 333 Bay Street, 10th Floor, Toronto

Abstract: Identity is a tricky thing to manage. These days every application requires some knowledge of the user, which inevitably requires users to log in and out of the applications to prove they are who they are as well as requiring the application to keep record of the accounts. With the Windows Identity Foundation, built on top of a Claims-based architecture, there is a fundamental shift in the way we manage these users and their accounts. In this presentation we will take a look at the why's and dig into the how's of the Windows Identity Foundation by building an Identity aware application from scratch.

Claims Transformation and Custom Attribute Stores in Active Directory Federation Services 2

Active Directory Federation Services 2 has an amazing amount of power when it comes to claims transformation.  To understand how it works lets take a look at a set of claims rules and the flow of data from ADFS to the Relying Party:

image

We can have multiple rules to transform claims, and each one takes precedence via an Order:

image

In the case above, Transform Rule 2 transformed the claims that Rule 1 requested from the attribute store, which in this case was Active Directory.  This becomes extremely useful because there are times when some of the data you need to pull out of Active Directory isn’t in a useable format.  There are a couple options to fix this:

  • Make the receiving application deal with it
  • Modify it before sending it off
  • Ignore it

Lets take a look at the second option (imagine an entire blog post on just ignoring it…).  ADFS allows us to transform claims before they are sent off in the token by way of the Claims Rule Language.  It follows the pattern: "If a set of conditions is true, issue one or more claims."  As such, it’s a big Boolean system.  Syntactically, it’s pretty straightforward.

To issue a claim by implicitly passing true:

=> issue(Type = "http://MyAwesomeUri/claims/AwesomeRole", Value = "Awesome Employee");

What that did was ignored the fact that there weren’t any conditions and will always pass a value.

To check a condition:

c:[Type == "http://schemas.microsoft.com/ws/2008/06/identity/claims/role", Value == "SomeRole"]
    => issue(Type = "http://MyAwesomeUri/claims/AwesomeRole", Value = "AwesomeRole");

Breaking down the query, we are checking that a claim created in a previous step has a specific type; in this case role and the claim’s value is SomeRole.  Based on that we are going to append a new claim to the outgoing list with a new type and a new value.

That’s pretty useful in it’s own right, but ADFS can actually go even further by allowing you to pull data out of custom data stores by way of Custom Attribute Stores.  There are four options to choose from when getting data:

  1. Active Directory (default)
  2. LDAP (Any directory that you can query via LDAP)
  3. SQL Server (awesome)
  4. Custom built store via custom .NET assembly

Let’s get some data from a SQL database.  First we need to create the attribute store.  Go to Trust Relationships/Attribute Stores in the ADFS MMC Console (or you could also use PowerShell):

image

Then add an attribute store:

image

All you need is a connection string to the database in question:

image

The next step is to create the query to pull data from the database.  It’s surprisingly straightforward.  This is a bit of a contrived example, but lets grab the certificate name and the certificate hash from a database table where the certificate name is equal to the value of the http://MyCertUri/UserCertName claim type:

c:[type == http://MyCertUri/UserCertName]
   => issue(store = "MyAttributeStore",
         types = ("http://test/CertName", "http://test/CertHash"),
         query = "SELECT CertificateName, CertificateHash FROM UserCertificates WHERE CertificateName='{0}'", param = c.value);

For each column you request in the SQL query, you need a claim type as well.  Also, unlike most SQL queries, to use parameters we need to use a format similar to String.Format instead of using @MyVariable syntaxes.

In a nutshell this is how you deal with claims transformation.  For a more in depth article on how to do this check out TechNet: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd807118(WS.10).aspx.

Presenting at IT Pro Toronto UG on ADFS 2 and Identity Simplification on October 12

Just a heads up that I will be presenting on ADFS in Toronto for the IT Pro User Group.  Here is the write up:

Simplifying User Identity with Active Directory Federation Services (click for link to event)

Start Date/Time:
Tuesday, October 12, 2010 6:30 PM

End Date/Time:
Tuesday, October 12, 2010 9:30 PM

Location:
UofT Health Sciences Bldg, Rm 106, 155 College St.

Description:

There is a growing demand for single sign-on solutions that cross organizational, application and platform boundaries of all sizes.  In this presentation, lets take a look at how we can easily meet these demands using Active Directory Federation Service 2.0 and the Windows Identity Foundation.

Don't worry;  There won't be any code.

Bio:

Steve Syfuhs is a very loud software developer, and works for a large not-for-profit Corporation creating awesome applications.  He has a passion for all things technology, but tries to stick to the fun stuff like the web development, identity management, and telling bad jokes.  His website, www.syfuhs.net, is a collection of random thoughts and ideas that revolve around technology.  And stuff.

Videos on Identity Foundation and ADFS

Some videos from the last PDC…

LOTS of information…

Making an ASP.NET MVC Application Claims Aware with Windows Identity Foundation

A couple posts back I had discussed how you would make an ASP.NET webforms application claims aware. It was reasonably detailed an hopefully it was clear.  I say that because to make an MVC application Claims aware, you follow the exact same procedure.

The only difference is the small little chunk of code to see what claims were returned.  Just drop this little snipped into a view and you can muck about:

<ul>
    <%
    var claimsIdentity 
        = (System.Threading.Thread.CurrentPrincipal 
	   as Microsoft.IdentityModel.Claims.IClaimsPrincipal)
	  .Identities[0];
    foreach (var claim in claimsIdentity.Claims)
    {%>
    <li>
       <%: claim.ClaimType %>
    --
    <%: claim.Value %>
    
    <% } %>
    </li>
</ul>

Making an ASP.NET Website Claims Aware with the Windows Identity Foundation

Straight from Microsoft this is what the Windows Identity Foundation is:

Windows Identity Foundation helps .NET developers build claims-aware applications that externalize user authentication from the application, improving developer productivity, enhancing application security, and enabling interoperability. Developers can enjoy greater productivity, using a single simplified identity model based on claims. They can create more secure applications with a single user access model, reducing custom implementations and enabling end users to securely access applications via on-premises software as well as cloud services. Finally, they can enjoy greater flexibility in application development through built-in interoperability that allows users, applications, systems and other resources to communicate via claims.

In other words it is a method for centralizing user Identity information, very much like how the Windows Live and OpenID systems work.  The system is reasonably simple.  I have a Membership data store that contains user information.  I want (n) number of websites to use that membership store, EXCEPT I don’t want each application to have direct access to membership data such as passwords.  The way around it is through claims.

In order for this to work you need a central web application called a Secure Token Service (STS).  This application will do authentication and provide a set of available claims.  It will say “hey! I am able to give you the person’s email address, their username and the roles they belong to.”  Each of those pieces of information is a claim.  This message exists in the application’s Federation Metadata

So far you are probably saying “yeah, so what?”

What I haven’t mentioned is that every application (called a Relying Party) that uses this central application has one thing in common: each application doesn’t have to handle authentication – at all.  Each application passes off the authentication request to the central application and the central application does the hard work.  When you type in your username and password, you are typing it into the central application, not one of the many other applications.  Once the central application authenticates your credentials it POST’s the claims back to the other application.  A diagram might help:

image

Image borrowed from the Identity Training kit (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=C3E315FA-94E2-4028-99CB-904369F177C0&displaylang=en)

The key takeaway is that only one single application does authentication.  Everything else just redirects to it.  So lets actually see what it takes to authenticate against an STS (central application).  In future posts I will go into detail about how to create an STS as well as how to use Active Directory Federation Services, which is an STS that authenticates directly against (you guessed it) Active Directory.

First step is to install the Framework and SDK.

WIF RTW: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=eb9c345f-e830-40b8-a5fe-ae7a864c4d76&displaylang=en

WIF SDK: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=c148b2df-c7af-46bb-9162-2c9422208504

The SDK will install sample projects and add two Visual Studio menu items under the Tools menu.  Both menu items do essentially the same thing, the difference being that “Add STS Reference” pre-populates the wizard with the current web application’s data.

Once the SDK is installed start up Visual Studio as Administrator.  Create a new web application.  Next go to the Properties section and go into the Web section.  Change the Server Settings to use IIS.  You need to use IIS.  To install IIS on Windows 7 check out this post.

image

So far we haven’t done anything crazy.  We’ve just set a new application to use IIS for development.  Next we have some fun.  Let’s add the STS Reference.

To add the STS Reference go to Tools > Add Sts Reference… and fill out the initial screen:

image


Click next and it will prompt you about using an HTTPS connection.  For the sake of this we don’t need HTTPS so just continue.  The next screen asks us about where we get the STS Federation Metadata from.  In this case I already have an STS so I just paste in the URI:

image

Once it downloads the metadata it will ask if we want the Token that the STS sends back to be encrypted.  My recommendation is that we do, but for the sake of this we won’t.

image

As an aside: In order for the STS to encrypt the token it will use a public key to which our application (the Relying Party) will have the private key.  When we select a certificate it will stick that public key in the Relying Party’s own Federation Metadata file.  Anyway… When we click next we are given a list of available Claims the STS can give us:

image
There is nothing to edit here; it’s just informative.  Next we get a summary of what we just did:

image

We can optionally schedule a Windows task to download changes.

We’ve now just added a crap-load of information to the *.config file.  Actually, we really didn’t.  We just told ASP.NET to use the Microsoft.IdentityModel.Web.WSFederationAuthenticationModule to handle authentication requests and Microsoft.IdentityModel.Web.SessionAuthenticationModule to handle session management.  Everything else is just boiler-plate configuration.  So lets test this thing:

  1. Hit F5 – Compile compile compile compile compile… loads up http://localhost/WebApplication1
  2. Page automatically redirects to https://login.myweg.com/login.aspx?ReturnUrl=%2fusers%2fissue.aspx%3fwa%3dwsignin1.0%26wtrealm%3dhttp%253a%252f%252flocalhost%252fWebApplication1%26wctx%3drm%253d0%2526id%253dpassive%2526ru%253d%25252fWebApplication1%25252f%26wct%3d2010-08-03T23%253a03%253a40Z&wa=wsignin1.0&wtrealm=http%3a%2f%2flocalhost%2fWebApplication1&wctx=rm%3d0%26id%3dpassive%26ru%3d%252fWebApplication1%252f&wct=2010-08-03T23%3a03%3a40Z (notice the variables we’ve passed?)
  3. Type in our username and password…
  4. Redirect to http://localhost/WebApplication1
  5. Yellow Screen of Death

Wait.  What?  If you are running IIS 7.5 and .NET 4.0, ASP.NET will probably blow up.  This is because the data that was POST’ed back to us from the STS had funny characters in the values like angle brackets and stuff.  ASP.NET does not like this.  Rightfully so, Cross Site Scripting attacks suck.  To resolve this you have two choices:

  1. Add <httpRuntime requestValidationMode="2.0" /> to your web.config
  2. Use a proper RequestValidator that can handle responses from Token Services

For the sake of testing add <httpRuntime requestValidationMode="2.0" /> to the web.config and retry the test.  You should be redirected to http://localhost/WebApplication1 and no errors should occur.

Seems like a pointless exercise until you add a chunk of code to the default.aspx page. Add a GridView and then add this code:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Web;
using System.Web.UI;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls;
using System.Threading;
using System.IdentityModel;
using System.IdentityModel.Claims;
using Microsoft.IdentityModel.Claims;

namespace WebApplication1
{
    public partial class _Default : System.Web.UI.Page
    {
        protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            IClaimsIdentity claimsIdentity = ((IClaimsPrincipal)(Thread.CurrentPrincipal)).Identities[0];

            GridView1.DataSource = claimsIdentity.Claims;
            GridView1.DataBind();
        }
    }
}

Rerun the test and you should get back some values.  I hope some light bulbs just turned on for some people :)