I have an ASP.NET MVC 4 Project using the Web API. On the controller I have set the class to require authorization using the [Authorize] attribute. For Authentication I am using the ASP.NET Membership Provider and have my Web.Config set to use "Forms" Authentication. Here is where I am stuck:
Everything is working great up until the point that I am done with testing the API and I want to secure the controller with the [Authorize] attribute so I can start testing authentication against users in my Membership Provider. So I fire up Fiddler and make the same call adding the Authorization:Basic attribute along with a username:password from my membership provider like so:
The response I get is 401 unauthorized and under "Auth" I get "No WWW-Authenticate Header is present." Then I realize that the API is looking for an SHA1 encoded key. So I fire up an SHA1 generator from a search and get a hash for my username:password and update my Request Header like so:
This does not work either and I get the same results. Also I obviously need some sort of "shared secret key" to use with the server to decode my username/password.
So my questions:
Thanks in advance!
You could use basic authentication with SSL. On the server side we could write a custom delegating handler which will verify the credentials by querying the memebership provider that we registered, and if valid, retrieve the roles and set the current principal:
public class BasicAuthenticationMessageHandler : DelegatingHandler
{
protected override Task<HttpResponseMessage> SendAsync(HttpRequestMessage request, CancellationToken cancellationToken)
{
var authHeader = request.Headers.Authorization;
if (authHeader == null)
{
return base.SendAsync(request, cancellationToken);
}
if (authHeader.Scheme != "Basic")
{
return base.SendAsync(request, cancellationToken);
}
var encodedUserPass = authHeader.Parameter.Trim();
var userPass = Encoding.ASCII.GetString(Convert.FromBase64String(encodedUserPass));
var parts = userPass.Split(":".ToCharArray());
var username = parts[0];
var password = parts[1];
if (!Membership.ValidateUser(username, password))
{
return base.SendAsync(request, cancellationToken);
}
var identity = new GenericIdentity(username, "Basic");
string[] roles = Roles.Provider.GetRolesForUser(username);
var principal = new GenericPrincipal(identity, roles);
Thread.CurrentPrincipal = principal;
if (HttpContext.Current != null)
{
HttpContext.Current.User = principal;
}
return base.SendAsync(request, cancellationToken);
}
}
We then register this handler in Application_Start
:
GlobalConfiguration.Configuration.MessageHandlers.Add(
new BasicAuthenticationMessageHandler()
);
Now we could have an Api controller that will be decorated with the [Authorize] attribute to ensure that only authenticated users can access its actions:
[Authorize]
public class ValuesController : ApiController
{
public string Get()
{
return string.Format("Hello {0}", User.Identity.Name);
}
}
Alright, now let's look at a sample client:
using System;
using System.Net;
using System.Net.Http;
using System.Net.Http.Headers;
using System.Text;
class Program
{
static void Main()
{
// since for testing purposes I am using IIS Express
// with an invalid SSL certificate I need to desactivate
// the check for this certificate.
ServicePointManager.ServerCertificateValidationCallback +=
(sender, certificate, chain, sslPolicyErrors) => true;
using (var client = new HttpClient())
{
var buffer = Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes("john:secret");
var authHeader = new AuthenticationHeaderValue("Basic", Convert.ToBase64String(buffer));
client.DefaultRequestHeaders.Authorization = authHeader;
var task = client.GetAsync("https://localhost:44300/api/values");
if (task.Result.StatusCode == HttpStatusCode.Unauthorized)
{
Console.WriteLine("wrong credentials");
}
else
{
task.Result.EnsureSuccessStatusCode();
Console.WriteLine(task.Result.Content.ReadAsAsync<string>().Result);
}
}
}
}