I have 4 single page applications with same technologies: Spring MVC, Spring Security, Angulajs.
Each application has own ldap authentication and authorization. We want to build a single sign architecture and make a central authentication application. And make the other 4 application use this central application.
When user login into one of the apps, he should not need to login the others.
What is the easy way to implent this in server side and client side?
What you want is Single Sign-On (SSO). There are two options:
Use some existed SSO server like CAS.
Do it yourself using subdomain cookie technique.
First option is exactly what you want implement. When you open URL of app1 you will be redirected to SSO server and prompted for login/password. After successful authentication you will be redirected to app1 URL. Now if you open app2 URL you will be signed in automatically. One of advantages is that user password is stored only in SSO server.
Second option is more lightweight IMHO, because instead of using existed SSO server for sharing authentication information between your apps you use HTTP cookies. From the other side you need to write some minimal authentication code which may be less secure.
Subdomain cookie technique:
Use subdomains for all your apps (app1.domain.com, app2.domain.com)
When user connects to app1, generate some token (your session id), store it in some shared DB and as a cookie for domain.com
When user opens app2, check if token is present (as a cookie for domain.com), verify that it is valid (use shared DB) and allow access.
It is very simple algorithm that do not take into account all possible security vulnerabilities (like session fixation for example). So if you do not have enough time to solve them it may be better to go with first option.
Related
I have multiple web applications running in different domains. Okta is the identity/auth provider for all these applications. After integrating with Okta in one of the application (following the Java example provided in Okta documentation), a new cookie (sid) is being created in Okta domain (https://developer.okta.com/docs/reference/api/sessions/).
How do I use this to SSO into other web application. What is the best approach to allow access to other application without prompting login credentials again?
Do I need to invoke getCurrentSession API in every application and redirect to login page only if the API response is 404 (as per doc, getCurrentSession will retrieve the current active session based on the Okta cookie).
Please share thoughts.
It all depends on how you integrate your apps: redirect to Okta or using Okta widget. If you do redirect it's pretty much guaranteed to have zero issues authenticating in your second app, as your redirect for second app will send sid cookie back to Okta, which was set while authenticating with your first app.
With widget things may become bit complicated, as it depends on 3rd party cookies. okta-auth-js GitHub repo has some examples on how you can check if session exists with okta, when you trying to authenticate a user. Check https://github.com/okta/okta-auth-js#third-party-cookies
I have a web application which requires username and password authentication to enter.
What I am doing is, authenticate a user from a stand alone Java app, which would do so by making Http request to the server using username and password. Then I would retrieve JSESSIONID cookie from response of server.
Now what I want is to use this JSESSIONID to continue session on browser i.e. to let user navigate pages of my web app which would be opened by my stand alone java app which I use for authentication.
Is this possible? Or is there any other way to do so.
Cookie can be changed using below mentioned methods.
Cookie cookie = new Cookie("JSESSIONID", NEWSESSIONID);
response.addCookie(cookie);
From your application you can send JSESSIONID as parameter while opening browser first time and reset your cookie using above method either in filter or servlet. This will reset your cookie in client side once you send response back. Next request on wards you will be able to access the session created previously.
It's possible but it's not that simple.
Since web applications don't share sessions, what you're looking for is a Single Sign On (SSO) solution, which involves an "Identity Provider" (IdM) that authenticates users for one or more "Service Providers" (SP). In this case, your servlet is the IdM and your web app is an SP.
Depending on your deployment, the following are third-party, open-source SSO libraries that you may be able to use:
Kerberos
PicketLink (for JBOSS)
OpenAM (for Tomcat)
If you don't want to use a third-party library, you may also be able to modify your servlet to be the IdM. Either way, I suggest reading a little about Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) before deciding on a solution. SAML is a popular method that the above libraries implement.
We are implementing Single Sign On [SSO] across multiple applications, which are hosted on different domains and different servers.
Now as shown in the picture, We are introducing a Authenticate Server which actually interacts with LDAP and authenticate the users. The applications, which will be used/talk to Authenticate Server are hosted across different Servers and domains.
for SSO, I can't use session variables, as there are different servers and different applications, different domains, a domain level cookie/session variable is not helpful.
I am looking a better solution which can be used for SSO across them. Any demonstrated implementation is existing? If so, please post it or point me in the right direction for this.
You can achieve this by having all your log-ins happen on the auth server. The other applications can communicate to the auth server through a back channel. The general principle is like this:
User accesses application 1.
Application 1 needs the user to sign on, so it sends a token to the auth server through the back channel. Application 1 then redirects the user to the log in page on the auth server with the token as a parameter on the request.
User logs in to auth server. Auth server sets a cookie, flags the token as authenticated and associates the user details with it. Auth server then redirects user back to application 1.
Application 1 gets request from user and calls auth server over back channel to check if the token is OK. Auth server response with user details.
Application 1 now knows that the user is authorised and has some basic user details.
Now this is where the SSO bit comes in:
User accesses application 2.
Application 2 needs the user to sign on, so it sends a token to the auth server through the back channel. Application 2 then redirects the user to the login page on the auth server with the token as a parameter on the request.
Auth server sees that there is a valid log in cookie, so it can tell that the user is already authenticated, and knows who they are. Auth server flags the token as authenticated and associates the user details with it. Auth server then redirects user back to application 2.
Application 2 gets request from user and calls auth server over back channel to check if the token is OK. Auth server response with user details.
Application 2 now knows that the user is authorised and has some basic user details.
There are some existing implementations of this method, for example CAS (Central Authentication Service). Note that CAS is supported out of the box in Spring Security. I would advise you look at using an existing implementation, as writing your own will be hard. I have simplified things in my answer and there is a lot of potential for introducing security holes if you're new to this.
I will recommend you check out OAuth. It is a good Authenticaiton and Authorization protocol used by several large organizations including facebook, google, windows live and others. It may have an initial learning curve, but it is a production grade solution.
It also has libraries for Java, Ruby, PHP and a range of other programming languages.
For example, the following server side implementations are available for Java.
Apache Amber (draft 22)
Spring Security for OAuth
Apis Authorization Server (v2-31)
Restlet Framework (draft 30)
Apache CXF
Following client side Java libraries are also available:
Apache Amber (draft 22)
Spring Social
Spring Security for OAuth
Restlet Framework (draft 30)
Please refer here for more details:
http://oauth.net/2/
http://oauth.net/documentation/
The bigger question is how you are implementing single sign on. Many open source and even proprietary (IBM Tivoli) offerings worth their salt offer cross domain single sign on capability. This would be the easiest and best way to implement cross domain sso. You can configure the LDAP server you use in the sso server you choose.
Taking for instance open sso, here is an article to configure cross domain single sign on
http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19681-01/820-5816/aeabl/index.html
To configure LDAP in open sso,
http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19316-01/820-3886/ghtmw/index.html
Reference on the issue is presented in a neat diagram here
http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19575-01/820-3746/gipjl/index.html
Depending on which offering you use, you can configure cross domain single sign on.
With this, your diagram will look like this, with the auth server being your utility to interact with sso server of your choice.
Having an auth server that communicates with sso is a sound architecture principle. I would suggest making calls to authenticate as REst end points which could be called via http from different applications.
You cannot use Rest Service .
You could use what i call a Refferer Url Authentication
Say you have a Authentication application running on www.AAAA.com
In the applications , where you want to authenticate , you could have a filter which looks for a authenticated cookie in its domain else redirect to www.AAAA.com for authentication
On Successfull authentication , you could pass the user profile information as encrypted GET / POST data back to the application
Since I have built a Java application, I have been looking for an SSO solution for it. I found a free Java SAML Connector using which you can achieve SSO in java based applications built using any java framework.
Here's the link to it - https://plugins.miniorange.com/java-single-sign-on-sso-connector
I have a couple of Java-based web applications developed. Both the applications have separate Authentication logic based on some ActiveX directory implementation.
Now, I need to change this to Windows authentication so that whenever the user hits the URLs of my web applications, instead of redirecting him to login page I need to check his Windows credentials.
I do not want to store his windows credentials in URL.
Is there any good way to do this ?
Depending on the level of integration you want your web application to have, Spring Security should have you covered in just about all aspects of what you are after.
If redirecting to a login page and authenticating the entered credentials against an Active Directory server via LDAP is acceptable, then the LDAP extension is the way to go.
If you want more of a Single Sign On (SSO) flow and your users are already authenticated against the authoritative Active Directory server in question (eg. they are logged in to the domain), then the Kerberos plugin for Spring Security may be more appealing, since your users will simply have to go to the web application and won't have to go through any other authentication steps. The systems will take care of it behind the scenes.
You can also combine / layer these approaches if you which and try Kerberos-based authentication first and if that falls through, fall back to a login form and LDAP-based authentication.
If you need to go beyond that, Spring Security is flexible enough to allow you to use OpenID or in-app authentication as well if needed.
I'd recommending using Active Directory to expose it's windows authentication layer over LDAP, which can then be hit by something like Spring Security.
This would effectively force anyone using your application to use their windows login.
I have a Java web application. It relies on Google OAuth to authenticate and authorize users. I want to provide an API to my application which must also use OAuth. Is it possible to provide OAuth by myself without having a database of users and auth mechanism?
Has it been implemented by anyone?
The OAuth specification doesn't make any particular statements about how to authenticate (ie, login) users - just how to pass credentials to other servers, once the authentication succeeds. There's no particular reason that, at the step where other servers might put up a login box, you can't instead initiate an OAuth transaction with another unrelated server.
However, you will need to have some sort of database to link up the credentials you issue (ie, the credentials your clients will use to operate your API) with the credentials you receive from upstream servers - whether this data needs to be retained over server shutdowns, etc, will depend on whether you want your third-party clients to be able to use their credentials over a long period.