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By: Chris Sully  Date: January 30, 2003  Download the code. Printer Friendly Version
Abstract: this article develops a reasonably secure login facility utilizing the inbuilt features of ASP.Net (forms based authentication). Also presented is an introduction to related security features and issues, in particular mentioning how security could be further improved by consideration of technologies external to .Net.
IntroductionThis article considers and develops a reasonably secure login facility for use within an Internet application utilizing the inbuilt features of ASP.Net. This login facility is intended to protect an administrative section of an Internet site where there are only a limited number of users who will have access to that section of the site. The rest of the site will be accessible to unauthorized users. This problem specification will guide our decision-making.
Also presented are suggestions as to how this security could be improved if you cross the boundary of ASP.Net functionality into supporting technologies. Firstly, however I''''ll provide an overview of web application security and the features available in ASP.Net, focusing particularly on forms based authentication, as this is the approach we shall eventually use as the basis for our login facility.
Pre-requisites for this article include some prior knowledge of ASP.Net (web.config, security, etc.) and related technologies (e.g. IIS) as well as a basic understanding of general web and security related concepts, e.g. HTTP, cookies.
Web application security: authentication and authorizationDifferent web sites require different levels of security. Some portions of a web site commonly require password-protected areas and there are many ways to implement such security, the choice largely dependent on the problem domain and the specific application requirements.
Security for web applications is comprised of two processes: authentication and authorization. The process of identifying your user and authenticating that they are who they claim they are is authentication. Authorization is the process of determining whether the authenticated user has access to the resource they are attempting to access.
The authentication process requires validation against an appropriate data store, commonly called an authority, for example an instance of Active Directory.
ASP.Net provides authorization services using both the URL and the file of the requested resource. Both checks must be successful for the user to be allowed to proceed to access said resource.
Authentication via ASP.NetASP.Net arrives complete with the following authentication providers that provide interfaces to other levels of security existing within and/ or external to the web server computer system:
- integrated windows authentication using NTLM or Kerberos.
- forms based authentication
- passport authentication
As with other configuration requirements web.config is utilized to define security settings such as:
- the authentication method to use
- the users who are permitted to use the application
- how sensitive data should be encrypted
Looking at each authentication method in turn with a view to their use in our login facility:
Integrated WindowsThis is a secure method but it is only supported by Internet Explorer and therefore most suited to intranet situations where browser type can be controlled. In fact it is the method of choice for Intranet applications. Typically it involves authentication against a Windows domain authority such as Active Directory or the Security Accounts Manager (SAM) using Windows NT Challenge/ Response (NLTM).
Integrated Windows authentication uses the domain, username and computer name of the client user to generate a ‘challenge’. The client must enter the correct password which will causes the correct response to be generated and returned to the server.
In order for integrated Windows authentication to be used successfully in ASP.Net the application needs to be properly configured to do so via IIS – you will commonly want to remove anonymous access so users are not automatically authenticated via the machines IUSR account. You should also configure the directory where the protected resource is located as an application, though this may already be the case if this is the root directory of your web application.
Consideration of suitabilityAs integrated Windows authentication is specific to Internet Explorer it is not a suitable authentication method for use with our login facility that we have specified we wish to use for Internet applications. In such a scenario a variety of browser types and versions may provide the client for our application and we would not wish to exclude a significant percentage of our possible user population from visiting our site.
Forms based authenticationThis is cookie-based authentication by another name and with a nice wrapper of functionality around it. Such authentication is commonly deemed sufficient for large, public Internet sites. Forms authentication works by redirecting unauthenticated requests to a login page (typically username and a password are collected) via which the credentials of the user are collected and validated. If validated a cookie is issued which contains information subsequently used by ASP.Net to identify the user. The longevity of the cookie may be controlled: for example you may specify that the cookie is valid only for the duration of the current user session.
Forms authentication is flexible in the authorities against which it can validate. . For example, it can validate credentials against a Windows based authority, as per integrated Windows, or other data sources such as a database or a simple text file. A further advantage over integrated Windows is that you have control over the login screen used to authenticate users.
Forms authentication is enabled in the applications web.config file, for example:
<configuration>
<system.web>
<authentication mode="Forms">
<forms name=".AUTHCOOKIE" loginURL="login.aspx" protection="All" />
</authentication>
<machineKey validationKey="Autogenerate" decryption key="Autogenerate" validation"SHA1" />
<authorization>
<deny users="?" />
<authorization>
</system.web>
</configuration> This is mostly self-explanatory. The name element refers to the name of the cookie. The machineKey section controls the decryption that is used. In a web farm scenario with multiple web servers the key would be hard-coded to enable authentication to work. Otherwise different machines would be using different validation keys! The ‘?’ in the authorization section above by the way represents the anonymous user. An ‘*’ would indicate all users.
Within the login page you could validate against a variety of data sources. This might be an XML file of users and passwords. This is an insecure solution however so should not be used for sensitive data though you could increase security by encrypting the passwords.
Alternatively you can use the credentials element of the web.config file, which is a sub-element of the <forms> element, as follows:
<credentials passwordFormat=”Clear”>
<user name=”Chris” password=”Moniker” />
<user name=”Maria” password=”Petersburg” />
</credentials> Using this method means there is very little coding for the developer to undertake due to the support provided by the .NET Framework, as we shall see a little later when we revisit this method.
Note also the passwordFormat attribute is required, and can be one of the following values:
Clear
Passwords are stored in clear text. The user password is compared directly to this value without further transformation.
MD5
Passwords are stored using a Message Digest 5 (MD5) hash digest. When credentials are validated, the user password is hashed using the MD5 algorithm and compared for equality with this value. The clear-text password is never stored or compared when using this value. This algorithm produces better performance than SHA1.
SHA1
Passwords are stored using the SHA1 hash digest. When credentials are validated, the user password is hashed using the SHA1 algorithm and compared for equality with this value. The clear-text password is never stored or compared when using this value. Use this algorithm for best security.
What is hashing? Hash algorithms map binary values of an arbitrary length to small binary values of a fixed length, known as hash values. A hash value is a unique and extremely compact numerical representation of a piece of data. The hash size for the SHA1 algorithm is 160 bits. SHA1 is more secure than the alternate MD5 algorithm, at the expense of performance.
At this time there is no ASP.Net tool for creating hashed passwords for insertion into configuration files. However, there are c [1] [2] [3] [4] 下一页
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