I have a website with frontend in AngularJS and backend in Python.
Currently we are presenting the user with a simple webform to fetch credentials.
The credentials from the form are sent to the Python backend(flask webservice)(this is a basic auth mechanism).
Now we would like to enable Single Sign on (SSO) on the website.Our identity provider is Pingone or Ping Federate.
I am starting from scratch here..with no prior knowledge of SAML or SSO.
I would like to know which path to take?
Which libraries to use and more importantly,how to use them?
At this point in time I am not sure how exactly SAML identifies a user and then authenticates him/her.
The basic exchange of SAML starts with a user asking for a resources (page, SPA app) on your Python server. The server determines if the user is already authenticated (has a session, JWT token, etc), and if not, creates a SAML request token to be sent via a redirect to the Identity Provider (use a library for this).
The identity provider verifies the SAML request token via digital signature. Once the token is verified, the user is asked to log in (if they are not already authenticated there). Once the user is authenticated, the identity provider creates a SAML request token which is presented back at your server via a redirect.
Upon receipt of the SAML request token, your server validates the token via digital signature, and you treat the user as logged in (again, use a library for this part). The token will minimally identify the user, but can contain authorizations and additional info. At this point your user is authenticated and you would create a session on your server or you create a JWT token to identify your user from within your angular app to the Python backend.
Creating the SAML request token and processing in the resultant SAML response token is not trivial. As suggested above, use a library, preferably one that has been through the the test of time. I'm not a Python dev, but I found this with some googling: onelogin/python-saml.
Wikipedia has a nice sequence diagram to demonstrate this and of course you can peruse the many docs on the Oasis SAML docs website.
Good luck with the implementation. I've done it a couple times in Java.
Related
I don't know why I can't find confirmation in the docs, maybe I am not navigating them correctly, although MSAL seems to have options to fit it into any application. This is my first time integrating a SAML sso procedure into any of my web-apps. I am just looking for some clarity on the correct, and secure way to verify the person attempting to login, is actually logged in with the IDP.
I am confused at the part after confirmation of login is given to my redirect API, I currently have it all happening on the front-end, then submitting the response to my back-end. Which is a RESTful API built with Django, and postgres database. At this point, I am thinking I need to verify my accessToken for authenticity, but I am unsure if I should be creating another PublicClient instance in python, and then sending the same commands to the IDP.
To guess at this point, I'm thinking this is wrong, as I need to verify the token, rather than get another Access and Refresh token. I'm thinking I just need to verify there is a session open with the IDP, and that the Access Token matches. Can anyone shed some light on this, possibly provide even just some direction.
The client Python Django Web App uses the Microsoft Authentication Library (MSAL) to sign-in and obtain an Access Token from Azure AD.
The access token is used as a bearer token to authorize the user to call the Python Flask Web API protected by Azure AD.
The Python Flask Web API then receives a token for Azure Resource Management API using the On-Behalf-Of flow.
To learn more about handing access token validation at the API layer, look into this sample walkthrough: https://github.com/Azure-Samples/ms-identity-python-on-behalf-of#about-the-code
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/develop/access-tokens#validating-tokens
Hi I have our website running on appengine with flask as backend framework and we have built our authentication and session management using libraries Flask-OAuth, Flask-Login.
But now I have a requirement to use firebase for authentication.
I am able create sample applications following firebase tutorials but I do no how to integrate with existing application.
In Firenotes samples provided by firebase team they are using two separate services frontend and backend.
I thought of using firebase code in login.html page and once client authenticated pass the info to /profile url -> log the user_id in database and login-user using Flask-Login.
I am not sure whether the above flow is correct and I am not to ensure that it is correct one without any problems in future.
Please help with any ideas as I need to implement it very soon!!
Flask-Login uses session based authentication. Clients login using an authentication scheme. Since you are using Flask-OAuth, it's the oauth flow. If the user successfully authenticates, Flask-Login sends a response during the token exchange step setting an HTTP only cookie (meaning javascript can't access it) with a token unique to the user session. The client then authenticates future requests for the duration of the session with that token. The server can invalidate the session at any time, forcing the client to log in again.
Meanwhile, firebase authentication is JSON Web Token (JWT) authentication scheme. After completing the login flow, the firebase API retrieves a JWT from google's application servers.
To authenticate requests, you need to transmit that JWT on EVERY request. Your server MUST also validate the JWT to ensure that it is both valid and unexpired.
You'll note that the manner by which the JWT arrives at the server is unspecified by the firebase SDK and libraries. I recommend using a Authentication: JWT <google's jwt> header.
One way to resolve your question would be to use the JWT to complete the initial login flow, and then rely on session based auth from there. You'd set up a login endpoint that expects and validates a JWT, and responds with the set cookie header. From that point forward you continue using your flask-login provided session based auth.
Google actually has an example of this in their documentation: https://firebase.google.com/docs/auth/admin/manage-cookies
I'm looking to set up Django to use OAuth2 to authenticate users for a service that I'm running, but I'm having a bit of difficulty understanding how the tokens are passed around.
I've been working my way through this tutorial: https://django-oauth-toolkit.readthedocs.org/en/0.7.0/tutorial/tutorial_01.html. I've been able to get a server up and running as the OAuth provider, and it seems to be working as it should. I'm able to log in to it and set up an application. The difficulty I'm having is figuring out how the various tokens are passed around.
Suppose that my OAuth provider is sitting on one server - let's call this Provider.com - and my service that I'm wanting authenticated is on service.com. When a user first tries to make a request to the service, they first need to authenticate against the Provider. So they click on a login button which directs them to Provider.com. They enter their credentials. If everything is set up correctly on the server, they should be presented with a prompt that gives them a chance to allow or deny Service.com from accessing their account on Provider.com. Supposing that they click Allow, they are then redirected to Service.com, and are given a token. On future calls to Service.com, they pass in the token, and are, in theory, able to make authenticated calls.
The problem I'm having understanding is this: At what point do the Provider and the Service communicate? If a call comes in to the Service, how does it know that the authentication token passed in with the call is valid? There's know way it could know that a particular token is valid unless: A) it recognizes that same token from a previous call which was also authenticated or B) it talks to the OAuth 2 provider and verifies the authenticity of the token.
A diagram like the one found here shows the process in the browser:
At the end of this, it has the Client App sending the authentication code, client id, and client secret to the OAuth2 provider. In the previously mentioned tutorial, it isn't really clear how this is actually done. In the tutorial, the provider and the service are on the same machine, and it would appear that they also share the same database.
This this brings about my question: How does one host a Django-based OAuth provider on a separate server than the resource/service being accessed? Is this possible?
From this other post, it indicates that this might not be possible: https://stackoverflow.com/a/26656538/1096385 Is that indeed the case, at least with the existing Django OAuth2 provider framework?
It depends on the oauth2 flow you're using. It seems like you're using authentication code.
In that case:
service.com sends the browser to provider.com for user authentication (uri contains service.com client_id and redirect_uri)
User authenticates on provider.com, then the browser is redirected to service.com's redirect_uri with a ?code parameter.
On your server side, handle this code parameter and ask for a token with it.
See https://aaronparecki.com/articles/2012/07/29/1/oauth2-simplified#web-server-apps
I am pretty new to developing APIs. This is part of my class project and the goal is to create a RESTful API in python where the delegation is done via OAuth and these tokens should be sent as part of the HTTP request.
I was advised that I should create an API that involves delegating the OAuth model into a proxy-like approach where authentication tokens are sent as part of the HTTP request. What exactly does a proxy-like approach mean? Any ideas?
I would really appreciate if anyone could help me out with this and also on how to create an API (even if it is not python specific, I can take cue from that)
If you are new to REST services, then this link will be nice kick start for you.
You can find here how to develop a basic rest api in python and the same with authentication.
So what is OAuth?
OAuth can be many things. It is most commonly used to allow an application (the consumer) to access data or services that the user (the resource owner) has with another service (the provider), and this is done in a way that prevents the consumer from knowing the login credentials that the user has with the provider.
For example, consider a website or application that asks you for permission to access your Facebook account and post something to your timeline. In this example you are the resource holder (you own your Facebook timeline), the third party application is the consumer and Facebook is the provider. Even if you grant access and the consumer application writes to your timeline, it never sees your Facebook login information.
This usage of OAuth does not apply to a client/server RESTful API. Something like this would only make sense if your RESTful API can be accessed by third party applications (consumers).
In the case of a direct client/server communication there is no need to hide login credentials, the client (curl in the examples above) receives the credentials from the user and uses them to authenticate requests with the server directly.
I'm trying to implement openid login with Django and having some trouble. The library I'm trying to use now is Django-openid-auth. I haven't found any django+openid libraries that have much documentation. How can I actually go about using this as a login and store the information I need for my app based on the users that come in from openid? How does this store the information shared from the openid provider and does this library already store it?
The OpenID identity verification process most commonly uses the
following steps:
The user enters their OpenID into a field on the consumer'ssite, and hits a login button.
The consumer site discovers the user's OpenID provider using
the Yadis protocol.
The consumer site sends the browser a redirect to the OpenID
provider. This is the authentication request as described in
the OpenID specification.
The OpenID provider's site sends the browser a redirect back to
the consumer site. This redirect contains the provider's
response to the authentication request.
your web app needs to keep track of:
-the user's identity URL and the list of endpoints discovered for
that URL
-State of relationships with servers, i.e. shared secrets
(associations) with servers and nonces seen on signed messages.
This information should persist from one session to the next
and should not be bound to a particular user-agent.
hope this helps:D