I'm trying to write an smb client in C to do just the authentication to validate username and password (So there is no need to maintain the session and other samba features are not required). I Didn't find any useful resource for doing that through SMB protocol. What method do you suggest to use ?
The client's OS is windows.
Related
if i use the android managed configuration with all the app restrictions and so on... and the admin should set the credentials (example for a mail server) what is with security? All the values you define in the restrictions.xml file are set in plain text in the emm system. How can that be safe? and also if i understand everything right: the date also will send via google to the device... also in plaintext?
is there any different approach? or will all the restrictions send over the internet just always in plaintext?
thx
When sending data to and from Android devices, Android uses Transport Layer Security to provide communication security over the network. All data transferred to and from the server are encrypted. However, it’s bad practice to store passwords in plaintext, so we would advise not including a field for passwords in your app restrictions. Gmail, for example, includes app restrictions for use with Exchange accounts; it allows the admin to specify a certificate alias for logging in, but it does not allow the admin to share the user’s password via app restrictions (the user must login on the device).
I would like to avoid having a plain text password in the .ini file. I guess it should use Kerberos authentication, but I couldn't find how to do that.
I don't believe that Shiro has any capability to support Windows Kerberos authentication nor does it appear to have any "out of the box" capability to support encrypted passwords in the [main] section of the shiro.ini file.
Looking at this message (http://shiro-user.582556.n2.nabble.com/How-to-secure-database-password-in-shiro-ini-td7578763.html) on the Shiro mailing list it suggests the best solution is to create your own password factory which will return the password when needed. The mailing list talks about using this for database passwords but the same principle should apply to Active Directory.
This link (https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/SHIRO-445) contains a patch which should give you some pointers on how to do this.
CONTEXT
Have created an API using Google Cloud Endpoints (Python) with which numerous low power devices will GET/POST data.
The only communication with the API will be from these custom devices (I own both ends of the communication).
RESEARCH
Looking at authentication, was hoping it would be as simple as using SSL/TLS client certs:
Each remote device will have a client cert signed by a single project CA anyway.
The Google cloud endpoints mandate SSL.
However, only oauth2 appears to be supported; I'm looking for a 'clean' way to implement 'hands off' authentication, ideally utilising the client SSL cert I already have on the client devices.
I have investigated creating 'service' oauth2 accounts, however as I want to protect against a device spoofing another device (one set of credentials for all is not acceptable), I would need to generate a service account for each client device, which would be bulky and horrible to maintain on the API-end.
It seems i'm looming towards needing to add a layer of authentication within my code for each API method, which somewhat defeats the point of utilising the services of Google's cloud endpoints.
QUESTION... Finally
Has anyone had experience in authenticating 'hands off' machine to machine devices at scale against google's cloud endpoint?
Does anyone know of a way of using a client certificate in the Oauth2 authentication process in a way which would be supported by GCE?
Is my only option going to be custom authentication within the API methods based on some crypto data in the POST/GET headers. (or just moving to hosting an API with Apache/NGINX and client-cert auth?)
Regards,
Matt
I wrote you an essay:
Consider that Cloud Endpoints basically exists in the application layer of the OSI model, since it communicates via HTTPS requests (it sends HTTP requests within a TLS session). Whether or not Endpoints uses HTTP or HTTPS is not a developer-configurable option - it must be HTTPS.
It uses HTTPS in that the API server has a TLS cert which is used to authenticate the API server. Inside the secure connection, the RPC params and responses are also secured from eavesdropping. This is the extent to which Endpoints "interacts" with TLS - it uses it to establish the session and send HTTP requests inside this session.
So, already I can tell you that you will not be able to have your TLS client certs (not an often-used feature) used to authenticate API clients automatically by endpoints, in the connection setup phase. TLS client certs simply aren't looked at or requested by the Endpoints API server.
Now, while authentication of the API server itself is guaranteed through the API server's TLS cert, authentication of API clients is done via Client IDs or the Users API, which sits in your code and abstracts over the different auth options App Engine offers at present:
OAuth (2.0)
OpenID
So, in order to auth your client devices in one of these two manners and still take advantage of Cloud Endpoints, you will need to find a way for each device to perform an OAuth flow or OpenID flow, your system having provisioned an identity for the respective auth method at the time of that device's initial deployment.
Google (Apps) Accounts option
This will involve creating a Google account (Google's unified SSO) or a Google Apps account managed by a custom domain for each device, and provisioning these accounts' credentials to each respective device. You can read more about custom domain authentication and App Engine auth configuration in general here.
OpenID option (general doc on OpenID with GAE)
This will involve setting up your own OpenID provider on a GCE instance using an OpenID connect library like pyoidc, so that you can provision accounts yourself, or it could involve registering accounts with a known OpenID provider for each device. The first solution is more robust but more time-consuming (OpenID providers can go down temporarily, or deactivate forever, and then your IOT network is out of luck).
Third option using Client IDs
You can of course generate an "installed application" client ID/secret and distribute these to each device in your network. They can use this to authenticate themselves as network devices (as opposed to an attacker's laptop), and then you trust devices to accurately report their own id as a param with each API call. Depending on how hackable your devices are and how widely you intend to distribute them, this scheme doesn't necessarily prevent devices from spoofing each other's id's, although depending on the id generation scheme, you can make it very difficult (each id being a long sufficiently long hash).
If you go this route and you're really concerned about this, you can provision a client ID for each device, but who knows if you'll hit some kind of undocumented limit on number of client IDs per app, and also this will require you to either do it by hand or write a script that logs into the dev console on a headless browser and does what you need.
Fourth crazy option that actually uses the TLS client certs
If you're really set on using both TLS client certs for auth and Cloud Endpoints for your API, you could try to send the client cert in the request, since TLS is encrypting the request data (unless your attacker has found a way to efficiently solve the inverse discrete logarithm problem, in which case they'll probably be too busy attacking more important targets (no offense) and changing the infosec game forever), and then reading and auth'ing the cert in your endpoints method somehow (third party libs uploaded with your app are probably necessary for this).
Fourth realistic option if you have your heart set on TLS client certs
Switch from App Engine to Compute Engine, where you basically have a VM managed and hosted in the same data-centers. On this box, you can implement any kind of connection protocol on any port you like, so you could have incoming API requests (not Endpoints, notice) TLS-authenticated based on teh connecting device's client certs.
Good luck!
We have an intranet web based information portal. Now, under development is module for internal orders.
The problem is: When the approver approves the order, it accesses page that requires https and accessing it should be much secure than a simple (second) password authentication.
The first idea was to pair certified connection between the server and client, i.e. the server should recognize that client has installed appropriate certificate, otherwise, to show inaccessible page message.
We played with OpenSSL certificates, but because we are newbie in that, there was no success.
Which is the right way to do this?
Probably, this is important: The certificates was done under Linux. They should work on Win2003 server with installed Apache2 with enabled SSL module (PHP, MySQL). Also - pages can be accessed only via IP address of the server. Is it OK to configure certificate for IP address? Information we used to generate certificates is here.
Is there another way to secure connection between client and server in that case, i.e. to ensure that only privileged client (computer, browser) is accessing the secured page? If you have other suggestions, they will be well appriciated.
I need to invoke a REST-based service from Windows Phone 7.
The service only accepts the request if the following conditions are satisfied:
The request must happen over HTTPS/SSL
The request must be authenticated with a client X509 certificate
I don't control the service, so I can't change the authentication requirements.
On the full framework, we can do things like this:
HttpWebRequest request = (HttpWebRequest)HttpWebRequest.Create(uri);
request.ClientCertificates.Add(accessCertificate);
However, the ClientCertificates property isn't available in Silverlight 4, and neither do any of the X509 classes from the System.Security.Cryptography.X509Certificates namespace seem to be available.
Is it really impossible to make Client Certificate-based HTTPS requests from Windows Phone 7?
Client certificates are not supported by the 3rd party WP7 SDK currently.
Confirmation here for your reference.
Problems with client certification authentication on WP7
Whilst it's possible to install certs on the device through email (referenced in an exhcange integration solution), your app won't use them.
There are only 2 ways to install 3rd party certificates on the device and neither can currently be done through code:
Installing certificates via Windows®
Internet Explorer®
A certificate can
be posted on a website and made
available to users through a
device-accessible URL that they can
use to download the certificate. When
a user accesses the page and taps the
certificate, it opens on the device.
The user can inspect the certificate,
and if they choose to continue the
certificate is installed on the
device.
Installing certificates via email
The certificate installer on
Windows Phone 7 supports .cer, .p7b,
and .pfx files. When installing
certificates via email, make sure your
mail filters do not block .cer files.
Certificates that are sent via email
appear as message attachments. When a
certificate is received, a user can
tap to review the contents and then
tap to install the certificate.
Typically, when an identity
certificate is installed the user is
prompted for the passphrase that
protects it.
You'll have to get the user to perform one of these actions before the app will work with the certificate.
From Windows Phone 7 and Certificates_FINAL_121610.pdf
So you can us oAuth for authentication and pass the token in the request header. If you check out acs.codeplex.com you can see how this is done using the Azure ACS system. I realize you may not be using Azure, but the reference app may help. I would also search for oAuth and Windows Phone 7, I have found a few examples that way too.
As far as SSL, you should be able to do that through the browser with out any issue. You can also open any https Url using an HttpWebRequest, etc.