"Issue description copied..."
I'm building a partner connector, which relies on a user name and password to connect to database (very similar to the existing Postgres / MySQL connectors provided by Google). In order to verify the credentials, I also need the database host information to be present in addition to username and password and this is the base of my problem.
The Google build connectors conveniently are allowed to collect user credentials and the database related information at the same time. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be the case for partner connectors as stated in the requirements
Point 5 "Use appropriate authentication method in getAuthType(). Do not request credentials via getConfig()."
The authentication itself happens before any other configuration details are known (there is just a dialog for username and password) and there doesn't seem to be a way to request additional information on the authentication screen itself. Once the credentials have been entered, the verification also happens immediately, before the configuration is being shown in the next step.
Once credentials are validated successfully, Datastudio then assumes the schema and data can be requested.This excludes the option of a dummy confirmation, because there doesn't seem to be a way to tell credentials are invalid and need to be changed after checking the other configuration details on the next screen.
That makes me unsure, how to determine valid credentials in my use case as I need to know the variable endpoint to authenticate against. I definitely want to avoid storing any user credentials myself in an external database, because this opens up another can of worms.
Has anyone successfully solved a similar issue before and can provide guidance here?
This is a known limitation of the authentication methods for Community Connectors.
A workaround would be to use authtype NONE and then request the credentials and database information in the config. This is, however, not a recommended approach.
Related
I am creating an electron application that connects to an Database and do POST and GET requests to retrieve and insert data into it, the problem is that in the code i have defined my database uri ( im using mongodb)
const uri = "mongodb+srv://<myusesrname>:<mypassword>#cluster0.wqbiu.mongodb.net/query?retryWrites=true&w=majority"
like in the example above, but if i pack my electron app the connection to the database as well as the credentials its visible if someone unpacks the app.asar file and look in the server.js file how i can solve this problem? i dont want any security breaches neither for me or the people that will be using my application, thanks in advance for any answer :)
An application that requires a secure connection to something cannot afford to have any username's or password's hardcoded into its code.
Instead, a procedure of authentication and authorisation is utilised.
Authentication is used to verify the user. IE: They are who they say they are, often achieved via the use of some type of login form.
Authorisation is used to verify the logged-in user is allowed to access the requested resource. EG: Is this user allowed to retrieve a list of all users email addresses from the database.
As a rough guide, a user will login with their username and password. You could use OpenID as well here if you wanted. Once the user is 'logged-in' you could set a cookie or session and save the session id in the DB against the user. Of course, all of this is done over HTTPS.
There are various ways to control the validity of the session such as but not limited to refreshing the expiration date / time every time the user hits the server, auto timeout if the user has not interacted with the server for more than X minutes, etc.
In your app, the user could try and interact with the database at any time, but if the user is not logged in, the server could return the appropriate response and prompt the user to login. Some form of API here is really the way to go.
If the user is logged in then then next step is to authorise the users request, ensuring they are allowed to perform what they are asking before sending a response back. If they are not authorised to access the resource (EG: Edit another user’s post) then an appropriate response is returned indicating so.
As you can see, securing your app will take some work but the result of not doing so could be devastating to you and your users.
For a school I implemented eduroam two years ago and from time to time we add new students in the AD.
Five days ago I added 40 more new students but I changed the CN's (or what in New-ADUser is called "-Name") format:
from "name.surname" to "SURNAME, NAME" (quotes excluded), hence
earlier it was
CN=name.surname, OU=CLASS_A, OU=STUDENTS, DC...
now it is
CN=SURNAME, NAME, OU=CLASS_A, OU=STUDENTS, DC...
an eduroam's username normally is <string with no blanks>#<yourschool>.<tld> so that the RADIUS proxies can route the auth request based on #<yourschool>.<tld> , So I must keep such a format.
Now, the new users cannot be authenticated anymore by NPS.
All the tests I ran back my thesis (i.e. that NPS uses CN to authenticate) but I cannot find any Microsoft document that states that.
Could anybody share the link to such doc?
is it a way to change the check from CN (if proved by answer of point 1)) to another user's recor like sAMAccountNAme or UPN?
I'm sure I'm touching something deep in AD but I hope somebody has tripped into this issue and has found a answer.
TIA
P.S. I guess the alternative would be to use FreeRADIUS but I would rather explore the options to still make within NPS/AD
• Please check the Windows Server event security log for more details on the issue for NPS authentication because that might shed some more light on the actual issue that you might be facing. Till then, please clear the cache and temporary files from the server and restart the whole infrastructure regarding NPS, i.e., domain controller, NPS Server, Access points and other related devices through which users can login through NPS.
• Once restarted, please try to authenticate any allowed user through NPS once again and check. Also, as you are using NPS as a radius server proxy, please check for the attribute manipulation rules for message forwarding since the CNs are changed in their order/format in your AD. Specifically, regarding the username which is provided by the access client and is included by the NAS in the Radius access-request message. The value of this attribute is a character string that typically contains a realm name and a user account name.
• To correctly replace or convert realm names in the username of a connection request, you must configure attribute manipulation rules for the User-Name attribute on the appropriate connection request policy.
Also, find the below links regarding your query whether which attribute you can use to authenticate in case of NPS. In it, it clearly stated that user principal name should be used as an attribute as a best practice: -
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/networking/technologies/nps/nps-best-practices#performance-tuning-nps
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/networking/technologies/nps/nps-best-practices#using-nps-in-large-organizations
Please check the below documentation link for your condition: -
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/networking/technologies/nps/nps-plan-proxy#key-steps-3
I am new to Salesforce, but am an experienced developer. I am provided a link to a Salesforce report, which mostly has the right filters (query). I would like to use an REST API to pull that information as CSV or JSON so that I can do further processing on it.
Here are my questions:
Do I need special permissions to make API calls? What are they?
Do I need to create an "app" with client-key & secret? Does my admin need to grant me permission for this too?
There are a lot of REST APIs from Salesforce, which one do I need to get the info from the report? Analytics?
How do I authenticate in code?
You'd have to work with the System Administrator on the security pieces. Anybody who knows how the company works, can all users see everything, is there Single Sign-On in place, how likely is the report to change...
You will need an user account to pull the data. You need to decide if it'll be some "system account" (you know username and password and have them stored in your app) or can it run for any user in this org. It might not matter much but reports are "fun". If there will be data visibility issues 6 months from now, you'll be asked to make sure the report shows only French data to French users etc... you can make it in report filters or have multiple reports - or you can just use current users access and then it's the sysadmin that has to set the sharing rules right. (would you ever think about packaging what you did and reusing in another SF instance? Making a mobile app out of it? Things like that, they may sound stupid now but will help you decide on best path)
The user (whether it'll be system account or human) needs Profile permissions like "API Enabled" + whatever else you'd need normally ("Run Reports" etc). If you're leaning towards doing it with system user - you might want to look at Password Policies and maybe set password to Never Expires. Now this is bit dangerous so there would be other things you might want to read up about: "API only user" (can't login to website), maybe even locking down the account so it can login only from certain IP ranges or at certain times when the job's supposed to be scheduled...
Connected App and OAUth2 stuff - it's a good idea to create one, yes. Technically you don't have to, you could use SOAP API to call login, get session id... But it's bit weak, OAuth2 would give you more control over security. If you have sandboxes - there's little-known trick. You can make connected app in production (or even totally unrelated Developer Edition) and use client id & secret from it to login to sandboxes. If you create app in sandbox and you refresh it - keys stop working.
(back to security piece - in connected app you can let any user allow/deny access or sysadmin would allow only say these 3 users to connect, "pre-authorize". Could be handy)
Login - there are few REST API ways to login. Depends on your decision. if you have 1 dedicated user you'll probably go with "web server flow". I've added example https://stackoverflow.com/a/56034159/313628 if you don't have a ready SF connection library in your programming language.
If you'll let users login with their own credentials there will be typical OAuth "dance" of going to the target page (Google login, LinkedIn, Twitter...) and back to your app on success. This even works if client has Single Sign-On enabled. Or you could let people type in their username and pass into your app but that's not a great solution.
Pull the actual report already
Once you have session id. Official way would be to use Reporting API, for example https://developer.salesforce.com/docs/atlas.en-us.api_analytics.meta/api_analytics/sforce_analytics_rest_api_get_reportdata.htm
A quick & dirty and officially not supported thing is to mimic what happens when user clicks the report export in UI. Craft a GET request with right cookie and you're golden. See https://stackoverflow.com/a/57745683/313628. No idea if this will work if you went with dedicated account and "API access only" permission.
Please read this carefully, as I'm pretty sure people will answer a different question to the one I'm asking.
I have an IdentityServer4 server, that allows users three methods of authentication (we have multiple sources of truth at the moment): custom (userid/pwd in SQL), ldap (user/pwd in AD) & integrated windows (no password required). These work lovely, and when I'm in my client MVC application I can get at the identity and claims, regardless of which method I used to authenticate.
The question I have is how do I understand which user has logged on to the SERVER (not the client MVC!). I can see the server is maintaining cookies, which must hold this info. Bear in mind that User.Identity.Name will return the Windows Authentication information before they have 'logged in' to my software. i.e. User.Identity.IsAuthenticated always returns true. They may well go on to choose the SQL authentication method.
I'm guessing that is has something to do with HttpContext.Authentication.GetAuthenticationInfoAsync but I'm not clear on what authenticationScheme to pass in, as the last call to SignInAsync called an overload that didn't specify that.
Ok, I understand what is going on here now. The way I check to see if the user is authenticated on the server is to check for the sub claim. That will only be present if they've been through the authentication process.
var sub = User.FindFirst(JwtClaimType.Subject)?.value;
If that's null then I know they're not authenticated. If it's not null then I know I can read the JtwClaimType.Name and it NOT be their Windows Authenticated account name.
If a user logs in to their computer using a Single Sign-On system such as Active Directory, LDAP, or Kerberos, is it possible for applications they run to know who they are and what system they authenticated with? Can I get enough information out of these systems to verify their identity without requiring any additional user input?
Specifically, I would like to be able to check these things:
Did they log in via a single sign-on system at all, or are they just using a regular user account on this machine?
What system did they use?
Does the system have some URI that would distinguish it from any other directory?
What is the current user's distinguished name in that directory?
Can I get some information which I can pass to another host to prove to that host that the user is who they said they are? For example, a token that can be used to query the SSO system.
I'd assume all of these things should be possible, and in fact encouraged, but I am not positive. I'm sure the method of getting at this information is
SSO (at least with Kerberos which is used by ActiveDirectoy) is based on a token. As soon as the user requests access to a kerberized system the system queries for the token and checks its validity for accessing the system. It's as good as querying for username and password. when the user did not log in with an Kerberos-account there is no tiket so no automated access.
using the token you can get the users login- name and from that you can then use that to query the SSO-backend (typically LDAP) for more information on that user.
LDAP is not an SSO-system as it is simply a storage query protocol but it is often used as backend for SSO-systems.
The problem often is kerberizing an application. for Webapps that means you have to kerberize the webserver so that that one then can handle the authentication process with the SSO-service and then pass that information on to the unferlying webapp.
Hope that answers you questions.
for more information have a look around the web for kerberos
You are really asking about two things:
Authentication: Who are you?
Authorization: What are you allowed to do?
Kerberos really only answers the first question, you need a secondary system like LDAP or Active Directory ( which is both kerberos and ldap in a single server) to answer the second.
If your system is using kerberos correctly, any user login should have an associated kerberos ticket. With this ticket, you can request "service" tickets
to prove your identity to remote servers that support kerberos. The ticket
contains your principal identity in the realm ( user#DOMAIN.NET ) that can be
used to query authorization systems.
However, the details required to get all the moving parts in that sentence working together "on the same page" so to speak can be very complex. The remote service has to support accepting kerberos credentials, it has to be either in the same realm or have a cross realm trust relationship configured.... The list
gets pretty long. Depending on your exact application environment, using all these things can be fairly trivial, or it can be next to impossible.