When a user logs in to a SSO (Single Sign on) application, IIS makes a request to LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) to get some user information for authentication. I am trying to find where the communication between LDAP and IIS happens (I am assuming that IIS sends a request to LDAP in order to get some user information). I have looked in the IIS Manager in windows and could not find the communication between IIS and LDAP. Does anyone know where I would be able to find the communication between LDAP and IIS?
If you're talking about Windows Authentication, then no, IIS doesn't use LDAP. It will use either Kerberos (preferably) or NTLM.
The mechanism is different for each, but basically, the user is already logged in on the client computer and sends their already-existing ticket to the server. The server just verifies the ticket with the domain controller. This means that the server must be joined to the same domain (or a trusted domain) as the user logging in.
For seamless SSO (where the user does not need to type in their username/password), the user must be logged into the client computer with the credentials they want to use on the website. If not, they will be prompted for credentials and the actual logging in will happen from the server.
If you cannot use Windows Authentication because the server is not joined to the same (or trusted) domain as the user, then you would have to implement LDAP authentication yourself. You would use Forms Authentication, ask for the user's username and password, and validate the credentials like this for example.
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We are developing a ReactJs and NodeJs application where node has to authenticate AD users using LDAP.
We are able to complete the authentication successfully using LDAP,
But the requirement is, in On-prem users are already logged in to the AD and if they open our web it should login without asking credentials again, it it is not happening with LDAP integration.
Can some one please help me.
Thanks in advance.
To add SSO in on-prem Active directory login using LDAP, please follow below steps:
Go to Administration -> Applications and enable Single Sign-On -> click setting -> select LDAP method.
If you want your users to login without using credentials again, set the option to use only SSO authentication only.
UseResponse internal account is created, when a new user logs in against the LDAP server. If you don't want to send internal registration credentials, Disable Registration Email.
In addition to these, include basic settings of your connection:
Give hostname or IP of your LDAP server
Add ldaps:// to hostname when the server has secure connection
Give Base Distinguished Name for your AD with default value dc=localhost.
Enter administration credentials for the connection, if your LDAP server requires authentication.
For more in detail, please refer below link:
Using LDAP as a Single Sign-On (Active Directory) | Integrations | Help Center - UseResponse.
I have set up a Mediawiki for our small local domain (abc.local) on a linux VM (just for internal use). Our local domain controller is a Win Server 2008 R2. I've setup the Mediawiki LDAP Authentication extensions so that i can restrict editing of our Wiki to only domain Users. I've configured the Mediawiki LDAP configuration to use the domain Administrator credentials for this authentication.
Is there a way to create another account that can do this user authentication but can't change anything? Sort of like a "read-only" Administrator account?
thanks,
russ
An account can't be "read-only" and also "Administrator". It's one or the other.
"Authentication" can only ever be done with the user's own credentials. There is no special kind of account that lets you authenticate other accounts. All it needs credentials for is to look up accounts on the domain. So you only need a read-only account, which is basically any account that can authenticate on your domain.
So just create an account specifically for Mediawiki and use that.
I am currently new to managing databases hence the question. From my lecture notes, it states that
A user logs into the network, Windows or otherwise.
The user opens a nontrusted connection to SQL Server using a username and password other than those used to gain network access. It’s called a nontrusted connection because SQL Server doesn’t trust the operating system to verify the user’s password.
SQL Server matches the username and password entered by the user to an entry in the sys.syslogins table.
My question is that how does the user open a nontrusted connection to SQL? I'm confused. What does it mean by SQL Server doesn’t trust the operating system to verify the user’s password.
Trusted connection is a legacy term and really a misnomer mostly because of how developers think of apps connecting to a database rather than how a database actually handles connection requests. SQL Server doesn't actually trusts connections. It trusts a 3rd party that you designated to authenticate a user and present the appropriate token it will then use for authorization. Just so happens Windows is the only 3rd party you can tell it to trust but it doesn't have to be.
Important things to distinguish in the process are authentication and authorization. Both SQL Server and Windows can authenticate a login attempt but only SQL Server can authorize access to objects/data. They are distinct though related parts.
When you connect using integrated authN, your security token is passed to SQL Server which then does basic checks for login mapping to establish connection. If successful, it goes on to do what it needs to for authZ(e.g. database context switch, authorization, etc...). It only cares that you have a valid token from a trusted source. In this case, it's Windows (simplifying the AD, Kerberos, etc... processes behind this). It doesn't further authenticate, it trusts that Windows has done the right checks already. Note that it doesn't have to be a network or domain user. Even local users can be setup for integrated authN but that's generally not a good idea.
If you connect with SQL Server credentials, after the pre-login handshake, your credentials are then passed to SQL Server for authorization where it'll check for login, compare password hash, policies (if any), etc... Essentially, the user authentication checks that Windows would have done when you login to a host but the security scope is SQL Server only. Until this authN is done, you are not logged in. These steps occur because the connection attempt is made with un-validated credentials rather than a secure token issued by a trusted party. Once it successfully completes authN then it goes down the same code path as before for authZ.
The conventional wisdom says using your Windows user to login to SQL Server is more secure than using a SQL Server user to login. But isn't the authentication nearly identical?
When you login to SQL server with a database user, a login packet is created with the password encrypted. A certificate is attached to the packet and sent to the database. When the certificate is authenticated, the hashed password is matched to the hashed password stored in the database. If they match, you are logged in.
When you login to SQL server with a Windows user, MSGINA creates a login packet, but I'm not sure if or how it's encrypted. A certificate is attached and the packet is sent to LSA. When the certificate is authenticated, how are the credentials verified?
To make this question fair, assume the certificate service is the same, as well as the method to create the password hash. In this scenario, the two methods seem equally vulnerable to a man-in-the-middle type of attack intercepting the login packet.
Depends how you define "secure". There's more to security than the cryptographic details of the authentication mechanism. For example:
With SQL Server auth, accounts/passwords are under the control of the DBAs. With Windows auth (to a domain) they're under the control of the domain admins.
Security policy (e.g. password strength, password aging, password length, permitted login locations/times, disabling accounts) is readily administered (e.g. via group policy) and audited when using domain authentication.
Domain authentication can use multiple factors (e.g. security tokens), whereas SQL Server authentication (AFAIK) can't.
MITM vulns in AD authentication (and more broadly Kerberos in general) would be big news.
Windows login is very secure - assuming Active Directory, you're sending a hash to AD to authenticate you which returns the ticket that is subsequently used to login to SQLServer.
However, this only applies to AD, local users use NTLM which is pretty old and is easily crackable by today's standards.
Windows logins are used to secure pretty much everything, including the user services like SQLServer runs as, so if its not the most secure then you have more worries than user login to your DB.
The question is how you store the password and login information.
When you use Windows-login you can rely on authentication by your active directory server or simply the windows machine, while when login with SQL Server credentials you will need to have the password somewhere in a form that you'll need to encrypt it in order to add it to the connection string.
This might be fine if the application is on the server, but more complicated when it is a rich client which is accessing the server directly. If you have such a scenario in a company, it is better to let active directory deal with the authentication.
In general it is also easier to administrate when you have the same active directory use everywhere.
We have a 3rd party product that allows some of our users to manipulate data in a database (on what we'll call SvrSQL) via a website on a separate server (SvrWeb).
On SvrWeb, we have a specific, non-default website setup for this application so instead of going to http://SvrWeb.company.com to get to the website we use http://application.company.com which resolves to SvrWeb and the host headers resolve to the correct website.
There is also a specific application pool set up for this site which uses an Active Directory account identity we'll call "company\SrvWeb_iis". We're setup to allow delegation on this account and to allow it to impersonate another login which we want it to do. (we want this account to pass along the AD credentials of the person signed into the website to SQL Server instead of a service account.
We also set up the SPNs for the SrvWeb_iis account via the following command:
setspn -A HTTP/SrvWeb.company.com SrvWeb_iis
The website pulls up, but the section of the website that makes the call to the database returns the message:
Cannot execute database query.
Login failed for user 'NT AUTHORITY\ANONYMOUS LOGON'.
I thought we had the SPN information set up correctly, but when I check the security event log on SrvWeb I see entries of my logging in, but it seems to be using NTLM and not kerberos:
Logon Type: 3
Logon Process: NtLmSsp
Authentication Package: NTLM
Any ideas or articles that cover this setup in detail would be extremely appreciated!
If it helps, we are using SQL Server 2005, and both the web and SQL servers are Windows 2003.
There are several possible reasons for kerberos failures which includes lack of SPN and duplicate SPN as well.
If SQL is running under custom account you would need to add SPN for SQL as well.
Also keep in mind, you should be adding SPN for the FQDN which is the host (A) entry in DNS and not a CNAME.
Check the value of NTAuthenticationProviders
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/215383
Try DelegConfig which would show what is missing if its SPN or something else.
http://www.iis.net/community/default.aspx?tabid=34&g=6&i=1887