Context
I've build a RESTful API server in Actix-Web with Rust that's hosted on a Heroku paid plan. It has n amount of publicly available endpoints to access content, alongside 3 strictly admin-only endpoints (for creating, editing, and deleting public content).
I am the only developer who'd ever need to access the admin-only endpoints - and infrequently at that. Several random users will be using the publicly available endpoints daily.
Normally, I'd implement an authentication/authorization strategy akin to this using JWTs (but obviously in Rust for my case). However, the added complexity that comes with this "more common" solution seems overkill for my simple use-case.
My theorized solution
Could I add a username and password field to the .env file in my project like so in order to match against a username and password passed in the admin-only handler functions?
... OTHER KEYS ...
USERNAME = my_really_long_random_username
PASSWORD = my_really_long_random_password
At first glance I'm storing passwords in plain text... but, there's only 1 and it's in my .env file, which is private by default.
All I'd do for the admin-only routes then is this (pseudo-code):
pub fn router_handler(passed_data) -> HttpResponse {
if passed_data.username == env.username && passed_data.password == env.password {
// CONSIDER THEM ADMIN
} else {
// BLOCK THEM AS THEY'RE NOT AUTHENTICATED
}
}
What I've tried
I have yet to try this strategy, but I'm curious about your opinions on it.
Question
Is my theorized solution secure? Does it seem reasonable given my use-case?
Response to question: jthulhu - is this what I do?
So, my .env file should look something like this:
... OTHER KEYS ...
USERNAME = a98ysnrn938qwyanr9c8yQden
PASSWORD = aosdf83h282huciquhr8291h91
where both of those hashes are the results of running my pre-determined username and password through my to_hash function which I added below (likely using a lib like this).
Then, my handler should be like this (psuedo-code):
pub fn router_handler(passed_data) -> HttpResponse {
if to_hash(passed_data.username) == env.username && to_hash(passed_data.password) == env.password {
// CONSIDER THEM ADMIN
} else {
// BLOCK THEM AS THEY'RE NOT AUTHENTICATED
}
}
You should never store passwords in plain text in a server, because if someones breaks in your server, and can read that file, they now have access to everything (whereas they might previously not). Not only that, but most people tend to reuse passwords, so storing one password in plain text means exposing several services where that password is used.
Instead, you should hash the passwords and store the hash. To perform a login, check if the hash of the given password corresponds to the one stored. This mechanism can be used with files or with databases alike, and is pretty much independent on how you actually store the hashes.
Related
Basically, I'm using the accounts-base package on meteor and on meteor startup, I set up what template the server should use for the password recovery mail, email confirmation mail, etc.
For example, in my server/startup.js on meteor startup I do many things like :
Accounts.urls.verifyEmail = function (token) {
return Meteor.absoluteUrl(`verify-email/${token}`);
};
Accounts.emailTemplates.verifyEmail.html = function (user, url) {
return EmailService.render.email_verification(user, url);
};
The problem is that my app is hosted on multiple host names like company1.domain.com, company2.domain.com, company3.domain.com and if a client wants to reset his password from company1.domain.com, the recovery url provided should be company1.domain.com/recovery.
If another client tried to connect on company2.domain.com, then the recovery url should be company2.domain.com.
From my understanding, this is not really achievable because the method used by the Accounts Package is "Meteor.absoluteUrl()", which returns the server ROOT_URL variable (a single one for the server).
On the client-side, I do many things based on the window.location.href but I cannot seem, when trying to reset a password or when trying to confirm an email address, to send this url to the server.
I'm trying to find a way to dynamically generate the url depending on the host where the client is making the request from, but since the url is generated server-side, I cannot find an elegent way to do so. I'm thinking I could probably call a meteor server method right before trying to reset a password or create an account and dynamically set the ROOT_URL variable there, but that seems unsafe and risky because two people could easily try to reset in the same timeframe and potentially screw things up, or people could abuse it.
Isn't there any way to tell the server, from the client side, that the URL I want generated for the current email has to be the client current's location ? I would love to be able to override some functions from the account-base meteor package and achieve something like :
Accounts.urls.verifyEmail = function (token, clientHost) {
return `${clientHost}/verify-email/${token}`;
};
Accounts.emailTemplates.verifyEmail.html = function (user, url) {
return EmailService.render.email_verification(user, url);
};
But I'm not sure if that's possible, I don't have any real experience when it comes to overriding "behind the scene" functionalities from base packages, I like everything about what is happening EXCEPT that the url generated is always the same.
Okay so I managed to find a way to achieve what I was looking for, it's a bit hack-ish, but hey..
Basically, useraccounts has a feature where any hidden input in the register at-form will be added to the user profile. So I add an hidden field to store the user current location.
AccountsTemplates.addField({
_id: 'signup_location',
type: 'hidden',
});
When the template is rendered, I fill in this hidden input with jQuery.
Template.Register.onRendered(() => {
this.$('#at-field-signup_location').val(window.location.href);
});
And then, when I'm actually sending the emailVerification email, I can look up this value if it is available.
Accounts.urls.verifyEmail = function (token) {
return Meteor.absoluteUrl(`verify-email/${token}`);
};
Accounts.emailTemplates.verifyEmail.html = function (user, url) {
const signupLocation = user.profile.signup_location;
if (signupLocation) {
let newUrl = url.substring(url.indexOf('verify-email'));
newUrl = `${signupLocation}/${newUrl}`;
return EmailService.render.email_verification(user, newUrl);
}
return EmailService.render.email_verification(user, url);
};
So this fixes it for the signUp flow, I may use the a similar concept for resetPassword and resendVerificationUrl since the signupLocation is now in the user profile.
You should probably keep an array of every subdomains in your settings and keep the id of the corresponding one in the user profile, so if your domain changes in the future then the reference will still valid and consistent.
So any one who has used perl dancer knows that to authenticate a user on login you can call authenticate_user
authenticate_user(
params->{username}, params->{password}
);
This is part of the Auth::Extensible plugin.
To me it looks like it encourages the use of storing passwords in plain text! Sure you can hash the password first then make sure the stored password is the same hash but this seems to be more of a work around and i found isn't guaranteed to work. I have only got this to work using sha1 which shouldn't be used. I want to use Bcrypt but the passphrase simply wont match. Possibly odd characters not matching i'm not sure.
The thing is using the dancer Passphrase plugin i can already validate the username and password without even needing to rely on authenticate_user to verify them. But for the dancer framework to consider the user logged in you still have to call authenticate_user which must be passed the password.
I'm completely stuck. I'm curious how other people have managed to use proper password management in dancer2?
Firstly, I'll echo the "you almost certainly don't need to be using authenticate_user()" comments. The plugin can handle all that for you.
However, "it doesn't hash it" is wrong; here's how it works. The
authenticate_user keyword loops through all auth realms configured, and for
each one, asks that provider's authenticate_user() method to see if it accepts
the username and password. The Database provider (and the others) fetch the
record from the DB, and use $self->match_password() (which comes from the
Provider role) to validate it; that code checks if the stored password from
the database starts with {scheme} and if so, uses
Crypt::SaltedHash->validate to validate that the user-supplied password (in
plain text, as it's just come in over the wire) matches the stored, hashed
passsword ($correct in the code below is the stored password):
if ( $correct =~ /^{.+}/ ) {
# Looks like a crypted password starting with the scheme, so try to
# validate it with Crypt::SaltedHash:
return Crypt::SaltedHash->validate( $correct, $given );
}
So, yes, if your stored password in the database is hashed, then it will match
it if the password supplied matches that hash.
For an example of what a stored hashed password should look like, here's
the output of the bundled generate-crypted-password utility:
[davidp#supernova:~]$ generate-crypted-password
Enter plain-text password ?> hunter2
Result: {SSHA}z9llSLkkAXENw8FerEchzRxABeuJ6OPs
See the Crypt::SaltedHash doco for details on which algorhythms are
supported by it, and the format it uses (which "comes from RFC-3112 and
is extended by the use of different digital algorithms").
Do bear in mind that the code behind authenticate_user is exactly what's used
under the hood for you.
For an example of just letting the plugin do the work for you, consider:
get '/secret' => require_login sub {
my $user = logged_in_user();
return "Hi, $user->{username}, let me tell you a secret";
};
... that's it. The require_login means that the plugin will check
if the user is logged in, and if not, redirect them to the login page
to log in. You don't need to call authenticate_user yourself, you
don't need to set any session variables or anything. logged_in_user()
will return a hashref of information about the logged in user (and because
the route code has require_login, there's guaranteed to be one at this
point, so you don't need to check).
If you need to check they have a suitable role, instead of just that they
are logged in, then look at require_role in the documentation instead.
In the documentation for Dancer2::Plugin::Auth::Extensible, the description for authenticate_user() says:
Usually you'll want to let the built-in login handling code deal with authenticating users, but in case you need to do it yourself, this keyword accepts a username and password ...
Which strongly implies to me that you shouldn't be calling this function at all unless you're doing something particularly clever.
I haven't used this module myself, but it seems to me that all the hashing and encryption stuff should be handled by one of the authentication providers and if there's not one that covers the case you use, then you can write one yourself.
Whenever I need to store secure passwords for a Dancer app, I reach for Dancer2::Plugin::Passphrase. I wonder if I should consider writing an Auth::Extensible style authentication provider for it.
I've been working with Sails since couple of weeks ago, I came from Rails and I don't have any experience working with Node.js.
Now I'm trying to make a robust token authentication using jsonwebtoken.
https://github.com/auth0/node-jsonwebtoken
I followed this guide http://thesabbir.com/how-to-use-json-web-token-authentication-with-sails-js/ and everything worked fine.
I'm able to make a sign up, sign in and then use the token correctly for different actions.
Now, there are some actions where I'd like to use the login user,
something like devise current_user helper.
For example, when creating a comment, this comment should belongs to the current user.
Using Sabbir Ahmed guide, in the line 33 from the isAuthorized.js policy the token gets decrypted so I can get the current user id from there.
So, my question is, what should be the best way to get the current user and be able to use it later in some controller?
For example I tried something like:
# isAuthorized.js line 34, after getting decrypted token
User.findOne({id: token.id}).exec(function findOneCB(err, found){
currentUser = found;
});
But, on this way, because this is an async action I can't use this currentUser in a controller.
I want to store the current user in order to be able to use it later in some controller without repeated the same code in each controller, something like a helper or maybe a service.
The trick is where you place the next(). Since you are making an async call, the control should only be transferred to next policy/ controller once the database action is competed.
You should modify the policy to:
User.findOne({id: token.id}).exec(function findOneCB(err, found){
if(err) next(err);
req.currentUser = found;
next();
});
And you should be able to access the user details in controllers that use isAuthorized policy via req.currentUser
If by
For example, when creating a comment, this comment should belongs to the current user.
what you mean is certain attributes like username, and country etc, rather than querying the database after verification, what you can choose to do is to send these additional attributes to jwToken.issue in api/controllers/UsersController.js
eg.
jwToken.issue({
id: user.id,
username: user.name,
country: user.country
})
How that helps is, you can keep api/policies/isAuthorized.js as is, and in all the controllers that you use in the future, you can access the payload values from as
token.username or token.country
Instead of having to query the database again, thereby saving you valuable response time.
Beware however, of the data you choose to send in the token (you could also send {user:user} if you want to) however, as the secret key or hashing is not required to decrypt the payload as you can figure # jwt.io , you might want to exercise restraint.
I have a framework that allows anonymous access as well as named user accounts. I'm exposing an OData resource on a certain URL. When configured as such, anonymous users can see parts of the resource and logged in users (through basic authentication) can see more.
The problem I'm facing is that some OData clients (like Excel) will initially attempt to access the OData resource anonymously even when you do provide credentials. Only when this fails, they will use the provided credentials. My understanding is that this is because there are many ways to log in and some clients just always try the most basic option first. But this prevents them from ever actually seeing more data, because they never use the provided credentials and also never get the authentication challenge when the resource allows anonymous access.
Is there a way to solve this issue, allowing both anonymous access AND properly sending an authentication challenge when possible? Is there maybe some header that clients will send when they do have credentials but just aren't supplying them initially?
Some (scala) code to make this a bit more tangible:
val (username, password) = getAuthInfo(request)
if (username != null && password != null) {
val regularSession = integration.core.login(username, password)
logger.debug(s"Login OK: User '$username' (Number of concurrent sessions: ${integration.core.getNumberConcurrentSessions}).")
(IMxRuntimeResponse.OK, null, regularSession)
} else if (integration.configuration.getEnableGuestLogin) {
val guestSession = integration.core.initializeGuestSession
logger.debug(s"Anonymous user '${guestSession.getUser.getName}' created " +
"(Number of concurrent sessions: ${integration.core.getNumberConcurrentSessions}).")
(IMxRuntimeResponse.OK, null, guestSession)
} else {
val responseMessage = "No basic authentication in header."
logger.warn(s"Login failed: $responseMessage")
(IMxRuntimeResponse.UNAUTHORIZED, responseMessage, null)
}
Somewhere else outside the surrounding try/catch:
if (httpStatusCode == IMxRuntimeResponse.UNAUTHORIZED)
response.addHeader("WWW-Authenticate", "Basic")
As you can see the challenge is never sent when anonymous access is allowed.
Edit: we investigated and there does not seem to be anything special in the headers of this request that would indicate this is an initial attempt that will result in another request when an authentication challenge is sent, rather than just another anonymous login attempt. We are at a loss here now on how to proceed.
I develop and maintain a customer portal, written in Perl/Catalyst. We make use of the Catalyst authentication plugins (w/ an LDAP storage backend, coupled with a few deny_unless rules to ensure the right people have the right group membership).
It's often that in managing a customer's permissions, we have the need to test out a user's settings before we hand things over. Currently, our only recourse is to reset a user's password and log in ourselves, but this is less than ideal, particularly if the user has already set their own passwords, etc.
My question is this: for Catalyst, has anyone come across a method of impersonating a user account such that, given the correct super-admin privileges, one could impersonate another account temporarily while testing out a setting, and then back out once done?
If not in Catalyst, then how have people approached this in other frameworks, or their own custom solutions? Admittedly, this is something that introduces a potentially egregious attack vector for a web application, but if forced to implement, how have people approached design for this? Perhaps some serious cookie-session-fu? Or possibly an actualID/effectiveID system?
We use a custom authenticator controller, a custom user class (MyApp::Core::User) and several realms:
package MyApp::Controller::Auth;
...
sub surrogate : Local {
my ( $self, $c ) = #_;
my $p = $c->req->params;
my $actual_user = $c->user; # save it for later
try {
$c->authenticate({ id=>$p->{surrogate_id} }, 'none');
$c->session->{user} = new MyApp::Core::User(
active_user => $actual_user,
effective_user => $c->user );
$c->stash->{json} = { success => \1, msg => "Login Ok" };
} catch {
$c->stash->{json} = { success => \0, msg => "Invalid User" };
};
$c->forward('View::JSON');
}
In myapp.conf I use something like this:
<authentication>
default_realm ldap
<realms>
<ldap>
# ldap realm config stuff here
</local>
<none>
<credential>
class Password
password_field password
password_type none
</credential>
<store>
class Null
</store>
</none>
</realms>
</authentication>
That way we're creating a normal Catalyst user object, but wrapping it around our custom user class for more control. I probably could have created an specialized realm for surrogating, but I've chosen using my own user class instead. It was done a while back and I can recall why we did it that way.