REST API with Single Page Application over HTTPS on Firefox only - rest

I am developing a web service using REST API. This REST API is running on port 6443 for HTTPS. Client is going to be a Single page application running on port 443 for HTTPS on same machine. The problem I am facing is:
While I hit the url say: https://mymachine.com/new_ui I get certificate exception for an invalid certificate because I use a self signed one, so mymachine.com:443 gets added to server exception. But still requests doen't go to REST API as they are running on https://mymachine.com:6443/restservice. If I manually add mymachine.com:6443 to server exception on firefox it works but it will not be the case in production for customers.
Some options that I thought are:
1. Give another pop up and ask to add REST server on port 6443 exception too.But this doesn't look proper as why an end user should accept the cerf for same domain twice. Also REST api server port can change.
Can we programmatically add exception for domain and both the ports in one shot? Ofcourse with the consent of the user. 3. Use a reverse proxy. But then its going to have memory footprint on our system. Also it will be time consuming.
Please suggest some options. How do I deal with it. Thank you

Related

WS Federation (single sign on) module - redirect issue when using SSL offloading

We have a site that we are trying to configure as a client in a SSO scenario, using WS Federation and SAML.
Our site sits behind a load balancer that is doing SSL offloading - the connection to the balancer is under https, but decrypted and forwarded (internally) to the actual site under http and port 81.
Somewhere the WS federation module is attempting to redirect us, but is building up the URL based on the port and incoming protocol to the website:
We request:
https://www.contoso.com/application
and are getting redirected to:
http://www.contoso.com:81/Application
Which doesn't work as the load balancer (correctly) won't respond on this port.
And it seems to be related to the casing of the virtual directory. Browsing to
https://www.contoso.com/Application
seems to work without issue.
(Note for completeness, attempting to browse to http://www.contoso.com/Application with no port will correctly redirect us to the SSL secured URL).
I am trying to find out:
a) Where this redirect is happening in the pipeline and
b) How to configure it to use the correct external address.
If anybody is able to point me in the right direction, I would very much appreciate it.
EDIT 14:19: Seems to be either the WsFederationAuthenticationModule or the SessionAuthenticationModule. These do a case sensitive comparison of the incoming url to what it expects and redirects otherwise:
https://brockallen.com/2013/02/08/beware-wif-session-authentication-module-sam-redirects-and-webapi-services-in-the-same-application/
So that seems to be happening, its a matter now of trying to get the site to behave nicely and redirect to the correct external url.
The following seems to be related and ultimately points to the culprit in the default CookieHandler:
Windows Identity Foundation and Port Forwarding
Looking at that code decompiled in VS, it compares HttpContext.Current.Request.Url against the targetUrl and will redirect to the expected 'cased' version otherwise (in our case including the errant port number).
It would seem that explicitly setting the path attribute of the cookie fixes this issue. Either an empty string or the virtual directory name seems to work:
<federationConfiguration>
<cookieHandler requireSsl="true" name="ContosoAuth" path="/Application/"/>
<wsFederation passiveRedirectEnabled="true" issuer="https://adfsSite" realm="https://www.contoso.com/Application/" reply="https://www.contoso.com/Application/Home" requireHttps="true"/>
</federationConfiguration>

Circumventing web security limitations between two sites on the same server

I'm using Eclipse to develop an app that consists of an Angular 2 front end and a Java REST back end.
For the front end, I'm using the Angular CLI plugin, which starts the app by issuing an ng serve command to the CLI. This command sets up an http server on port 4200.
For the back end, I'm using an in-company framework that launches in Jetty within Eclipse in port 8088.
While both these ports are configurable, by nature of the frameworks and plugins in use, they'll always be distinct.
Authentication works via an OAuth2 service that is also deployed to port 8088, as part of the framework. This service sets a cookie which certifies the browser session as authenticated. I have verified that this service works correctly by testing it against a Swagger instance of the REST API (also running in 8088 as part of the same framework).
The problem is that when the browser is aimed at the Angular 2 app on :4200, its internal REST API requests to :8088 aren't carrying the authentication cookie. Presumably, this is because of cross-site protection.
Is there any way for the app or the framework to tell the browser that these two "sites" are actually part of the same system?
Alternatively, if I have to configure the dev browser (Chrome) to work, I can live with that too. However, I've tried the --disable-web-security --user-data-dir recommendation, but the cookie still doesn't show up on the requests.
Lastly, I have Apache installed on the dev machine. If I can set up appropriate vhosts and use it as a proxy so that the browser thinks it's all the same, that would probably work too. It would just be a matter of intercepting all /swagger and /api requests and sending them to :8088, and all forwarding all other requests to :4200. However, I've been banging my head against mod_rewrite and mod_proxy and haven't been able to come up with anything that works.
I think what you're looking for is
withCredentials = true
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/XMLHttpRequest/withCredentials

While connecting two app servers with an ibm http webserver, we are able to successfully connect with only one server

While running two app servers (which has mobilefirst servers hosted 7.1 version) from ibm http server, only one server runs successfully on keeping only one of the Route attribute active in the plugin-cfg.xml of the http server. In the server which is not running, the following error is seen in the messages.log.
CWWKS4001E: The security token cannot be validated. This can be for the following reasons
1. The security token was generated on another server using different keys.
2. The token configuration or the security keys of the token service which created the token has been changed.
3. The token service which created the token is no longer available.
Kindly guide in resolving the error above.
Thanks.
Sounds like your two servers have not exchanged/shared LTPA keys and IHS and the WAS Plugin are a red herring.
http://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SSAW57_liberty/com.ibm.websphere.wlp.nd.doc/ae/twlp_sec_ltpa.html
http://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SSAW57_liberty/com.ibm.websphere.wlp.nd.doc/ae/twlp_sec_sso.html
Note: For SSO to work across Liberty servers, full profile servers, or both, set the following resources:
The servers must use the same LTPA keys and share the same user registry.
Sounds like communication issue between two servers. Are the inbound ports opened on another server to communicate with HTTP server? if they are opened use telnet and test whether both servers (HTTP and app server) are communicating with each other.
On HTTP Server, open command prompt and enter below command.
telnet <app server ip> <app server port>
If this is not successful then you need to open ports on app server.

Azure webapp startup host address 127.0.0.1:80 An attempt was made to access a socket in a way forbidden by its access permissions

I have an issue with appears to occur randomly (however i suspect it occurs when starting up the application or changing the application settings). The error I'm getting is as follows:
An attempt was made to access a socket in a way forbidden by its access permissions 127.0.0.1:80
The particular error in my case occurs when trying to generate a authentication token using Identity Framework by making requests to the following url:
https://domainname/api/token
Note that the api/token url is specified within the owin pipeline > OAuthAuthorizationServerOptions > TokenEndpointPath. This get set on startup of the application.
From my understanding 127.0.0.1:80 is azures localhost and is forbidden for us to access, i'm not sure why its defaulting to localhost as a domain, my educated guess is something is happening during the startup that's first setting the host to localhost.
My question is does anyone else get this on startup (while the site is warming up) for azure web apps?
Have i configured something incorrectly for me to be getting this behavior?
I know this is a little open ended but is there anything i can do to resolve this issue?
That is the well-known issue described in the official documentation. You may not to access not just a 127.0.0.1, but i suspect that the problem is even a little different - it looks like something is wrong with the :80 port usage. IIS use that port, and i would try to change the port used by your app.
However, from your description is not clear who is that guy who tries to do that - your app tries to do something with the 80 port, or the Azure WebApp functionality.
Please try to start from the eliminating the possibility of some renewing events by enabling Always On in the Azure Web App setting. It will make your web app always on, and will help to understand if that is caused by the service.

Can't Authenticate with Local .NET back-end

I've followed the guide:
Getting Started with Authentication with Mobile Services .NET for Windows Store
I'm able to run the service locally as long as I don't need to authenticate the user. I can also authenticate the user if I publish the service to Azure. But I want to be able to test and authenticate the user locally. How can this be done?
I'm using Live ID and I have the correct ClientID and ClientSecret set in the Web.config. When I attempt to call LoginAsync from the client the call fails with The request could not be completed. (Method Not Allowed)
** Update 2014-03-20 **
Based on the comments of Carlos and Henrik, I've updated my local service to look exactly like my server instance. I followed Scot Hanselmans excellent guide and now I have my service running locally on port 80 and port 443 with a completely valid SSL certificate. It's even running on the exact same https://xxxx.azure-mabile.net hostname.
With these changes, there is now no configuration difference whatsoever between running the app against my local machine or running it against Azure. I can go to https://xxxx.azure-mabile.net in the browser, get redirected to Live login, sign in, and get redirected back to the service successfully. In the browser it all works. However it still doesn't work in the app.
I attached the debugger, set CLR errors to "break when thrown" and I managed to trap the exception in the service. Here's what I see in the immediate window:
The Response property is not helpful. It does not provide any additional information about the problem.
The only thing that stands out to me is that the app is trying to do a POST to /login/microsoftaccount while the browser would normally be doing a GET at this address (then getting redirected).
** Update #2 2014-03-20 **
After following Henriks guide for remote debugging I was able to load symbols and get a tiny bit more information:
"An existing connection was forcibly closed by the remote host"
The error code is 10054 (WSAECONNRESET) Connection reset by peer.
It appears the Live Authentication server may be forcibly terminating the connection, but only when I'm authenticating with the app. Again, authentication within the browser is fine. This, combined with the fact that /login/microsoftaccount is a POST from the app seems to suggest there is a problem with the authentication token I'm getting back from LiveClient.LoginAsync. I'll do some more digging...
At the moment, it is set up so that you don't need authentication when running locally and access the service from localhost. In this case, anonymous access is let through (this is of course disabled while running in the cloud).
We don't really have a way for your to authenticate locally as redirect URIs won't work (they can't point to localhost as there is not way that Facebook, say, can resolve "localhost").
One option is that we somehow can mock the authentication locally and give you a token without connecting with the various identity providers. I am not sure exactly what that would look like but it is something we can consider.
Henrik
Did you perhaps set Mobile client app: Yes in your Live Connect project? I think that setting is meant to be used with the Live Connect SDK (client) flow, not the browser-based (server) flow. The client flow isn't supported yet with a .NET backend.
You also want to make sure you are using LoginAsync(MobileServiceAuthenticationProvider.MicrosoftAccount) on the client to trigger the server flow.