I'm trying to figure out how to use the Azure Graph API to query a user's full name (first and last) from a given username. I understand I can do this with the following Graph API call...
https://graph.windows.net/myorganization/users/{user_id}?api-version
However, I am not sure how I go about getting an access token to use with this, because this process will be called without a user logging in, which is usually how we obtain an access token.
Is there anyway I can pass a username/password to a given URL using cURL or something and obtain an access token that way, so it is done behind-the-scenes?
There are two main authentication methods which are supported by OAuth 2:
Authorization Code Grant Flow
Client Credentials Grant Flow
The first flow requires a user agent to be present to sign into the client service and results in a delegated token. The second method does not require a user to sign in, as it only authenticates using the client secret; this results in an app only token.
If you want to create a background service that captures data from the AAD Graph API, you can absolutely do this using the Client Credentials Grant Flow, which does not require a user to be present at any point during the authentication flow.
You simply need to configure your application to to have app only scopes. Read here: Permission scopes | Graph API concepts. App only scopes all require tenant administrators to consent to the application in order to get access to data.
Finally, I feel I must mention that there is another less used flow specified in the OAuth 2 spec: Resource Owner Password Credentials Grant. This flow specifies how a client application who has knowledge of a user's username and password could directly pass those parameters and get an access token on behalf of the user. However using this flow is not good practice at all.
The resource owner password credentials grant type is suitable in
cases where the resource owner has a trust relationship with the
client, such as the device operating system or a highly privileged
application. The authorization server should take special care when
enabling this grant type and only allow it when other flows are not
viable.
We support this in our V1 endpoint, but not in our new V2 endpoint. You can read this blog to learn more.
Related
In my application, users can perform some tasks without login via the keycloak. After performing the task, I want to get an access token from keycloak by giving the username of the user to automatically log the user into application. Assume the user has a registered user account in keycloak too. is there a way to obtain an access token with username only?
In my application, users can perform some tasks without login via the
keycloak.
Unless those users are authenticated via some external IDP and you have established a trust-relationship between your external IDP and Keycloak (have a look at this SO thread for potential solution for a similar question to yours) in short I would say no.
From auth0:
Access tokens are used in token-based authentication to allow an
application to access an API. The application receives an access token
after a user successfully authenticates and authorizes access, then
passes the access token as a credential when it calls the target API.
The point is exactly that, exchanging some kind of authentication information (.e.g., username and password, or client secret) for a token that proves to your application that the user has authenticated successfully. Otherwise, someone could just enter your system as long as it had access to a username.
It sounds to me that you want to use the access token has means to pass information between Keycloak and your app, for that you have for sure better options.
I am trying to understand the use of access tokens to authorize an API fronted by API Gateway.
My current understanding of the process is as follows:
After setting up a Cognito User Pool, I can define a resource server and associated scopes (e.g. https://wibble-api.com/read, https://wibble-api.com/full).
Then, I can select the allowed custom scopes for a user pool app client.
In AWS Gateway, I can create a Cognito Authorizer to authorize incoming requests.
For each AWS Gateway resource, I can go into the Method Request and select the Cognito Authorizer and determine which OAuth scopes are necessary in order to be able to execute the API method e.g. I can enter https://wibble-api.com/read, https://wibble-api.com/full to indicate that either of those two scopes are sufficient to be allowed to execute the API resource.
When using the hosted UI, the scope parameter will include all of the allowed scopes configured for that app client, and the returned access token (if using implicit grant) will contain those scopes as part of the JWT.
What I don't understand is, I have what must be a very common scenario where I want to be able to give the read-only scope to, say, a user that hasn't paid for the service, and the full scope to a user that has paid. Yet it looks like I would need to have two separate app clients if I'm going to be using the Hosted UI, because there doesn't seem to be a way to return different scopes depending on, say, what group the user has been assigned, or some other metadata in their user profile such as department, etc. I won't know what sort of user they are until after they have been authenticated, but I still need to enter the exact scope when I am authenticating. Is there a solution for this, please?
I have a question regarding Keycloak and obtaining an Access Token.
Our setup is as follows:
· users are created and maintained in Keycloak
· resources, policies and permissions are also maintained in Keycloak
Our use case is:
As a third party application, I want to obtain authorization information (e.g. resource- and scope-based permissions) for a specific user by only providing the username to Keycloak, so I can allow or prohibit further actions.
To be more specific:
In our application the need to validate each request to other services based on the access token.But we have only the user name with us.
The question is now:
> How can we obtain an access token for the user by only knowing the username ?
>
Is there a solution to obtain an access token for such a user?
You don't specify in your question if the current user is logged in. Are you validating user specific actions, or you want to retrieve user roles for the application instead?
The user is logged in and he is performing some action
I suppose you're using some keycloak adapter. Then just retrieve the session object and you should have the extra info somewhere in there.
If not, you can just parse the request yourself. When using OpenId Connect, the access token is always sent for each of the requests, in the Authorization header. The token is base64 encoded, you can decode the token yourself.
The application is performing some action for some registered user, without him logged in
User access tokens are meant to provide permissions for users. As you say in your question: As a third party application, I want... so here you are not acting as a logged user, but as an application, so you need to go with client credentials instead. Just give the client permissions to list all the users and their roles (probably it's enough with the view-users role, see the link below) and log in with client credentials grant. Then you can handle fine grained permissions in your application business logic.
See also:
Keycloak Client Credentials Flow Clarification
Keycloak spring security client credential grant
How to get Keycloak users via REST without admin account
For those who really needs to impersonate a user from a client, there is a new RFC for this : token-echange.
Keycloak loosely implement it at the time of this answer
See particularly https://www.keycloak.org/docs/latest/securing_apps/#direct-naked-impersonation
I have a scenario where a user has logged into to a web application (authenticated with OpenID Connect) and then needs to access data from a separate REST service.
The REST service needs to determine whether or not the user has permission to access the requested data, but if the user does have permission, then it should grant authorization to the web application without requiring the user to interact with the UI.
Essentially, what I need is a two-legged OAuth solution where the client/relying party is fully trusted but the user, who's already been authenticated, is not.
Going in, I assumed that OAuth could accommodate these requirements, but none of the grant types seem to match the requirements:
Authorization Code is the opposite of what I need, as the user is pretty much automatically trusted but the client is not, requiring that the user grant access to the client via a web form.
Client Credentials trusts the client (which is what I need) but does not give the service an opportunity to determine if the user has permission to the resource (user auth tokens are not passed to the service, making all requests essentially "anonymous").
ROPC (Resource Owner Password Credentials) would appear to be the only option, but requires the web application to know and possibly store the users' login credentials (which is untenable).
Is this a gap in OAuth? Or am I misunderstanding these grant types? If OAuth can't support this scenario, is there another widely adopted open standard that I've missed?
Of note: I only own/control the web application, while the customers (all of which are businesses) own/control both the authentication servers and the REST services. Therefore, a shared, non-proprietary standard is necessary so that our customers will know how to configure their services (IBM, Microsoft, whatever) and so that I'll know how to pass along any authentication tokens, etc.
I think this is possible using normal OAuth2 flows. You have your web application use the code authorization grant to get a token to call the API on behalf of the user.
Your web application makes the call to the API attaching the JWT token in the Authorization header. If the REST service determines the user does not have permission to access the resource, it returns a 401 Unauthorized HTTP response code.
Your web application handles the 401 response by going back to the authorization server and using the client credentials grant to get an access token to call the REST API on behalf of the client itself.
As both grants allow you to get a refresh token, you should be able to switch between access tokens easily.
If there is no trust relationship between the web application and the REST service, there's no way around using the Authorization Code grant since the user needs to be involved anyhow to allow the web application to make the call on behalf of the user.
If there is a trust relationship between web application and REST service you should be able to use the regular OpenID Connect flow to get an access token to the web application at login time that can also be used in calls towards the REST service.
You may pass on the user information as part of a JWT (i.e. a structured) access token that is signed by the web application itself or the OP; that would be OAuth 2.0 compliant. See https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6749#section-1.4 and May an OAuth 2.0 access token be a JWT?.
I am building a messaging application using BackboneJS which naturally persists using a REST interface.
The issue I'm having is that I don't know how to restrict what data a user can pull back from the API. For instance a call to /messages would, at the moment, return messages for ALL users. I would like that resource to only return messages belonging to the current user.
Searching online seems to indicate that oAuth2 is the best way to solve this issue but all the tutorials talk about been redirected to another place to confirm access and retrieve an access token.
Given that my users will have already logged into the message application and that the REST API is actually part of the same application I don't like the idea of asking the users to confirm that my own app can access my own API.
Is there a better way?
oAuth2 is probably your best bet -- you definitely don't want to roll your own security. However, the flavor of oAuth2 you are thinking of is probably not what you want.
oAuth2 has four different flavors, known as authorization grant types:
Authorization code: This is the type you are thinking about. It is often called three-legged oAuth, because there are three actors in the token granting process (app, resource owner, and user). The app asks the user whether it is ok for the resource owner to give specific type(s) of access to the resource. It is a rather complex process that allows the validation of user credentials without allowing the app access to them. This is not necessary in your case, since you are both the app and resource owner.
Client credentials: This is a method for authorizing a client application with the server. It does not use user credentials at all. If you completely trust your client application (all client applications) to correctly protect user data and not expose other user's data to the user using the app, or you are providing only non-user data via the API (for example, map data or catalog data), you might be able to use this fairly simple type of oAuth2. However, if you want to be vigilant in protecting user data (and not allow apps to get to the data without the user providing credentials), you might not use this one.
Resource owner password credentials: The username and password of the user is passed via https to your backend server, which authenticates and authorizes access by providing an access token. The access token can then be passed with each call, and it remains valid for accessing the backend until a configurable time period has elapsed. This means that someone intercepting the token could only use it successfully for a limited amount of time (some number of minutes, generally). The interceptor would not know the username and password of the user. In addition, you can supply the app with a refresh token, which can be used to get a new access token once it has expired (until the refresh token expires -- usually with a significantly longer expiration date). Since the credentials are not passed across the wire often (and must only be passed encrypted), this is often the best solution for protecting user credentials and not requiring the user to pass them in often (good user experience). Implementation is much simpler than for the authorization code grant type.
Implicit: This is the least secure method -- no credentials are validated server side at all. This is usually used for client side scripting languages where credentials cannot be stored safely. If you are worried about security at all, avoid this type if possible.
So, check out OAuth 2.0, and look for the resource owner password credentials grant type.