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• Using Robocopy to Backup to a NAS

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  When using Robocopy to backup data to a NAS, I always had the problem that most files were considered “old” on the NAS device (even if they weren’t) – that kind of defeats the purpose of the /MIR switch. Today I finally decided to search for a solution – and it was remarkably easy. Most NAS devices use Samba or something similar to provide “NTFS shares” – but most of them only implement FAT-style file times with a 2-second-granularity. You can force robocopy to use FAT file time as well using the /FFT switch. Now my backup script works again as expected. See also here.

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• Mixing Forms and Token Authentication in a single ASP.NET Application (the Details)

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  The scenario described in my last post works because of the design around HTTP modules in ASP.NET. Authentication related modules (like Forms authentication and WIF WS-Fed/Sessions) typically subscribe to three events in the pipeline – AuthenticateRequest/PostAuthenticateRequest for pre-processing and EndRequest for post-processing (like making redirects to a login page). In the pre-processing stage it is the modules’ job to determine the identity of the client based on incoming HTTP details (like a header, cookie, form post) and set HttpContext.User and Thread.CurrentPrincipal. The actual page (in the ExecuteHandler event) “sees” the identity that the last module has set. So in our case there are three modules in effect: FormsAuthenticationModule (AuthenticateRequest, EndRequest) WSFederationAuthenticationModule (AuthenticateRequest, PostAuthenticateRequest, EndRequest) SessionAuthenticationModule (AuthenticateRequest, PostAuthenticateRequest) So let’s have a look at the different scenario we have when mixing Forms auth and WS-Federation. Anoymous request to unprotected resource This is the easiest case. Since there is no WIF session cookie or a FormsAuth cookie, these modules do nothing. The WSFed module creates an anonymous ClaimsPrincipal and calls the registered ClaimsAuthenticationManager (if any) to transform it. The result (by default an anonymous ClaimsPrincipal) gets set. Anonymous request to FormsAuth protected resource This is the scenario where an anonymous user tries to access a FormsAuth protected resource for the first time. The principal is anonymous and before the page gets rendered, the Authorize attribute kicks in. The attribute determines that the user needs authentication and therefor sets a 401 status code and ends the request. Now execution jumps to the EndRequest event, where the FormsAuth module takes over. The module then converts the 401 to a redirect (302) to the forms login page. If authentication is successful, the login page sets the FormsAuth cookie.   FormsAuth authenticated request to a FormsAuth protected resource Now a FormsAuth cookie is present, which gets validated by the FormsAuth module. This cookie gets turned into a GenericPrincipal/FormsIdentity combination. The WS-Fed module turns the principal into a ClaimsPrincipal and calls the registered ClaimsAuthenticationManager. The outcome of that gets set on the context. Anonymous request to STS protected resource This time the anonymous user tries to access an STS protected resource (a controller decorated with the RequireTokenAuthentication attribute). The attribute determines that the user needs STS authentication by checking the authentication type on the current principal. If this is not Federation, the redirect to the STS will be made. After successful authentication at the STS, the STS posts the token back to the application (using WS-Federation syntax). Postback from STS authentication After the postback, the WS-Fed module finds the token response and validates the contained token. If successful, the token gets transformed by the ClaimsAuthenticationManager, and the outcome is a) stored in a session cookie, and b) set on the context. STS authenticated request to an STS protected resource This time the WIF Session authentication module kicks in because it can find the previously issued session cookie. The module re-hydrates the ClaimsPrincipal from the cookie and sets it.     FormsAuth and STS authenticated request to a protected resource This is kind of an odd case – e.g. the user first authenticated using Forms and after that using the STS. This time the FormsAuth module does its work, and then afterwards the session module stomps over the context with the session principal. In other words, the STS identity wins.   What about roles? A common way to set roles in ASP.NET is to use the role manager feature. There is a corresponding HTTP module for that (RoleManagerModule) that handles PostAuthenticateRequest. Does this collide with the above combinations? No it doesn’t! When the WS-Fed module turns existing principals into a ClaimsPrincipal (like it did with the FormsIdentity), it also checks for RolePrincipal (which is the principal type created by role manager), and turns the roles in role claims. Nice! But as you can see in the last scenario above, this might result in unnecessary work, so I would rather recommend consolidating all role work (and other claims transformations) into the ClaimsAuthenticationManager. In there you can check for the authentication type of the incoming principal and act accordingly. HTH

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• Identity in .NET 4.5&ndash;Part 2: Claims Transformation in ASP.NET (Beta 1)

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  In my last post I described how every identity in .NET 4.5 is now claims-based. If you are coming from WIF you might think, great – how do I transform those claims? Sidebar: What is claims transformation? One of the most essential features of WIF (and .NET 4.5) is the ability to transform credentials (or tokens) to claims. During that process the “low level” token details are turned into claims. An example would be a Windows token – it contains things like the name of the user and to which groups he belongs to. That information will be surfaced as claims of type Name and GroupSid. Forms users will be represented as a Name claim (all the other claims that WIF provided for FormsIdentity are gone in 4.5). The issue here is, that your applications typically don’t care about those low level details, but rather about “what’s the purchase limit of alice”. The process of turning the low level claims into application specific ones is called claims transformation. In pre-claims times this would have been done by a combination of Forms Authentication extensibility, role manager and maybe ASP.NET profile. With claims transformation all your identity gathering code is in one place (and the outcome can be cached in a single place as opposed to multiple ones). The structural class to do claims transformation is called ClaimsAuthenticationManager. This class has two purposes – first looking at the incoming (low level) principal and making sure all required information about the user is present. This is your first chance to reject a request. And second – modeling identity information in a way it is relevant for the application (see also here). This class gets called (when present) during the pipeline when using WS-Federation. But not when using the standard .NET principals. I am not sure why – maybe because it is beta 1. Anyhow, a number of people asked me about it, and the following is a little HTTP module that brings that feature back in 4.5. public class ClaimsTransformationHttpModule : IHttpModule {     public void Dispose()     { }     public void Init(HttpApplication context)     {         context.PostAuthenticateRequest += Context_PostAuthenticateRequest;     }     void Context_PostAuthenticateRequest(object sender, EventArgs e)     {         var context = ((HttpApplication)sender).Context;         // no need to call transformation if session already exists         if (FederatedAuthentication.SessionAuthenticationModule != null &&             FederatedAuthentication.SessionAuthenticationModule.ContainsSessionTokenCookie(context.Request.Cookies))         {             return;         }         var transformer = FederatedAuthentication.FederationConfiguration.IdentityConfiguration.ClaimsAuthenticationManager;         if (transformer != null)         {             var transformedPrincipal = transformer.Authenticate(context.Request.RawUrl, context.User as ClaimsPrincipal);             context.User = transformedPrincipal;             Thread.CurrentPrincipal = transformedPrincipal;         }     } } HTH

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• Thinktecture IdentityServer Azure Edition RC

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  I found some time over the holidays to finalize the Azure edition of IdentityServer. http://identityserver.codeplex.com/releases/view/81206 The biggest difference to the on-premise version (and earlier Azure betas) is, that by default IdSrv now uses Azure Storage for all data storage (configuration & user data). This means that there is no need anymore for SQL Azure (which is still supported out of the box – just not the default anymore). The download includes a readme file with setup instructions. In a nutshell: Create a new hosted service and upload your certificates Modify the service configuration file in the download to your needs (signing cert, connection strings to storage…) Deploy the package via the portal or other tools Use the new Powershell scripts to add users If you encounter any problem, please give me feedback.

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• Switching to WIF SessionMode in ASP.NET

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  To make it short: to switch to SessionMode (cache to server) in ASP.NET, you need to handle an event and set a property. Sounds easy – but you need to set it in the right place. The most popular blog post about this topic is from Vittorio. He advises to set IsSessionMode in WSFederationAuthenticationModule_SessionSecurityTokenCreated. Now there were some open questions on forum, like this one. So I decided to try it myself – and indeed it didn’t work for me as well. So I digged a little deeper, and after some trial and error I found the right place (in global.asax): void WSFederationAuthenticationModule_SecurityTokenValidated( object sender, SecurityTokenValidatedEventArgs e) {     FederatedAuthentication.SessionAuthenticationModule.IsSessionMode = true; } Not sure if anything has changed since Vittorio’s post – but this worked for me. While playing around, I also wrote a little diagnostics tool that allows you to look into the session cookie (for educational purposes). Will post that soon. HTH

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• Weird 302 Redirects in Windows Azure

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  In IdentityServer I don’t use Forms Authentication but the session facility from WIF. That also means that I implemented my own redirect logic to a login page when needed. To achieve that I turned off the built-in authentication (authenticationMode="none") and added an Application_EndRequest handler that checks for 401s and does the redirect to my sign in route. The redirect only happens for web pages and not for web services. This all works fine in local IIS – but in the Azure Compute Emulator and Windows Azure many of my tests are failing and I suddenly see 302 status codes where I expected 401s (the web service calls). After some debugging kung-fu and enabling FREB I found out, that there is still the Forms Authentication module in effect turning 401s into 302s. My EndRequest handler never sees a 401 (despite turning forms auth off in config)! Not sure what’s going on (I suspect some inherited configuration that gets in my way here). Even if it shouldn’t be necessary, an explicit removal of the forms auth module from the module list fixed it, and I now have the same behavior in local IIS and Windows Azure. strange. <modules>   <remove name="FormsAuthentication" /> </modules> HTH Update: Brock ran into the same issue, and found the real reason. Read here.

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• Windows Phone 7 and WS-Trust

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  A question that I often hear these days is: “Can I connect a Windows Phone 7 device to my existing enterprise services?”. Well – since most of my services are typically issued token based, this requires support for WS-Trust and WS-Security on the client. Let’s see what’s necessary to write a WP7 client for this scenario. First I converted the Silverlight library that comes with the Identity Training Kit to WP7. Some things are not supported in WP7 WCF (like message inspectors and some client runtime hooks) – but besides that this was a simple copy+paste job. Very nice! Next I used the WSTrustClient to request tokens from my STS: private WSTrustClient GetWSTrustClient() {     var client = new WSTrustClient(         new WSTrustBindingUsernameMixed(),         new EndpointAddress("https://identity.thinktecture.com/…/issue.svc/mixed/username"),         new UsernameCredentials(_txtUserName.Text, _txtPassword.Password));     return client; } private void _btnLogin_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) {     _client = GetWSTrustClient();       var rst = new RequestSecurityToken(WSTrust13Constants.KeyTypes.Bearer)     {         AppliesTo = new EndpointAddress("https://identity.thinktecture.com/rp/")     };       _client.IssueCompleted += client_IssueCompleted;     _client.IssueAsync(rst); } I then used the returned RSTR to talk to the WCF service. Due to a bug in the combination of the Silverlight library and the WP7 runtime – symmetric key tokens seem to have issues currently. Bearer tokens work fine. So I created the following binding for the WCF endpoint specifically for WP7. <customBinding>   <binding name="mixedNoSessionBearerBinary">     <security authenticationMode="IssuedTokenOverTransport"               messageSecurityVersion="WSSecurity11 WSTrust13 WSSecureConversation13 WSSecurityPolicy12 BasicSecurityProfile10">       <issuedTokenParameters keyType="BearerKey" />     </security>     <binaryMessageEncoding />     <httpsTransport/>   </binding> </customBinding> The binary encoding is not necessary, but will speed things up a little for mobile devices. I then call the service with the following code: private void _btnCallService_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) {     var binding = new CustomBinding(         new BinaryMessageEncodingBindingElement(),         new HttpsTransportBindingElement());       _proxy = new StarterServiceContractClient(         binding,         new EndpointAddress("…"));     using (var scope = new OperationContextScope(_proxy.InnerChannel))     {         OperationContext.Current.OutgoingMessageHeaders.Add(new IssuedTokenHeader(Globals.RSTR));         _proxy.GetClaimsAsync();     } } works. download

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• Modifying the SL/WIF Integration Bits to support Issued Token Credentials

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  The SL/WIF integration code that ships with the Identity Training Kit only supports Windows and UserName credentials to request tokens from an STS. This is fine for simple single STS scenarios (like a single IdP). But the more common pattern for claims/token based systems is to split the STS roles into an IdP and a Resource STS (or whatever you wanna call it). In this case, the 2nd leg requires to present the issued token from the 1st leg – this is not directly supported by the bits. But they can be easily modified to accomplish this. The Credential Fist we need a class that represents an issued token credential. Here we store the RSTR that got returned from the client to IdP request: public class IssuedTokenCredentials : IRequestCredentials {     public string IssuedToken { get; set; }     public RequestSecurityTokenResponse RSTR { get; set; }     public IssuedTokenCredentials(RequestSecurityTokenResponse rstr)     {         RSTR = rstr;         IssuedToken = rstr.RequestedSecurityToken.RawToken;     } } The Binding Next we need a binding to be used with issued token credential requests. This assumes you have an STS endpoint for mixed mode security with SecureConversation turned off. public class WSTrustBindingIssuedTokenMixed : WSTrustBinding {     public WSTrustBindingIssuedTokenMixed()     {         this.Elements.Add( new HttpsTransportBindingElement() );     } } WSTrustClient The last step is to make some modifications to WSTrustClient to make it issued token aware. In the constructor you have to check for the credential type, and if it is an issued token, store it away. private RequestSecurityTokenResponse _rstr; public WSTrustClient( Binding binding, EndpointAddress remoteAddress, IRequestCredentials credentials )     : base( binding, remoteAddress ) {     if ( null == credentials )     {         throw new ArgumentNullException( "credentials" );     }     if (credentials is UsernameCredentials)     {         UsernameCredentials usernname = credentials as UsernameCredentials;         base.ChannelFactory.Credentials.UserName.UserName = usernname.Username;         base.ChannelFactory.Credentials.UserName.Password = usernname.Password;     }     else if (credentials is IssuedTokenCredentials)     {         var issuedToken = credentials as IssuedTokenCredentials;         _rstr = issuedToken.RSTR;     }     else if (credentials is WindowsCredentials)     { }     else     {         throw new ArgumentOutOfRangeException("credentials", "type was not expected");     } } Next – when WSTrustClient constructs the RST message to the STS, the issued token header must be embedded when needed: private Message BuildRequestAsMessage( RequestSecurityToken request ) {     var message = Message.CreateMessage( base.Endpoint.Binding.MessageVersion ?? MessageVersion.Default,       IssueAction,       (BodyWriter) new WSTrustRequestBodyWriter( request ) );     if (_rstr != null)     {         message.Headers.Add(new IssuedTokenHeader(_rstr));     }     return message; } HTH

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• Access Control Service v2: Registering Web Identities in your Applications [code]

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  You can download the full solution here. The relevant parts in the sample are: Configuration I use the standard WIF configuration with passive redirect. This kicks automatically in, whenever authorization fails in the application (e.g. when the user tries to get to an area the requires authentication or needs registration). Checking and transforming incoming claims In the claims authentication manager we have to deal with two situations. Users that are authenticated but not registered, and registered (and authenticated) users. Registered users will have claims that come from the application domain, the claims of unregistered users come directly from ACS and get passed through. In both case a claim for the unique user identifier will be generated. The high level logic is as follows: public override IClaimsPrincipal Authenticate( string resourceName, IClaimsPrincipal incomingPrincipal) {     // do nothing if anonymous request     if (!incomingPrincipal.Identity.IsAuthenticated)     {         return base.Authenticate(resourceName, incomingPrincipal);     } string uniqueId = GetUniqueId(incomingPrincipal);     // check if user is registered     RegisterModel data;     if (Repository.TryGetRegisteredUser(uniqueId, out data))     {         return CreateRegisteredUserPrincipal(uniqueId, data);     }     // authenticated by ACS, but not registered     // create unique id claim     incomingPrincipal.Identities[0].Claims.Add( new Claim(Constants.ClaimTypes.Id, uniqueId));     return incomingPrincipal; } User Registration The registration page is handled by a controller with the [Authorize] attribute. That means you need to authenticate before you can register (crazy eh? ;). The controller then fetches some claims from the identity provider (if available) to pre-fill form fields. After successful registration, the user is stored in the local data store and a new session token gets issued. This effectively replaces the ACS claims with application defined claims without requiring the user to re-signin. Authorization All pages that should be only reachable by registered users check for a special application defined claim that only registered users have. You can nicely wrap that in a custom attribute in MVC: [RegisteredUsersOnly] public ActionResult Registered() {     return View(); } HTH

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• Moving StarterSTS to the (Azure) Cloud

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  Quite some people asked me about an Azure version of StarterSTS. While I kinda knew what I had to do to make the move, I couldn’t find the time. Until recently. This blog post briefly documents the necessary changes and design decisions for the next version of StarterSTS which will work both on-premise and on Azure. Provider Fortunately StarterSTS is already based on the idea of “providers”. Authentication, roles and claims generation is based on the standard ASP.NET provider infrastructure. This makes the migration to different data stores less painful. In my case I simply moved the ASP.NET provider database to SQL Azure and still use the standard SQL Server based membership, roles and profile provider. In addition StarterSTS has its own providers to abstract resource access for certificates, relying party registration, client certificate registration and delegation. So I only had to provide new implementations. Signing and SSL keys now go in the Azure certificate store and user mappings (client certificates and delegation settings) have been moved to Azure table storage. The one thing I didn’t anticipate when I originally wrote StarterSTS was the need to also encapsulate configuration. Currently configuration is “locked” to the standard .NET configuration system. The new version will have a pluggable SettingsProvider with versions for .NET configuration as well as Azure service configuration. If you want to externalize these settings into e.g. a database, it is now just a matter of supplying a corresponding provider. Moving between the on-premise and Azure version will be just a matter of using different providers. URL Handling Another thing that’s substantially different on Azure (and load balanced scenarios in general) is the handling of URLs. In farm scenarios, the standard APIs like ASP.NET’s Request.Url return the current (internal) machine name, but you typically need the address of the external facing load balancer. There’s a hotfix for WCF 3.5 (included in v4) that fixes this for WCF metadata. This was accomplished by using the HTTP Host header to generate URLs instead of the local machine name. I now use the same approach for generating WS-Federation metadata as well as information card files. New Features I introduced a cache provider. Since we now have slightly more expensive lookups (e.g. relying party data from table storage), it makes sense to cache certain data in the front end. The default implementation uses the ASP.NET web cache and can be easily extended to use products like memcached or AppFabric Caching. Starting with the relying party provider, I now also provide a read/write interface. This allows building management interfaces on top of this provider. I also include a (very) simple web page that allows working with the relying party provider data. I guess I will use the same approach for other providers in the future as well. I am also doing some work on the tracing and health monitoring area. Especially important for the Azure version. Stay tuned.

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• StarterSTS 1.1 CTP &ndash; ActAs Support

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  Due to popular demand, I added identity delegation (aka ActAs) support to StarterSTS. To give this feature a try, first download the new bits and add a enableActAs = true to startersts.config. You then have to configure which user account is allowed to delegate, as well as the target realm to delegate to. This is done in usermappings.config, e.g.: <userMappings xmlns="http://www.thinktecture.com/configuration/usermappings">     <user name="middletier">       <mappings>         <mapping type="ActAs"                  value="https://server/service.svc" />       </mappings>     </user>   </users> </userMappings> Please use the forum for any feedback. thanks!

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• Access Control Service V2 and Facebook Integration

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  I haven’t been blogging about ACS2 in the past because it was not released and I was kinda busy with other stuff. Needless to say I spent quite some time with ACS2 already (both in customer situations as well as in the classroom and at conferences). ACS2 rocks! It’s IMHO the most interesting and useful (and most unique) part of the whole Azure offering! For my talk at VSLive yesterday, I played a little with the Facebook integration. See Steve’s post on the general setup. One claim that you get back from Facebook is an access token. This token can be used to directly talk to Facebook and query additional properties about the user. Which properties you have access to depends on which authorization your Facebook app requests. You can specify this in the identity provider registration page for Facebook in ACS2. In my example I added access to the home town property of the user. Once you have the access token from ACS you can use e.g. the Facebook SDK from Codeplex (also available via NuGet) to talk to the Facebook API. In my sample I used the WIF ClaimsAuthenticationManager to add the additional home town claim. This is not necessarily how you would do it in a “real” app. Depends ;) The code looks like this (sample code!): public class ClaimsTransformer : ClaimsAuthenticationManager {     public override IClaimsPrincipal Authenticate( string resourceName, IClaimsPrincipal incomingPrincipal)     {         if (!incomingPrincipal.Identity.IsAuthenticated)         {             return base.Authenticate(resourceName, incomingPrincipal);         }         string accessToken;         if (incomingPrincipal.TryGetClaimValue( "http://www.facebook.com/claims/AccessToken", out accessToken))         {             try             {                 var home = GetFacebookHometown(accessToken);                 if (!string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(home))                 {                     incomingPrincipal.Identities[0].Claims.Add( new Claim("http://www.facebook.com/claims/HomeTown", home));                 }             }             catch { }         }         return incomingPrincipal;     }      private string GetFacebookHometown(string token)     {         var client = new FacebookClient(token);         dynamic parameters = new ExpandoObject();         parameters.fields = "hometown";         dynamic result = client.Get("me", parameters);         return result.hometown.name;     } }  

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• Access Control Service: Handling Errors

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  Another common problem with external authentication is how to deal with sign in errors. In active federation like WS-Trust there are well defined SOAP faults to communicate problem to a client. But with web applications, the error information is typically generated and displayed on the external sign in page. The relying party does not know about the error, nor can it help the user in any way. The Access Control Service allows to post sign in errors to a specified page. You setup this page in the relying party registration. That means that whenever an error occurs in ACS, the error information gets packaged up as a JSON string and posted to the page specified. This way you get structued error information back into you application so you can display a friendlier error message or log the error. I added error page support to my ACS2 sample, which can be downloaded here. How to turn the JSON error into CLR types The JSON schema is reasonably simple, the following class turns the JSON into an object: [DataContract] public class AcsErrorResponse {     [DataMember(Name = "context", Order = 1)]     public string Context { get; set; }     [DataMember(Name = "httpReturnCode", Order = 2)]     public string HttpReturnCode { get; set; }     [DataMember(Name = "identityProvider", Order = 3)]        public string IdentityProvider { get; set; }     [DataMember(Name = "timeStamp", Order = 4)]     public string TimeStamp { get; set; }     [DataMember(Name = "traceId", Order = 5)]     public string TraceId { get; set; }     [DataMember(Name = "errors", Order = 6)]     public List<AcsError> Errors { get; set; }     public static AcsErrorResponse Read(string json)     {         var serializer = new DataContractJsonSerializer( typeof(AcsErrorResponse));         var response = serializer.ReadObject( new MemoryStream(Encoding.Default.GetBytes(json))) as AcsErrorResponse;         if (response != null)         {             return response;         }         else         {             throw new ArgumentException("json");         }     } } [DataContract] public class AcsError {     [DataMember(Name = "errorCode", Order = 1)]     public string Code { get; set; }             [DataMember(Name = "errorMessage", Order = 2)]     public string Message { get; set; } } Retrieving the error information You then need to provide a page that takes the POST and deserializes the information. My sample simply fills a view that shows all information. But that’s for diagnostic/sample purposes only. You shouldn’t show the real errors to your end users. public class SignInErrorController : Controller {     [HttpPost]     public ActionResult Index()     {         var errorDetails = Request.Form["ErrorDetails"];         var response = AcsErrorResponse.Read(errorDetails);         return View("SignInError", response);     } } Also keep in mind that the error page is an anonymous page and that you are taking external input. So all the usual input validation applies.

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• Small (and fixed) Bug in IdentityServer v1.0

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  It was brought to my attention that fedutil does not work anymore with IdSrv v1 metadata. And I can confirm that. The reason for this bug is my recent change to the XmlWriter factory methods which have a different default behavior when it comes to encoding. Since there were only 20 downloads so far – I fixed the bug in-place (shame on me). So when you are one of the early adopters and run into this problem – just re-download IdSrv ;) HTH

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• Identity in .NET 4.5&ndash;Part 3: (Breaking) changes

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  I recently started porting a private build of Thinktecture.IdentityModel to .NET 4.5 and noticed a number of changes. The good news is that I can delete large parts of my library because many features are now in the box. Along the way I found some other nice additions. ClaimsIdentity now has methods to query the claims collection, e.g. HasClaim(), FindFirst(), FindAll(). ClaimsPrincipal has those methods as well. But they work across all contained identities. Nice! ClaimsPrincipal.Current retrieves the ClaimsPrincipal from Thread.CurrentPrincipal. Combined with the above changes, no casting necessary anymore. SecurityTokenHandler now has read and write methods that work directly with strings. This makes it much easier to deal with non-XML tokens like SWT or JWT. A new session security token handler that uses the ASP.NET machine key to protect the cookie. This makes it easier to get started in web farm scenarios. No need for a custom service host factory or the federation behavior anymore. WCF can be switched into “WIF mode” with the useIdentityConfiguration switch (odd name though). Tooling has become better and the new test STS makes it very easy to get started. On the other hand – and that was kind of expected – to bring claims into the core framework, there are also some breaking changes for WIF code. If you want to migrate (and I would recommend that), most changes to your code are mechanical. The following is a brain dump of the changes I encountered. Assembly Microsoft.IdentityModel is gone. The new functionality is now in mscorlib, System.IdentityModel(.Services) and System.ServiceModel. All the namespaces have changed as well. No IClaimsPrincipal and IClaimsIdentity anymore. Configuration section has been split into <system.identityModel /> and <system.identityModel.services />. WCF configuration story has changed as well. Claim.ClaimType is now Claim.Type. ClaimCollection is now IEnumerable<Claim>. IsSessionMode is now IsReferenceMode. Bootstrap token handling is different now. ClaimsPrincipalHttpModule is gone. This is not really needed anymore, apart from maybe claims transformation (see here). Various factory methods on ClaimsPrincipal are gone (e.g. ClaimsPrincipal.CreateFromIdentity()). SecurityTokenHandler.ValidateToken now returns a ReadOnlyCollection<ClaimsIdentity>. Some lower level helper classes are gone or internal now (e.g. KeyGenerator). The WCF WS-Trust bindings are gone. I think this is a pity. They were *really* useful when doing work with WSTrustChannelFactory. Since WIF is part of the Windows operating system and also supported in future versions of .NET, there is no urgent need to migrate to the 4.5 claims model. But obviously, going forward, at some point you want to make the move.

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• Access Control Service: Programmatically Accessing Identity Provider Information and Redirect URLs

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  In my last post I showed you that different redirect URLs trigger different response behaviors in ACS. Where did I actually get these URLs from? The answer is simple – I asked ACS ;) ACS publishes a JSON encoded feed that contains information about all registered identity providers, their display names, logos and URLs. With that information you can easily write a discovery client which, at the very heart, does this: public void GetAsync(string protocol) {     var url = string.Format( "https://{0}.{1}/v2/metadata/IdentityProviders.js?protocol={2}&realm={3}&version=1.0",         AcsNamespace,         "accesscontrol.windows.net",         protocol,         Realm);     _client.DownloadStringAsync(new Uri(url)); } The protocol can be one of these two values: wsfederation or javascriptnotify. Based on that value, the returned JSON will contain the URLs for either the redirect or notify method. Now with the help of some JSON serializer you can turn that information into CLR objects and display them in some sort of selection dialog. The next post will have a demo and source code.

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• Logging Output of Azure Startup Tasks to the Event Log

  - by Your DisplayName here!

  This can come in handy when troubleshooting: using System; using System.Diagnostics; using System.Text;   namespace Thinktecture.Azure {     class Program     {         static EventLog _eventLog = new EventLog("Application", ".", "StartupTaskShell");         static StringBuilder _out = new StringBuilder(64);         static StringBuilder _err = new StringBuilder(64);           static int Main(string[] args)         {             if (args.Length != 1)             {                 Console.WriteLine("Invalid arguments: " + String.Join(", ", args));                 _eventLog.WriteEntry("Invalid arguments: " + String.Join(", ", args));                                 return -1;             }               var task = args[0];               ProcessStartInfo info = new ProcessStartInfo()             {                 FileName = task,                 WorkingDirectory = Environment.CurrentDirectory,                 UseShellExecute = false,                 ErrorDialog = false,                 CreateNoWindow = true,                 RedirectStandardOutput = true,                 RedirectStandardError = true             };               var process = new Process();             process.StartInfo = info;               process.OutputDataReceived += (s, e) =>                 {                     if (e.Data != null)                     {                         _out.AppendLine(e.Data);                     }                 };             process.ErrorDataReceived += (s, e) =>                 {                     if (e.Data != null)                     {                         _err.AppendLine(e.Data);                     }                 };               process.Start();             process.BeginOutputReadLine();             process.BeginErrorReadLine();             process.WaitForExit();               var outString = _out.ToString();             var errString = _err.ToString();               if (!string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(outString))             {                 outString = String.Format("Standard Out for {0}\n\n{1}", task, outString);                 _eventLog.WriteEntry(outString, EventLogEntryType.Information);             }               if (!string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(errString))             {                 errString = String.Format("Standard Err for {0}\n\n{1}", task, errString);                 _eventLog.WriteEntry(errString, EventLogEntryType.Error);             }               return 0;         }     } } You then wrap your startup tasks with the StartupTaskShell and you’ll be able to see stdout and stderr in the application event log.

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• IdentityServer v1.0.1 On-Premise and Azure Edition

  - by Your DisplayName here!

  I just uploaded the final Azure Edition as well as a combined Azure and on-premise source package to Codeplex. http://identityserver.codeplex.com/releases I am also in the process of building a wiki for documentation – it is not done yet – but can be browsed here: http://wiki.thinktecture.com/IdentityServer.MainPage.ashx Any feedback, bug reports, volunteers (coding, setup, wiki) – please DM me. Have fun!

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• Access Control Service: Walkthrough Videos of Web Application, SOAP, REST and Silverlight Integration

  - by Your DisplayName here!

  Over the weekend I worked a little more on my ACS2 sample. Instead of writing it all down, I decided to quickly record four short videos that cover the relevant features and code. Have fun ;) Part 1 – Overview This video does a quick walkthrough of the solution and shows the web application part. This includes driving the sign in UI via JavaScript (thanks Matias) as well as the registration logic I wrote about here. watch Part 2 – SOAP Service and Client The sample app also exposes a WCF SOAP service. This video shows how to wire up the service to ACS and hows how to create a client that first requests a token from an IdP and then sends this token to ACS. watch Part 3 – REST Service and Client This part shows how to set up a WCF REST service that consumes SWT tokens from ACS. Unfortunately there is currently no standard WIF plumbing for REST. For the service integration I had to combine a lot of code from different sources (kzu, zulfiq) as well as the WIF SDK and OAuth CTPs together. But it is working. watch Part 4 – Silverlight and Web Identity Integration This part took by far the most time to write. The Silverlight Client shows ho to sign in to the application using a registered identity provider (including web identities) and using the resulting SWT token to call our REST service. This is designed to be a desktop (OOB) client application (thanks to Jörg for the UI magic). watch code download

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• Guide to Claims-based Identity and Access Control (2nd Edition)

  - by Your DisplayName here!

  This fell through the cracks over the summer holiday time: The 2nd edition of the Patterns & Practices “claims guide” has been released. This is excellent! We added a lot of content around ADFS, Access Control Service, REST and SharePoint. All source code is available as well! Grab it from: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff423674.aspx Or use my vanity URL: http://tinyurl.com/claimsguide

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• WIF in .NET 4.5&ndash;First Observations (2)

  - by Your DisplayName here!

    WindowsIdentity, FormsIdentity and GenericIdentity now derive from ClaimsIdentity WindowsIdentity.GetCurrent() converts Windows token details (groups for the current Windows versions) to claims. Claims for Windows identities now distinguish between user claims and device claims (Windows 8 feature) WCF now populates Thread.CurrentPrincipal with a ClaimsPrincipal derived type

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• IPv6: Should I have private addresses?

  - by AlReece45

  Right now, we have a rack of servers. Every server right now has at least 2 IP addresses, one for the public interface, another for the private. The servers that have SSL websites on them have more IP addresses. We also have virtual servers, that are configured similarly. Private Network The private range is currently just used for backups and monitoring. Its a gigabit port, the interface usage does not usually get very high. There are other technologies we're considering using that would use this port: iSCSI (implementations usually recommends dedicating an interface to it, which would be yet another IP network), VPN to get access to the private range (something I'd rather avoid) dedicated database servers LDAP centralized configuration (like puppet) centralized logging We don't have any private addresses in our DNS records (only public addresses). For our servers to utilize the correct IP address for the right interface (and not hard code the IP address) probably requires setting up a private DNS server (So now we add 2 different dns entries to 2 different systems). Public Network Our public range has a variety of services include web, email, and ftp. There is a hardware firewall between our network and the "public" network. We have (relatively secure) method to instruct the firewall to open and close administrative access (web interfaces, ssh, etc) for our current IP address. With either solution discussed, the host-based firewalls will be configured as well. The public network currently runs at a dedicated 20Mbps link. There are a couple of legacy servers with fast-ethernet ports, but they are scheduled for decommissioning. All of the other production boxes have at least 2 Gigabit Ethernet ports. The more traffic-heavy servers have 4-6 available (none is using more than the 2 Gigabit ports right now). IPv6 I want to get an IPv6 prefix from our ISP. So at least every "server" has at least one IPv6 interface. We'll still need to keep the IPv4 addressees up and available for legacy clients (web servers and email at the very least). We have two IP networks right now. Adding the public IPv6 address would make it three. Just use IPv6? I'm thinking about just dumping the private IPv4 range and using the IPv6 range as the primary means of all communications. If an interface starts reaching its capacity, utilize the newly free interfaces to create a trunk. It has the advantage that if either the public or private traffic needs to exceed 1Gbps. The traffic for each interface is already analyzed on a regular basis to predict future bandwidth use. In the rare instances where bandwidth unexpected peaks: utilize QoS to ensure traffic (like our limited SSH access) is prioritized correctly so the problem can be corrected (if possible, our WAN is the bottleneck right now). It also has the advantage of not needing to make an entry for every private address. We may have private DNS (or just LDAP), but it'll be much more limited in scope with less entries to duplicate. Summary I'm trying to make this network as "simple" as possible. At the same time, I want to make sure its reliable, upgradeable, scalable, and (eventually) redundant. Having one IPv6 network, and a legacy IPv4 network seems to be the best solution to me. Regarding using assigned IPv6 addresses for both networks, sharing the available bandwidth on one (more trunked if needed): Are there any technical disadvantages (limitations, buffers, scalability)? Are there any other security considerations (asides from firewalls mentioned above) to consider? Are there regulations or other security requirements (like PCI-DSS) that this doesn't meet? Is there typical software for setting up a Linux network that doesn't have IPv6 support yet? (logging, ldap, puppet) Some other thing I didn't consider?

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• How does Trash Can works? Where can i find official specification / documentation / reference about it?

  - by MestreLion

  When trying to manage trash can from mounted NTFS volumes, I ended up reading FreeDesktop.org's reference on it. Poking around and doing some tests, I realized Ubuntu/Gnome does not follow the specs 100%. Here's why: For non-/ partitions, it always use <driveroot>/.Trash-<uid>, It never used <driveroot>/.Trash/<uid>, even when i created it in advance. While this works, its annoying: if i have 15 users, i end up with 15 /.Trash-xxx folders in my drive, while the other approach would still give a single folder (with 15 sub-folders). That "pollution" in my drives is very unpleasant. And specs say "If an $topdir/.Trash directory is absent, an $topdir/.Trash-$uid directory is to be used". Well, it IS present, so why it never uses it? root trash does not work, at least not out of the box. Open nautilus as root and click on trash, it gives error. Try to delete any file, it says "it cant move to trash". Ok, i know this can be fixed by creating /root/.local/share. But specs says "A “home trash” directory SHOULD be automatically created for any new user. If this directory is needed for a trashing operation but does not exist, the implementation SHOULD automatically create it, without any warnings or delays.". Why error then? Bug? Why do i must change /etc/fstab entries for mounted volumes, adding options like uid and guid, if the volumes are already mounted as RW for everyone? These are just some examples of deviation from standard. So, the question is: "If Ubuntu does not adhere 100% to the spec, HOW exactly does the trash work? WHERE can i find technical reference about Ubuntu's implementation of the trash?" By the way: if Ubuntu does happen to follow specs, please tell me what am i doing wrong, specially regarding the /.Trash-<uid> vs /.Trash/<uid> issue. Thanks! EDIT: Some more info: If a given fs has no support for sticky bit (VFAT, NTFS), it probably dont have for permitions either (at least VFAT surely doesnt). So what prevents one user for purging / restoring other users ./Trash-xxx ? If one can read/write his own Trash, he can also do the same for the whole drive, including other's trashes, isnt it? Or does Gnome has any "extra" protection on ./Trash-xxx folders on VFAT/NTFS fs? If Linux can "emulate" file permitions on NTFS mounting by editing /fstab uid and gid options, can it also "emulate" the sticky bit? I would really want to use /.Trash/xxx format... For the root issue: for the / partition, i can trash as root, and it goes to /root/.local/shate/Trash. But if i click on Nautilus "Trash" (as root), i get an error. Dont you? So files are correctly trashed, but i cant access it. All i can do is manually "purge" them (by deleting files on /root/.local/shate/Trash), but restoring would be very tricky (opening info files and manually moving, etc) For non-/ partitions (or at least for VFAT/NTFS), I can not even trash as root: it does not create a ./Trash-0 folder, it simply says "Cannot trash, want to permantly delete?" Why? About fstab: i use it for a permanent mount for my NTFS partitions. I have several, and if not "pre-mounted" they really cluttter desktop and/or Nautilus. Id rather have it pre mounted, integrated in my fs, in mounts like /data , /windows/xp , /windows/vista , and so on, and leave /media and its "mount/unmount" flexibility just for truly removable drives Si, if Ubuntu/Gnome truly follow the spec, is there any way to fix the root issues and to "emulate" the sticky bit for (at least) my fstab'ed NTFS fixed partitions?

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• How does the Trash Can work, and where can I find official documentation, reference, or specification for it?

  - by MestreLion

  When trying to manage trash can from mounted NTFS volumes, I ended up reading FreeDesktop.org's reference on it. Poking around and doing some tests, I realized Ubuntu/Gnome does not follow the specs 100%. Here's why: For non-/ partitions, it always uses <driveroot>/.Trash-<uid>, It never used <driveroot>/.Trash/<uid>, even when i created it in advance. While this works, it's annoying: if I have 15 users, I end up with 15 /.Trash-xxx folders in my drive, while the other approach would still give a single folder (with 15 sub-folders). That "pollution" in my drives is very unpleasant. And specs say "If an $topdir/.Trash directory is absent, an $topdir/.Trash-$uid directory is to be used". Well, it IS present, so why does it never use it? root trash does not work, at least not out of the box. Open nautilus as root and click on trash; it gives an error. Try to delete any file, it says "it can't move to trash". Ok, I know this can be fixed by creating /root/.local/share. But specs says "A “home trash” directory SHOULD be automatically created for any new user. If this directory is needed for a trashing operation but does not exist, the implementation SHOULD automatically create it, without any warnings or delays.". Why the error then? Bug? Why must I change /etc/fstab entries for mounted volumes, adding options like uid and guid, if the volumes are already mounted as RW for everyone? These are just some examples of deviation from the standard. So, the question is: "If Ubuntu does not adhere 100% to the spec, HOW exactly does the trash work? WHERE can i find a technical reference for Ubuntu's implementation of the trash?" By the way: if Ubuntu does happen to follow specs, please tell me what I am doing wrong, especially regarding the /.Trash-<uid> vs /.Trash/<uid> issue. Thanks! EDIT: Some more info: If a given fs has no support for the sticky bit (VFAT, NTFS), it probably doesn't have for permissions either (at least VFAT surely doesn't). So what prevents one user from purging / restoring other users' ./Trash-xxx ? If one can read/write his own Trash, one can do the same for the whole drive, including other's trashes, correct? Or does Gnome have some kind of "extra" protection on ./Trash-xxx folders on VFAT/NTFS fs? If Linux can "emulate" file permissions on NTFS mounting by editing /fstab uid and gid options, can it also "emulate" the sticky bit? I would really prefer to use /.Trash/xxx format... For the root issue: for the / partition, I can use trash as root, and it goes to /root/.local/shate/Trash. But if I click on Nautilus "Trash" (as root), I get an error. Don't you? So files are correctly trashed, but I can't access it. All I can do is manually "purge" them (by deleting files on /root/.local/shate/Trash), but restoring would be very tricky (opening info files and manually moving, etc.). For non-/ partitions (or at least for VFAT/NTFS), I can not even use trash as root: it does not create a ./Trash-0 folder, it simply says "Cannot trash, want to permanently delete?" Why? About fstab: i use it for a permanent mount for my NTFS partitions. I have several, and if not "pre-mounted" they really clutter the desktop and/or Nautilus. I'd rather have it pre-mounted, integrated in my fs, in mounts like /data , /windows/xp , /windows/vista , and so on, and leave /media and its "mount/unmount" flexibility just for truly removable drives. So, if Ubuntu/Gnome truly follows the spec, is there any way to fix the root issues and to "emulate" the sticky bit for (at least) my fstab'ed NTFS fixed partitions?

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• Why do I need two Instances in Windows Azure?

  - by BuckWoody

  Windows Azure as a Platform as a Service (PaaS) means that there are various components you can use in it to solve a problem: Compute “Roles” - Computers running an OS and optionally IIS - you can have more than one "Instance" of a given Role Storage - Blobs, Tables and Queues for Storage Other Services - Things like the Service Bus, Azure Connection Services, SQL Azure and Caching It’s important to understand that some of these services are Stateless and others maintain State. Stateless means (at least in this case) that a system might disappear from one physical location and appear elsewhere. You can think of this as a cashier at the front of a store. If you’re in line, a cashier might take his break, and another person might replace him. As long as the order proceeds, you as the customer aren’t really affected except for the few seconds it takes to change them out. The cashier function in this example is stateless. The Compute Role Instances in Windows Azure are Stateless. To upgrade hardware, because of a fault or many other reasons, a Compute Role's Instance might stop on one physical server, and another will pick it up. This is done through the controlling fabric that Windows Azure uses to manage the systems. It’s important to note that storage in Azure does maintain State. Your data will not simply disappear - it is maintained - in fact, it’s maintained three times in a single datacenter and all those copies are replicated to another for safety. Going back to our example, storage is similar to the cash register itself. Even though a cashier leaves, the record of your payment is maintained. So if a Compute Role Instance can disappear and re-appear, the things running on that first Instance would stop working. If you wrote your code in a Stateless way, then another Role Instance simply re-starts that transaction and keeps working, just like the other cashier in the example. But if you only have one Instance of a Role, then when the Role Instance is re-started, or when you need to upgrade your own code, you can face downtime, since there’s only one. That means you should deploy at least two of each Role Instance not only for scale to handle load, but so that the first “cashier” has someone to replace them when they disappear. It’s not just a good idea - to gain the Service Level Agreement (SLA) for our uptime in Azure it’s a requirement. We point this out right in the Management Portal when you deploy the application: (Click to enlarge) When you deploy a Role Instance you can also set the “Upgrade Domain”. Placing Roles on separate Upgrade Domains means that you have a continuous service whenever you upgrade (more on upgrades in another post) - the process looks like this for two Roles. This example covers the scenario for upgrade, so you have four roles total - One Web and one Worker running the "older" code, and one of each running the new code. In all those Roles you want at least two instances, and this example shows that you're covered for High Availability and upgrade paths: The take-away is this - always plan for forward-facing Roles to have at least two copies. For Worker Roles that do background processing, there are ways to architect around this number, but it does affect the SLA if you have only one.

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