// Security

I’ve always found Kerberos to be an interesting protocol.  It works by way of a trusted third party which issues secured tickets based on an authentication or previous session.   These tickets are used as proof of identity by asserting that the subject is who they claim to be. Claims authentication works on a similar principle, except instead of a ticket you have a token.  There are some major differences in implementation, but the theory is the same.  One of the reasons I find it interesting is that Kerberos was originally developed in 1983, and the underlying protocol called the Needham-Schroeder protocol, was originally published in 1978.

There have been major updates over the years, as well as a change to fix a man-in-the-middle attack in the Needham-Schroeder protocol in 1995, but the theory is still sound.  Kerberos is the main protocol used in Windows networks to authenticate against Active Directory.

The reason I bring it up is because of a comment I made in a previous post.  I made an assertion that we don’t necessarily abstract out the identity portion of our applications and services. 

Well, It occurred to me that up until a certain period of time, we did.  In many environments there was only one trusted authority for identity.  Whether it was at a school, in a business, or within the government there was no concept of federation.  The walls we created were for a very good reason.  The applications and websites we created were siloed and the information didn’t need to be shared.  As such, we created our own identity stores in databases and LDAP directories.

This isn’t necessarily a problem because we built these applications on top of a foundation that wasn’t designed for identity.  The internet was for all intents and purposes designed for anonymity.  But here is where the foundation became tricky: it boomed.

People wanted to share information between websites and applications, but the data couldn’t be correlated back to the user across applications.  We are starting to catch up, but it’s a slow process.

So here is the question: we started with a relatively abstract process of authentication by way of the Kerberos third party, and then moved to siloed identity data.  Why did we lose the abstraction?  Or more precisely, during this boom, why did we allow our applications to lose this abstraction?

Food for thought on this early Monday.

Update: I should have mentioned this when I first posted, but some of these thoughts are the result of me reading Programming Windows Identity Foundation.  While I hope I haven’t copied the ideas outright, I believe the interpretation is unique-ish.

One of the main reasons we as developers shy away from new technologies is because we are afraid of it.  As we learned in elementary school, the reason we are afraid usually boils down to not having enough information about the topic.  I’ve found this especially true with anything security related.  So, lets think about something for a minute.

I’m not entirely sure how valid a method this is for measure, but I like to think that as developers we measure our understanding of something by how much we abstract away the problems it creates.  Now let me ask you this question:

How much of an abstraction layer do we create for identity?

Arguably very little because in most cases we half-ass it.

I say this knowing full well I’m extremely guilty of it.  Sure, I’d create a User class and populate with application specific data, but to populate the object I would call Active Directory or SQL directly.  That created a tightly coupled dependency between the application and the user store.  That works perfectly up until you need to migrate those users in a SQL database to Active Directory.  Oops.

So why do we do this?

My reason for doing this is pretty simple.  I didn’t know any better.  The reason I didn’t know better was also pretty simple.  Of the available options to abstract away the identity I didn’t understand how the technology worked, or more likely, I didn’t trust it.  Claims based authentication is a perfect example of this.  I thought to myself when I first came across this: “are you nuts?  You want me to hand over authentication to someone else and then I have to trust them that what they give me is valid?  I don’t think so.”

Well, yes actually.

Authentication, identification, and authorization are simply processes in the grand scheme of an application lifecycle.  They are privileged, but that just means we need to be careful about it.  Fear, as it turns out, is the number one reason why we don’t abstract this part out.*

With that, I thought it would be a perfect opportunity to take a look at a few of the reasons why Claims based authentication is reasonably secure.  I would also like to take this time to compare some of these reasons to why our current methods of user authentication are usually done wrong.

Source

First and foremost we trust the source.  Obviously a bank isn’t going to accept a handwritten piece of paper with my name on it as proof that I am me.  It stands to reason that you aren’t going to accept an identity from some random 3rd party provider for important proof of identity.

Encryption + SSL

The connection between RP and STS is over SSL.  Therefore no man in the middle attacks.  Then you encrypt the token.  Much like the SSL connection, the STS encrypts the payload with the RP’s public key, which only the RP can decrypt with its private key.  If you don’t use SSL anyone eavesdropping on the connection still can’t read the payload.  Also, the STS usually keeps a local copy of the certificate for token encryption.

How many of us encrypt our SQL connections when verifying  the user’s password?  How many of us use secured LDAP queries to Active Directory?  How many of us encrypt our web services?  I usually forget to.

Audience whitelist

Most commercial STS applications require that each request come from an approved Relying Party.  Moreover, most of those applications require that the endpoint that it responds to also be on an approved list.  You could probably fake it through DNS poisoning, but the certificates used for encryption and SSL would prevent you from doing anything meaningful since you couldn’t decrypt the token.

Do we verify the identity of the application requesting information from the SQL database?  Not usually the application.  However, we could do it via Kerberos impersonation.  E.g. lock down the specific data to the currently logged in/impersonated user.

Expiration and Duplication Prevention

All tokens have authentication timestamps.  They also normally have expiration timestamps.  Therefore they have a window of time that defines how long they are valid.  It is up to the application accepting the token to make sure the window is still acceptable, but it is still an opportunity for verification.  This also gives us the opportunity to prevent replay attacks.  All we have to do is keep track of all incoming tokens within the valid time window and see if the tokens repeat.  If so, we reject them.

There isn’t much we can do in a traditional setting to prevent this from happening.  If someone eavesdrops on the connection and grabs the username/password between the browser and your application, game over.  They don’t need to spoof anything.  They have the credentials.  SSL can fix this problem pretty easily though.

Integrity

Once the token has been created by the STS, it will be signed by the STS’s private key.  If the token is modified in any way the signature wont match.  Since it is being signed by the private key of the STS, only the STS can resign it, however anyone can verify the signature through the STS’s public key.  And since it’s a certificate for the STS, we can use it as strong proof that the STS is who they say they are.  For a good primer on public key/private key stuff check out Wikipedia.

It's pretty tricky to modify payloads between SQL and an application, but it is certainly possible.  Since we don’t usually encrypt the connections (I am guilty of this daily – It’s something I need to work on ), intercepting packets and modifying them on the fly is possible.  There isn’t really a way to verify if the payload has been tampered with.

Sure, there is a level of trust between the data source and the application if they are both within the same datacenter, but what if it’s being hosted offsite by a 3rd party?  There is always going to be a situation where integrity can become an issue.  The question at that point then is: how much do you trust the source, as well as the connection to the source?

Authentication Level

Finally, if we are willing to accept that each item above increases the security and validity of the identity, there is really only one thing left to make sure is acceptable.  How was the user authenticated?  Username/password, Kerberos, smart card/certificates, etc.  If we aren’t happy with how they were authenticated, we don’t accept the token.

So now that we have a pretty strong basis for what makes the tokens containing claims as well as the relationship between the RP’s and STS’s secure, we don’t really need to fear the Claims model.

Now we just need to figure out how to replace our old code with the identity abstraction.

* Strictly anecdotal evidence, mind you.

Yet another presentation on the docket!  I submitted an abstract to SharePoint Summit 2011 and they accepted!  I will be presenting on SharePoint and how it manages Identity.  More specifically, how SharePoint 2010 uses WIF to handle Claims based authentication and Federation.

Here are the details

Event: SharePoint Summit 2011, January 31st 2011 – February 2nd, 2011

When: 11:30 a.m. - 12:45 p.m. February 1st, 2011

Where: Four Seasons Hotel, Toronto

Abstract: Managing identities within an organization is relatively easy. However, as business changes, we need to be able to adapt quickly. Identity is something that often gets overlooked in adaptation. In this session we will discuss the Windows Identity Foundation and how SharePoint uses it to adapt easily to change.

Link: http://www.sharepointsummit2011.com/Toronto/conference_day2.htm#session_7_3

Earlier this morning I got an email from John Bristowe congratulating me on being selected to present a session for the local flavours track at TechDays in Toronto!  This bumps up my count to 2.  Needless to say I am REALLY excited.

I was a little disappointed to find out there weren’t any sessions on the Windows Identity Foundation, so that just meant I had to submit my own to the local flavours track…and they accepted it!  Here are the details:

October 27, 3:40 PM to 4:45 PM

Breakout | LFT330: Windows Identity Foundation Simplified: All the Scary Things Made Un-Scary

The Windows Identity Foundation helps simplify user access for developers by externalizing user access from applications via claims and reducing development effort with pre-built security logic and integrated .NET tools. This presentation is an intimate discussion on the basics of the Windows Identity Foundation and its claims model. In this session, you’ll learn how to refactor an existing sample set of applications to use WIF, to connect identities to the Cloud, and to remove the burden of managing multiple disparate user stores.

Location: Metro Toronto Convention Centre - South Building (255 Front Street West, Toronto)

Room: TBA

There are times when you need to question what you are doing, and why you are doing it.  Take for instance the “evercookie” at http://samy.pl/evercookie/.  I came across this when Kevin Dente posted a link to it on Twitter.

The jist of it is to use all the available resources of the browser and it’s plugins to create a truly persistent cookie across browser resets and cookie cleanups.  I’ll admit, it’s kind of a neat idea, but realistically, it will only be used for bad.  As Kevin said, no good can come of this.

Now, nothing is ever truly persistent when it comes to browsers.  At some point you can clean everything.  The problem is the plugins.  Flash is…well, I hate Flash.  It is an abomination.  Then there is Silverlight.  Plus Java, and any plugin or ActiveX control that ties into the browser that stores data locally.

While I could get into the privacy and security debate over all of this, what it really boils down to is that it’s just really annoying.  I don’t want websites keeping persistent data on my machine if I don’t want them to.  It’s my PC, not theirs.

So I’ve started work on a little script.  It will clear cache of IE 7+ and delete all persistent storage for Flash, Java, and Silverlight.

Keep in mind this will delete your history as well!

RunDll32.exe InetCpl.cpl,ClearMyTracksByProcess 8
RunDll32.exe InetCpl.cpl,ClearMyTracksByProcess 2
RunDll32.exe InetCpl.cpl,ClearMyTracksByProcess 1
RunDll32.exe InetCpl.cpl,ClearMyTracksByProcess 16
RunDll32.exe InetCpl.cpl,ClearMyTracksByProcess 32
RunDll32.exe InetCpl.cpl,ClearMyTracksByProcess 255
RunDll32.exe InetCpl.cpl,ClearMyTracksByProcess 4351

cd %appdata%
cd "Macromedia\Flash Player\"
rmdir "#SharedObjects" /S /Q

cd %appdata%
cd "Macromedia\Flash Player\macromedia.com\support\flashplayer\"
rmdir "sys" /S /Q

cd "C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jre6\bin"
javaws -Xclearcache -silent -Xnosplash

cd "%userprofile%"
cd AppData\LocalLow\Microsoft\Silverlight"
rmdir "is" /S /Q

Now, I should also give a word of caution.  This is by no means a sure-fire way to protect your privacy.  That’s pretty hard to do.  This is only designed to do a very simple cleanup of the usual suspects.  If you are really wanting to keep your browsing anonymous, turn off all plugins, turn off all scripting, and run in InPrivate Browsing mode.

I’ll update the script as necessary over time.

When you install an instance of Active Directory Federation Services v2, amongst other things it will create a website within IIS to use as it’s Secure Token Service.  This is sort of fundamental to the whole design.  There are some interesting things to note about the situation though.

When Microsoft (or any ISV really) releases a new application or server that has a website attached to it, they usually deliver it in a precompiled form, so all we do is point IIS to the binaries and config files and we go from there.  This serves a number of purposes usually along the lines of performance, Intellectual Property protection, defense in depth protection, etc.  Interestingly though, when the installer creates the application for us in IIS, it drops source code instead of a bunch of assemblies.

There is a valid reason for this.

It gives us the opportunity to do a couple things.  First, we can inspect the code.  Second, we can easily modify the code.  Annoyingly, they don’t give us a Visual Studio project to do so.  Let’s create one then.

First off, lets take a look at what was created by the installer.  By default it drops the files in c:\inetpub\adfs\ls.  We are given a few files and folders:

There isn’t much to it.  These files only contain a few lines of code.  Next we create the actual project.

DISCLAIMER:  I will not be held responsible if things break or the server steals your soul.  Please do NOT (I REPEAT) do NOT do this with production servers please!  (Notice I said please twice?)

Since we want to create a Visual Studio project, and since ADFS cannot be installed on a workstation, we have two options:

1. Install Visual Studio on the server running ADFS
2. Copy the files to your local machine

Each options have their tradeoffs.  The first requires a bit of a major overhaul of your development environment.  It’s very similar to SharePoint 2007 development.  The second option makes developing a lot easier, but testing is a pain because the thing won’t actually work properly without the Windows Services running.  You would need to deploy the code to a test server with ADFS installed.

Since I have little interest in rebuilding my development box, I went with the second option.

Okay, back to Visual Studio.  The assemblies referenced were all built on Framework 3.5, so for the sake of simplicity lets create a 3.5 Web Application:

I haven’t tested 4.0 yet.

Since this is a Web Application and not a Web Site within Visual Studio, we need to generate the *.designer.cs files for all the *.aspx pages.  Right-click your project and select Convert to Web Application:

At this point if you tried to compile the application it wouldn’t work.  We are missing a few assembly references.  First, add Microsoft.IdentityModel.  This should be in the GAC or the Reference Assemblies folder in Program Files.  Next, go back to the ADFS server and navigate to C:\Program Files\Active Directory Federation Services 2.0 and copy the following files:

• Microsoft.IdentityServer.dll
• Microsoft.IdentityServer.Compression.dll

Add these assemblies as references.  The web application should compile successfully.

Next we need to sign the web application’s assemblies.  If you have internal policies on assembly signing, follow those.  Otherwise double-click the properties section in Solution Explorer and navigate to Signing:

Choose a key file or create a new one.  Rebuild the web application.

So far we haven’t touched a line of code.  This is all general deployment stuff.  You can deploy the web application back to the ADFS server and it should work as if nothing had changed.  You have a few options for this.  The Publishing Features in Visual Studio 2010 are awesome.  Right click the project and Publish it:

Since I set up a test box for ADFS development, I’m just going to overwrite the files on the server:

Pro Tip: If you do something terrible and need to revert back to original code (what part of don’t do this on a production box didn’t make sense? ) you can access the original files from C:\Program Files\Active Directory Federation Services 2.0\WSFederationPassive.Web.

At this point we haven’t done much, but we now have a stepping point to modify the default behavior of ADFS.  This could range from simple theme changes to better suit corporate policy, or to completely redefine the authentication workflow.

This also gives us the ability to better protect our code in the event that IIS craps out and shows contents of files, not to mention the (albeit minor) performance boost we get because the website doesn’t need to be recompiled.

Have fun!

there comes a point where using an eavesdropping application to catch packets as they fly between Secure Token Services and Relying Parties becomes tiresome.  For me it came when I decided to give up on creating a man-in-the-middle between SSL sessions between ADFS and applications.  Mainly because ADFS doesn’t like that.  At all.

Needless to say I wanted to see the tokens.  Luckily, Windows Identity Foundation has the solution by way of the Bootstrap token.  To understand what it is, consider how this whole process works.  Once you’ve authenticated, the STS will POST a chunk of XML (the SAML Token) back to the RP.  WIF will interpret it as necessary and do it’s magic generating a new principal with the payload.  However, in some instances you need to keep this token intact.  This would be the case if you were creating a web service and needed to forward the token.  What WIF does is generate a bootstrap token from the SAML token, in the event you needed to forward it off to somewhere.

Before taking a look at it, let's add in some useful using statements:

using System;
using System.IdentityModel.Tokens;
using System.Text;
using System.Threading;
using System.Xml;
using Microsoft.IdentityModel.Claims;
using Microsoft.IdentityModel.Tokens;
using Microsoft.IdentityModel.Tokens.Saml11;

The bootstrap token is attached to IClaimsPrincipal identity:

SecurityToken bootstrapToken = ((IClaimsPrincipal)Thread.CurrentPrincipal).Identities[0].BootstrapToken;

However if you do this out of the box, BootstrapToken will be null.  By default, WIF will not save the token.  We need to explicitly enable this in the web.config file.  Add this line under <microsoft.IdentityModel><service><securityTokenHandlers>:

<securityTokenHandlerConfiguration saveBootstrapTokens="true" />

Once you’ve done that, WIF will load the token.

The properties are fairly straightforward, but you can’t just get a blob from it:

Luckily we have some code to convert from the bootstrap token to a chunk of XML:

SecurityToken bootstrapToken = ((IClaimsPrincipal)Thread.CurrentPrincipal).Identities[0].BootstrapToken;

StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();

using (var writer = XmlWriter.Create(sb))
{
     new Saml11SecurityTokenHandler(new SamlSecurityTokenRequirement()).WriteToken(writer, bootstrapToken);
}

string theXml = sb.ToString();

We get a proper XML document:

In a domain environment it is really useful to switch user contexts in a web application.  This could be if you are needing to log in with credentials that have elevated permissions (or vice-versa) or just needing to log in as another user.

It’s pretty easy to do this with Windows Identity Foundation and Claims Authentication.  When the WIF framework is installed, a service is installed (that is off by default) that can translate Claims to Windows Tokens.  This is called (not surprisingly) the Claims to Windows Token Service or (c2WTS).

Following the deploy-with-least-amount-of-attack-surface methodology, this service does not work out of the box.  You need to turn it on and enable which user’s are allowed to impersonate via token translation.  Now, this doesn’t mean which users can switch, it means which users running the process are allowed to switch.  E.g. the process running the IIS application pools local service/network service/local system/etc (preferably a named service user other than system users).

To allow users to do this go to C:\Program Files\Windows Identity Foundation\v3.5\c2wtshost.exe.config and add in the service users to <allowedCallers>:

<windowsTokenService> 
  <!-- 
      By default no callers are allowed to use the Windows Identity Foundation Claims To NT Token Service. 
      Add the identities you wish to allow below. 
    --> 
  <allowedCallers> 
    <clear/> 
    <!-- <add value="NT AUTHORITY\Network Service" /> --> 
    <!-- <add value="NT AUTHORITY\Local Service" /> –> 
    <!-- <add value="nt authority\system" /> –> 
    <!-- <add value="NT AUTHORITY\Authenticated Users" /> --> 
  </allowedCallers> 
</windowsTokenService> 

You should notice that by default, all users are not allowed.  Once you’ve done that you can start up the service.  It is called Claims to Windows Token Service in the Services MMC snap-in.

That takes care of the administrative side of things.  Lets write some code.  But first, some usings:

using System;
using System.Linq;
using System.Security.Principal;
using System.Threading;
using Microsoft.IdentityModel.Claims;
using Microsoft.IdentityModel.WindowsTokenService;

The next step is to actually generate the token.  From an architectural perspective, we want to use the UPN claims type as that’s what the service wants to see.  To get the claim, we do some simple LINQ:

IClaimsIdentity identity = (ClaimsIdentity)Thread.CurrentPrincipal.Identity;
string upn = identity.Claims.Where(c => c.ClaimType == ClaimTypes.Upn).First().Value;

if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(upn))
{
    throw new Exception("No UPN claim found");
}

Following that we do the impersonation:

WindowsIdentity windowsIdentity = S4UClient.UpnLogon(upn);

using (WindowsImpersonationContext ctxt = windowsIdentity.Impersonate())
{
    DoSomethingAsNewUser();

    ctxt.Undo(); // redundant with using { } statement
}

To release the token we call the Undo() method, but if you are within a using { } statement the Undo() method is called when the object is disposed.

One thing to keep in mind though.  If you do not have permission to impersonate a user a System.ServiceModel.Security.SecurityAccessDeniedException will be thrown.

That’s all there is to it.

Implementation Details

In my opinion, these types of calls really shouldn’t be made all that often.  Realistically you need to take a look at how impersonation fits into the application and then go from there.

Just a quick little collection of useful code snippets when dealing with certificates.  Some of these don’t really need to be in their own methods but it helps for clarification.

Namespaces for Everything

using System.Security.Cryptography.X509Certificates;
using System.Security;

Save Certificate to Store

// Nothing fancy here.  Just a helper method to parse strings.
private StoreName parseStoreName(string name)
{
    return (StoreName)Enum.Parse(typeof(StoreName), name);
}
	
// Same here
private StoreLocation parseStoreLocation(string location)
{
    return (StoreLocation)Enum.Parse(typeof(StoreLocation), location);
}
	
private void saveCertToStore(X509Certificate2 x509Certificate2, StoreName storeName, StoreLocation storeLocation)
{
    X509Store store = new X509Store(storeName, storeLocation);

    store.Open(OpenFlags.ReadWrite);
    store.Add(x509Certificate2);

    store.Close();
}

Create Certificate from byte[] array

private X509Certificate2 CreateCertificateFromByteArray(byte[] certFile)
{
     return new X509Certificate2(certFile); 
	// will throw exception if certificate has private key
}

The comment says that it will throw an exception if the certificate has a private key because the private key has a password associated with it. If you don't pass the password as a parameter it will throw a System.Security.Cryptography.CryptographicException exception.

Get Certificate from Store by Thumbprint

private bool FindCertInStore(
    string thumbprint, 
    StoreName storeName, 
    StoreLocation storeLocation, 
    out X509Certificate2 theCert)
{
    theCert = null;
    X509Store store = new X509Store(storeName, storeLocation);

    try
    {
        store.Open(OpenFlags.ReadWrite);

        string thumbprintFixed = thumbprint.Replace(" ", "").ToUpperInvariant();

        foreach (var cert in store.Certificates)
        {
            if (cert.Thumbprint.ToUpperInvariant().Equals(thumbprintFixed))
            {
                theCert = cert;

                return true;
            }
        }

        return false;
    }
    finally
    {
        store.Close();
    }
}

Have fun!

Straight from Microsoft this is what the Windows Identity Foundation is:

Windows Identity Foundation helps .NET developers build claims-aware applications that externalize user authentication from the application, improving developer productivity, enhancing application security, and enabling interoperability. Developers can enjoy greater productivity, using a single simplified identity model based on claims. They can create more secure applications with a single user access model, reducing custom implementations and enabling end users to securely access applications via on-premises software as well as cloud services. Finally, they can enjoy greater flexibility in application development through built-in interoperability that allows users, applications, systems and other resources to communicate via claims.

In other words it is a method for centralizing user Identity information, very much like how the Windows Live and OpenID systems work.  The system is reasonably simple.  I have a Membership data store that contains user information.  I want (n) number of websites to use that membership store, EXCEPT I don’t want each application to have direct access to membership data such as passwords.  The way around it is through claims.

In order for this to work you need a central web application called a Secure Token Service (STS).  This application will do authentication and provide a set of available claims.  It will say “hey! I am able to give you the person’s email address, their username and the roles they belong to.”  Each of those pieces of information is a claim.  This message exists in the application’s Federation Metadata. 

So far you are probably saying “yeah, so what?”

What I haven’t mentioned is that every application (called a Relying Party) that uses this central application has one thing in common: each application doesn’t have to handle authentication – at all.  Each application passes off the authentication request to the central application and the central application does the hard work.  When you type in your username and password, you are typing it into the central application, not one of the many other applications.  Once the central application authenticates your credentials it POST’s the claims back to the other application.  A diagram might help:

Image borrowed from the Identity Training kit (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=C3E315FA-94E2-4028-99CB-904369F177C0&displaylang=en)

The key takeaway is that only one single application does authentication.  Everything else just redirects to it.  So lets actually see what it takes to authenticate against an STS (central application).  In future posts I will go into detail about how to create an STS as well as how to use Active Directory Federation Services, which is an STS that authenticates directly against (you guessed it) Active Directory.

First step is to install the Framework and SDK.

WIF RTW: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=eb9c345f-e830-40b8-a5fe-ae7a864c4d76&displaylang=en

WIF SDK: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=c148b2df-c7af-46bb-9162-2c9422208504

The SDK will install sample projects and add two Visual Studio menu items under the Tools menu.  Both menu items do essentially the same thing, the difference being that “Add STS Reference” pre-populates the wizard with the current web application’s data.

Once the SDK is installed start up Visual Studio as Administrator.  Create a new web application.  Next go to the Properties section and go into the Web section.  Change the Server Settings to use IIS.  You need to use IIS.  To install IIS on Windows 7 check out this post.

So far we haven’t done anything crazy.  We’ve just set a new application to use IIS for development.  Next we have some fun.  Let’s add the STS Reference.

To add the STS Reference go to Tools > Add Sts Reference… and fill out the initial screen:

Click next and it will prompt you about using an HTTPS connection.  For the sake of this we don’t need HTTPS so just continue.  The next screen asks us about where we get the STS Federation Metadata from.  In this case I already have an STS so I just paste in the URI:

Once it downloads the metadata it will ask if we want the Token that the STS sends back to be encrypted.  My recommendation is that we do, but for the sake of this we won’t.

As an aside: In order for the STS to encrypt the token it will use a public key to which our application (the Relying Party) will have the private key.  When we select a certificate it will stick that public key in the Relying Party’s own Federation Metadata file.  Anyway… When we click next we are given a list of available Claims the STS can give us:

There is nothing to edit here; it’s just informative.  Next we get a summary of what we just did:

We can optionally schedule a Windows task to download changes.

We’ve now just added a crap-load of information to the *.config file.  Actually, we really didn’t.  We just told ASP.NET to use the Microsoft.IdentityModel.Web.WSFederationAuthenticationModule to handle authentication requests and Microsoft.IdentityModel.Web.SessionAuthenticationModule to handle session management.  Everything else is just boiler-plate configuration.  So lets test this thing:

1. Hit F5 – Compile compile compile compile compile… loads up http://localhost/WebApplication1
2. Page automatically redirects to https://login.myweg.com/login.aspx?ReturnUrl=%2fusers%2fissue.aspx%3fwa%3dwsignin1.0%26wtrealm%3dhttp%253a%252f%252flocalhost%252fWebApplication1%26wctx%3drm%253d0%2526id%253dpassive%2526ru%253d%25252fWebApplication1%25252f%26wct%3d2010-08-03T23%253a03%253a40Z&wa=wsignin1.0&wtrealm=http%3a%2f%2flocalhost%2fWebApplication1&wctx=rm%3d0%26id%3dpassive%26ru%3d%252fWebApplication1%252f&wct=2010-08-03T23%3a03%3a40Z (notice the variables we’ve passed?)
3. Type in our username and password…
4. Redirect to http://localhost/WebApplication1
5. Yellow Screen of Death

Wait.  What?  If you are running IIS 7.5 and .NET 4.0, ASP.NET will probably blow up.  This is because the data that was POST’ed back to us from the STS had funny characters in the values like angle brackets and stuff.  ASP.NET does not like this.  Rightfully so, Cross Site Scripting attacks suck.  To resolve this you have two choices:

1. Add <httpRuntime requestValidationMode="2.0" /> to your web.config
2. Use a proper RequestValidator that can handle responses from Token Services

For the sake of testing add <httpRuntime requestValidationMode="2.0" /> to the web.config and retry the test.  You should be redirected to http://localhost/WebApplication1 and no errors should occur.

Seems like a pointless exercise until you add a chunk of code to the default.aspx page. Add a GridView and then add this code:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Web;
using System.Web.UI;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls;
using System.Threading;
using System.IdentityModel;
using System.IdentityModel.Claims;
using Microsoft.IdentityModel.Claims;

namespace WebApplication1
{
    public partial class _Default : System.Web.UI.Page
    {
        protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            IClaimsIdentity claimsIdentity = ((IClaimsPrincipal)(Thread.CurrentPrincipal)).Identities[0];

            GridView1.DataSource = claimsIdentity.Claims;
            GridView1.DataBind();
        }
    }
}

Rerun the test and you should get back some values.  I hope some light bulbs just turned on for some people :)