[arvados-dev] API Authentication Options from C#

Wed Jul 19 08:55:49 EDT 2017

Yup, you guessed correctly - that's a security feature. I'm not sure if
that particular one is being set by Arvados or your OAuth2/SSO provider,
but it amounts to the same thing. It's to prevent a bad actor from
presenting the authorization dialog framed in a way to obscure or deceive.
When you get the login dialog from Google, Facebook, Github, etc, it's
exactly as they want it presented without any additional decoration.

Tom

On Wed, Jul 19, 2017 at 8:49 AM, Albrecht, Tom <tom.albrecht at roche.com>
wrote:

> Hi Tom,
>
> thanks a lot for this direct explanation. I had kind of guessed that this
> is why there is no direct API authentication and you are forced to use a
> browser, but here all my colleagues were focused on finding workarounds to
> still log in without a browser. But it is good to know that this is
> purposely prevented and even if we did find a workaround, that may be
> closed in a future release. So now I will need fully focus on finding a
> browser-based solution.
>
> In the meantime, I already tried out something using a browser window, but
> got this error message:
> Refused to display 'https://sso.ardev.XXX.com/users/ldap_sign_in' in a
> frame because it set 'X-Frame-Options' to 'DENY'.
>
> That seems to be another security feature to prevent shenanigans with the
> login page. Is there any way to allow the X-Frame-Options, or is this also
> built in to Arvados, never to be changed?
>
> Best regards
>
> Tom
>
>
> On Wed, Jul 19, 2017 at 2:26 PM, Tom Morris <tfmorris at curoverse.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Hi Tom,
>>
>> [Adding a 3rd Tom to the conversation just to make things even more
>> confusing]
>>
>> The whole point of the browser redirect scheme built in to the OAuth2
>> authentication flow is to prevent the user's password from being exposed to
>> untrusted code which could snoop it. Authentication is done by Google or
>> your corporate SSO or whoever controls the actual credentials and that's
>> the only component that gets to see the password.
>>
>> Perhaps you could look at using something like the .Net WebBrowser class
>> in your application? I'm not a C# or .Net expert, so I'm afraid I can't
>> help out with the details.
>>
>> Best regards,
>> Tom (the 3rd)
>>
>> --
>> Tom Morris
>> Director, Product Management
>> Curoverse
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Jul 19, 2017 at 2:31 AM, Albrecht, Tom <tom.albrecht at roche.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi Tom,
>>>
>>> thanks so much for taking time to answer my question. As far as I
>>> understand, you describe the login procedure laid out in
>>> http://doc.arvados.org/api/tokens.html.
>>>
>>> The core of my question actually concerns navigating to
>>> https://your-apiserver-host/login
>>> <https://your-apiserver-host/login?return_to=https://your-application-host/any/desired/path>.
>>> Am I right that this *requires *an actual *web browser* like Internet
>>> Explorer or Chrome? I am calling the API from a C# application without a UI
>>> or Web Browser, so ideally I would like to be able to log in without
>>> actually displaying a web page in an actual browser once I got the username
>>> and password, e.g. on the command line or a simple .net GUI. Do you see a
>>> way to do this?
>>> I saw the suggestion in the documentation to copy-paste the token from
>>> the work bench to the command line to define an environment variable, but
>>> that does not seem appropriate for our users. Other APIs offer the option
>>> to pass https://your-apiserver-host/login
>>> <https://your-apiserver-host/login?return_to=https://your-application-host/any/desired/path>
>>> /?username=XXX?password=XXX, but it seems like Arvados purposely does
>>> not allow this possibility.
>>>
>>> Best regards
>>>
>>> Thomas
>>>
>>> On Tue, Jul 18, 2017 at 10:22 PM, Tom Clegg <tom at curoverse.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hi Thomas,
>>>>
>>>> Your application can give the user a link/redirect to a URL like this:
>>>>
>>>> https://your-apiserver-host/login?return_to=https://your-app
>>>> lication-host/any/desired/path
>>>>
>>>> (Of course the "return_to" value should be suitably escaped.)
>>>>
>>>> After a successful login, the user will be redirected to
>>>> https://your-application-host/any/desired/path?api_token=X, where X is
>>>> of course the newly issued token, and your application can take it
>>>> from there -- typically saving X in a session store and redirecting to
>>>> a cleaned URL so the api_token doesn't remain in the browser's
>>>> Location bar.
>>>>
>>>> This is the same procedure Arvados Workbench uses, so it might be
>>>> helpful to refer to the Workbench code as examples. Here are some of
>>>> the relevant bits.
>>>>
>>>> https://github.com/curoverse/arvados/blob/master/apps/workbe
>>>> nch/app/controllers/application_controller.rb#L511
>>>>
>>>> https://github.com/curoverse/arvados/blob/master/apps/workbe
>>>> nch/app/models/arvados_api_client.rb#L232-L244
>>>>
>>>> https://github.com/curoverse/arvados/blob/master/apps/workbe
>>>> nch/app/controllers/application_controller.rb#L586-L597
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Tom Clegg
>>>> Chief Architect
>>>> Curoverse
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Tue, Jul 18, 2017 at 3:52 AM, Albrecht, Tom <tom.albrecht at roche.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>> > Hi,
>>>> >
>>>> > I hope you point me in a direction to achieve an elegant
>>>> authentication for
>>>> > my Arvados API application.
>>>> >
>>>> > I am developing a plugin for a third-party software to download data
>>>> from
>>>> > our Arvados server. The software dictates the language and platform:
>>>> C# /
>>>> > .net and Windows. I managed to access the data using .net's
>>>> > System.Net.HttpWebRequest class. What remains to be done is
>>>> implementing an
>>>> > elegant authentication.
>>>> >
>>>> > As a workaround, I logged into the Arvados Workbench using my browser
>>>> and
>>>> > copy-pasted the authentication token into my application. This works
>>>> but is
>>>> > not as user-friendly as I would like it to be. So my question is how
>>>> to
>>>> > achieve the authentication more elegantly without a web browser, for
>>>> > instance by passing username and password to the API up front or
>>>> using some
>>>> > kind of single sign-on functionality available in .net.
>>>> >
>>>> > Do you have any suggestions?
>>>> >
>>>> > Best regards
>>>> >
>>>> > Thomas
>>>> >
>>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>>
>>> *Thomas Albrecht, PhD*
>>>
>>> Senior Scientist
>>>
>>> SIAD Solution Delivery & Architecture, pRED Informatics
>>>
>>> Roche Pharma Research and Early Development
>>>
>>>
>>> Roche Innovation Center Basel
>>>
>>>
>>> F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd
>>> Grenzacherstrasse 124
>>> 4070 Basel
>>>
>>> Switzerland
>>>
>>>
>>> Building: 92 / 7.01.09
>>>
>>> Phone: +41 61 687 9804 <+41%2061%20687%2098%2004>
>>>
>>>
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>>
>>
>>
>
>
> --
>
> *Thomas Albrecht, PhD*
>
> Senior Scientist
>
> SIAD Solution Delivery & Architecture, pRED Informatics
>
> Roche Pharma Research and Early Development
>
>
> Roche Innovation Center Basel
>
>
> F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd
> Grenzacherstrasse 124
> 4070 Basel
>
> Switzerland
>
>
> Building: 92 / 7.01.09
>
> Phone: +41 61 687 9804 <+41%2061%20687%2098%2004>
>
>
> *Confidentiality Note: This message is intended only for the use of the
> named recipient(s) and may contain confidential and/or proprietary
> information. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the
> sender and delete this message. Any unauthorized use of the information
> contained in this message is prohibited.*
>

-- 
Tom Morris
Director, Product Management
Curoverse
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