User/Pass Authentication using RESTful WCF & Windows Forms

NaquinSonarikh — Mon, 10 Oct 2022 12:31:52 GMT

What is the best approach to implementing authorisation/authentication for a Windows Forms app talking to an IIS-hosted RESTful WCF Service?

The reason I ask is I am very confused, after sifting through different articles and posts expressing a different method and eventually hitting a ~650 page document on WCF Security Best Practices" (http://www.codeplex.com/WCFSecurityGuide) I am just uncertain which approach is the BEST to take and how to get started on implementation, given my scenario.

I started with this article "A Guide to Designing and Building RESTful Web Services with WCF 3.5" (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd203052.aspx shagle voojio) and a PDC video on RESTful WCF services, which was great and helped me implement my first REST-friendly WCF service,

After I had the service working, I returned to implement security, see. "Security Considerations" (quarter down the page) and attempted to implement a HTTP Authorization header as per the instructions, however I found the code to be incomplete (see how 'UserKeys' variable was never declared). This is the point at which I tried to research more on how to do this (using a HMAC hash with the "Authorization" HTTP header, but could not find much on google?) it led me to other articles regarding message-level security, forms auth and custom validators and frankly I am not sure which is the best and most appropriate approach to take now.

So with all that said (and thanks for listening up till now!), I guess my main questions are,

- Which security implementation should I use?

- Is there any way to avoid sending the username/password with every WCF call? I would prefer not to send these extra bytes if a connection has been established at the beginning, which it will be before subsequent calls are allowed to be made after login.

- Should I even really be concerned about anything other than plain text if I am using SSL?

As said, .NET 3.5 win forms app, IIS-hosted WCF service, however what is important is I wish any and all WCF services to require this authorization procedure (however it should be, session, http header or otherwise) as I do not want anybody to be able to hit these services from the web.

I know the above post is large but I had to express the route I have already been down and what I need to accomplish, any and all help is greatly appreciated.

PS: I am also aware of this post How to configure secure RESTful services with WCF using username/password + SSL /ome gle and if the community suggests I move away from REST for WCF services, I can do this, however I started with this to keep consistency for any public APIs to come.

I think it's important I state how I am accessing my WCF Service (contacting the service is working, but what is the best way to validate credentials - and then return the Member object?):

WebChannelFactory<IMemberService> cf = new WebChannelFactory<IMemberService>(
                new Uri(Properties.Settings.Default.MemberServiceEndpoint));
            IMemberService channel = cf.CreateChannel();
            Member m = channel.GetMember("user", "pass");

Code that was half implemented from MS article (and some of my own for testing):

 public Member GetMember(string username, string password)
    {
        if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(username))
            throw new WebProtocolException(HttpStatusCode.BadRequest, "Username must be provided.", null);
        if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(password))
            throw new WebProtocolException(HttpStatusCode.BadRequest, "Password must be provided.", null);

        if (!AuthenticateMember(username))
        {
            WebOperationContext.Current.OutgoingResponse.StatusCode = HttpStatusCode.Unauthorized;
            return null;
        }

        return new Member() { Username = "goneale" };
    }

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User/Pass Authentication using RESTful WCF & Windows Forms