WindowsTokenRoleProvider Anyone?

[progrock]

Hey All, I'm attempting to put together a "secure" ASP.NET 2.0
application with one requirement that has given me a bit of grief: In a
nutshell, if the user's session expires then they should be forced to
re-authenticate with the application by providing logon credentials.
These credentials are currently Active Directory domain accounts. This
is to prevent the user from walking away from their workstation and
another user walking up and accessing the application using their
perhaps still unexpired session. Yes, I know there are better ways to
enforce this kind of security but lets pretend the web app has to do it
all, 'kay?

In my experience, the easy way to implement security with domain users
is to use the Windows Authentication model built in to ASP.NET. The
problem with this is that the browser, IE6, caches any previously
supplied credentials until it is closed. So, once they log in to the app
the first time they never get prompted to do it again...even if their
session expires. Only way to clear the credential cache is to close the
browser. That won't work as it needs to be implicit. They just
carelessly walked away, remember?

So, to have the programmatic control over the authentication mechanism
seems to leave only one choice in this scenario: Forms Authentication.
Hmm, how to get Forms Auth to secure an app so that only domain users in
a given global group are permitted to log in? 2.0 Membership provider to
the rescue! Well, not exactly. "ActiveDirectoryMembershipProvider" and
"WindowsTokenRoleProvider" seem to be up to the task, but I'm hitting an
error not even the mighty Google Search can shed any light on:

[Begin Error]
Method is only supported if the user name parameter matches the user
name in the current Windows Identity.
Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the
current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information
about the error and where it originated in the code.

Exception Details: System.Configuration.Provider.ProviderException:
Method is only supported if the user name parameter matches the user
name in the current Windows Identity.

[Clip]

Stack Trace:

[ProviderException: Method is only supported if the user name parameter
matches the user name in the current Windows Identity.]

System.Web.Security.WindowsTokenRoleProvider.GetCurrentWindowsIdentityAndCheckName(String
userName) +2182633

[End Error]

I don't know what to make of this. The error seems to imply the need for
impersonation, which would be bad if true. Problem is, even with
impersonation turned on there is still no joy (same error). Another
thought is that it wants the full domain\account syntax in the login
control. No, that just fails to authenticate entirely. It's probably
something obvious and I'm just too tired to think straight.

My implementation is straight out of MSDN AFAIKT. So, before I go down
the custom-provider road which overrides the offending method into
oblivion, does anybody have any other ideas? Thanks for reading this far!

-Lee

Here is my web.config for those patient enough to endure all this:

<!-- ***BEGIN SECURITY CONFIGURATION*** -->
<authentication mode="Forms">
<forms name=".AMSFORMSAUTH"
loginUrl="~/Logon.aspx"
defaultUrl="~/Default.aspx"
protection="All"
timeout="10"
path="/"
requireSSL="true"
slidingExpiration="true"
cookieless="UseDeviceProfile"
domain=""
enableCrossAppRedirects="false" />
</authentication>
<authorization>
<deny users="?" />
<allow roles="[The domain group for this app]" />
<deny users="*" />
</authorization>
<membership
defaultProvider="ExtranetActiveDirectoryMembershipProvider">
<providers>
<add name="ExtranetActiveDirectoryMembershipProvider"
connectionStringName="ActiveDirectoryConnectionString"
connectionUsername="[Removed domain account]"
connectionPassword="[Removed account password]"
attributeMapUsername="sAMAccountName"
type="System.Web.Security.ActiveDirectoryMembershipProvider,
System.Web, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral,
PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a" />
</providers>
</membership>
<roleManager defaultProvider="ExtranetActiveDirectoryRoleProvider"
enabled="true"
cacheRolesInCookie="false">
<providers>
<add name="ExtranetActiveDirectoryRoleProvider"
type="System.Web.Security.WindowsTokenRoleProvider" />
</providers>
</roleManager>
<!-- ***END SECURITY CONFIGURATION*** -->

The connection string:

<add name="ActiveDirectoryConnectionString" connectionString="[Removed
perfectly good LDAP path to domain]" />

 

[Erik Funkenbusch]

I don't know what to make of this. The error seems to imply the need for
impersonation, which would be bad if true. Problem is, even with
impersonation turned on there is still no joy (same error). Another
thought is that it wants the full domain\account syntax in the login
control. No, that just fails to authenticate entirely. It's probably
something obvious and I'm just too tired to think straight.

I don't think you understand what impersonation does in this context. With
FormsAuthentication, impersonation either impersonates Worker process or
the user credentials supplied in the web.config. It doesn't impersonate
the user logging in. That's why you get the error even when using
impersonation.

WindowsTokenRoleProvider doesn't work very well with FormsAuthenitcation.

A better approach is to use Authorization Manager (aka AzMan), though this
is a little more complex to set up and requires support from your
administrator.