I have just started getting my hands dirty with building IM applications with ejabberd XMPP server and I have a requirement to allow one user account to login simultaneously from multiple devices and be able to follow conversations on all their logged in devices much like what gives in Skype, FB.
Is this possible with ejabberd out of the box or are there any further customizations one has to do?
Any pointers I can get woild be helpful. The body of knowledge out there is quite huge and knowing where to start looking has been quite daunting.
Yes, connecting from multiple devices at once is part of the XMPP standard. In a JID, the "resource" portion (e.g.: the part after the slash in jome#stackoverflow.com/desktop) is unique to a single connection and users may have many resources. So the resource could be your MAC or some unique device ID.
Vanilla XMPP allows users to specify priorities with each resource, and messages are routed to the highest-priority resource present. To follow a conversation across all resources at once, you need to enable XEP-0280.
Related
I'm developing a HTML5 Websocket-Based application which should notify the users in real-time about different events. The client connect to the server, send a handshake with some securitytoken, the server check if the securitytoken is valid and add the client to the list of active clients. Now he get notifications on special events.
Because there are different notifications from multiplice applications, there is a notification-core where handle the basics of the connection and also the authentification because this is always the same. The core can be accessed from applications, with them they can communicate to the server.
Does it make sense or is it necessary to insert some limitations in the core? For example tracking the user-ip and refuse the connection if the user has more than lets say 3 connections to the server in the last 10 seconds to prevent flood-attacks.
In my oppinion I think it can reduce serverload if someone try to crash my service by holding the F5 key or using some botnet as long as he isn't sending so much traffic to my server that my connection can't handle that much.
I'm using socket.io if this is important.
If you're trying to protect your application from malicious attacks, there are many, many things you would need to consider and it is important to prioritize those things and spend your development time on the things that could most impact your service. I would think that creating multiple webSocket connections would be very low on the priority list way behind operations in your service that actually change state such as cause writes to a database, etc... Modern servers can easily hold tens of thousands of sockets and it costs little server load to just be sending the same notification to lots of sockets.
In addition, using the IP address as something to limit by can cause problems because larger organizations may use NAT to share a single IP address among many users for outbound connections. If you are going to limit by user, it's much better to limit by a userID (something each user uniquely logs in with).
I have been developing and running a small website using apache2 for several years, and ~once per day, my error log is spammed with requests for nonexistent files related to PHPMyAdmin. My site does not use PHP, though there is an active MySQL server (using non-conventional settings). All requests are made over a span of 2-5 seconds. Am I safe in assuming these are all requests sniffing for vulnerabilities, or is there any instance in which a legitimate site/company/server might need this information? e.g. advertisers and such? As it is, I've got a script setup to automatically ban any IP that attempts to access one of these nonexistent files. Also, if all of these requests are people searching for vulnerabilities, is there any way to have some fun with the perpetrators? e.g. a well-placed redirect to the NSA? Thanks.
There is nothing to worry about. Most likely those will be automated bots that search for publicly released vulnerabilities (or their identifiers, such as a specific url), default box set ups, default username/password combinations etc. Those bots are looking for quick and easy exploitation, so normally they will only search for a couple of urls and then move on, thus there is nothing to worry about. You will have to get to used to this though, because as the site will grow, those may occur more commonly (then you might want to start thinking about restricting access by IP range etc)
To improve security against brute-force login attempts, version 4.1.0-rc1 has an optional reCAPTCHA module.
I am developing a swing based DEFECT TRACKER application.
The problem is I have to maintain user sessions. I do not have a clue how to do this. Many users may access the system simultaneously and enter their own data. This is a basic scenario seen at many places.
Like any login based application we have.
These are the following answers I can think of:
If the user logs in before performing any activity, you could easily maintain session information based on the login ID.
If there is no necessity for the user to login, you can track the clients connected at the entry point of your application and maintain a map of them. Since each user is not logging in explicitly, you might want to track the clients based on the IP address they are logging in from.
You could assign each Swing client downloaded an unique GUID and send that along with each request.
Of course, the caveat is if there are a lot of concurrent users accessing the system, you have to implement a queuing system and also make sure that your server code is thread safe.
A completely different approach is use to JSPs or Servlets.
I have a simple REST JSON API for other websites/apps to access some of my website's database (through a PHP gateway). Basically the service works like this: call example.com/fruit/orange, server returns JSON information about the orange. Here is the problem: I only want websites I permit to access this service. With a simple API key system, any website could quickly attain a key by copying the key from an authorized website's (potentially) client side code. I have looked at OAuth, but it seems a little complicated for what I am doing. Solutions?
You should use OAuth.
There are actually two OAuth specifications, the 3-legged version and the 2-legged version. The 3-legged version is the one that gets most of the attention, and it's not the one you want to use.
The good news is that the 2-legged version does exactly what you want, it allows an application to grant access to another via either a shared secret key (very similar to Amazon's Web Service model, you will use the HMAC-SHA1 signing method) or via a public/private key system (use signing method: RSA-SHA1). The bad news, is that it's not nearly as well supported yet as the 3-legged version yet, so you may have to do a bit more work than you otherwise might have to right now.
Basically, 2-legged OAuth just specifies a way to "sign" (compute a hash over) several fields which include the current date, a random number called "nonce," and the parameters of your request. This makes it very hard to impersonate requests to your web service.
OAuth is slowly but surely becoming an accepted standard for this kind of thing -- you'll be best off in the long run if you embrace it because people can then leverage the various libraries available for doing that.
It's more elaborate than you would initially want to get into - but the good news is that a lot of people have spent a lot of time on it so you know you haven't forgotten anything. A great example is that very recently Twitter found a gap in the OAuth security which the community is currently working on closing. If you'd invented your own system, you're having to figure out all this stuff on your own.
Good luck!
Chris
OAuth is not the solution here.
OAuth is when you have endusers and want 3rd party apps not to handle end user passwords. When to use OAuth:
http://blog.apigee.com/detail/when_to_use_oauth/
Go for simple api-key.
And take additional measures if there is a need for a more secure solution.
Here is some more info, http://blog.apigee.com/detail/do_you_need_api_keys_api_identity_vs._authorization/
If someone's client side code is compromised, they should get a new key. There's not much you can do if their code is exposed.
You can however, be more strict by requiring IP addresses of authorized servers to be registered in your system for the given key. This adds an extra step and may be overkill.
I'm not sure what you mean by using a "simple API key" but you should be using some kind of authentication that has private keys(known only to client and server), and then perform some kind of checksum algorithm on the data to ensure that the client is indeed who you think it is, and that the data has not been modified in transit. Amazon AWS is a great example of how to do this.
I think it may be a little strict to guarantee that code has not been compromised on your clients' side. I think it is reasonable to place responsibility on your clients for the security of their own data. Of course this assumes that an attacker can only mess up that client's account.
Perhaps you could keep a log of what ip requests are coming from for a particular account, and if a new ip comes along, flag the account, send an email to the client, and ask them to authorize that ip. I don't know maybe something like that could work.
Basically you have two options, either restrict access by IP or then have an API key, both options have their positive and negative sides.
Restriction by IP
This can be a handy way to restrict the access to you service. You can define exactly which 3rd party services will be allowed to access your service without enforcing them to implement any special authentication features. The problem with this method is however, that if the 3rd party service is written for example entirely in JavaScript, then the IP of the incoming request won't be the 3rd party service's server IP, but the user's IP, as the request is made by the user's browser and not the server. Using IP restriction will hence make it impossible to write client-driven applications and forces all the requests go through the server with proper access rights. Remember that IP addresses can also be spoofed.
API key
The advantage with API keys is that you do not have to maintain a list of known IPs, you do have to maintain a list of API keys, but it's easier to automatize their maintenance. Basically how this works is that you have two keys, for example a user id and a secret password. Each method request to your service should provide an authentication hash consisting of the request parameters, the user id and a hash of these values (where the secrect password is used as the hash salt). This way you can both authenticate and restrict access. The problem with this is, that once again, if the 3rd party service is written as client-driven (for example JavaScript or ActionScript), then anyone can parse out the user id and secret salt values from the code.
Basically, if you want to be sure that only the few services you've specifically defined will be allowed to access your service, then you only option is to use IP restriction and hence force them to route all requests via their servers. If you use an API key, you have no way to enforce this.
All of production of IP's security seems produces a giant bug to users before getting connected. Symbian 60s has the fullest capability to left an untraced, reliable and secure signal in the midst of multiple users(applying Opera Handler UI 6.5, Opera Mini v8 and 10) along with the coded UI's, +completely filled network set-up. Why restrict for other features when discoverable method of making faster link method is finally obtained. Keeping a more identified accounts, proper monitoring of that 'true account'-if they are on the track-compliance of paying bills and knowing if the users has an unexpired maintaining balance will create a more faster link of internet signal to popular/signatured mobile industry. Why making hard security features before getting them to the site, a visit to their accounts monthly may erase all of connectivity issues? All of the user of mobile should have no capability to 'get connected' if they have unpaid bills. Why not provide an 'ALL in One' -Registration/Application account, a programmed fixed with OS, (perhaps an e-mail account) instead with a 'monitoring capability' if they are paying or not (password issues concern-should be given to other department). And if 'not' turn-off their account exactly and their other link features. Each of them has their own interests to where to get hooked daily, if you'd locked/turn them off due to unpaid bills that may initiate them to re-subscribe and discipline them more to become a more responsible users and that may even expire an account if not maintained. Monthly monitoring or accessing of an identified 'true account' with collaboration to the network provider produces higher privacy instead of always asking for users 'name' and 'password', 'location', 'permissions' to view their data services. IP's marked already their first identity or 'finding the location of the users' so, it's seems unnessary to place it on browsers pre-searches, why not use 'Obtaining data' or 'Processing data.'
I'm wondering what strategies people use for reduced sign on with legacy applications and how effective they have found them?
We have an ASP.Net based intranet and own a lot of the legacy applications, but not all. We also have BizTalk and are considering the use of it's SSO engine too.
A good compromise between effort/rework and the convenience of single sign on is to continue to maintain a list of users, privileges, roles etc in the legacy app. Make the changes necessary to automatically log the user into your application based on their user account (usually their Windows or network account).
I'm currently running a couple of applications that use this method of sign on, and it makes them seem more integrated even though they aren't.
Another advantage we've found is that it stops people from sharing passwords to legacy applications. They're much less likely to hand out an admin password that also gives others access to their email or payroll details!
Multiple identity storage per application?
Might not be a single sign on solution, but have you try looking into something that is more targetted solution like MS Identity Lifecycle Manager? It will simplify identity synchronization between applications and it's pluggable as well, meaning you can hook up your own code to do the synchronization between different system. So if you change the identity info (i.e. login info) in ILM portal, you can propagate those to the different systems. Same thing for provisioning and deprovisioning identity. Single point of entry.
I supposed you can use biztalk also for similar thing.
As for truly single sign on solution where you just logged in once and you don't have to login again to different applications. I've yet to find one.
I supposed if your legacy apps has a pluggable identity provider module, it's doable, meaning you can customize the login system to hook up to your single identity source of truth whatever that maybe.
We did two things with legacy accounts. (legacy web based apps)
We first mapped the legacy accounts to their system logon accounts (running in a Windows Active Directory).
A facade logon screen then was applied to over the top of the legacy apps (web based), this would request the AD logon, which would then reverse map to the legacy applications logon account and assign the appropriate rights to the user, using the legacy systems security model. The user received a token for the session which kept the doors open for them.
This gave us the benefit of not having to retrofit legacy apps (for example what would happen is app x only had numbers for ID, and the user uses a windows logon (alphanumeric), and also achieve a psuedo single signon from the client's perspective.
The other option that did make sense was at the new logon screen, it would check multiple repositories of security, so even if the user didn't decide to use their windows logon they could still logon with the legacy account name. Obviously this does have some side effects but can also help ease the transition pain end users sometimes feel moving between systems.
There are also programs like the Citrix XenApp Single Signon which take a totally different approach to the issue.
In addition to Jimmy's points about using ILM, this particular system does allow integration with the AD PCNS (Password Change Notification Service) service, that can be used with ILM (ILM "sees" the password change event and can publish it to other consuming applications / services) to at least ensure that as a user's password changes in one system, it gets reflected into others.