ASP.NET Core 3.0 MVC Secure Authentication

On September 23rd, Microsoft announced the third major release of its .NET Core framework. This new release boasts better performance, support for Windows Desktop apps, improved support for Docker containers, and more. Naturally, I was excited to see this new release and get authentication hooked into it with Okta! I put together this tutorial to demonstrate how to quickly and securely set up user management with Okta and OIDC (OpenID Connect) in an ASP.NET Core 3.0 application.

To follow along, you will need:

• DotNet Core 3.0
• I am using Visual Studio Code on Linux, but you should be able to follow along with Visual Studio 2019
• A free forever Okta developer account

Scaffold an ASP.NET Core 3.0 MVC Application

To scaffold your new ASP.NET Core 3.0 MVC application, open a terminal window to where you want to store your source code and run:

dotnet new mvc -n AspNetCore3AuthExample

Then, change into the newly created directory and open up Visual Studio Code.

cd AspNetCore3AuthExample
code .

You should be asked to restore missing components (the .vscode folder) that will allow you to easily run the app with a quick press of F5. Click Yes, and the folder and files will be added for you. From there, you can run the application and see the base MVC application running.

Configure an Application in Okta

Once you’ve signed up for a free developer account on Okta, log in to your dashboard and click the Applications menu item, then click the Add Application button.

On the first screen, choose Web as the platform then click the Next button.

On the Application Settings screen, give your application a name (I chose “Sample ASP.NET Core 3 OIDC”) and update the Base URIs and Login redirect URIs values to use https and port 5001, then click Done.

Once complete, you will be redirected to the General tab of the application settings. Click Edit in the top right corner to update a few values.

First, change the Login redirect URIs value to https://localhost:5001/signin-oidc and update the Logout redirect URIs value tohttps://localhost:5001/signout-callback-oidc, then click Save. These values update the Okta settings to align with what the ASP.NET Core OIDC middleware expects.

When you first created an Okta account, it automatically set up an AS (Authorization Server) for you called default. Your next step is to add groups as a claim for authenticated users.

To view the settings for your default AS, hover over the API menu item at the top of the page and click on the Authorization Servers menu item in the dropdown. From the list of Authorization Servers, choose default to l, see the settings page for the default AS. From the settings page, select the Claims tab and click on the Add Claim button. In the Add Claim dialog add and select the values as shown:

This will add the groups claim to the ID Token when a user authenticates. Lastly, go to your application’s General Settings and make note of the Client ID and Client Secret values. You will be using those to configure your application.

Configure Your ASP.NET Core 3 MVC App for Authentication

In VS Code, open up the appsettings.Development.json file and add a new section below the Logging section so that your completed file looks like this:

{
  "Logging": {
    "LogLevel": {
      "Default": "Debug",
      "System": "Information",
      "Microsoft": "Information"
    }
  },
  "Okta": {
    "ClientId": "{yourClientId}",
    "ClientSecret": "{yourClientSecret",
    "Domain": "https://{yourOktaDoomain}",
    "PostLogoutRedirectUri": "https://localhost:5001/"
  }
}

CAUTION: It’s important that you never commit sensitive information to your repository. This becomes another attack vector for attackers. For production client IDs and secrets, consider using a Key Management Service (KMS) such as AWS Key Management Service or Azure Key Vault.

Before setting up the OpenID Connect middleware for ASP.NET Core 3, you’ll need to install the NuGet package for it:

dotnet add package Microsoft.AspNetCore.Authentication.OpenIdConnect --version 3.0.0

Then add a few using statements to bring in:

using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Authentication.Cookies;
using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Authentication.OpenIdConnect;
using Microsoft.IdentityModel.Protocols.OpenIdConnect;
using Microsoft.IdentityModel.Tokens;

TIP: You can always just cut and paste the code below and use the key-chord CTRL+. to have VS Code (and Visual Studio) add the using statements for you.

Use the Client ID and Client Secret values from the General Settings tab of your application in Okta. Your Okta Domain is listed in the top right corner of your Okta dashboard and looks something like https://dev-123456.okta.com.

Use these values to set up the OIDC configuration in startup.cs. In the ConfigureServices() method, before the services.AddControllerWithViews(); call, add the following code:

services.AddAuthentication(options =>
{
  options.DefaultScheme = CookieAuthenticationDefaults.AuthenticationScheme;
  options.DefaultChallengeScheme = OpenIdConnectDefaults.AuthenticationScheme;
})
.AddCookie()
.AddOpenIdConnect(options =>
{
  options.SignInScheme = CookieAuthenticationDefaults.AuthenticationScheme;
  options.Authority = Configuration["Okta:Domain"] + "/oauth2/default";
  options.RequireHttpsMetadata = true;
  options.ClientId = Configuration["Okta:ClientId"];
  options.ClientSecret = Configuration["Okta:ClientSecret"];
  options.ResponseType = OpenIdConnectResponseType.Code;
  options.GetClaimsFromUserInfoEndpoint = true;
  options.Scope.Add("openid");
  options.Scope.Add("profile");
  options.SaveTokens = true;
  options.TokenValidationParameters = new TokenValidationParameters
  {
    NameClaimType = "name",
    RoleClaimType = "groups",
    ValidateIssuer = true
  };
});

services.AddAuthorization();

While it may look like there’s a lot to unpack here, all you really did was add AddAuthentication(), AddCookie(), AddOpenIdConnect(), and AddAuthorization(). The rest of it is configuration options.

Starting from the top, you told ASP.NET’s authentication middleware to use cookies as the authorization scheme and to use OpenID Connect to authenticate. The AddCookie() method with no options passed to it simply lets the middleware know to use the default setup for cookies.

The AddOpenIdConnect() tells the middleware you want to use OpenID Connect and sets the OpenID Connection options. You told OpenID Connect you’ll be using “Cookies” as the authentication scheme and set values in the options pulled from the appSettings.Development.json file you just edited. You’ll notice I added oauth2/default to the Okta:Domain value - this is the path to your default authorization server.

The ResponseType options lets the middleware know to use the authorization code flow for authentication. Setting GetClaimsFromUserInfoEndpoint to true tells the middleware that it will need to make a call to the authorization server’s userinfo endpoint to populate the user claims.

The Scopes added here are the openid and profile scopes. This tells the middleware that you want all the claims contained in those two scopes. SaveTokens determines whether the access and refresh tokens should be stored in the ASP.NET authentication properties.

TokenValidationParameters set a few more options for the OIDC set up. The NameClaimType = "name" lets the middleware know the Name property for User will be in the name claim in the token. The same goes for the RoleClaimType.

Since you set the “groups” claim in Okta, you can map it to the roles list of the User object in your application. Finally, you told OpenID Connect to check that the issuer was valid by making sure it matches the Authority value from above.

AddAuthorization() turns on the authorization services for the ASP.NET middleware.

We have one last change to make in Startup.cs: add authentication to the Configure() method. Directly before app.UseAuthorization();, add:

app.UseAuthentication();

Your app is now configured and ready to use OAuth2 and OpenID Connect for authentication and authorization!

Add Authentication to Your ASP.NET Core 3 MVC App

Now that your app is configured to use Okta as the OpenID Connect Identity Provider, you can add the necessary plumbing to the app to actually utilize OpenID Connect for authentication.

Add a controller called AccountController.cs with the following content:

using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Authentication.Cookies;
using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Authentication.OpenIdConnect;
using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc;

namespace DockerPipelineExample.Controllers
{
  public class AccountController : Controller
  {
    public IActionResult Login()
    {
      if(!HttpContext.User.Identity.IsAuthenticated)
      {
        return Challenge(OpenIdConnectDefaults.AuthenticationScheme);
      }
      return RedirectToAction("Index", "Home");
    }

    public IActionResult Logout()
    {
      return new SignOutResult(new[]
      {
        OpenIdConnectDefaults.AuthenticationScheme,
        CookieAuthenticationDefaults.AuthenticationScheme
      });
    }
  }
}

The two actions here simply kick off an OpenID Connect challenge on Login() and get the SignOutResult() in the Logout() action. You’ve already seen the AuthenticationScheme string literals in the configuration.

Now you need to add the user interface elements to kick off login and logout. In the /Views/Shared folder, add a file called _LoginPartial.cshtml and add the following code to it.

@if (User.Identity.IsAuthenticated)
{
  <ul class="navbar-nav">
    <li>
      <span class="navbar-text">Hello, @User.Identity.Name</span>  
      <a onclick="document.getElementById('logout_form').submit();" style="cursor: pointer;">Log out</a>
    </li>
  </ul>
  <form asp-controller="Account" asp-action="Logout" method="post" id="logout_form"></form>
}
else
{
  <ul class="navbar-nav">
    <li><a asp-controller="Account" asp-action="Login">Log in</a></li>
  </ul>
}

This will give you a little “chunk” of UI that you can inject into your main page layout. So in the _Layout.cshtml file, add the login partial right before the close of the div with a navbar-collapse class, like:

<div class="navbar-collapse collapse justify-content-between">
  <ul class="navbar-nav mr-auto">
    <li class="nav-item">
      <a class="nav-link text-dark" asp-area="" asp-controller="Home" asp-action="Index">Home</a>
    </li>
    <li class="nav-item">
      <a class="nav-link text-dark" asp-area="" asp-controller="Home" asp-action="Privacy">Privacy</a>
    </li>
  </ul>
  <partial name="_LoginPartial" />
</div>

You’ll also notice I replaced the d-sm-inline-flex flex-sm-row-reverse classes on the main div with justify-content-between. This pushes the login partial to the right of the main menu bar while keeping the menu items on the left and justifying the content between them.

Now you can fire up the app and log in with your username and password you use for signing in to Okta!

Add Authorization to your ASP.NET Core 3 MVC App

Because you mapped the authenticated user’s roles from the groups claim you set up in Okta, adding authorization becomes drop-dead simple. Add a new action to your HomeController.cs file:

[Authorize(Roles="Everyone")]
public IActionResult Everyone()
{
  return View();
}

Make sure to add the using statement for the Authorize decorator.

using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Authorization;

Add a view to the /Views/Home folder called Everyone.cshtml with one simple text line:

This page is for people in the "Everyone" group.

Make sure to add a menu item. I just copied the existing privacy link in _Layout.cshtml and changed the values like this:

<li class="nav-item">
    <a class="nav-link text-dark" asp-area="" asp-controller="Home" asp-action="Everyone">Everyone</a>
</li>

You can check this isn’t a false positive by changing the Roles value passed into the Authorize decorator to something else. I always use Roles="Dancers" because I know I’m not in that group.

Then when you log in and try to go to the Everyone page, you should be redirected to an /Account/AccessDenied page. To handle this more gracefully, you can add an action handler to the AccountController and a view to display a more user-friendly message.

If you want the final code for this post, you can get it on GitHub.

Learn More About OpenID Connect and ASP.NET

If you want to learn more about OAuth2, OpenID Connect, or ASP.NET in general, check out these other great pieces of content!

• User Authorization in ASP.NET Core with Okta
• An Illustrated Guide to OAuth and OpenID Connect
• Build a CRUD App with ASP.NET Core 2.2 and Entity Framework Core

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