Usar Discourse como proveedor de identidad (SSO, DiscourseConnect)

Hi :wave:, I wrote this SimpleSAMLphp authentication module to be able to use Discourse as an SSO provider within a SimpleSAMLphp installation. I.e. you can use Discourse as an SSO provider for any services that supports SAML or Shibboleth authentication, which is really nice.

https://github.com/swcc/simplesamlphp-module-authdiscourse

Let me know what you think (if interested to comment on the code you can use Github Issues).

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That’s great! If you’d like to make the module more visible, you could create a topic about it in our extras category. That category is a directory of all extensions & integrations for Discourse which are not Discourse plugins,

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EDIT: Mockup image added


I’m implementing this SSO on an existing web site and I just want to check how people are “presenting” their login method to users.

For example, let’s say my web site at www.example.com has a Login button in the top nav.

Should that login button instantly take people to my discourse login auth page? Or is it preferable to display a page / modal of information first, something like:

I’m just wondering if people will get confused if they’re not told what’s about to happen? :thinking:

Does anyone have any user experiences or best practices to share?

And thanks too by the way to @techAPJ for the very detailed first post in this thread, I was able to successfully build this in to my ASP.NET web site from scratch following your steps :+1:t2:

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Is it possible to include a state parameter that gets returned unchanged, like as is done in OAuth? Asp.net core authentication middleware depends on generating a correlation id to prevent CSRF attacks, and I don’t currently have an easy way to include this.

Could you not add one to the querystring of your callback URL before you wrap it up?

Eg:

nonce=NONCE&return_sso_url=https://www.example.com/my/callback_url.aspx?myparam=here

@jessicah I tried this today and yes, it works fine.

        ' Create a Return URL
        Dim strReturnURL As String = "https://www.example.com/authtestRETURNURL.aspx?myownparametershere=surewhynot"

        ' Generate a random nonce. Save it temporarily so that you can verify it with returned nonce value
        Dim strNonce As String = Guid.NewGuid().ToString("N")

        ' Create a new payload with nonce and return url (where the Discourse will redirect user after verification)
        '       Payload should look like: nonce=NONCE&return_sso_url=RETURN_URL
        Dim strPayload As String = "nonce=" & strNonce & "&return_sso_url=" & strReturnURL

Then on the page which is called back you’ll find this inside your decoded SSO query string:

&return_sso_url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.example.com%2FauthtestRETURNURL.aspx%3Fmyownparametershere%3Dsurewhynot&username=Rich

Hopefully this is what you meant?

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Multi-site approaches to using discourse-auth-proxy?

Are there any examples or recommendations for using Discourse as SSO provider for multi-site authentication?

It seems like the there are two basic multisite approaches:

  1. Use multiple instances of discourse-auth-proxy, one per site protected.
  2. Use a single instance of discourse-auth-proxy so the payload containing return_sso_url changes based upon the source of the login request.

I think either of these could work, but the issue with these two approaches, is
that you still require logging into each different site.
There is also the risk that something is stored in Postgres that will get overwritten by each login from the different sites. ie: site1.com. site2.com
(I don’t know the details of Discourse auth/PG schema, so I don’t know)

What would be ideal is a way to have login performed once, which gets you logged into all the sites in the multi-site group. ie, site1.com, site2.com, site3.com

Apparently Stackoverflow does this using a combination of localSession storage and Iframes as the main enabler. tech description

But I’d really love to know if someone has implemented any approach to
multisite login using Discourse as the SSO provider.
approach 1: multiple instances of discourse-auth-proxy
approach 2: hacked discourse-auth-proxy affecting return_sso_url in payload.
approach 3: #1 or #2 implemented such that logging in once, means you do not have to login again when moving from site1.com to site2.com

I am tagging you @sam, since you originally authored the Go discourse-auth-proxy program.

Hi.

I am stucking at how the provider handle the + sign in return sso url.

In my case, my DiscourseConnect consumer will create a return_sso_url like

  1. raw http://example.com/foo/bar?wpLoginToken=123+\
  2. PHP urlencoded http%3A%2F%2Fexample.com%2Ffoo%2Fbar%3FwpLoginToken%3D123%2B%5C

then DiscourseConnect will return to

  1. http://example.com/foo/bar?wpLoginToken=123%20\&sso=foo&sig=bar
  2. http://example.com/foo/bar?wpLoginToken=123+\&sso=foo&sig=bar

The problem is that the return to url will be handle by the urldecode function in PHP(it’s the core workflow in MediaWiki Authentication), and the wpLoginToken value will be unexpected change from 123+\ to 123 \.

Look like i has found the cause:
https://ruby-doc.org/stdlib-2.7.1/libdoc/uri/rdoc/URI.html#method-c-decode_www_form
https://www.php.net/manual/en/function.urlencode.php

Well, the client and server implement encode/decode but follow different specification.

I’m not asking Discourse to change but looking for advice to resolve this.

Thanks.

Edit:
I resolve it just urlencode the + sign twice.

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Thanks!

I’m trying this presently. I sent you two PRs on GitHub, one for refreshing the docs and one for fixing a bug I hit.

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In Settings > Login, the two DiscourseConnect provider settings are not consecutive, and appear interspersed with the DiscourseConnect settings:

Since the provider and the non-provider settings are for opposite use cases—using Discourse to manage users for something else versus using something else to manage users for Discourse—displaying these settings mixed together invites misconfiguration. It would be less confusing if the two provider settings were consecutive and either entirely before or entirely after the non-provider settings.

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@techAPJ Can this be used with AWS Cognito? I want to create an app in AWS Amplify for my discourse community and want my app to be authenticated through discourse.

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Sorry for the very delayed reply. You’re absolutely right - it’s confusing that they’re interspersed like that. I’ve cleaned it up in this PR:

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@mdoggydog Gracias por la reciente actualización de la extensión MediaWiki DiscourseSsoConsumer. Habíamos estado dándole vueltas a qué hacer con los usuarios que se desconectaban de nuestra wiki sin haberse desconectado de Discourse, y $wgPluggableAuth_EnableAutoLogin definitivamente no era lo que queríamos, ya que impide el acceso anónimo a la wiki. La configuración $wgDiscourseSsoConsumer_AutoRelogin que añadiste es exactamente lo que necesitábamos.

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Hola :wave:

Estoy intentando usar el ejemplo de PHP de la publicación original, pero la forma en que almacenan las cosas no tiene sentido. Simplemente almacenan valores en una base de datos SQL con las claves login y nonce. Si quiero usar SQL para almacenar los nonces, ¿cómo se vería exactamente mi base de datos SQL?

Otra información que podría ayudar es para qué estoy usando esto: espero vincular un usuario de Discourse a una cuenta de Minecraft generando un enlace SSO que esté vinculado a su UUID. Al iniciar sesión correctamente con Discourse, almacenaré su UUID y su ID de Discourse en una tabla.

Hasta ahora, pude hacer que el ejemplo de PHP funcione, pero supongo que no entiendo completamente cómo tendría que modificarlo para que funcione para mi caso de uso. Idealmente, quiero generar el enlace a través de una solicitud GET y enviárselo al usuario, de modo que el UUID ya esté asociado con el nonce.

¡Gracias por esta publicación, ya que estaría aún más perdido sin ella!

Edición: Para los nonces, ¿sería mejor almacenar los nonces en la tabla y buscar por ellos? Sé que necesito hacer coincidir el nonce, pero, a menos que pueda pasar información adicional en la URL de redirección (lo cual no he logrado hacer), no estoy seguro de cómo referenciar el nonce correctamente.

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He creado una guía que permite a los administradores configurar DiscourseConnect en el protocolo SAML estándar a través de SimpleSAMLphp.

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Detalle del enlace

/session/sso_provider?sso=bm9uY2U9NDA3YTVlNjg1ZTEwMDlh...

No estoy seguro de por qué da 502 bad gateway.

Eliminé parte del valor del parámetro sso que habías proporcionado. A menos que alguien conociera tu clave secreta, no podría decodificar el valor, pero aun así me pareció más seguro no proporcionar el valor completo. No estará relacionado con el error 502 que estás recibiendo.

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Parece un error de base de datos. Porque probé el mismo plugin y configuración en otro sitio web de Discourse, y está funcionando. ¿Cómo puedo solucionar este problema?

Parece que intentar autenticarse en discourse-auth-proxy con nombres de usuario o grupos no ASCII (chino en mi caso) genera un error porque las cookies no pueden contener estos caracteres. Esta es mi solución: (descargo de responsabilidad: no estoy muy familiarizado con golang)

diff --git a/main.go b/main.go
index 1b1dc28..18f8c9e 100644
--- a/main.go
+++ b/main.go
@@ -154,7 +154,12 @@ func redirectIfNoCookie(handler http.Handler, r *http.Request, w http.ResponseWr
 		var username, groups string

 		if err == nil && cookie != nil {
-				username, groups, err = parseCookie(cookie.Value, config.CookieSecret)
+				var value string
+				value, err = url.QueryUnescape(cookie.Value)
+				if err != nil {
+						return
+				}
+				username, groups, err = parseCookie(value, config.CookieSecret)
 		}

 		if err == nil {
@@ -224,7 +229,7 @@ func redirectIfNoCookie(handler http.Handler, r *http.Request, w http.ResponseWr
 				cookieData := strings.Join([]string{username, strings.Join(groups, "|")}, ",")
 				http.SetCookie(w, &http.Cookie{
 						Name:     cookieName,
-						Value:    signCookie(cookieData, config.CookieSecret),
+						Value:    url.QueryEscape(signCookie(cookieData, config.CookieSecret)),
 						Expires:  expiration,
 						HttpOnly: true,
 						Path:     "/",
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¡Gracias por informar! ¿Te importaría hacer una PR contra el repositorio de GitHub para que podamos fusionar este cambio en la versión oficial?

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