I have a few websites which allow both anonymous and window auth users at the same time. Basically if you hit the site with IE or Webkit based browsers on a windows system, the server instantly recognizes your active directory user and group.
In the past I’ve provided a link to a windows auth only page which allows the current user to login, or bounce back to where they started.
I find the management of this kind of frustrating as I need to make certain that IIS has the correct security settings for that single page after every deployment.
Is there a better way for me to allow a user to elevate from anon to authenticated?
OK, I figured out a fairly nice way to do this…however it’s not as elegant as I had hoped since it doesn’t work across applications.
Basically, if you create a single page within your Anon + Integrated Auth IIS6 website or virtual directory, let’s call it auth.aspx, then you can use this page to prompt authentication.
Go into IIS settings and specify that auth.aspx is Integrated Auth ONLY (no anon). Then create a hidden iframe somewhere on your page. I then created a simple JavaScript action to update the src attribute of the iframe to the auth.aspx page. This forces the browser to try and authenticate using NTLM. Once you enter valid credentials you’ve successfully elevated your current user beyond the generic anonymous user.
One final touch was to then include a Response.Redirect into the auth.aspx which reloads the current page. Assuming your ASP.net session tokens are set correctly, the page will reload and the user will be authenticated.