Question

I have a security manager in my application that works for both windows and web, the process is simple, just takes the user and pwd and authenticates them against a database then sets the Thread.CurrentPrincipal with a custom principal. For windows applications this works fine, but I have problems with web applications.

After the process of authentication, when I’m trying to set the Current.User to the custom principal from Thread.CurrentPrincipal this last one contains a GenericPrincipal. Am I doing something wrong? This is my code:

Login.aspx

protected void btnAuthenticate_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    SecurityManager.Authenticate("user","pwd"); // This is where I set the custom principal in Thread.CurrentPrincipal
    FormsAuthenticationTicket authenticationTicket = new FormsAuthenticationTicket(1,
                        "user",
                        DateTime.Now,
                        DateTime.Now.AddMinutes(30),
                        false,
                        "");

    string ticket = FormsAuthentication.Encrypt(authenticationTicket);
    HttpCookie authenticationCookie = new HttpCookie(FormsAuthentication.FormsCookieName, ticket);
    Response.Cookies.Add(authenticationCookie);    
    Response.Redirect(FormsAuthentication.GetRedirectUrl("user", false));
}

Global.asax (This is where the problem appears)

protected void Application_AuthenticateRequest(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    HttpCookie authCookie = Context.Request.Cookies[FormsAuthentication.FormsCookieName];
    if (authCookie == null)
        return;

    if (HttpContext.Current.User != null && HttpContext.Current.User.Identity.IsAuthenticated && HttpContext.Current.User.Identity is FormsIdentity)
    {                
        HttpContext.Current.User = System.Threading.Thread.CurrentPrincipal; //Here the value is GenericPrincipal
    }

Thanks in advance for any help.

Answer 1

First of all: You need to set the principal on every request.

Forms authentication uses it’s own assignment of the principal on each request. That’s why you are seeing the GenericPrincipal

I usually reassign my custom prinicpal in OnPostAuthenticate when the standard authentication mechanism is done.