Question

I’m getting a “Message signature was incorrect” exception when trying to authenticate with MyOpenID and Yahoo.

I’m using pretty much the ASP.NET MVC sample code that came with DotNetOpenAuth 3.4.2

public ActionResult Authenticate(string openid)
{
    var openIdRelyingParty = new OpenIdRelyingParty();
    var authenticationResponse = openIdRelyingParty.GetResponse();

    if (authenticationResponse == null)
    {
        // Stage 2: User submitting identifier
        Identifier identifier;

        if (Identifier.TryParse(openid, out identifier))
        {
            var realm = new Realm(Request.Url.Root() + "openid");
            var authenticationRequest = openIdRelyingParty.CreateRequest(openid, realm);
            authenticationRequest.RedirectToProvider();
        }
        else
        {
            return RedirectToAction("login", "home");
        }
    }
    else
    {
        // Stage 3: OpenID provider sending assertion response
        switch (authenticationResponse.Status)
        {
            case AuthenticationStatus.Authenticated:
            {
                // TODO
            }
            case AuthenticationStatus.Failed:
            {
                throw authenticationResponse.Exception;
            }
        }
    }

    return new EmptyResult();
}

Working fine with Google, AOL and others. However, Yahoo and MyOpenID fall into the AuthenticationStatus.Failed case with the following exception:

DotNetOpenAuth.Messaging.Bindings.InvalidSignatureException: Message signature was incorrect.
   at DotNetOpenAuth.OpenId.ChannelElements.SigningBindingElement.ProcessIncomingMessage(IProtocolMessage message) in c:\Users\andarno\git\dotnetopenid\src\DotNetOpenAuth\OpenId\ChannelElements\SigningBindingElement.cs:line 139
   at DotNetOpenAuth.Messaging.Channel.ProcessIncomingMessage(IProtocolMessage message) in c:\Users\andarno\git\dotnetopenid\src\DotNetOpenAuth\Messaging\Channel.cs:line 992
   at DotNetOpenAuth.OpenId.ChannelElements.OpenIdChannel.ProcessIncomingMessage(IProtocolMessage message) in c:\Users\andarno\git\dotnetopenid\src\DotNetOpenAuth\OpenId\ChannelElements\OpenIdChannel.cs:line 172
   at DotNetOpenAuth.Messaging.Channel.ReadFromRequest(HttpRequestInfo httpRequest) in c:\Users\andarno\git\dotnetopenid\src\DotNetOpenAuth\Messaging\Channel.cs:line 386
   at DotNetOpenAuth.OpenId.RelyingParty.OpenIdRelyingParty.GetResponse(HttpRequestInfo httpRequestInfo) in c:\Users\andarno\git\dotnetopenid\src\DotNetOpenAuth\OpenId\RelyingParty\OpenIdRelyingParty.cs:line 540

Appears that others are having the same problem: http://trac.dotnetopenauth.net:8000/ticket/172

Does anyone have a workaround?

Answer 1

Turns out this was an issue with using DotNetOpenAuth in a web farm environment.

When you create your OpenIdRelyingParty make sure you pass null in the constructor.

This puts your web site into OpenID stateless or ‘dumb’ mode. It’s slightly slower for users to log in (if you even notice) but you avoid having to write an IRelyingPartyApplicationStore to allow DotNetOpenAuth to work across your farm;

var openIdRelyingParty = new OpenIdRelyingParty(null);