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Assume I have two web applications and single STS service: 1. Administration portal where I can grant privileges to users. 2. Sales portal where users can do things based on those privileges.

Now assume I have STS that provides security tokens with 8 hours expiration to Sales portal. Token contains claims that carry information about privileges for user, among other things.

Now imagine a scenario where on the Administration portal privilege is removed for the user and change has been saved to the database. Since user is already logged in to Sales portal with security token that has not yet expired, Sales portal will not be aware that privilege has been removed.

Question is - how to handle this scenario. To me the only solution that I can see here is complete removal of STS, but I'm looking for a smarter way to handle this.

Is there a better approach to this out-of-sync issue?

Admir Tuzović
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1 Answers1

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Removing the STS is a little bit drastic :-). You have it for a reason (SSO, federation, etc). You have a few options: decrease the expiration time of the token to a reasonable value for the volatility of your changes (8 hours might be excessive), or move the sensitive authorization information (e.g. privileges) to the app so it is checked each time.

You can do "claims enrichment" at the app level (through a custom AuhtenticationManager in WIF) and still use claims model from your app code.

Technically there's no synching between the app and the STS. The Token is a snapshot of user attributes at the time of issuance and valid until it expires.

Eugenio Pace
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  • Although I'm familiar with everything you just wrote, your post is actually very valuable as it confirms the way I understood all claims based authentication/authorization/STS. Vote up for you sir :) – Admir Tuzović Sep 10 '13 at 18:03