Contents
The key concept to grasp in order to understand authentication in Windows environments is the relationship between logon sessions and access tokens. A logon session is used to represent the presence of a user on a machine and begins when a user is successfully authenticated and ends when the user logs off.
What happens to a token when you log out of a server?
Once the user logs out of the server, the token is destroyed. The token proves you’ve been allowed in and allows you to view other resources and make further requests. This is an improvement from traditional processes that require users to verify their identities at every step.
How is user data stored in token based authentication?
Token based authentication is one in which the user state is stored on the client. This has grown to be the preferred mode of authentication for RESTful APIs. In the token based authentication, the user data is encrypted into a JWT (JSON Web Token) with a secret and then sent back to the client.
How are logon IDs identified in Windows tokens?
Every new logon session is identifiable via a 64 bit locally unique identifier (LUID), referred to as the logon ID, and every access token must contain an Authentication Id (or AuthId) parameter that identifies the origin/linked logon session via this LUID. This is highlighted in the diagram below:
Why is session security important in open source?
This article will introduce session management, analyze commonly use session flaws, and demonstrate best practices. Part two will take a look at a new open source flow that is secure and easy to integrate into existing systems. Why session security is important. JWT vs Opaque access tokens. Common attacks on sessions.
How are JWT access tokens used in session management?
Implementations with JWT access tokens can be as scalable, in terms of space and time complexity, as session flow 5 in part 1. We only need to store one refresh token per logged in user per device in the database. That concludes the bulk of the matter we have on session management.
How can I revoke a user session token?
However, one can revoke all tokens by changing the signing key. These are random strings which act as pointers to information that is held only by the system that issues them. These require a database/cache lookup each time they are used. A single token can easily be revoked on demand.