How LogonUserIdentity information is passed from browser to server?

Question

I'm accessing Windows authentication information in my ASP.NET MVC application using the following code.

WindowsIdentity identity = HttpContext.Current.Request.LogonUserIdentity;

Value of identity.Name is correctly the Windows login name.

When I inspect the http request that is send from browser to the server I see the following.

GET http://localhost:12010/administration HTTP/1.1
Authorization: Negotiate YIIJqgYGKwYBBQUCoIIJnjCCCZqgMDAuBgkqhkiC9xIBAgIGCSqGSIb3EgECAgYKKwYBBAGCNwICHgYKKwYBBAGCNwICCqKCCWQEgglgYIIJXAYJKoZIhvcSAQICAQBugglLMIIJR6ADAgEFoQMCAQ6iBwMFACAAAACjggfcYYIH2DCCB9SgAwIBBaEKGwhJVC5MT0NBTKIoMCagAwIBAqEfMB0bBEhUVFAbFWl0LWRsMzgyLWhraS5JVC5MT0NBTKOCB5UwggeRoAMCARKhAwIBIaKCB4MEggd
Accept: text/html, application/xhtml+xml, */*
Accept-Language: en-EN
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/7.0; rv:11.0) like Gecko
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate
Connection: Keep-Alive
Host: localhost:12010
Cookie: ASP.NET_SessionId=pr0qmeomsr1rlb1ehp2sffd3

There is no Windows authentication information in the http request, but I can access it in my code.

How are the values of LogonUserIdentity properties passed from browser to server?

I updated the question. Header has now Cookie and Authorization fields. — CuriousSuperhero, Feb 06 '15 at 10:57
`There is no Windows authentication information in the http request` <- what about in the Authorization field? — wal, Feb 06 '15 at 11:05
Here are the full explanations of how it works. https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff647076.aspx — slvnperron, Feb 06 '15 at 11:07
I updated my answer again for more clarification. may contain your right answer. get ready. — Amirhossein Mehrvarzi, Feb 06 '15 at 16:21

score 2 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:27

Note that these type of authentication is designed to employ in intranet applications.

As you can see, the Request parameters for my own test is:

Params: {ALL_HTTP=HTTP_CACHE_CONTROL%3amax-age%3d0%0d%0aHTTP_CONNECTION%3akeep-alive%0d%0aHTTP_ACCEPT%3atext%2fhtml%2capplication%2fxhtml%2bxml%2capplication%2fxml%3bq%3d0.9%2cimage%2fwebp%2c*%2f*%3bq%3d0.8%0d%0aHTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING%3agzip%2c+deflate%2c+sdch%0d%0aHTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE%3aen-US%2cen%3bq%3d0.8%2cfa%3bq%3d0.6%0d%0aHTTP_HOST%3alocalhost%3a54035%0d%0aHTTP_USER_AGENT%3aMozilla%2f5.0+(Windows+NT+6.3%3b+WOW64)+AppleWebKit%2f537.36+(KHTML%2c+like+Gecko)+Chrome%2f40.0.2214.94+Safari%2f537.36%0d%0a&ALL_RAW=Cache-Control%3a+max-age%3d0%0d%0aConnection%3a+keep-alive%0d%0aAccept%3a+text%2fhtml%2capplication%2fxhtml%2bxml%2capplication%2fxml%3bq%3d0.9%2cimage%2fwebp%2c*%2f*%3bq%3d0.8%0d%0aAccept-Encoding%3a+gzip%2c+deflate%2c+sdch%0d%0aAccept-Language%3a+en-US%2cen%3bq%3d0.8%2cfa%3bq%3d0.6%0d%0aHost%3a+localhost%3a54035%0d%0aUser-Agent%3a+Mozilla%2f5.0+(Windows+NT+6.3%3b+WOW64)+AppleWebKit%2f537.36+(KHTML%2c+like+Gecko)+Chrome%2f40.0.2214.94+Safari%2f537.36%0d%0a&APPL_MD_PATH=%2fLM%2fW3SVC%2f7%2fROOT&APPL_
PHYSICAL_PATH=c%3a%5cusers%5camirmehr%5cdocuments%5cvisual+studio+2013%5cProjects%5cWindows+Auth%5cWindows+Auth%5c&AUTH_TYPE=Negotiate&AUTH_USER=Amir%5camirmehr&AUTH_PASSWORD=&LOGON_USER=Amir%5camirmehr&REMOTE_USER=Amir%5camirmehr&CERT_COOKIE=&CERT_FLAGS=&CERT_ISSUER=&CERT_KEYSIZE=&CERT_SECRETKEYSIZE=&CERT_SERIALNUMBER=&CERT_SERVER_ISSUER=&CERT_SERVER_SUBJECT=&CERT_SUBJECT=&CONTENT_LENGTH=0&CONTENT_TYPE=&GATEWAY_INTERFACE=CGI%2f1.1&HTTPS=off&HTTPS_KEYSIZE=&HTTPS_SECRETKEYSIZE=&HTTPS_SERVER_ISSUER=&HTTPS_SERVER_SUBJECT=&INSTANCE_ID=7&INSTANCE_META_PATH=%2fLM%2fW3SVC%2f7&LOCAL_ADDR=%3a%3a1&PATH_INFO=%2f&PATH_TRANSLATED=c%3a%5cusers%5camirmehr%5cdocuments%5cvisual+studio+2013%5cProjects%5cWindows+Auth%5cWindows+Auth&QUERY_STRING=&REMOTE_ADDR=%3a%3a1&REMOTE_HOST=%3a%3a1&REMOTE_PORT=54427&REQUEST_METHOD=GET&SCRIPT_NAME=%2f&SERVER_NAME=localhost&SERVER_PORT=54035&SERVER_PORT_SECURE=0&SERVER_PROTOCOL=HTTP%2f1.1&SERVER_SOFTWARE=Microsoft-IIS%2f8.0&URL=%2f&HTTP_CACHE_CONTROL=max-age%3d0&HTTP_CONNECTION=keep-alive&HTTP_
ACCEPT=text%2fhtml%2capplication%2fxhtml%2bxml%2capplication%2fxml%3bq%3d0.9%2cimage%2fwebp%2c*%2f*%3bq%3d0.8&HTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING=gzip%2c+deflate%2c+sdch&HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE=en-US%2cen%3bq%3d0.8%2cfa%3bq%3d0.6&HTTP_HOST=localhost%3a54035&HTTP_USER_AGENT=Mozilla%2f5.0+(Windows+NT+6.3%3b+WOW64)+AppleWebKit%2f537.36+(KHTML%2c+like+Gecko)+Chrome%2f40.0.2214.94+Safari%2f537.36}

And Server variables :

ServerVariables: {ALL_HTTP=HTTP_CACHE_CONTROL%3amax-age%3d0%0d%0aHTTP_CONNECTION%3akeep-alive%0d%0aHTTP_ACCEPT%3atext%2fhtml%2capplication%2fxhtml%2bxml%2capplication%2fxml%3bq%3d0.9%2cimage%2fwebp%2c*%2f*%3bq%3d0.8%0d%0aHTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING%3agzip%2c+deflate%2c+sdch%0d%0aHTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE%3aen-US%2cen%3bq%3d0.8%2cfa%3bq%3d0.6%0d%0aHTTP_HOST%3alocalhost%3a54035%0d%0aHTTP_USER_AGENT%3aMozilla%2f5.0+(Windows+NT+6.3%3b+WOW64)+AppleWebKit%2f537.36+(KHTML%2c+like+Gecko)+Chrome%2f40.0.2214.94+Safari%2f537.36%0d%0a&ALL_RAW=Cache-Control%3a+max-age%3d0%0d%0aConnection%3a+keep-alive%0d%0aAccept%3a+text%2fhtml%2capplication%2fxhtml%2bxml%2capplication%2fxml%3bq%3d0.9%2cimage%2fwebp%2c*%2f*%3bq%3d0.8%0d%0aAccept-Encoding%3a+gzip%2c+deflate%2c+sdch%0d%0aAccept-Language%3a+en-US%2cen%3bq%3d0.8%2cfa%3bq%3d0.6%0d%0aHost%3a+localhost%3a54035%0d%0aUser-Agent%3a+Mozilla%2f5.0+(Windows+NT+6.3%3b+WOW64)+AppleWebKit%2f537.36+(KHTML%2c+like+Gecko)+Chrome%2f40.0.2214.94+Safari%2f537.36%0d%0a&APPL_MD_PATH=%2fLM%2fW3SVC%2f7%2fR
OOT&APPL_PHYSICAL_PATH=c%3a%5cusers%5camirmehr%5cdocuments%5cvisual+studio+2013%5cProjects%5cWindows+Auth%5cWindows+Auth%5c&AUTH_TYPE=Negotiate&AUTH_USER=Amir%5camirmehr&AUTH_PASSWORD=&LOGON_USER=Amir%5camirmehr&REMOTE_USER=Amir%5camirmehr&CERT_COOKIE=&CERT_FLAGS=&CERT_ISSUER=&CERT_KEYSIZE=&CERT_SECRETKEYSIZE=&CERT_SERIALNUMBER=&CERT_SERVER_ISSUER=&CERT_SERVER_SUBJECT=&CERT_SUBJECT=&CONTENT_LENGTH=0&CONTENT_TYPE=&GATEWAY_INTERFACE=CGI%2f1.1&HTTPS=off&HTTPS_KEYSIZE=&HTTPS_SECRETKEYSIZE=&HTTPS_SERVER_ISSUER=&HTTPS_SERVER_SUBJECT=&INSTANCE_ID=7&INSTANCE_META_PATH=%2fLM%2fW3SVC%2f7&LOCAL_ADDR=%3a%3a1&PATH_INFO=%2f&PATH_TRANSLATED=c%3a%5cusers%5camirmehr%5cdocuments%5cvisual+studio+2013%5cProjects%5cWindows+Auth%5cWindows+Auth&QUERY_STRING=&REMOTE_ADDR=%3a%3a1&REMOTE_HOST=%3a%3a1&REMOTE_PORT=54427&REQUEST_METHOD=GET&SCRIPT_NAME=%2f&SERVER_NAME=localhost&SERVER_PORT=54035&SERVER_PORT_SECURE=0&SERVER_PROTOCOL=HTTP%2f1.1&SERVER_SOFTWARE=Microsoft-IIS%2f8.0&URL=%2f&HTTP_CACHE_CONTROL=max-age%3d0&HTTP_CONNECTION=keep-al
ive&HTTP_ACCEPT=text%2fhtml%2capplication%2fxhtml%2bxml%2capplication%2fxml%3bq%3d0.9%2cimage%2fwebp%2c*%2f*%3bq%3d0.8&HTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING=gzip%2c+deflate%2c+sdch&HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE=en-US%2cen%3bq%3d0.8%2cfa%3bq%3d0.6&HTTP_HOST=localhost%3a54035&HTTP_USER_AGENT=Mozilla%2f5.0+(Windows+NT+6.3%3b+WOW64)+AppleWebKit%2f537.36+(KHTML%2c+like+Gecko)+Chrome%2f40.0.2214.94+Safari%2f537.36}

which contains my username equal to amirmehr. But in browser request we don't see any user information which says the IIS is reading user data from OS since I'm running my project locally :). Here is browser request:

Request URL:http://localhost:54035/
Request Headers
Provisional headers are shown
Accept:text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,image/webp,*/*;q=0.8
Referer:http://localhost:54035/
User-Agent:Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/40.0.2214.94 Safari/537.36

After some research, I found out the question depends on test environment (besides configuration).

For Local case, take a look at Unable to get windows authentication to work through local IIS
And to understand how it works, check the Windows Authentication for .net MVC 4 - how it works, how to test it. Both have useful things.

Also we have configuration considerations mentioned below:

For customization check ASP.NET MVC 4 Forms Authentication Customized :)

Thanks for the answer. My implementation works also in other environment than in localhost. I think the server receives Authorization field in http request and checks if the value is found from Active Directory. That's my best guess and it's also mentioned in other answer's link. — CuriousSuperhero, Feb 06 '15 at 19:08

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 06 '15 at 11:14

Depending on your WindowsAuthenticationMode, the browser may or may not authenticate with IIS. For example, if you allow Anonymous Authentication, then IUSR_MACHINENAME user will be used to authenticate the user. If Basic is specified, then the browser will authenticate with IIS (you will need to provide user/password) and then you will see in the requests the authentication information. Then there is NTLM authentication. More information here.

How LogonUserIdentity information is passed from browser to server?

2 Answers2