WCF: Learning Impersonation and Delegation

  • Article

Configure DC:

Please follow link to configure your domain controller.

<techsthing.com/2012/how-to-create-a-domain-controller-using-the-dcpromo-command/>

Add all three boxes (A, B, C) to your new DC.

First Box/Domain Controller/Client box: DCSAURABH

Second Box: DCSAURABH1

Third Box: DCSAURABH2

Architecture:

  1. User on Box A (DCSAURABH) using IE to browse the web app running on BOX B (DCSAURABH1)
  2. Web App internally impersonates the credentials to the WCF Service 1 running on same box under different app pool.
  3. WCF Service 1 from Box B (DCSAURABH1) delegates the credential received from web app to another WCF service 2 running on Box C (DCSAURABH2).

Configure the Domain Controller for delegation:

DCSAURABH is my Domain Controller.

DCSAURABH1 and DCSAURABH2 are two boxes attached to this DC.

DCSAURABH1 is configured for delegating the credentials received from the IE running on client box (DCSAURABH)

Next step is to configure the Web app and two WCF service (WCF1 and WCF2).

Web Application:

IIS Settings:

Client End point:

Client end point Binding:

End point behaviour:

Note:

So the end point behaviour clearly indicates that the web app will impersonate the received credentials to the WCF service 1 running on same box.

WCF service 1 will be responsible for the delegation of these credentials to different box, i.e. Box C where WCF Service 2 is running.

WCF Service1:

IIS Settings:

WCF Service 1 service end point:

Client end point to call WCF service 2:

Client end point binding:

Client end point behaviour:

We are setting allowedImpersonationLevel to “Delegation”.

This will help in delegating the incoming windows token from web app (which came from IE) to the back end WCF service 2 running on third box.

Call to WCF Service 2

WCF Service 2:

IIS Settings

Code:

Output:

  1. User running IE from Client box (DCSAURABH)
  2. Browsing the web page hosted on DCSAURABH1, which internally impersonates the credentials to WCF Service 1 running on same box.
  3. WCF Service 1 delegates the credentials to External WCF Service 2 running on DCSAURABH2
  4. Current log in user on DCSAURBH is “SAURABH/user2”

These steps will make sure you can delegate the john’s identity (SAURABH/user2) to the back end server.