Return HTTP 403 using Authorize attribute in ASP.Net Core

Question

When using ASP.Net WebAPI, I used to have a custom Authorize attribute I would use to return either an HTTP 403 or 401 depending on the situation. e.g. if the user is not authenticated, return a 401; if the user is authenticated but doesn't have the appropriate permissions, return a 403. See here for more discussion on that.

It seems now, in the new ASP.Net Core, they don't want you overriding the Authorize attribute anymore instead favoring a policy-based approach. However, it seems Core MVC suffers from the same "just return 401 for all auth errors" approach its predecessors have.

How do I override the framework to get the behavior I want?

According to @blowdart, if the MVC6 Authorize attribute is still returning 401's instead of 403's when a user is authenticated but unauthorized, there is either a bug that should be filed or you are doing something wrong. — danludwig
– danludwig, Commented Feb 26, 2016 at 19:11
I just assumed it was by design that it was returning 401's no matter the scenario. If that behavior is not expected, I'll file a bug in aspnet/security. — Chad
– Chad, Commented Feb 26, 2016 at 21:12

Chad · Accepted Answer · 2017-08-09 16:02:29Z

17

After opening an issue here, it appears this actually should work...sort of.

In your Startup.Configure, if you just call app.UseMvc() and don't register any other middleware, you will get 401 for any auth-related errors (not authenticated, authenticated but no permission).

If, however, you register one of the authentication middlewares that support it, you will correctly get 401 for unauthenticated and 403 for no permissions. For me, I used the JwtBearerMiddleware which allows authentication via a JSON Web Token. The key part is to set the AutomaticChallenge option when creating the middleware:

in Startup.Configure:

app.UseJwtBearerAuthentication(new JwtBearerOptions
{
    AutomaticAuthenticate = true,
    AutomaticChallenge = true
});
app.UseMvc();

AutomaticAuthenticate will set the ClaimsPrincipal automatically so you can access User in a controller. AutomaticChallenge allows the auth middleware to modify the response when auth errors happen (in this case setting 401 or 403 appropriately).

If you have your own authentication scheme to implement, you would inherit from AuthenticationMiddleware and AuthenticationHandler similar to how the JWT implementation works.

edited Aug 9, 2017 at 16:02

answered Mar 1, 2016 at 20:09

Chad

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5 Comments

steamrolla Over a year ago

I'm not using JwtBearerAuthentication, but, using cookie auth. Setting AutomaticChallenge = true results in automatic redirects when failing authorization. I don't want redirects, but, 403's. From what I can see in the docs, this isn't possble.

Chad Over a year ago

Cookie auth was the default back with "FormsAuthentication" in the webforms days. I think the behavior is modeled off of that. e.g. if someone isn't authenticated, you want to redirect them to a login page after which a cookie will be set with their auth token. If you want cookie auth AND the behavior of JWT, you will probably need to implement a custom authentication scheme using AuthenticationMiddleware & AuthenticationHandler

Bill Noel Over a year ago

Great answer. Fixed a huge problem for me. Thanks!

Ahmadali Shafiee Over a year ago

how can we use this in Identity Core 2? there's no such options avalable there

Johnny Qian Over a year ago

Looks like this works out of box for .net 6.

Chad · Accepted Answer · 2016-02-26 18:49:18Z

12

I ended up doing it with middleware:

public class AuthorizeCorrectlyMiddleware
{
    readonly RequestDelegate next;

    public AuthorizeCorrectlyMiddleware(RequestDelegate next)
    {
        this.next = next;
    }

    public async Task Invoke(HttpContext context)
    {
        await next(context);

        if (context.Response.StatusCode == (int)HttpStatusCode.Unauthorized)
        {
            if (context.User.Identity.IsAuthenticated)
            {
                //the user is authenticated, yet we are returning a 401
                //let's return a 403 instead
                context.Response.StatusCode = (int)HttpStatusCode.Forbidden;
            }
        }
    }
}

which should be registered in Startup.Configure before calling app.UseMvc().

answered Feb 26, 2016 at 18:49

Chad

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3 Comments

danludwig Over a year ago

This is what I was going to suggest, but not sure how you could apply it only to certain controllers / actions like you can with an attribute.

tlt Over a year ago

this is dangerous because writing to a HttpResponse (by setting statuscode in this case) after calling next middleware/delegate with next(context) will throw exception in case when some other middleware in the pipeline started writing response already.

tlt Over a year ago

forgot to mention....You should at least check context.Response.HasStarted == false before modifying the statuscode.

Ogglas · Accepted Answer · 2021-08-18 15:07:32Z

I followed the guide for Custom Authorization Policy Providers using IAuthorizationPolicyProvider in ASP.NET Core and also wanted to create a custom response.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/aspnet/core/security/authorization/iauthorizationpolicyprovider?view=aspnetcore-5.0

The guide I followed for that was Customize the behavior of AuthorizationMiddleware

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/aspnet/core/security/authorization/customizingauthorizationmiddlewareresponse?view=aspnetcore-5.0

My code finally looked like this:

public class GuidKeyAuthorizationMiddlewareResultHandler : IAuthorizationMiddlewareResultHandler
{
    private readonly AuthorizationMiddlewareResultHandler
         DefaultHandler = new AuthorizationMiddlewareResultHandler();

    public async Task HandleAsync(
        RequestDelegate requestDelegate,
        HttpContext httpContext,
        AuthorizationPolicy authorizationPolicy,
        PolicyAuthorizationResult policyAuthorizationResult)
    {

        if (policyAuthorizationResult.Challenged && !policyAuthorizationResult.Succeeded && authorizationPolicy.Requirements.Any(requirement => requirement is GuidKeyRequirement))
        {
            httpContext.Response.StatusCode = (int)HttpStatusCode.Forbidden;
            return;
        }

        // Fallback to the default implementation.
        await DefaultHandler.HandleAsync(requestDelegate, httpContext, authorizationPolicy,
                               policyAuthorizationResult);
    }
}

Startup.cs:

services.AddSingleton<IAuthorizationMiddlewareResultHandler,
    GuidKeyAuthorizationMiddlewareResultHandler>();

You can also edit your AuthorizationHandler and access httpContext via IHttpContextAccessor. However this feels more like a hack.

internal class GuidKeyAuthorizationHandler : AuthorizationHandler<GuidKeyRequirement>
{
    private readonly ILogger<GuidKeyAuthorizationHandler> _logger;
    private readonly IHttpContextAccessor _httpContextAccessor;

    public GuidKeyAuthorizationHandler(ILogger<GuidKeyAuthorizationHandler> logger, IHttpContextAccessor httpContextAccessor)
    {
        _logger = logger;
        _httpContextAccessor = httpContextAccessor;
    }

    // Check whether a given GuidKeyRequirement is satisfied or not for a particular context
    protected override Task HandleRequirementAsync(AuthorizationHandlerContext context, GuidKeyRequirement requirement)
    {
        var httpContext = _httpContextAccessor.HttpContext; // Access context here

        var key = System.Web.HttpUtility.ParseQueryString(httpContext.Request.QueryString.Value).Get("key");

        if (!string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(key))
        {
            // If the user guid key matches mark the authorization requirement succeeded
            if (Guid.TryParse(key, out var guidKey) && guidKey == requirement.Key)
            {
                _logger.LogInformation("Guid key is correct");

                if (requirement.RequireRefererHeader)
                {
                    _logger.LogInformation("Require correct referer header");
                    httpContext.Request.Headers.TryGetValue("Referer", out var refererHeader);
                    if (requirement.RefererHeader == refererHeader)
                    {
                        _logger.LogInformation("Referer header is correct");
                        context.Succeed(requirement);
                        return Task.CompletedTask;
                    }
                    else
                    {
                        _logger.LogInformation($"Referer header {refererHeader} is not correct");
                    }
                }
                else
                {
                    _logger.LogInformation("Correct referer header is not needed");
                    context.Succeed(requirement);
                    return Task.CompletedTask;
                }
            }
            else
            {
                _logger.LogInformation($"Guid key {guidKey} is not correct");
            }
        }
        else
        {
            _logger.LogInformation("No guid key present");
        }
        var msg = "Invalid Guid";
        var bytes = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(msg);
        httpContext.Response.StatusCode = 403;
        httpContext.Response.ContentType = "application/json";
        httpContext.Response.Body.WriteAsync(bytes, 0, bytes.Length);
        return Task.CompletedTask;
    }
}

Found that solution here:

https://stackoverflow.com/a/61861098/3850405

Thank you. I tried to follow original SampleAuthorizationMiddlewareResultHandler but AuthorizationFailure is always null. I didn't find a way how to fill it in my AuthorizationHandler. So, finally fallen back to your solution: policy.Requirements.Any(requirement => requirement is MyRequirement) instead.

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