Force Windows Challenge

Question

I have a AuthorizationProvider that needs to use both Anonymous and Windows and I can't seem to get then windows challenge to work using:

if (principal == null || principal.Identity == null || string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(principal.Identity.Name))
            {
                context.OwinContext.Authentication.Challenge();
                return Task.FromResult(0);
            }

Are there any other configuration values I need to set in order for this line to work? : context.OwinContext.Authentication.Challenge();

Any thoughts why this will not work? I need to be able to get the windows principal which works fine with just windows enabled but also need to enable anonymous in order to be able to hit other endpoints in the provider.

Answer 1

In short, you should enable Windows authentication in your Web host. There are different settings, depending on the Web host you are using.

After configuring the Web host, your controller code starts working.

OWIN self-host

Configure HttpListener to accept both authentication modes in OWIN Startup class:

class Startup
{
    public void Configuration(IAppBuilder app)
    {
        var listener = (HttpListener)app.Properties["System.Net.HttpListener"];

        listener.AuthenticationSchemes = 
            AuthenticationSchemes.IntegratedWindowsAuthentication |
            AuthenticationSchemes.Anonymous;

        // Other initialization
    }
}

IIS

If you are hosting your application on IIS, you should enable Windows authentication mode in IIS Web site settings for your application:

If you don't see Authentication icon or Windows authentication mode, install following Windows features:

Visual Studio Web debugging (IIS Express)

Finally, for convenience of Web debugging from Visual Studio, you can enable Windows authentication in your project properties. Open Solution explorer and select your project:

Then open Properties tab and set both anonymous and Windows authentication:

For more details, you can check out this article.