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We are looking to secure a bunch of ASP.Net 2.0 .asmx web services. The which will host the web services is already forms authenticated.
Is it possible to secure the web services using forms authentication?
What are the pros and cons and other possible ways to achieve this. We certainly don't want to pass a username/pwd or token in each web method call.
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Form-based authentication is not particularly secure. In form-based authentication, the content of the user dialog box is sent as plain text, and the target server is not authenticated. This form of authentication can expose your user names and passwords unless all connections are over SSL.
Form Authentication is a token-based system. When users log in, they receive a token with user information that is stored in an encrypted cookie. When a user requests an ASP.NET page via the browser, the ASP.NET verifies whether the form authentication token is available.
By default, forms authentication protects only ASPX pages and any other . NET extensions. You can configure forms authentication to protect other static extensions such as . jpg, .
Forms authentication is where the user is required to login with credentials just for the web site. Windows authentication is for when the web site will accept the user's Windows credentials for login purposes.
The thing with form authentication is that its designed for people, where as a web service is designed to be consumed by a client application. While it is possible to do the authentication like this, it's the wrong way of thinking.
The level of security needed obviously depends upon the sensitivity of data that you're working with, but I'm going to assume its at least somewhat sensitive (but less than bank transactions). You could perhaps use SSL and passing a username and password as jle suggested, while I was typing this, or you could require an api key much like flickr does.
Another more secure option is to only pass the username and password once (and with the security of ssl) and have that give out a token that is valid for a period of time. This has the benefit of protecting the password information, and avoiding the constant overhead of ssl.
As mentioned though, it highly depends on HOW sensitive the information is that you're trying to secure.
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