Integrating with Azure Active Directory

This tutorial explains how to setup Curity and Azure Active Directory (AAD) to use Curity as the Identity Provider. This covers the use case we're there is a domain myorganization.tld in Azure that we want federated with the Curity Identity Server at login.myorganization.tld. This means that all users with an email address that matches *@myorganization.tld will be federated using the authentication methods available from login.myorganization.tld.

Settings in Azure

In Azure, you’ll need to add the custom domain that should be federated to your Curity Identity Server.

How the domain is added and verified is not covered by this tutorial, you should instead use the Azure documentation for the current procedure. When added, the domain will be marked as a managed domain, the part this tutorial covers is how that is turned into federated.

Curity Settings

In Curity, you’ll need to setup a SAML protocol. This make it aware of incoming SAML AuthNRequest, and able to respond with the authentication result in a SAMLResponse. To setup the protocol, first we need a key to use when signing the responses. In the Admin UI, that is accomplished in the Facilities menu: Facilities → Keys and Cryptography → Signing → Signing Keys → + A dialog opens where you can choose to generate a new key. When all the mandatory fields are filled, close and commit the new key.

Using the CLI, issue a key using the following command: request facilities crypto generate-signing-key-keystore key-type rsa key-size 2048

Preparing certificate for Azure

Azure will need the certificate we just created to be able to validate the responses sent from Curity. In the Admin UI, download the signing key from the Facilities menu. Facilities → Keys and Cryptography → Signing → Signing Keys → Key Name → View and press Download PEM.

This downloads a PEM formatted certificate that we need to configure with Azure. Azure can't accept the PEM format of the certificate so we'll need to reformat it. Azure wants the certificate as a Base64 encoded DER string. To convert your PEM certificate, open the file up with a text editor, remove the BEGIN/END CERTIFICATE and all the newlines. Or, if you have openssl available, issue this command.

openssl x509 -in <path-to.pem> -inform PEM -outform DER | openssl enc -base64 -A

The output is what we need to configure for the AzureAD trust. Copy the outputs and store it for later. Examples of input/output below.

Example PEM

-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----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-----END CERTIFICATE-----

Example Base64 encoded DER

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

Converting the Azure domain to be federated

You will need a Windows computer with PowerShell and AD Connect libraries installed for the next step. The Mac and Linux version of PowerShell does not support this yet, so a windows machine is required. Microsoft Azure Active Directory Connect

Install-Module MSOnline
Connect-MsolService

A dialog will open where you get the possibility to login using an account that has administrator privileges for the domain.

When logged in, set these variables in the shell:

$signingCertificate = "MII…rKlQ=="; # Abbreviated for visual purposes
$authenticationEndpoint = "https://<hostname>:8443/authn/authenticate"; # The authentication endoint of the Curity Authentication Profile
$serverName = "https://id.curity.se"; # The Curity Identity Server name (i.e., entity ID) on the System &#8594; General page of the UI
$domainName = "<federated-domainname>"; # login.myorganization.tld

Convert the domain with the following command. Be aware that issuing this command will make all users in $domainName redirect to $authenticationEndpoint for authentication.

Set-MsolDomainAuthentication -DomainName "$domainName" -Authentication Federated -IssuerUri "$serverName" -SigningCertificate "$signingCertificate" -LogOffUri "$authenticationEndpoint/logout" -FederationBrandName Curity -PreferredAuthenticationProtocol Samlp -PassiveLogOnUri "$authenticationEndpoint"

Creating the Curity Authentication protocol

Now we have the prerequisites in place for creating the protocol. Adding this configuration enables Curity to respond to the Azure AuthNRequest with a SAML 2.0 SAMLResponse.

ImmutableID

Azure expects the response to come back with the NameID to be the ImmutableID of the authenticated user. This ImmutableID cannot be created by a third party, so we need to look the user up in either the local Active Directory thats synced with Azure, or directly using LDAPS with Azure Domain Services.

LDAP Datasource

To configure this, we first need a data source with the attributes configuration that we can use in an action.

This configuration searches for an account with the sAMAccountName matching the authenticated subject. Make sure to tweak this for your needs.

Data Source Authentication Action

Next, we will use this data source to perform a lookup in the Azure AD.

In your authenticator, configure an action of type Data Source, and select your Azure AD data source. This will perform a lookup after authentication, to collect the attributes from the account.

Transforming the subject

Last in the authentication chain, we need to set the objectGUID to be the subject. This will make the resulting SAMLResponse have the objectGUID as the NameID, which is required for Azure.

To add this transformation, add a action to the authenticator, with type Script. You'll get to add a new procedure to use with the action. Add this content to it:

function result(transformationContext) {
    var attributes = transformationContext.attributeMap;
    attributes.subject = attributes.objectGUID;
    attributes.IDPEmail = attributes.userPrincipalName;
    return attributes;
}

This procedure will copy the objectGUID to the subject, and userPrincipalName to IDPEmail which is mandatory for some Azure services.

Testing the federation

To test that everything is correctly set up, go to https://portal.azure.com and login using an email address matching the domain we just setup. You should be federated to your Curity Identity Server, and get to login with the authentication method you just setup.

Summary

In this tutorial we managed to configure Azure AD to use a different Authentication Service than their own. This could be useful to provide authentication methods that Azure AD don't provide, such as national E-IDs or other 2-Factor methods. Since Azure is limited to allowing only known accounts to login, we setup an attribute lookup towards the Azure AD, to get the account we were trying to login with. We could also have done a provisioning flow, were we create the account in Azure AD if it's not there yet, using other Authentication Actions.