Oct 30, 2016 I really don't understand why developers use macs at all. They're not good dev machines. All production systems I work with are some flavor of linux (mostly ubuntu). There is actually a real impedance mismatch when I'm using my mac for work purposes. All those cores and RAM become meaningless when I have to do everything in a VM anyway.
This introductory article helps app architects and developers better understand the various Windows 10 platform capabilities that accelerate creating secure Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps. It details how to use the Windows security features available at each of the following stages: authentication, and regular password changes can make using passwords more secure, but they put more burden on users and they’re not an effective deterrent against hackers.
The challenge with passwords is that it is easier to guess them successfully than systems that have more than one factor. If they steal a database with user accounts and hashed password from a little web shop, they can use the passwords used on other web sites. Users tend to reuse accounts all the time, because complex passwords are hard to remember. For an IT department, managing passwords also brings with it the complexity of having to offer reset mechanisms, requiring frequent updates to passwords, and storing them in a safe manner.
For all of its disadvantages, single-factor authentication gives the user control of the credential. They create it and modify it, and only a keyboard is needed for the authentication process. This is the main aspect that distinguishes single-factor from multi-factor authentication.
2.1.1 Web authentication broker
As previously discussed, one of the challenges with password authentication for an IT department is the added overhead of managing the base of usernames/passwords, reset mechanisms, etc. An increasingly popular option is to rely on third-party identity providers that offer authentication through OAuth, an open standard for authentication.
Using OAuth, IT departments can effectively 'outsource' the complexity of maintaining a database with usernames and passwords, reset password functionality, etc. to a third party identity provider like Facebook, Twitter or Microsoft.
Users have complete control over their identity on these platforms, but apps can request a token from the provider, after the user is authenticated and with their consent, which can be used to authorize authenticated users.
The web authentication broker in Windows 10 provides a set of APIs and infrastructure for apps to use authentication and authorization protocols like OAuth and OpenID. Apps can initiate authentication operations through the WebAuthenticationBroker API, resulting in the return of a WebAuthenticationResult. An overview of the communication flow is illustrated in the following figure.
The app acts as the broker, initiating the authentication with the identity provider through a WebView in the app. When the identity provider has authenticated the user, it returns a token to the app that can be used to request information about the user from the identity provider. As a security measure, the app must be registered with the identity provider before it can broker the authentication processes with the identity provider. This registration steps differ for each provider.
Here’s the general workflow for calling the WebAuthenticationBroker API to communicate with the provider.
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If the communication is successful, process the response string returned by the identity provider. If unsuccessful, process the error.
Sample C# code that for this process is below. For information and a detailed walkthrough, see WebAuthenticationBroker. For a complete code sample, check out the WebAuthenticationBroker sample on GitHub.
2.2 Multi-factor authentication
Multi-factor authentication makes use of more than one authentication factor. Usually, 'something you know,' such as a password, is combined with 'something you have,' which can be a mobile phone or a smart card. Even if an attacker discovers the user’s password, the account is still inaccessible without the device or card. And if only the device or card is compromised, it is not useful to the attacker without the password. Multi-factor authentication is therefore more secure, but also more complex, than single-factor authentication.
Services that use multi-factor authentication will often give the user a choice in how they receive the second credential. An example of this type of authentication is a commonly used process where a verification code is sent to the user’s mobile phone using SMS.
As you can see, this process also differs from single-factor authentication in that the second user credential is sent to the user instead of being created or provided by the user. https://creationskeen.weebly.com/logitech-g-software-for-mac.html. The user is therefore not in complete control of the necessary credentials. This also applies when a smart card is used as the second credential: the organization is in charge of creating and providing it to the user.
2.2.1 Azure Active Directory
Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) is a cloud-based identity and access management service that can serve as the identity provider in single-factor or multi-factor authentication. Azure AD authentication can be used with or without a verification code.
While Azure AD can also implement single-factor authentication, enterprises usually require the higher security of multi-factor authentication. In a multi-factor authentication configuration, a user authenticating with an Azure AD account has the option of having a verification code sent as an SMS message either to their mobile phone or the Azure Authenticator mobile app.
Additionally, Azure AD can be used as an OAuth provider, providing the standard user with an authentication and authorization mechanism to apps across various platforms. To learn more, see Azure Active Directory and Multi-Factor Authentication on Azure.
2.4 Windows Hello
In Windows 10, a convenient multi-factor authentication mechanism is built into the operating system. Windows Hello is the new biometric sign-in system built into Windows 10. Because it is built directly into the operating system, Windows Hello allows face or fingerprint identification to unlock users’ devices. The Windows secure credential store protects biometric data on the device.
Windows Hello provides a robust way for a device to recognize an individual user, which addresses the first part of the path between a user and a requested service or data item. After the device has recognized the user, it still must authenticate the user before determining whether to grant access to a requested resource. Windows Hello also provides strong two-factor authentication (2FA) that is fully integrated into Windows and replaces reusable passwords with the combination of a specific device, and a biometric gesture or PIN. The PIN is specified by the user as part of their Microsoft account enrollment.
Windows Hello isn’t just a replacement for traditional 2FA systems, though. It’s conceptually similar to smart cards: authentication is performed by using cryptographic primitives instead of string comparisons, and the user’s key material is secure inside tamper-resistant hardware. Microsoft Hello doesn't require the extra infrastructure components required for smart card deployment, either. In particular, you don’t need a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) to manage certificates, if you don’t currently have one. Windows Hello combines the major advantages of smart cards—deployment flexibility for virtual smart cards and robust security for physical smart cards—without any of their drawbacks.
A device must be registered with Windows Hello before users can authenticate with it. Windows Hello uses asymmetric (public/private key) encryption in which one party uses a public key to encrypt the data that the other party can decrypt using a private key. In the case of Windows Hello, it creates a set of public/private key pairs and writes the private keys to the device’s Trusted Platform Module (TPM) chip. After a device has been registered, UWP apps can call system APIs to retrieve the user’s public key, which can be used to register the user on the server.
The registration workflow of an app might look like the following:
The registration information you collect may include a lot more identifying information than it does in this simple scenario. For example, if your app accesses a secured service such as one for banking, you’d need to request proof of identity and other things as part of the sign-up process. Once all the conditions are met, the public key of this user will be stored in the back-end and used to validate the next time the user uses the service.
For more information on Windows Hello, see the Windows Hello guide and the Windows Hello developer guide.
3 This data needs to be stored on the device in a secure manner, so that it cannot be accessed by unauthorized users or apps. The app model in Windows 10 does a lot to ensure that the data stored by any app is only accessible to that app, while providing APIs to share the data when necessary. Additional APIs are also available to ensure that data can be encrypted and credentials can be stored safely.4.1 Windows app model
Traditionally, Windows has never had a definition of an app. It was most commonly referred to as an executable (.exe), and this never included installation, storage of state, execution length, versioning, OS integration, or app-to-app communication. The Universal Windows Platform model defines an app model that covers installation, runtime environment, resource management, updates, data model, and uninstallation.
Windows 10 apps run in a container, which means that they have limited privileges by default (additional privileges can be requested and granted by the user). For example, if an app wants to access files on the system, a file picker from the Windows.Storage.Pickers namespace has to be used to let the user pick a file (no direct access to files is enabled). Another example is if an app wants to access the user’s location data, it needs to enable the location device capability needs to be declared, prompting the user at download time that this app will request access to the user’s location. On top of that, the first time the app wants to access the user’s location, an additional consent prompt is shown to the user, requesting permission to access the data.
Note that this app model acts as a 'jail' for apps, meaning that they can’t reach out, but it is not a “castle” that cannot be reached from the outside (applications with administrator privileges can of course still reach in). Device Guard in Windows 10, which enables organizations/IT to specify which (Win32) apps are allowed to execute, can further help limit this access.
Can audirvana remote android app access audirvana on mac. The app model also manages the app lifecycle. It limits the background execution of apps by default, for example; as soon as an app goes into the background, the process is suspended – after giving the app a brief period to address app suspension in code – and its memory is frozen. The operating system does provide mechanisms for apps to ask for specific background task execution (on a schedule, triggered by various events such as Internet/Bluetooth connectivity, power changes, etc., and in specific scenarios such as music playing or GPS tracking).
When memory resources on the device are running low, Windows frees memory space by terminating apps. This lifecycle model forces apps to persist data whenever they’re suspended, because there is no additional time available between suspension and termination.
For more information, see It's Universal: Understanding the Lifecycle of a Windows 10 Application.
4.2 Stored credential protection
Windows apps that access authenticated services often provide the users the option of storing their credentials on the local device. This is a convenience for the users; when they provide their username and password, the app automatically uses them in subsequent launches of the app. Because this can be a security issue if an attacker gains access to this stored data, Windows 10 provides the ability for Windows apps to store user credentials in a secure credential locker. The app calls the Credential Locker API to store and retrieve the credentials from the locker instead of storing them in the app’s storage container. The credential locker is managed by the operating system, but access is limited to the app that stores them, providing a securely managed solution for credential storage.
When a user supplies the credentials to be stored, the app gets a reference to the credential locker using the PasswordVault object in the Windows.Security.Credentials namespace. It then creates a PasswordCredential object containing an identifier for the Windows app and the username and password. This is passed to the PasswordVault.Add method to store the credentials in the locker. The following C# code example shows how this is done.
In the following C# code example, the app requests all of the credentials corresponding to the app by calling the FindAllByResource method of the PasswordVault object. If more than one is returned, it prompts the user to enter their username. If the credentials are not in the locker, the app prompts the user for them. The user is then logged into the server using the credentials.
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For more information, see Credential locker.
4.3 Stored data protection![]()
When you are dealing with stored data, commonly referred to ass hash value and message and compares the two hash values. Apps running on Windows 10 can call the HashAlgorithmProvider class to enumerate the hash algorithms that are available and run one of them. The CryptographicHash class represents the hash value. The CryptographicHash.GetValueAndReset method can be used to repeatedly hash different data without having to re-create the object for each use. The Append method of the CryptographicHash class adds new data to a buffer to be hashed. This entire process is shown in the following C# code example.
4.3.4 Digital signatures
The data integrity of a digitally signed stored message is verified in a similar way to MAC authentication. Here is the way the digital signature workflow operates.
Hashing algorithms are very fast, so hash values can be derived quickly from even large messages. The resulting hash value is an arbitrary length and can be shorter than the full message, so using public and private keys to encrypt and decrypt only the digest rather than the full message is an optimization.
For more information, take a look articles on Digital signatures, MACs, hashes, and signatures, and Cryptography.
Do App Developers Use Macs Or Windows 105 SummaryDo App Developers Use Macs Or Windows 7
The Universal Windows Platform in Windows 10 offers a number of ways to leverage operating system capabilities to create more secure apps. In different authentication scenarios, such as single-factor, multi-factor, or brokered authentication with an OAuth identity provider, APIs exist to mitigate the most common challenges with authentication. Windows Hello provides a new biometric sign-in system that recognizes the user and actively defeats efforts to circumvent proper identification. It also delivers multiple layers of keys and certificates that can never be revealed or used outside the trusted platform module. Plus, a further layer of security is available through the optional use of attestation identity keys and certificates.
To secure data in flight, APIs exist to communicate with remote systems securely over SSL, while providing the possibility to validate the server’s authenticity with SSL pinning. Publishing APIs securely and in a controlled manner is something in which Azure API Management aids by providing powerful configuration options for exposing APIs across the web using a proxy that provides additional obfuscation of the API endpoint. Access to these APIs is secured by using API keys and API calls can be throttled to control performance.
When the data arrives on the device, the Windows app model provides more control over how the app is installed, updated and accesses it data, while keeping it from accessing data of other apps in an unauthorized manner. Credential locker can provide secure storage of user credentials that is managed by the operating system and other data can be protected on the device by using the encryption and hashing APIs offered by the Universal Windows Platform.
Download Mac Apps On Windows6 Resources6.1 How-to articlesApple App Developer Site6.2 Code samplesMac Developer Account6.3 API referenceComments are closed.
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