Windows Store app with enterpriseAuthentication and Impersonation

Question

Short Version: Why when I impersonate a web-request made by Windows Store app, I get WindowsIdentity object with correct user name, but its IsAuthenticated property returns False? Making same request from a browser (including Metro IE10) gives IsAuthenticated==true.

Long Version:
I'm prototyping an internal enterprise solution, which consists of WCF-service and WinJS application. WCF-service is based on the webHttpBinding (i.e. simple GET/POST requests).

Certain actions need to be processed on behalf of a user making request, therefore service is configured to impersonate its callers. Here is sample configuration:

<system.serviceModel>
  <bindings>
    <webHttpBinding>
      <binding name="CustomizedWebBinding">
        <security mode="TransportCredentialOnly">
          <transport clientCredentialType="Windows" />
        </security>
      </binding>
    </webHttpBinding>
  </bindings>
    <behaviors>
      <endpointBehaviors>
        <behavior name="Web">
          <webHttp/>
        </behavior>
      </endpointBehaviors>
        <serviceBehaviors>
            <behavior name="">
                <serviceMetadata httpGetEnabled="true" httpsGetEnabled="true" />
                <serviceDebug includeExceptionDetailInFaults="false" />
            </behavior>
        </serviceBehaviors>
    </behaviors>
    <services>
        <service name="WcfService">
            <endpoint address="" binding="webHttpBinding" bindingConfiguration="CustomizedWebBinding" contract="IWcfService" behaviorConfiguration="Web">
                <identity>
                    <dns value="localhost" />
                </identity>
            </endpoint>
            <host>
                <baseAddresses>
                    <add baseAddress="http://localhost:8787/" />
                </baseAddresses>
            </host>
        </service>
    </services>
</system.serviceModel>

... and code:

public class WcfService : IWcfService
{
    [OperationBehavior(Impersonation=ImpersonationOption.Required)]
    public UserInfo GetUserInfo()
    {
        UserInfo ui = new UserInfo();
        WindowsIdentity identity = ServiceSecurityContext.Current.WindowsIdentity;

        ui.UserName = identity.Name;
        ui.IsAuthenticated = identity.IsAuthenticated;
        ui.ImpersonationLevel = identity.ImpersonationLevel.ToString();
        ui.IsAnonymous = identity.IsAnonymous;
        ui.IsGuest = identity.IsGuest;
        ui.IsSystem = identity.IsSystem;
        ui.AuthenticationType = identity.AuthenticationType;

        return ui;
    }
}

So, this operation simply collects information about the caller and sends it back in a json string.

Moving to the client. To enable automatic authentication I checked "Enterprise Authentication", "Internet (Client)" and "Private Networks" in the Windows Store app's manifest file.

From within Windows Store app, I send request using WinJS.xhr function:

    var options = {
        url: "http://localhost:8787/getuserinfo"
    };

    WinJS.xhr(options).then(function (xhrResponse) {
        var userInfoBlock = document.getElementById("userInfoBlock");
        var data = JSON.parse(xhrResponse.response);

        userInfoBlock.innerHTML += "<ul>"

        for (var p in data) {
            if (data.hasOwnProperty(p)) {
                userInfoBlock.innerHTML += "<li>" + p + ": " + data[p] + "</li>";
            }
        }

        userInfoBlock.innerHTML += "</ul>";
    });

Now, when I execute Windows Store app and it sends request, the response I get is:

AuthenticationType: "NTLM"
ImpersonationLevel: "Impersonation"
IsAnonymous: false
IsAuthenticated: false
IsGuest: false
IsSystem: false
UserName: "TESTBOX\dev"

If I send request using browser's address bar, I get same response, with the only difference that "IsAuthenticated: true".

I also noticed that if I disable "Enterprise Authentication", it causes Credentials Picker to popup and after providing correct credentials I'm getting "IsAuthenticated: true".

Am I missing something or expecting too much from the enterpriseAuthentication capability?

Answer 1

I think I've stumbled across the same (Calling a WCF service using Windows Auth from a Windows Store App) and it looks like Windows Store Apps with enterprise authentication prevent calls to services on localhost using impersonation.

When I hosted my service on another server on the domain it worked just fine.