Getting A Users Username in ASP.NET

When building an ASP.net application it’s important to understand the authentication solution that you are planning to implement and then ensure that all your developers are aware of it. On a few projects I have noted that some developers lack this knowledge and it can end up causing issues later on in the project once the code is first deployed to a test environment. These problems are usually a result of the differences of running a web project locally and remotely. One problem I found on a recent project was where developers were trying to retrieve the logged on user’s Windows username (within an intranet scenario) for display on screen. Unfortunately the code to retrieve the username from client request had been duplicated and a different solution used in both places, worst still neither worked. Sure they worked on the local machine but not when deployed. It was clear immediately that the developers had not quite grasped the way ASP.net works in this regard. There are several ways of retrieving usernames and admittedly it’s not always clear which is best in each scenario, so here is a very, very, very a quick guide. This post is not a deep dive into this huge subject (I might do a follow up post on that) but merely a quick guide to indicate what user details you get for a user the below objects in the framework.

The members we’re looking at are:

1. HTTPRequest.LogonUserIdentity
2. System.Web.HttpContext.Current.Request.IsAuthenticated
3. Security.Principal.WindowsIdentity.GetCurrent().Name
4. System.Environment.UserName
5. HttpContext.Current.User.Identity.Name (same as just User.Identity.Name)
6. HttpContext.User Property
7. WindowsIdentity

To test we create a basic ASPX page and host it in IIS so we can see what values these properties get for a set of authentication scenarios. The page just calls the various username properties available and writing out the values in the response via Response.Write().

Scenario 1: Anonymous Authentication in IIS with impersonation off

HttpContext.Current.Request.LogonUserIdentity.Name	COMPUTER1\IUSR_COMPUTER1
HttpContext.Current.Request.IsAuthenticated	False
HttpContext.Current.User.Identity.Name	-
System.Environment.UserName	ASPNET
Security.Principal.WindowsIdentity.GetCurrent().Name	COMPUTER1\ASPNET

As you can see where we’re running with Anonymous Authentication HttpContext.Current.Request.LogonUserIdentity is the anonymous guest user defined in IIS (IUSR_COMPUTER1 in this example) and as the user is not authenticated the WindowsIdentity is set to that of the running process (ASPNET), and the HttpContext.Current.User.Identity is not set.

Scenario 2: Windows Authentication in IIS, impersonation off

HttpContext.Current.Request.LogonUserIdentity.Name	MYDOMAIN\USER1
HttpContext.Current.Request.IsAuthenticated	True
HttpContext.Current.User.Identity.Name	MYDOMAIN\USER1
System.Environment.UserName	ASPNET
Security.Principal.WindowsIdentity.GetCurrent().Name	COMPUTER1\ASPNET

Using Windows Authentication however enables the remote user to be authenticated (i.e. IsAuthenticated is true) automatically via their domain account and therefore the HttpContext.Current.Request user is set to that of the remote clients user account, including the Identity object.

Scenario 3: Anonymous Authentication in IIS, impersonation on

HttpContext.Current.Request.LogonUserIdentity.Name	COMPUTER1\IUSR_COMPUTER1
HttpContext.Current.Request.IsAuthenticated	False
HttpContext.Current.User.Identity.Name	-
System.Environment.UserName	IUSR_COMPUTER1
Security.Principal.WindowsIdentity.GetCurrent().Name	COMPUTER1\IUSR_COMPUTER1

This time we’re using Anonymous Authentication but now with ASP.net Impersonation turned on in web.config. The only difference to the first scenario is that now the anonymous guest user IUSR_COMPUTER1 is being impersonated and therefore the System.Environment and Security.Principle are using running under that account’s privileges.

Scenario 4: Windows Authentication in IIS, impersonation on

HttpContext.Current.Request.LogonUserIdentity.Name	MYDOMAIN\USER1
HttpContext.Current.Request.IsAuthenticated	True
HttpContext.Current.User.Identity.Name	MYDOMAIN\USER1
System.Environment.UserName	USER1
Security.Principal.WindowsIdentity.GetCurrent().Name	MYDOMAIN\USER1

Now with Windows Authentication and Impersonation on everything is running as our calling user’s domain account. This means that the ASP.net worker process will share the privileges of that user.

As you can see each scenario provides a slightly different spin on the results which is what you would expect. It also shows how important it is to get the configuration right in your design and implement it early on in build to avoid confusion. For more information see ASP.NET Web Application Security on MSDN.