node-expose-sspi

Expose the Microsoft Windows SSPI (SSP Interface) to Node.js®.

😏 Use cases:

• NTLM and Kerberos SSO authentication inside a private organization network, for instance an ERP in a private company.
• Active Directory access to users for detailed info.

Requirements: Microsoft Windows OS, NodeJS version >=12.16.1.

Install

Just do:

npm i node-expose-sspi

Note: There is a prebuilt binary node addon that will be installed.

Usage

SSO Authentication server use case

mkdir myproject
cd myproject
npm init -y
npm i express
npm i node-expose-sspi

Make an express web server by doing the server.js file:

const express = require('express');
const { sso } = require('node-expose-sspi');

const app = express();
app.use(sso.auth());

app.use((req, res, next) => {
  res.json({
    sso: req.sso,
  });
});

app.listen(3000, () => console.log('Server started on port 3000'));

node server.js

Open a Google Chrome web browser and go to http://localhost:3000.

You should see the JSON result with the browser user authentication info and the authentication method used (NTLM or Kerberos).

{
  "sso": {
    "method": "NTLM",
    "user": {
      "domain": "JLG",
      "name": "jlouis",
      "displayName": "Jean-Louis P. GUÉNÉGO",
      "groups": [
        "JLG\\Domain Users",
        "\\Everyone",
// ...
      ],
      "sid": "S-1-5-21-2022955591-1730574677-3210790899-1103",
      "adUser": {
        // adUser filled only if Active Directory is reachable.
        "objectClass": ["top", "person", "organizationalPerson", "user"],
        "cn": ["Jean-Louis P. GUÉNÉGO"],
        "sn": ["GUÉNÉGO"],
        "c": ["FR"],
        "l": ["TORCY"],
        "title": ["IT Consultant"],
        "description": ["My microsoft domain account for demonstrating SSO"],
        "postalCode": ["77200"],
        "physicalDeliveryOfficeName": ["Office of my lovely wife Suzana"],
        "telephoneNumber": ["+33612131415"],
        "givenName": ["Jean-Louis"],
        "initials": ["P"],
        "distinguishedName": [
          "CN=Jean-Louis P. GUÉNÉGO,OU=JLG_LOCAL,DC=jlg,DC=local"
        ],
        "instanceType": [4],
        "whenCreated": ["3/19/2020 10:58:19 AM"],
        "whenChanged": ["3/19/2020 5:40:06 PM"],
        "displayName": ["Jean-Louis P. GUÉNÉGO"],
// ...
        "co": ["France"],
        "company": ["JLG Consulting"],
        "streetAddress": ["2 allée du Commandant Charcot"],
        "wWWHomePage": ["www.jlg-consulting.com"],
// ...
        "sAMAccountName": ["jlouis"],
// ...
        "mail": ["jlguenego@gmail.com"],
        "ADsPath": [
          "LDAP://CN=Jean-Louis P. GUÉNÉGO,OU=JLG_LOCAL,DC=jlg,DC=local"
        ]
      }
    },
// ...
  }
}

Note: To read JSON file on Chrome, you should use the JSON Formatter Chrome Extension.

Browsers

Chrome

No conf. It just works.

Firefox

Unlike Chrome, NTLM and Kerberos are not activated by default in Firefox. To make it working, you need to follow these steps:

1. Navigate to the URL about:config.
2. Click past the warning of harmful consequences.
3. Type negotiate-auth into the filter at the top of the page, in order to remove most of the irrelevant settings from the list.
4. Double-click on network.negotiate-auth.trusted-uris. A dialogue box for editing the value should appear.
5. Enter the required hostname(s) and/or URL prefix(es) then click OK. For the above example, it is http://localhost:3000

More detailed info here.

Edge

Edge does not require any configuration. But the browser ask the credentials to the user each time it is started.

API

The API is automatically documented with typedoc.

Access to the detailed API document.

Note: you should read all the sso source code. You will see how powerfull the api.sspi, and api.adsi can bring to you.

You can also read the mocha unit tests to see small examples.

Typescript

This module is also integrated with Typescript.

Typescript example

NTLM

If you are not on a Microsoft Windows Active Directory Domain, it will use the NLTM authentication protocol.

Note: the NTLM protocol is not very secure, so be sure to be above HTTPS.

Kerberos

You should see this Node Expose SSPI Kerberos dedicated documentation.

Examples

To run the examples, just clone this project.

git clone https://github.com/jlguenego/node-expose-sspi.git
npm i
cd node-expose-sspi
cd examples
cd <***example-name***>

Look also at the README.md of the example.

Examples :

• Express simple
• Koa simple
• Fastify simple
• Restify simple
• Reverse proxy example
• Angular SSO example
• React SSO example
• Vue SSO example
• HTTP(S) fetch API with SSO

Development

As a prerequisites, you need node-gyp and a C++ toolchain installed on your environment.

If you did not installed node-gyp and the C++ toolchain, please open a PowerShell command line as an administrator and do :

npm i -g windows-build-tools

To compile the native node module, do the following:

git clone https://github.com/jlguenego/node-expose-sspi.git
cd node-expose-sspi
npm run build
npm run test

All tests are done with mocha.

The module debug is used for printing some debug info.

TODO

Any idea of new features ? Please tell me and raise an issue. 😊

• write a nestjs example
• write a medium article
• publish on Facebook
• Reddit
• Funding
• Integrate with passport?
• Test with 10000 users.
• Filter groups options.
• BUG: Connect to a local account while being on a domain

Thanks

Thanks to all the people who wrotes the npm modules required by this project.

And a very special thanks to the authors of the node-sspi project that helped me writing this one. I considere node-sspi to be the father of node-expose-sspi.

Author

Jean-Louis GUENEGO jlguenego@gmail.com (http://jlg-consulting.com/)

You may participate to complete this project. You can improve this doc, or check the code (memory leak, etc.), create new usefull business cases, etc.

Contributors are welcome!