[keycloak-dev] User Device Activity

Federico Michele Facca federico.facca at martel-innovate.com
Fri Aug 2 03:24:33 EDT 2019


Hi Pedro,

Nice feature but why considering request from same ip as from the same device?
If you are using a fixed connection with several devices using it, then it may be easily  the case that different devices have been used.

Cheers,
Federico


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> Il giorno 1 ago 2019, alle ore 23:16, Pedro Igor Silva <psilva at redhat.com> ha scritto:
> 
> Hi All,
> 
> I apologize for the long email :)
> 
> The new account console should provide a nice feature (see attachment) to
> help users to track their devices activity. I think the main goal is not to
> be 100% accurate (mainly because device identification is not an easy task)
> but let users know about:
> 
> * The devices the user is using to authenticate
> * Suspicious behavior either from devices that are not known or based on
> the last time a device was used to authenticate
> 
> I would like to share what I've done so far and what the next steps could
> be. I've submitted a WIP [1] that basically relies on the User-Agent header
> to obtain info about devices.
> 
> Device identification is based on the OS and Device (if available from user
> agent), where requests from the same IP are considered as being from the
> same device. If the IP is different, we check session id, if it is the
> same, the request is from the same device. If you use a different browser
> you also have that grouped and available as a list from the device
> representation. It is worth mentioning that device management is only
> performed when a session is created in Keycloak, or it is used when
> processing a request. One thing to consider is that if running behind a
> proxy, Keycloak should be able to obtain the original client address from a
> header.
> 
> By using the device/client IP as an identifier, I'm also trying to avoid
> creating a new device if the session is still active. If so, we assume that
> the request comes from the same device and we just update that info, so
> that subsequent requests will match by IP.
> 
> However, if the session ends and the IP changes, a new device will be
> created (if the device session was not updated). To overcome that, I think
> we could:
> 
> * Support a specific cookie to identify devices (UUID)
> * Allow clients connecting to Keycloak to provide a device fingerprint
> (sent as a header, for instance), with restrictions on which clients can do
> that
> * Geolocation
> * Anything else?
> 
> The first two options are useful depending on the client.
> 
> For browsers, cookies are more natural. Yes, users can clear browser data.
> but in the worst case, he will get a new device entry and we'll show that.
> Still, a good option IMO.
> 
> Device fingerprint may be useful for mobile apps or other types of clients
> that are capable of providing a unique and trustworthy identifier. It can
> be used for browsers too, but I think this implies more privacy/security
> concerns.
> 
> Regarding the third one above (geolocation), I'll skip for now as we can
> live without it in a first version of the feature. Although it would enrich
> even more the functionality as well as the discussions happening around MFA
> and adaptive authentication.
> 
> Data purging is another concern. Right now we don't have anything at this
> regards, but I would like to expire entries based on the last time they
> were accessed. Or maybe this something we should just keep and admins
> should be responsible for purging data as it may imply privacy and security
> concerns that are specific to a particular use case.
> 
> For last, I think we should probably have a switch for this feature. So
> admins can enable/disable it accordingly with their needs. Not sure if this
> kind of stuff makes always sense.
> 
> [1] https://github.com/keycloak/keycloak/pull/6217
> <DeviceActivity.png>
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