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Security Considerations

As with any software, we can only list a few application-specific considerations. You still have to decide for yourself which of these considerations apply to your environment and what other considerations you have to make to deploy the application securely.

Secrets

As the application itself does not operate under its own user, it just forwards the users' inputs, there are no secrets to be stored and no impersonation occurs.

Exposing the Application to the Internet

We see the default use case for deplyoing this application in your intranet, because usually the Active Directory is also not exposed to the internet.

Apart from any potential vulnerabilities in the Kerberos or NTLM protocols, which may be a security threat if you expose the application to the internet, attackers could use the portal to brute force username/password combinations.

caution

Thus, we cannot recommend exposing the application to the outside world.

Denial of Service

This applies if you have configured your Domain Group Policies such that account lockout is activated - i.e. the Active Directory locks a user's account if there are too many failed login attempts.

The Active Directory Self-Service Portal performs an operation that is recognized by the domain controller(s) as a login attempt, and thus it might lead to a user being locked out of their account (= denial of service). As any other login method against an Active Directory, it can also be abused to deny a specific user to log in.

However, the ADSSP has a built-in feature to mitigate brute-force attacks.