How do the AuthorizeFilter and Authentication methods work under the hood?

Question

I would like to understand briefly how the authorize filter and FormAuthentication.SetAuthCookie work under the hood. It's the only thing I find ambiguous after reading some books on the language.

I don't understand how the authorize filter knows where to look. And what about FormsAuthenticationTicket VS FormAuthentication ? And is cookie the most secure way, I mean I'm sure it's possible to export the cookie from a browser and use it somewhere else..?

Answer 1

You might find this question helpful.

If you're interested in how the Authorize filter works in more detail you can review the source code: AuthorizeAttribute

Briefly the Authorize filter will check whether the user has been authenticated by checking the HttpContext.User.Identity.IsAuthenticated property. The User property will have been set by the FormsAuthenticationModule in the case of Forms Authentication.

The FormsAuthentication.SetAuthCookie method creates a ticket for the authenticated user (assuming the user has provided the correct credentials) and adds it to the cookies collection of the response. Alternatively the module can be configured to use cookieless authentication if you want but the encrypted ticket is still sent with each HTTP request. Either way the client (browser) needs a way of telling the server that the requested is authenticated.

Regarding your concerns over security there are some ideas in this question.