Claims and Tokens

This topic describes the various claim types that Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) creates from the default tokens that it supports.

You can examine the claims of a client credential by using the ClaimSet and Claim classes. The ClaimSet contains a collection of Claim objects. Each Claim has the following important members:

  • The ClaimType property returns a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) that specifies the type of claim being made. For example, a claim type may be a thumbprint of a certificate, in which case the URI is http:schemas.microsoft.com/ws/20005/05/identity/claims/thumprint.

  • The Right property returns a URI that specifies the right of the claim. Predefined rights are found in the Rights class (Identity, PossessProperty).

  • The Resource property returns the resource associated with the claim.

Each ClaimSet also has an Issuer property, which represents the ClaimSet of the Issuer.

Windows Accounts

Where a client credential maps to a Windows user account, the resulting ClaimSet has the following values:

  • The Issuer is the value returned by the static Windows property of the ClaimSet class.

  • The claims in the collection are:

    • A Claim with a ClaimType value of security identifier (SID), a Right property value of Identity, and a Resource that returns the actual SID value. A SID is a unique value the domain controller issues to every user. The SID is used to identify the user in interactions with Windows security.

    • A Claim with a ClaimType value of SID, a Right of PossessProperty, and a Resource of the SID value.

    • A Claim with a ClaimType of Name, a Right of PossessProperty and a Resource of string containing the user name (for example, "MYMACHINE\Bob").

    • Additional SID claims with PossessProperty for the various groups the user belongs to.

Certificates

Where the client credential is a certificate, the resulting ClaimSet has the following values:

  • For self-issued certificates, the Issuer is the ClaimSet itself. The ClaimSet returns a ClaimType of Thumbprint, a Right of Identity, and a Resource value that is a Byte array containing the thumbprint of the certificate.

  • For a certificate issued by a certificate authority, the issuer is the ClaimSet representing the certificate authority’s certificate.

  • The Claims in the collection include:

    • A Claim with a ClaimType of Thumbprint, a Right of PossessProperty, and a Resource that is a byte array containing the thumbprint of the certificate

    • Additional PossessProperty claims of various types, including X500DistinguishedName, Dns, Name, Upn, and Rsa, represent various properties of the certificate. The resource for the Rsa claim is the public key associated with the certificate.Note Where the client credential type is a certificate that the service maps to a Windows account, two ClaimSet objects are generated. The first contains all the claims related to the Windows account and the second contains all the claims related to the certificate.

User Name/Password

Where the client credential is a user name/password (or equivalent) that does not map to a Windows account, the resulting ClaimSet is issued by the static System property of the ClaimSet class. The ClaimSet contains an Identity claim of type Name whose resource is the user name the client provides. A corresponding claim has a Right of PossessProperty.

RSA Keys

Where an RSA key not associated with a certificate is used, the resulting ClaimSet is self-issued and contains an Identity claim of type Rsa whose resource is the RSA key. A corresponding claim has a Right of PossessProperty.

SAML

Where the client authenticates with a Security Assertions Markup Language (SAML) token, the resulting ClaimSet is issued by the entity that signed the SAML token, often the certificate of the security token service (STS) that issued the SAML token. The ClaimSet contains various claims as found in the SAML token. If the SAML token contains a SamlSubject with a non-null name, then an Identity claim with a type of NameIdentifier and a resource type of SamlNameIdentifierClaimResource are created.

Identity Claims and ServiceSecurityContext.IsAnonymous

If none of the ClaimSet objects resulting from the client credentials contain a claim with a Right of Identity, then the IsAnonymous property returns true. If one or more such claims are present, the IsAnonymous property returns false.

See Also

Reference

ClaimSet
Claim
Rights
ClaimTypes

Concepts

Managing Claims and Authorization with the Identity Model