Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Automatic Logging in to .NET / ASPX using Firefox

If a .NET / ASPX site's authentication mode is marked as 'Windows Authentication', then IIS authenticates the web request with the domain on behalf of the site. This works seamlessly with Internet Explorer but with Firefox , it asks for domain credentials which shows up as a popup in Firefox. This is the usual situation in an Enterprise network where we have Sharepoint and some internal sites built on .NET technology.

Now how do we configure firefox to automatically send the user credentials to the server (IIS) which can authenticate it automatically. To do so:
  1. In the Firefox URL bar enter "about:config":
  2. Acknowledge the warning, and in the "Filter:" box, enter "network.negotiate-auth.trusted-uris". Double click on this, and give it a value of "ad.com,intra.com" (internal domains to which you want firefox to automatically log in to). Click OK.
  3. This will allow Firefox to log you in automatically to internal sites of your company.