How to get HttpClient to pass credentials along with the request?

I was also having this same problem. I developed a synchronous solution thanks to the research done by @tpeczek in the following SO article: Unable to authenticate to ASP.NET Web Api service with HttpClient

My solution uses a WebClient, which as you correctly noted passes the credentials without issue. The reason HttpClient doesn't work is because of Windows security disabling the ability to create new threads under an impersonated account (see SO article above.) HttpClient creates new threads via the Task Factory thus causing the error. WebClient on the other hand, runs synchronously on the same thread thereby bypassing the rule and forwarding its credentials.

Although the code works, the downside is that it will not work async.

var wi = (System.Security.Principal.WindowsIdentity)HttpContext.Current.User.Identity;

var wic = wi.Impersonate();
try
{
    var data = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(new
    {
        Property1 = 1,
        Property2 = "blah"
    });

    using (var client = new WebClient { UseDefaultCredentials = true })
    {
        client.Headers.Add(HttpRequestHeader.ContentType, "application/json; charset=utf-8");
        client.UploadData("http://url/api/controller", "POST", Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(data));
    }
}
catch (Exception exc)
{
    // handle exception
}
finally
{
    wic.Undo();
}

Note: Requires NuGet package: Newtonsoft.Json, which is the same JSON serializer WebAPI uses.

OK, so thanks to all of the contributors above. I am using .NET 4.6 and we also had the same issue. I spent time debugging System.Net.Http, specifically the HttpClientHandler, and found the following:

    if (ExecutionContext.IsFlowSuppressed())
    {
      IWebProxy webProxy = (IWebProxy) null;
      if (this.useProxy)
        webProxy = this.proxy ?? WebRequest.DefaultWebProxy;
      if (this.UseDefaultCredentials || this.Credentials != null || webProxy != null && webProxy.Credentials != null)
        this.SafeCaptureIdenity(state);
    }

So after assessing that the ExecutionContext.IsFlowSuppressed() might have been the culprit, I wrapped our Impersonation code as follows:

using (((WindowsIdentity)ExecutionContext.Current.Identity).Impersonate())
using (System.Threading.ExecutionContext.SuppressFlow())
{
    // HttpClient code goes here!
}

The code inside of SafeCaptureIdenity (not my spelling mistake), grabs WindowsIdentity.Current() which is our impersonated identity. This is being picked up because we are now suppressing flow. Because of the using/dispose this is reset after invocation.

It now seems to work for us, phew!

What you are trying to do is get NTLM to forward the identity on to the next server, which it cannot do - it can only do impersonation which only gives you access to local resources. It won't let you cross a machine boundary. Kerberos authentication supports delegation (what you need) by using tickets, and the ticket can be forwarded on when all servers and applications in the chain are correctly configured and Kerberos is set up correctly on the domain. So, in short you need to switch from using NTLM to Kerberos.

For more on Windows Authentication options available to you and how they work start at: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff647076.aspx

You can configure HttpClient to automatically pass credentials like this:

var myClient = new HttpClient(new HttpClientHandler() { UseDefaultCredentials = true });