I've been provided with a REST API which has authentication type bearer (Security Scheme Type: API Key, Header parameter name: Authorization) and which i use to authenticate the user and then fetch other data (i will only create the front end using react).
As a first step the user logs in and i sent his/her username-password to the prementioned REST API and get back an access and a refresh token.
Is anything wrong with storing these 2 tokens in a cookie in order to use them in subsequent requests? How does JWT comes into play regarding these 2 tokens? Is JWT of any use to me in this situation?
There's nothing wrong in storing the tokens in cookies, but if you're planning to have a Single Page Application with React it should be enough to store these tokens in memory. Once the user refreshes the page you can either make them sign in again or perform a silent login in the background to get a new set of tokens. In both cases the session kept on the Authorization Server should kick in and you should get new tokens without the need of user interaction.
Your tokens will be much safer if you don't keep them in cookies.
JWTs are not a requirement for access and refresh tokens. If you don't have to use them I would recommend going with opaque tokens. That said, since you do not have control over the API you might be limited to the format required by the API. If you don't want to be limited by this format you can set up your own gateway which you can use to perform token exchange or introspection and forward requests to the API with proper tokens (something which is called a Phantom Token pattern.
From my understanding of the question, you are using an identity provider which provides you with access token and refresh token for the users. That means it is a authentication as a service REST API at works here.
The REST API requires an authorisation header to be passed along with the username-password to exchange for access token and refresh token for the users. (correct me if I'm wrong) In this case, you might want to keep the authorisation header away from the users (consult the authentication as a service documentation).
You call the REST API with payloads (the user-password) along with headers like this:
Authorization: ACCESS_TOKEN
However the ACCESS_TOKEN is the one provided by the vendor for you to use the REST API. On success call of the REST API, it should return you with a set of access token and refresh token. You can then use this access token and refresh token to safe guard your own API, API that you control to provide service to your users.
The access token and refresh token might just be JWT tokens (again consult the vendor documentation).
Also if you are using an authentication as a service REST API, check the documentation if they provide a client sdk. In that case, it should show you the best practise of handling the access token and refresh token it returned.
Related
What I want is to access the customer details in the client side in next.js and I need to pass the customer access token to the backend API. Using next-auth, I was able to store the access token to the session but is it safe or is it better to use the next.js api route and use getToken function? I'm still a beginner in frontend security, I don't know if I'm just being a paranoid but I can't find a topic/post that states it is completely safe.
So by default the session strategy is set to jwt, which means your session is encoded / signed and safe to store sensitive info in.
However, NextAuth.js can be used to automatically put that accessToken you get from your OAuth provider in the JWT token via the jwt callback. Therefore you can pull it out anywhere with the getToken() method you mentioned and authenticate against Google APIs for further use (get drive contents, contacts, etc, etc, etc).
Check out this example for how to do that in the jwt callback: https://github.com/nextauthjs/next-auth-refresh-token-example/blob/57f84dbc50f30233d4ee389c7239212858ecae14/pages/api/auth/%5B...nextauth%5D.js#L67
I am doing a project with React, msal-react, and msal-browser.
I can get an access token with functions provided with msal-react library, but I cannot get the refresh token manually.
I can see from the network that a token request is performed when user is logged in by redirect, and obviously returned both token and refresh token. However, the refresh token is very well protected and cannot be found under cookie, session storage, or the instance.
Is it possible for the frontend to get refresh token of azure ad?
sorry, I cannot post my code due to security requirements
Refresh tokens are intentionally not returned on the public API surface as MSAL will handle all required token refreshes under the hood when you call acquireTokenSilent. If the backend service needs its own access token it needs to use a server side library such as msal-node. We do not recommend or support obtaining tokens using the SPA library and passing them down to a backend as tokens should only be sent to the resource they are intended for.
I would like some clarification on how to use ID tokens and access tokens in an implicit grant flow.
I have an Angular SPA using MSAL.js for Angular package and a Web API. The API does NOT call any external services, like MSFT Graph. The back end uses role claims from JWT to establish RBAC authorization to our API functionality only.
This doc says:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/develop/id-tokens
id_tokens are sent to the client application as part of an OpenID Connect flow. They can be sent along side or instead of an access token, and are used by the client to authenticate the user.
ID Tokens should be used to validate that a user is who they claim to be and get additional useful information about them - it shouldn't be used for authorization in place of an access token.
This doc shows an authentication flow where a web API is called with an ID token instead of an access token:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/develop/v2-oauth2-implicit-grant-flow
This sample code sends ID token too (calling own Web API sample):
https://github.com/Azure-Samples/active-directory-javascript-singlepageapp-dotnet-webapi-v2
The sample back end validates ID token audience against Client ID of the app that issued it.
Given our API is the only consumer of tokens, should we use ID tokens or access tokens?
Generally speaking, when securing your API with the Microsoft Identity platform, clients should be using the access token when making API requests, not the ID token.
check this part
It first calls acquireTokenSlient, which gets a token from the cache if available if not
it calls acquireTokenPopUp which will get an acces token for the specific scope, I am not sure if it would open up a popup window or will get a token in the background with hidden iframe. But it would fetch an access token for sure. API can never be accessed with ID token.
check https://learn.microsoft.com/bs-latn-ba/azure/active-directory/develop/scenario-spa-acquire-token for more clarification
I am having troubles in implementing OAuth in the right way.
I use a client/API architecture (Angular for front and Node.js for back) and I would like user to sign in using Google OAuth authentication only.
Here is what I think is the right way for the moment (tell me if I misunderstood something) :
Angular open a Google popup asking user's consent.
Once the user agree, Google Authorization server sends back to angular a verification code.
This verification code is forwarded to an API endpoint.
Then, the API asks Google Authorization server to exchange this code for an access_token, an id_token and a refresh_token.
Google sends those 3 tokens.
The API uses access_token to retrieve user from Google API
The API persists the user
Here is the little dillema, in my opinion, the access_token and refresh_token should be stored into the database and the id_token should be sent back to Angular client.
This way, it would allow the API to ask for resource in Google API and if the token expires it can still ask for a new token thanks to the refresh_token.
Client-side, the id_token is embedded in all requests thus allowing the API to identify the client and verify his authentication with Google certs from https://www.googleapis.com/oauth2/v3/certs.
Supposing this is right way to use tokens, how could I deal with id_token expiration since client does not have any refresh token ?
Thanks !
I do it slightly different (I have the same basic architecture though).
Angular decides the user needs to log in and displays a login popup.
The url in the login popup is not serviced by angular, but is instead directly run off of the backend server: /auth/google . (I use hapijs and bell, personally).
/auth/google is serviced by a bell plugin and initiates the OAUTH dance.
the end of the OAUTH dance results in my node server generating a local token (I just generate random bytes and store them in redis mapped to user ids)
because the initial login popup was created by window.open, the success page (generated on the api side rather than in angular) can use window.opener.postMessage to communicate the token back to the angular runtime.
This way, all my sensitive google credentials (the user's oauth token, refresh token if needed, and my application's api ID and secret) are only on the server, except for during the OAUTH dance relay when they're in a URL string during the client redirects. This is reasonably secure.
Then for all the actual user interactions with the api, I use the token I generated in step four to authenticate. This could be a JWT if you wanted, but I don't do it that way; I just use redis to map from 'longrandostring' -> userId. That lets me (for example) force everyone to re-login if I wipe the redis database that has all the tokens stored, or I can write a lua script to delete all the entries that map to a certain userid.
If you need a refresh token, you can set access_type=offline in the initial request to oauth2/auth, and you'll get a refresh token as part of the response, unless you've previously gotten a refresh token. You can then persist it on the server side and get new access tokens as needed. If you set approval_prompt=force as well, you'll force a new consent screen and be guaranteed a refresh token (but after some small number of refresh tokens granted to a user, older ones expire on the same application so it's best to only request them if really needed).
Help me pick the right OAuth2 grant type for my Angular App and my REST API?
UX-wise I want just one login form on my front-end, that would ask for username/pass(no dialog asking for permissions). I think the "Resource Owner(Password) Grant" is the most appropriate for me(since I control front&backend), but I'm not sure how should I handle access token refresh.
Correct me if I wrong about the flow:
When user submits credentials through login form, access token is returned.
I can store this token in LocalStorage to make subsequent Ajax requests with it.
As I understand access tokens should be short-lived. And should be updated with Refresh token. Should the refresh token be returned with the access token after initial login and also stored on the client? If not what is the alternative?
Should there be any session maintained on the server to invoke access token refresh? or I should make calls from front-end to refresh the access token when it is about to expire. But then I need a refresh token on the front-end, right?
As you see there is a mess in my head about refresh token. Would be great to have some clarification or suggestion for another grant implementation.
Backend technology I guess is irrelevant here, but just in case it's Symfony2 with FOSOAuthServerBundle.
When you are calling the TOKEN endpoint (for every grant_type possible) on a OAuth Server, you get an access_token but other information as well (I think there are all here):
{
access_token: // your short-lived token
expires_in: // number of seconds before the access_token is invalid
token_type: // the type of the access_token
scope: // scopes of the access_token
refresh_token: // long-lived token to get a new access_token
}
You need, in my opinion, all these information (maybe the scope is unused, but all others will be used later). You have to store the access_token to ba able to make API calls. After seconds, your access_token will not work anymore. You will need to get a new one. You can either ask the user to log in AGAIN or use the refresh_token.
You will have to call the OAuth Server on the TOKEN endpoint but with a grant_type: refresh_token. You will have to provide the refresh_token from the first request (among other information) and in return you will have the same response as above. In fact, I think you will have to do that every time an access_token is expired. In my opinion, the server side does not know anything about sessions or connected users. It knows about valid and invalid access_token.
This is OAuth. If you don't want to have to refresh everytime, you can make a long-lived access_token (by setting the expires_in), I think this is the only solution that makes sens in an OAuth context.
Do you need some clarification about OAuth in general?