I'm using directus to grant users access to ressources required by an SPA written in Angular. To authenticate users I created an auth service and interceptor to handle sessions and attach the "Authorization" header. Those services work fine and login as intended. But here comes the problem:
Directus session times are configured with default values (15 min validity for access_token, 7d for refresh_token) but as soon as the access_token expires I cannot retrieve a new one using the refresh token. This bugs me, because the goal is to keep users logged in for the next 7d (refresh_token lifespan) or until logout if they check this option.
My attempts at achieving this:
Since i'm using graphQL, i tried the "auth_refresh" mutation from the authentication documentation. While the access token is still valid, refreshing works fine. After the access token expired there is no way to retrieve a new one via a valid refresh token.
Alternatively I tried to achieve a refresh via the POST request specified by the docs (to double check if it was some sort of config error with graphql) but I encounter exactly the same problems as with graphQL. Directus returns either "401 unauthorized : Token expired."
if i extend the lifespan of the access token for longer than the server defined lifetime,
Response: Sending a token with prolonged life
or "401 unauthorized : Invalid user credentials." if I request a new token without an
"Authorization" header.
Response: Sending no access token
The refresh token is correctly loaded and sent to the server as specified in the docs in both
cases.
Now my questions are:
Am I missing something? I haven't found any further specification in the docs and the Auth0 protocol specifies that a new access token should be retrievable with a valid refresh token.
If this feature is not intended: How could I achieve a "keep me signed in" option with directus? I would like to keep user rights management in one place and do not really want to handle user auth redundantly for my current use case.
2b. Why is the lifespan of the refresh token so much longer than the lifespan of the access token if this isn't intended?
One of my thoughts is, that it has to do with access rights of the "public" role on the "directus_sessions" table. But I can't think of a way to grant only read rights for owned/received tokens, since there are no payload variables available inside the filters. Could this be the cause? Would there be a way to achieve this?
Thx&Greetz
Related
I am trying to implement SvelteKit together with Hasura (GraphQL) and Firebase auth.
I have managed to sign in the user successfully, then store the access token and credentials in an HTTP-only cookie, so that each time the user revisits, they don't have to log in again.
I am not storing the "user" object in that cookie, as that contains sensitive data such as the refresh token that would be dangerous to expose. (Is that correct?)
My problem is that although I have set the expiry date of that cookie to seven days, the access token (rightfully) expires in an hour, and I have no way to refresh it.
Research here showed me I can use user.getIdToken() to refresh the token, but my problem is that I don't have the user object stored anywhere.
Am I missing something? Should I store the user object somewhere so I can refresh the token? Or is there another way to refresh the token?
I need the access token because it needs to be passed in the graphql headers to Hasura (it contains custom claims).
I have looked through the docs and stackoverflow to find alternative ways of refreshing the token, or to find ways to get the user object from an existing token or from any non-compromising information that I could store in my cookie - but found none.
This seems to answer a similar question but I didn't understand the answer: Firebase Auth - how to refresh access token without current user object
I am Looking at the Network activity of this page: https://helm.csod.com/ux/ats/careersite/4/home?c=helm&lang=de-DE.
Specifically at the post request with the Name: "search". Its using an authorization token.
tldr: How is the following authorization token stored on the Client side?
Goal:
I would like to understand how the browser (client-side) stores this authorization token. I dont Need to get the data or know how to scrape with selenium or sthg. I would just be interested in the mechanics behind.
What i tried:
I find the token in the page source: view-source:https://helm.csod.com/ux/ats/careersite/4/home?c=helm&lang=de-DE.
It seems like there is an object csod created in /player-career-site/1.15.4/pages/home.js.
then the key is stored in csod.context.
Finally, csod.player.initialize(csod.context) is called.
Unfortunately, i failed digging in the Code and finding These function as there where too many Matches for initialize and my js are skills too bad.
As storage i am only Aware of the Cookies. It might be transformed / encrypted and stored in the cookies? But how is it then restored to the "original" token, before being added to the request Header?
This seems to be a CSRF prevent method.
The token is created with a key in the back end, it stores the original key in a session and sends the token to the client side.
When the client sends a request, the token is posted with the data as a header or with the data, then the back end gets the stored key in the session, generate the token with the same method and compare it with the posted token. If they are equal there is no problem, access granted.
It is not necessary to restore as you can't decrypt that depending on the algorithm (sha256, md5, etc)
And the browser don't do that, as it can be manipulated, there is no sense to.
The token sent here is JWT(JSON Web Token). This is a widely used standard authentication mechanism.
You can create your own token in any languages like JS, Java, PHP, Python, etc.
I am adding a basic authentication flow:
Let's say a user comes on a form. Enter his email & password.
Now an HTTP request is being sent to the server with credentials. The backend server checks the details and if successful, then returns a response containing the authentication token.
Most of the time this token is stored in localstorage and sometimes in cookies.
Now for every request the token is picked from the stored location and sent in the header.
On the backend, it is checked if the request header has the details or not. And then respond accordingly.
At last, whenever someone logs out then that token is removed from the front end.
I hope it helps! Let me know if you have any queries
There is an app that wants to authenticate with my users using oAuth2.
So they open a window, with the authorize URL, and parameters (such as redirect uri)
Like: https://my-website.com/api/authLauncherauthorize?redirect=SOME_URI
Now I have my own firebase-login, and when the user logs in, I get their access token from firebase. Which is what I want to respond with.
However, in oAuth2 guides/explanations like https://aaronparecki.com/oauth-2-simplified/ I see I am supposed to return an authorization code, and I don't understand where can I get that from?
What I can do, is generate a bullshit code, pair it in the DB to the access token, and then in the "token" request, send the correct access token. Is that what I am supposed to do?
Just to be clear, this is my first time writing an oAuth2 service myself.
OAuth is a system that provides authenticated access to resources. This resource can be for example a user page or editing rights to that user page. So your goal is to provide access to permissions to the right people.
When someone logs in, they get a token. Your part is to generate that token however you want, may it be some form of userdata into base64 or completely random. Take this token and link it against permissions, like viewing a page, editing it or even simpler things like viewing the email of a user.
OAuth2 tokens and/or permissions should be revokable without deleting a user. You should not use OAuth2 to identify someone.
If I am understanding your question correctly:
User visits some website
User wants to register or login using your websites OAuth2
You redirect back to the original page and send your generated token
The page can access content on your site with this token
Assuming you are the Host Site, given a User who wants to connect a 3rd party application, then the flow would be like this:
User lands on site - Clicks Login with Github
User is redirected to Github site where they login and click "Authorize"
Github redirects user back to your site /authorize with an auth token.
Your site then passes that token back to the 3rd party API (github in this case) in exchange for an access token and refresh token.
You can then pass that Authorization token to an API endpoint to get details about it. If the token expires, you can use the refresh token to get a new Auth token. Both Tokens should be stored in your database for your user.
However writing that all out I realize you are asking how do you generate the Authorization token, so I'm guessing you're actually the 3rd party API in this example. So you would want to generate an Authorization token using a random generator. Since you are using firebase, you'll probably wanna try out their token generator: https://github.com/firebase/firebase-token-generator-node
There's also some more up-to-date info here I believe: https://firebase.google.com/docs/auth/admin/#create_a_custom_token
And like you said, you would store that in a database associated with the user, and then when the Host Site sends that user's auth token to your server, you exchange it for the Authorization token (and refresh token if requested).
It's also worth reading through how google does it, because you'd be doing something similar: https://developers.google.com/identity/protocols/OAuth2UserAgent#validatetoken
JWT is another option of generating tokens: https://jwt.io/
When I refresh an OAuth access token A, I get an new access token B. But A is still valid, I can still use it.
Shouldn't the old access token be invalidated by the refresh operation? If not, if it's "by design", could someone give me details about why?
Note: using Symfony with the FOSOAuthServerBundle bundle.
The RFC6749 section 1.5 indicates that:
Refresh tokens are issued to the client by the authorization server and are
used to obtain [...] additional access tokens
with identical or narrower scope
As far as I understand, the access token A may be still valid when an access token B is issued with the refreh token.
When pulling information from the LinkedIn API, the access token will randomly expired, and the application will not be able to pull the information from the API. This issue randomly occurs after an extended period of time. I am trying to determine whether this could possibly be coming from LinkedIn's side. Is there any way to verify?
According to the LinkedIn documentation, you should receive the expiration date of the access token in the same request you receive the token.
Access Token Response
A successful Access Token request will return a JSON object containing
the following fields:
access_token — The access token for the user. This value must be kept secure, as per your agreement to the API Terms of Use.
expires_in — The number of seconds remaining, from the time it was requested, before the token will expire. Currently, all access tokens are issued with a 60 day lifespan.
One thing to keep in mind is that access tokens can be manually revoked by the user:
Invalid Tokens
If you make an API call using an invalid token, you will receive a
"401 Unauthorized" response back from the server. A token could be
invalid and in need of regeneration because:
It has expired.
The user has revoked the permission they initially granted to your application.
You have changed the member permissions (scope) your application is requesting.
Since a predictable expiry time is not the only contributing factor to token invalidation, it is very important that you code your applications to properly handle an encounter with a 401 error by redirecting the user back to the start of the authorization workflow.
One thing that is not mentioned on this page, as #JustinKominar mentioned, is that only your most recent access token is valid. That means requesting a new access token will invalidate all of the previous ones, so make sure that your tokens are up to date!