In Webserver Grant Flow
After I obtain the Authorization Code from the authorization authority (after the user has authorized my access) how long is that code usually valid form?
The reason i am asking is, can my webserver store that code and use it in later sessions to retrieve a new access token without the need for the user to re-authenticate again? Should that be the flow?
FYI my goal is make requests from Adobe Analytics and Google Analytics on behalf of my customer. So i would want to ask my customer for authorization once until he revokes my access.
Speaking strictly of Google Oauth. There are three types of codes or tokens you should be aware of.
Authorization code
Access token
Refresh token
Authorization code is return when the user clicks accept to your application accessing their data. This code is used to exchange for an access token and a refresh token. This code can only be used once and is extremely short lived 10 minutes I believe.
Access tokens are used to access private user data. They are valid for approximately one hour.
Refresh tokens are used to gain a new access token when the access token has expired. For the most part refresh tokens do not expire however if it has not been used for six months it will no longer be valid and of course the user can always remove your access.
Answer: No storing the authentication code would be pointless. You will need to store the refresh token. make sure you are requesting offline access of your users.
I cant help you with adobe analytics however I suspect it is similar this is standard Oauth protocol we are talking about.
Related
My current setup is the following:
Single Page Application with Vue
Rest Backend
The SPA has social login functionality. It uses the authorization code flow with PKCE to retrieve:
Access Token / Refresh Token
ID-Token
As it is an SPA, the information is stored in local storage and therefore not 100% secure.
But how do I use this information to actually authenticate against my rest backend? The rest backend actually contains the user data I need after all.
Originally, I thought I could just send my access token or id token to my backend and the backend uses this as proof that I'm the correct user.
Main problems I see:
Make sure the access token / id token is actually from my application (the SPA)
Be protected if the tokens are stolen / Minimize the impact of this
For the first problem, the client_id might help, which is embedded in the id-token. It is kind of public information (because it is an SPA) and there is no client_secret. But the redirect_uri is specific to my SPA. Is this enough protection?
If it is my backend could have a list of allowed client ids and providers and check if the client id of the token is one of them.
The second problem is the lifetime of the token. Access tokens are only valid for a short time period and refresh token should be rotated. So it's kind of okay to store these in local storage. But the id_token is valid for a longer time. What do to about this?
Is this in general the right track? Or is my approach completely wrong?
In my application I have used aws cognito with next auth for user auth.
In the jwt callback that I have from api next-auth I receive an access token, which is then saved and sent to the client side. There, I save it in local storage and, among other things, I send it to my api which checks if it is correct.
The problem is that after an hour the access token expires and does not get a new one (always next-auth gives me old value). Has anyone had a similar flow and knows how to manage a session refresh? I will add that I am not automatically logged out because next-auth is managing it underneath, but it does not return the value of the new access token to me.
Do you have any ways how to manage this?
I can suggest a workaround that would take the least effort to solve this quickly. Amazon Cognito contains 3 kinds of tokens, the ID Token, Access Token and Refresh Token.
From the Amazon Cognito console, you can increase the validity of the token you're dealing with from there. A good idea is to refer to this answer.
Albeit you might need a couple of methods to assert security and robustness.
I know how to sync with Google Calendar API. We are trying to build a system where to sync the Google Calendar continuously without asking for the consent screen.
I did search a lot but it seems they sent nextsynctoken to get the full event list. but If I want to restart the sync after 2 weeks. how can I do it? without asking auth window or consent screen to the user?
Please let me know if its possible.
Thank you in advance
Saravana
All requests you are making to the Google Calendar API must be authorized by an authenticated user.
But since you are encountering a problem that looks like token expiration to me, why don't you try and refresh the access tokens you are using?
According to the Using OAuth 2.0 to Access Google APIs documentation
Access tokens have limited lifetimes. If your application needs access to a Google API beyond the lifetime of a single access token, it can obtain a refresh token. A refresh token allows your application to obtain new access tokens.
The nextSyncToken is a piece of data exchanged between the server and the client, and is used in the synchronization process.
You can keep on using the nextSyncToken but you will have to use a refresh token in order for you to not use the consent screen every time.
Here is a sample code from the Using OAuth 2.0 for Web Server Applications used to exchange authorization code for refresh and access tokens, using Python:
state = flask.session['state']
flow = google_auth_oauthlib.flow.Flow.from_client_secrets_file(
'client_secret.json',
scopes=['https://www.googleapis.com/auth/youtube.force-ssl'],
state=state)
flow.redirect_uri = flask.url_for('oauth2callback', _external=True)
authorization_response = flask.request.url
flow.fetch_token(authorization_response=authorization_response)
# Store the credentials in the session.
# ACTION ITEM for developers:
# Store user's access and refresh tokens in your data store if
# incorporating this code into your real app.
credentials = flow.credentials
flask.session['credentials'] = {
'token': credentials.token,
'refresh_token': credentials.refresh_token,
'token_uri': credentials.token_uri,
'client_id': credentials.client_id,
'client_secret': credentials.client_secret,
'scopes': credentials.scopes}
I suggest you check the following links since they can provide more information on your issue:
Using OAuth 2.0 to Access Google APIs
Authorizing Requests to the Google Calendar API
Synchronize Resources Efficiently
For other programming languages used for the refresh token, you can check this:
Using OAuth 2.0 for Web Server Applications
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/
I'm building an installed application that will have features requiring the Google Drive REST API using Qt and C++. I understand Qt is now releasing new libraries to support OAuth flows but let's assume I'm a student and learning to use OAuth at this layer is a requirement for this project.
In my application, I have a working OAuth flow for installed applications that ends with an Access Token and Refresh Token being stored using QSettings (I'm open to input on whether this is a disastrously bad idea too). The application requires no authentication/login for its own sake/data, but it does need authentication to Google for calling API's using an Access Token. This application has no associated web backend being hosted; its simple and should be deployable completely locally (I've written and included a simple TCP server that will receive the authorization redirect_uri and will run and close when called from within the application).
As such, I'm curious about the best way to make sure that, when a user opens my application and wants to use the Google Drive features, they are appropriately authenticated on Google's end. Say, if I maintain an access token in the registry, and this access token is granted per-user/per-application basis (right?), then how can I make sure only the user the token belongs to is able to make calls to the API with it?
Here's my understanding and approach; feel free to correct me or educate me if I've got the wrong interpretation.
If an Access Token is found, perform the following:
Open a browser page to a Google login domain and have the user authenticate there (this could prohibit a user from being able to use a cached login session that would have access to a token they otherwise shouldn't have access to)
If user has correctly authenticated with a Google account, return control to the application and make a test call to an API using the stored token.
If the call fails (responds with an invalid_credentials) I should be able to be sure its because the access token has expired and the application will go through the flow to renew an Access Token from a Refresh Token.
If no Access Token is initially found:
Start a normal OAuth installed application flow
Get the tokens and store them so that when the user opens the application next time the former procedure is used
My issue then is the first two steps if the Access Token is found. Nominally this could be done by the typical OAuth flow but it appears that when using a localhost as the redirect uri, Google will always prompt for consent, regardless of settings for prompt and access_type authorization query parameters.
What can be done to accomplish these first two steps in a way that my application can control (i.e. not a solution that relies on a backend server being hosted somewhere)?
If this question is too open-ended for SO requirements I can make some more restrictions/assumptions to limit the problem domain but I'd rather not do that yet in case I unknowingly rope off a good viable solution.
Thanks for reading! Sorry if its a verbose; I wanted to ensure my problem domain was fully fleshed out!
If you are using an installed application, I wouldn't recommend using or storing refresh tokens. Storing refresh tokens on the client side means that if an intruder gains access to the client's application, they have infinite access to the user's application without ever having to enter the user's credentials. If you do insist on having a refresh token, ensure you follow the Google's installed app flow, with the code_verifier parameter included in your requests.
If the access token is found, you should try to verify it, and if verified then use it at the google api, otherwise force the user to login again (or refresh it if you chose to still use refresh tokens).
If no access token is found, your flow sounds fine.
A few notes on loggin in with Google:
Google will only return a refresh token if you specify access_type=offline in your auth request.
Google will only return a refresh token on the user's first authorization request, unless you always specify prompt=consent in your query params.
In my experience, when leaving out the prompt query param, the user is not prompted for their consent again. If they are logged in to google, you will get a new access token, but no refresh token, unless you have prompt=consent.
I think the idea is you use prompt=consent if you have no record of the user ever using your application. Otherwise if they have used it before, you may prefer to use prompt=select_account to allow the user to select which account he wants to use in case he has more then one, or you can just use prompt=none.
This is just my understanding of it all.
My approach I ended up using was just to deploy with an SQLite db that will be stored in the AppData roaming directory. The db schema includes a field for the user's Name (from the OpenID IDToken field if it exists), the user's picture URL (again from IDToken if it exists), the refresh and access token strings (will be stored as encrypted strings when I get around to it), the user's UID/sub string, and a field for a user name and password.
These latter two fields are authentication fields for within my own application, which, again, I wanted to avoid but it seems impossible to do so. So the user will be prompted to enter a username and password into a form, and these credentials will be checked against the existing SQLite db file mentioned previously.
If they exist and are correct, the user gets logged in and will have access to their respective access and refresh token.
If the user has forgotten their password, they'll be asked for reconsent (going through the installed app flow again), and whatever password they provided during initial login will be used as the reset password. It is considered, for my purposes, that logging into Google for the installed app flow is proof enough that the user account belongs to them and they should have authorization to reset the password.
If the user is a new user and doesn't have a record in the local SQLite db file, then they can also click a button to "Create New Account" - which effectively goes through the authorization flow as well but this time a whole new record is posted to the SQLite db with the appropriate fields filled.
There's still more optimization that could be done but at least I am getting closer to the level of security and control of access to Google user accounts that I want.
I'm not marking this as an answer because I feel like this solution is still not desired and that there should be an easier way. So if someone has evidence or experience of providing an equivalent level of authentication control without needing to maintain a local user account database then I would be more than happy to mark such a method as the solution!
Thanks again!