I need to allow my app to fetch general information available in the Database but without making the information accessible elsewhere. In other words, allowing only my app to access some data.
As far as I know, Anonymous login is not an option for me because at a later stage I am login using email and password.
Basically, I am looking for an alternative to Firebase Secret, in order to allow my app to access the data, but not make that data publicly available by making it .read": "true".
In Firebase 2.x the way to do this was using Firebase Secret, but do not know how to achieve the same access without officially login in.
There is a similar question here, but it asks whether or not it is possible rather than alternatives.
Although the Secrets are deprecated now, you can find it under Project settings -> Service accounts -> Database Secrets.
Instead of the Secret, you should use the Firebase Admin in your project.
Related
I'm developing an android app with firebase as a backend and I heard a word named Admin SDK. I had searched for it and found it is used to manage data.
But I have a doubt that firebase provides a console webpage (console.firebase.google.com) to manage data, but why there is a separate Admin SDK?
Can someOne please explain...
The firebase admin SDK provides a simple and easy way to modify firebase settings and data using API calls.
For example, you might ask: why should you even have a regular SDK to store data? After all, you can store and save data directly from the web interface. It is, however, simply not secure or practical to have users update their own data each time using the console.
Similarly, the admin SDK is just like the regular SDK but with administrator permissions. For example, it allows you to bypass the rules set up using your firestore rules. The Firebase admin SDK is meant to be used on your backend - so you know it is running trusted software. You know that it will act the way you expect it to, unlike code running client-side that can't be trusted.
For example, let's say that you want to be able to delete a user's post if certain conditions are met. The user will make the request to your server, and it will check if the conditions are met, and then delete the post using its admin privilages. Sure you could technically automate this using firestorm rules, but those can be quite cumbersome and might not work in more complicated examples.
You can also even use it to integrate with other applications like connecting your app to a moderation tool or a curse detector that can't or shouldn't run on the client's device.
Is your question is why does Admin SDK exists?
There are several administrative tasks such as deleting users, listing collections and many more which the client cannot and should not be able to do.
Firebase Admin SDK has admin access to your Firebase project's resources.
It does not obey any security rules and can read/write any of your database, storage bucket..
That is why you must use Admin SDK in a server (or cloud function only). Although I feel Firebase Admin SDK is more useful if you use your own servers and authentication method. If you are using a custom server then:
It can be used to generate custom token so you can authenticate users using your own method (maybe legacy auth system) but still use Firebase Authentication to handle the auth tokens thereafter.
If you use your own database (and not any from Firebase), the Admin SDK can verify the ID Token sent by client and get identity of that user. Thereafter it's could be a simple if-else statement for you to decide if the user has access to the request resource or not.
I'm making a little Snapchat clone, and a part of this app I'm trying to build is the ability to add a friend and start a conversation with them. I'm using Firebase to manage my users and I'm a little stuck now trying to figure out what works and why I'm getting problems trying to use some methods or functions.
What I want is this simple line of code to work:
var userByEmail = await _admin.app().auth().getUserByEmail("b#gmail.com");
print(userByEmail.toString());
However this has been giving my some problems, most recently, the following error message:
Unhandled Exception: FirebaseAuthError(auth/invalid-credential): Must initialize app with a cert credential or set your Firebase project ID as the GOOGLE_CLOUD_PROJECT environment variable to call verifyIdToken().
Getting to this point made me want to first ask a question about FirebaseAdmin and Auth before continuing and potentially screwing up my app settings.
Is there a simple way to do what I'm trying to do?
I have a Firebase.instance.initializeApp() in my Main function, do I only ever call that once or should I start initilizeApp in the initState of each Stateful Widget where needed?
What does this error message actually mean?
You are trying to use the Firebase Admin SDK in your Flutter code, which is not possible. The Admin SDKs give full administrative access to your Firebase project, which would be a serious security concern if you allow that in your Flutter app.
If you want to allow certain administrative functionality in your application, you will have to make that functionality available yourself. For example, to look up a user by their email address, there are two common approaches:
Store the minimal information about each user in a cloud-accessible database (such as Firebase's Realtime Database or Cloud Firestore) when each user registers with your app, and then look it up from there.
Wrap the getUserByEmail from the Admin SDK in a custom API that you make for yourself, on a server you control or in Cloud Functions. In that API you validate that the user making the call is authorized to do so, then call Firebase through the API you were trying to use, and return the minimal result back to the caller.
Both of these are feasible and can work to solve a variety of use-cases. But if you've never built backend code before, you might find the first approach easier to get started with.
Also see:
How to get Firebase UID knowing email user?
Flutter get User Data from Firebase
The right way to do what you want is using Firebase auth, authenticating your user and using a collection to store and retrieve users information. That auth information provided by firebase should only be used for authentication and security purposes.
The Firebase admin must have a user logged in to work properly, but its purpose is to provide a more administration environment and should not be used inside a clients app, unless its an admin app.
With all that said, lets go for the rescue:
Authenticate your user (using firebase auth);
After auth, save all the user information you want to share with other user inside its own collection (you will need to create one);
When an authenticated user (this is important) 'request any other users data, you query for the data in the previous created collection.
Is it possible to create a Firebase token using the CLI that only works for a specific project inside the account? The current way using firebase login:ci looks like it can work for all projects inside an account. I am going to use this token for specifically Github action CI work and might pass around other team members.
I have seen questions like this which was asked in 2019.
I'm planning to use the token with this action so any workaround is appreciated.
It's not possible.
When you get a login token, that token represents the user, unrelated to any projects that user might have access to.
If you want to control the per-user access to various projects, you will have to configure that in the console using IAM for each product that you are trying to control. If you give the user permission to make changes in the console, then they implicitly have permission to make the same changes from the CLI.
So you want to authenticate against Firebase to deploy a service within a CI pipeline.
And you want to scope that access to a specific project only to reduce the impact radius, if the token leaks.
firebase login:ci has (I) a too broad scope (all projects you as a user have access to) and (II) is tied to a specific person, which does not scale well if you get ever offboarded from that project...
The solution is to create a Service Account and assign it the necessary role(s).
You will need to make the Service Account key JSON file available on your CI server and set the GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS respectively
The Github Action you linked provides actually the ability to authenticate via a Service Account. This means you are good to go
I am using firebase for authentication on my app. There only needs to be one username/password for it, and after X time, i need for it to expire and to generate a new one. I was wondering if that was possible at all
There are no built-in features for automatic account generation or expiration in Firebase Authentication. However, since it has an API, you can implement all of these yourself. For example, here is documentation on creating a new user, and updating a user profile, such as changing their password.
You'll typically need to use the Firebase Admin SDK for these operations, since they require administrative access to your project. That also means you should run them in a trusted environment, such as your development machine, a server you control, or Cloud Functions.
Can somebody else get the Firebase credentials from my APK and use them? Is this prevented by adding the SHA-1 keys for Android?
If it is prevented, what do I need security rules for since only code from my app with my SHA-1 can manipulate database at all?
If it is not prevented, can somebody else use my Firebase database as long as his requests fit the security rules? (Write 2nd client, which actually cannot do bad things but should not be allowed at all.)
Im not sure how I should think about security rules:
A) Protecting data against access and manipulation from bad guys + B?
B) Just a set of rules to keep data in a certain state and prevent my software from doing invalid database request?
A Firebase Database can be accessed via the REST API, or any of the client libraries. The decision about whether a client can or can't do something is entirely based on the rules.
You can even just access the Database URL in a web browser and see a JSON response by putting .json on the end, e.g. https://[YOUR_PROJECT_ID].firebaseio.com/.json
So the answer is definitely B! The default rules in a new Firebase project are that read and write to the database require auth, but you can configure them to provide whatever levels of protection you need.
Take a look at the Database Rules quickstart to see what you can do!
We don't ship the Realtime Database secret (or any other "secret" material) in the json file that gets baked into your app. That file simply contains resource identifiers that allow us to know which resources (database, storage bucket, analytics, etc.) to properly authenticate to (we use Firebase Authentication for these purposes), and we handle server side authorization to ensure that users are properly logged in.
If you are authorizing your requests properly (using Firebase Realtime Database Rules, for instance), your data is secure!
I'd recommend watching The Key to Firebase Security, one of our I/O talks, which talks in greater detail about how this works.
firebaser here
Thanks to the new feature called Firebase App Check, it is now actually possible to limit calls to your Realtime Database to only those coming from iOS, Android and Web apps that are registered in your Firebase project.
You'll typically want to combine this with the user authentication based security that Mike and Ian describe in their answers, so that you have another shield against abusive users that do use your app.