Is there a difference between using a "Bearer" Authorization header and using a custom header? For example, the "Basic" Authorization header is different from a custom header because browsers treat "Basic" Authorization headers as a special case (some browsers cache the "Basic" Authorization header). In other words, is "Bearer" just an arbitrary string or do browsers know about it?
If I don't want future browsers to cache my bearer token, should I be safe and use a custom header?
For example, is there a difference between these (assuming my server can handle both):
header('Authorization: Bearer 12345');
header('Mysite-Bearer-Token: 12345');
Bearer token is defined by OAuth 2.0. You can get more details from https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6750.
Related
I am currently working with a group of applications that are running on two separate, but equivalent, environments (Referred to as ENV1 and ENV2). I have been using OAuth 2.0 for Authorization and when I receive a response after requesting an access token from the OAuth service (I am making my requests through Postman) I get a response that looks like this from ENV1 and ENV2:
As far as I am aware, I believe that this "token_type": "Bearer" means that when I send in the access_token to my application I need to do so like this:
By sending in the token through the Authorization header, prefixed with "Bearer". This approach works fine on ENV1 but on ENV2 the request fails unless I send in the token alone with no "Bearer" prefix:
If I send in the Authorization header with the "Bearer" prefix, I get a 401 Unauthorized error as the response. This is the help tip that Postman provides(Emphasis mine):
Similar to 403 Forbidden, but specifically for use when authentication is possible but has failed or not yet been provided. The response must include a WWW-Authenticate header field containing a challenge applicable to the requested resource.
The problem here is that there IS a WWW-Authenticate header field, and it contains "Bearer", which I would assume is a "challenge applicable to the requested resource" seeing as the token response contained "token_type": "Bearer":
Questions:
Why would this be different between environments?
How is this even possible? The documentation I have found on OAuth 2.0 shows that the "Bearer" prefix is needed for requests like the ones I am trying to make. (for example, in section 2.1 of the documentation here)
From your description, it seems that the environments are not actually identical. E.g. maybe ENV2 is behind a gateway that adds the Bearer prefix to the header. Or the API on ENV2 (or the gateway) is configured to read the header without the prefix.
When the OAuth Server returns the access token, it gives you the type - a bearer token. That type means, that the token is just this - a bearer token - as opposed to a Proof-of-Possession token. When you send a bearer token to an API, you don't have to provide any additional information that would prove that you are the owner of the token. (you can compare bearer with the DPoP standard)
The Bearer Token Usage standard does require you to use the prefix Bearer in the authorization header (as you pointed out), but it doesn't mean that all the APIs and gateways implement that standard correctly, or that they use that standard at all.
To summarize:
it's up to the gateway/API to decide in what format they want the Authorization header, and that has nothing to do with the type of the token (a bearer token). It's nice when they use standards, but they don't have to.
In your setup, there must be some kind of difference between the environments if the same request is treated differently between them. If you own the environments you should investigate what is configured differently. If you don't own them, you should contact the owner's support to solve the issue.
I know modheader extension allows us to modify the header of a request. And as such we can handle authorization use cases by specifying Token. But what I've seen so far is the use of basic tokens. My question is : Does modheader allow us to specify Bearer Token as in tools like Postman or Thunder Client ? If Yes then how to do it ? Thanks for any hint
It works using the header Name "Authorization" and the value "Bearer YOURTOKEN"
Header configuration
What exactly is the difference between following two headers:
Authorization : Bearer cn389ncoiwuencr
vs
Authorization : cn389ncoiwuencr
All the sources which I have gone through, sets the value of 'Authorization' header as 'Bearer' followed by the actual token. However, I have not been able to understand the significance of it. What if I simply put the token in the Authorization header?
Then the service receiving the header would not know how to interpret it. Instead of bearer, it could also be basic for example in which case the encoded string is a base64 encoded username/password instead of a token.
There are a number of authentication schemes possible. Which one is used is indicated by the identifier in the header.
I want to develop a SDK that encapsules the OAuth 2.0 functions. I have checked the differences between OAuth 1.0 & 2.0, and I have some confusion on Authorization Header (1.0 and
2.0), OAuth 1.0 protocol parameters can be transmitted using the HTTP "Authorization" header, but I can't find this described in current OAuth 2.0 draft.
Does OAuth 2.0 supports authorization headers?
In OAuth 1.0 your header would look like:
Authorization: OAuth realm="Example",
oauth_consumer_key="0685bd9184jfhq22",
oauth_token="ad180jjd733klru7",
oauth_signature_method="HMAC-SHA1",
oauth_signature="wOJIO9A2W5mFwDgiDvZbTSMK%2FPY%3D",
oauth_timestamp="137131200",
oauth_nonce="4572616e48616d6d65724c61686176",
oauth_version="1.0"
For those looking for an example of how to pass the OAuth2 authorization (access token) in the header (as opposed to using a request or body parameter), here is how it's done:
Authorization: Bearer 0b79bab50daca910b000d4f1a2b675d604257e42
You can still use the Authorization header with OAuth 2.0. There is a Bearer type specified in the Authorization header for use with OAuth bearer tokens (meaning the client app simply has to present ("bear") the token). The value of the header is the access token the client received from the Authorization Server.
It's documented in this spec: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6750#section-2.1
E.g.:
GET /resource HTTP/1.1
Host: server.example.com
Authorization: Bearer mF_9.B5f-4.1JqM
Where mF_9.B5f-4.1JqM is your OAuth access token.
I just want to specify that you can use "Property Expansion" in the header value as well to Automation your proccess.
( Actually i use a property transfer too, to transfer token into my TestSuite property and then as you can see return it with "${#TestSuite#token}" )
example:
Sources :
pass a property as access token,
Accessing Property
Best regards community !
I need to authenticate a client when he sends a request to an API. The client has an API-token and I was thinking about using the standard Authorization header for sending the token to the server.
Normally this header is used for Basic and Digest authentication. But I don't know if I'm allowed to customize the value of this header and use a custom authentication scheme, e.g:
Authorization: Token 1af538baa9045a84c0e889f672baf83ff24
Would you recommend this or not? Or is there a better approach for sending the token?
You can create your own custom auth schemas that use the Authorization: header - for example, this is how OAuth works.
As a general rule, if servers or proxies don't understand the values of standard headers, they will leave them alone and ignore them. It is creating your own header keys that can often produce unexpected results - many proxies will strip headers with names they don't recognise.
Having said that, it is possibly a better idea to use cookies to transmit the token, rather than the Authorization: header, for the simple reason that cookies were explicitly designed to carry custom values, whereas the specification for HTTP's built in auth methods does not really say either way - if you want to see exactly what it does say, have a look here.
The other point about this is that many HTTP client libraries have built-in support for Digest and Basic auth but may make life more difficult when trying to set a raw value in the header field, whereas they will all provide easy support for cookies and will allow more or less any value within them.
In the case of CROSS ORIGIN request read this:
I faced this situation and at first I chose to use the Authorization Header and later removed it after facing the following issue.
Authorization Header is considered a custom header. So if a cross-domain request is made with the Autorization Header set, the browser first sends a preflight request. A preflight request is an HTTP request by the OPTIONS method, this request strips all the parameters from the request. Your server needs to respond with Access-Control-Allow-Headers Header having the value of your custom header (Authorization header).
So for each request the client (browser) sends, an additional HTTP request(OPTIONS) was being sent by the browser. This deteriorated the performance of my API.
You should check if adding this degrades your performance. As a workaround I am sending tokens in http parameters, which I know is not the best way of doing it but I couldn't compromise with the performance.
This is a bit dated but there may be others looking for answers to the same question. You should think about what protection spaces make sense for your APIs. For example, you may want to identify and authenticate client application access to your APIs to restrict their use to known, registered client applications. In this case, you can use the Basic authentication scheme with the client identifier as the user-id and client shared secret as the password. You don't need proprietary authentication schemes just clearly identify the one(s) to be used by clients for each protection space. I prefer only one for each protection space but the HTTP standards allow both multiple authentication schemes on each WWW-Authenticate header response and multiple WWW-Authenticate headers in each response; this will be confusing for API clients which options to use. Be consistent and clear then your APIs will be used.
I would recommend not to use HTTP authentication with custom scheme names. If you feel that you have something of generic use, you can define a new scheme, though. See http://greenbytes.de/tech/webdav/draft-ietf-httpbis-p7-auth-latest.html#rfc.section.2.3 for details.
Kindly try below on postman :-
In header section example work for me..
Authorization : JWT eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.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.BkyB0LjKB4FIsCtnM5FcpcBLvKed_j7rCCxZddwiYnU