What are the main differences between JWT and OAuth authentication?
Oauth is typically used to request permission of a user, where as JWT is most often used for server to server communication. To grant once system access to another system. So no user is required to authorize the call.
A JWT is composed of three parts: a header, a claim set, and a signature.
{Base64url encoded header}.{Base64url encoded claim set}.{Base64url encoded signature}
All information needed by the application to access the system would be imbedded with in this. I am currently using this to access patient medical data on behalf of a medical provider. The patient doesn't need to grant me access because I have been granted access by the medical provider in the form of a certificate that allows me to generate the JWT for each patient granting me access to their data. I just need to imbed the patients system number in order to have access.
With Oauth2 a user must grant consent by being shown a consent screen the authorization server will then return an access token and refresh token which will grant access to the users data.
Related
I am missing some understanding of OAuth2 access_token hope someone can explain or guide me to what I am missing.
I am using Microsoft Azure AD as an authentication provider for my application, I used the returned id_token after successful authentication to extend it with some additional data custom to my application (to facilitate authorization).
I am doing this throw JWT.sign, I decode the data from id_token and add data then I sign it using a secret key saved at the server.
My question is, can I do the same for access_token? When I tried to do so, I get unauthorized.
Am I doing something wrong? Or this is not possible? And why is this happening, I don't find any request made to MS to validated my new signed access_token.
You should never change tokens issued - this is not a correct thing to do. But your point about using domain specific claims is totally valid - all real world systems need these for their authorization.
OPTION 1
Some specialist providers can reach out at time of token issuance and contact your APIs, to get domain specific data to include in tokens. See this Curity article for how that works. I don't think Azure AD supports this though.
PRIVACY
It is best to avoid revealing sensitive data in readable tokens returned to internet clients. If you include name, email etc in ID tokens or access tokens this may be flagged up in PEN tests, since it is Personally Identifiable Information and revealing it can conflict with regulations such as GDPR.
Curity recommends protecting access tokens by issuing them in an opaque reference token format - via the phantom token pattern.
OPTION 2
An option that would work fir Azure AD is to adopt the following approaches:
Look up extra domain specific claims in your API when an access token is first received, then cache results for further API requests with the same access token. See this Azure AD Code Sample class of mine for some code that builds a custom ClaimsPrincipal. Note that the API continues to validate the JWT on every request.
If the UI needs extra domain specific claims then serve them from your API, which can return both OAuth User Info and domain specific data from its ClaimsPrincipal to the UI. See this API controller class for how that looks. Personally I always do this and never read ID tokens in UIs - which should also never read access tokens.
Applications interacting with Azure AD, receive ID tokens after authenticating the users. The applications use access tokens and refresh tokens while interacting with APIs.
The id_token is a JSON Web Token (JWT) which has user profile
attributes in the form of claims. The ID Token is consumed by the
application and used to get user information like the user's name,
email.
The Access Token on the otherhand is a credential that can be
used by an application to access an API.
So if you need application to access api, there the access token is used and you may follow the suggestion steps provided by Tiny Wang
Similar to id tokens, access tokens are also signed, but they are not
encrypted. As per IETF OAuth (RFC 6749) standard specification ,
access token can have different formats and structures for each
services whereas, id token should be JWT format.
To validate an id_token or an access_token, your app has to validate
both the token's signature and the claims. To validate access tokens,
your app should also validate the issuer, the audience, and the
signing tokens.
So in production application, you should get id token by specifying
“id_token+code” or “id_token+token” as response_type to verify
whether the authentication is correctly succeeded. It means it uses
the id_token for authentication and “code” to exchange access_token
to access the resource for authorization.
In short id_token is used to identify the authenticated user, and the
access token is used to prove access rights to protected resources.
Refer this for the information regarding access token and id token.
I've began to take interest in the OAuth 2.0 specification and am not sure if what I've understood so far is correct.
OAuth is an authorization protocol while OpenID Connect is an authentication protocol which extends OAuth.
The first deals with authorizing access to a 3rd party resource, by a client application. Example you are building some app and would like to use some other application (which is not yours to own) features (resources).
On the other hand OpenID connect, deals with authorization, authorizing some human entity by verifying his/hers identity to, for example, access a specific resource that only him/her alone has access to. Example you're a banking application and allow users to access their account but first they need to confirm their identity with an Authorization Provider.
So is it safe to say that Authorization is destined to application interaction while Authentication for human interaction ?
Your understanding on OAuth and OpenID Connect is correct. When OAuth was introduced, it define a way to obtain access tokens, which the holding party can used against an endpoint protected by OAuth access tokens. This allowed identity details to be stored in a central location (authorization server aka identity servcer) and that central location to maintain token obtaining process (which include human authentication too).
While access token are used to grant access (authorize), OpenID Connect introduced ID token that get transmitted along with access token. The ID token is there to be consumed by the client application, which is used to authenticate the end user.
Token obtaining require authentication at authorization server. Depending on the token obtaining flow (aka OAuth grant), this authentication will involve the human user. It is also possible to follow a flow which does not involve a human user. Such flow only produce an access token. And OpenID Connect can only be used when human user is involved.
Q : So is it safe to say that Authorization is destined to application interaction while Authentication for human interaction ?
If your application (client) involves and end user, then that user can involved in token obtaining flow. And you can obtain access token as well as ID Token. Then you use ID token for end user authentication. And access token is used to connect with another endpoint.
If your application does not involved an end user (ex:- A service), then you will use OAuth to obtain access token, which used against another endpoint.
I'm building a system with OIDC and OAuth 2.0 (using Auth0), and I'm unsure how to properly use the id_token and access_token. Or rather, I'm confused about which roles to assign to the various services in my setup.
I have a fully static frontend-application (single-page app, HTML + JS, no backend) that ensures that the user is authenticated using the implicit flow against Auth0. The frontend-application then fetches data from an API that I am also building.
Now, which is right?
The frontend SPA is the OAuth client application
My API service is an OAuth resource server
...or:
The frontend and my API service are both the client application
If both my frontend and backend API can be considered to be the client, I see no real harm in using the id_token as the bearer token on requests from my frontend to my backend - this is appealing because then I can simply verify the signed token on the backend, and I have all the information about the user that I need. However, if my API is considered a resource server, I should probably use the access_token, but then I have to connect to Auth0's servers on every API request to both verify the token, and get basic user info, won't I?
I've read this which seems to suggest that the access_token is the only valid token for use with my API. But like I said, I'm not sure about the roles of the individual services. And using the id_token is tempting, because it requires no network connections on the backend, and contains information I need to extract the right data.
What is the right way to go about this?
I like this Medium post about the difference, all cred to this author.
https://medium.com/#nilasini/id-token-vs-access-token-17e7dd622084
If you are using Azure AD B2C like I am you can read more here:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory-b2c/openid-connect
ID Token
You will get id token if you are using scope as openid. Id token is specific to openid scope. With openid scope you can get both id token and access token.
The primary extension that OpenID Connect makes to OAuth 2.0 to enable End-Users to be Authenticated is the ID Token data structure. The ID Token is a security token that contains Claims(claims are name/value pairs that contain information about a user) about the Authentication of an End-User by an Authorization Server when using a Client, and potentially other requested Claims. The ID Token is represented as a JSON Web Token (JWT)
{
"iss": "https://server.example.com",
"sub": "24400320",
"aud": "s6BhdRkqt3",
"nonce": "n-0S6_WzA2Mj",
"exp": 1311281970,
"iat": 1311280970,
"auth_time": 1311280969,
"acr": "urn:mace:incommon:iap:silver"
}
The above is default JWT claims, in addition to that, if you requested claims from service provider then you will get those as well.
An id_token is a JWT, per the OIDC Specification. This means that:
identity information about the user is encoded right into the token
and
the token can be definitively verified to prove that it hasn't been
tampered with.
There's a set of rules in the specification for validating an id_token. Among the claims encoded in the id_token is an expiration (exp), which must be honored as part of the validation process. Additionally, the signature section of JWT is used in concert with a key to validate that the entire JWT has not been tampered with in any way.
Access Tokens
Access tokens are used as bearer tokens. A bearer token means that the bearer (who hold the access token) can access authorized resources without further identification. Because of this, it's important that bearer tokens are protected. If I can somehow get ahold of and "bear" your access token, I can pretend as you.
These tokens usually have a short lifespan (dictated by its expiration) for improved security. That is, when the access token expires, the user must authenticate again to get a new access token limiting the exposure of the fact that it's a bearer token.
Although not mandated by the OIDC spec, Okta uses JWTs for access tokens as (among other things) the expiration is built right into the token.
OIDC specifies a /userinfo endpoint that returns identity information and must be protected. Presenting the access token makes the endpoint accessible.
http://openid.net/specs/openid-connect-core-1_0.html
https://connect2id.com/learn/openid-connect#cool-id-token-uses
https://developer.okta.com/blog/2017/07/25/oidc-primer-part-1
Your frontent is your OAuth client application, once it stores the token it can take actions on the OAuth flow. And your API service is resource server, because it accepts the access_token issued by your identity server.
Also I would say that your id_token stands for the identification of the logged user and may contain sensitive data for your app. The access_token is standing as your credential to access a resource.
At the end you will use an access_token to request a resource, and then if you need specific data from the logged in user (resource owner), you may request the ID token from the token endpoint.
In my opinion, the first approach is correct. Your SPA is the client application and your APIs are resource servers.
I would suggest you limit the use of id_token till your SPA only. You can use the basic information present in the id token (like username and email) to display user information within your UI. If you can generate access tokens as JWTs too then your API can validate the access tokens without going to the Identity provider. You can include roles (or similar) in your access token to get authorization information in your access token.
I was also wondering if I need to talk to the IdP on every request if I'm using the tokens received from the IdP. I ended up with the following setup:
Only the backend talks to the IdP, the frontend does not.
Upon the IdP callback the backend issues a JWT for the frontend.
User session and frontend-backend communication is managed entirely by my app using the JWT token.
Check this article: OAuth2 in NestJS for Social Login (Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc)
and this repo: https://github.com/thisismydesign/nestjs-starter
and this question: OAuth2 flow in full-stack NestJS application
The id_token is an cryptographically encoded token for authentication. The OP (the auth provider) is the one that generates it and the RP (relying party or the resource) will eventually re-present the token to the OP to counter validate when handed over by the client. In short the id_token is tied to authn workflow.
The access_token enables resource access. It does subsume the userinfo i.e., the id_token or any other principal on whose behalf the access is being requested. So this token includes both user claims plus claims to groups that are authorized. In short the access_token is tied to your authz workflow.
Our Mobile Client App uses https://identityserver:port/oauth2/token service from Identity Server by passing the ClientID and ClientSecret with grant_type as “client_credentials” to generate the access token. The generated access token is used to invoke the API from ESB.
As per the implementation the ClientID and ClientSecret will be stored in the device.
For an example, ClientX requested for an Oauth Token which will have a certain expiry time. Can this token make as a unique for ClientX?
Currently all the upcoming client calls will get the same access token as its already generated from the request of ClientX. If a client is requesting a token very late it will get the same token with almost expiry time.
Is there a way to make this token unique for the Client?
In your case, if you use “client_credentials” as a grant type, resource owner is also the client.
Since this is a mobile application, once your mobile app gets the token it will be used until the expiry date and there will not be a necessity of changing it, because of mobile is belongs to a single user. Therefore the token would be same for same scope till it is expired.
Ex: BBC news mobile application.
If you need different access tokens, you need to use different scopes.
You will need different access token in case if different clients accessing the same API. In that case you may use “PASSWORD” grant type for a unique access token.
Ex: Purchasing a product using ebay.
So you should define your scope properly to identify the use of access token.
Find the following blog that will help you to guide to select your scope. [1]
[1] http://wso2.com/library/articles/2014/02/securing-your-web-service-with-oauth2-using-wso2-identity-server-1/
I will assume that mobile application instance is bound per user.
If you want to get different access tokens for every user bound to a session don't use client_credential grant type.
For example you have client-x and client-y both using client_credentials grant. Identity Server (Authorization Server) will give an access token for client-x and client-y since this is about authorizing client-x and client-y to access resource and not about authorizing a user. This means whatever user you have in client-x or client-y requesting access_token, they can get one (assuming they are authenticated).Vice versa, a user, even if authenticated both client and identity server cannot get an access token if the request comes from client-z (client-z is not registered in identity server)
If your Oauth 2.0 client is browser-based you can use implicit grant, if it is a server you can use either authorization grant or resource owner password credential.
My app get the oauth2.0 token to access the protected resource, but how can I distinguish between users, example if there is userA and userB. UserA can access the url /accout/info.jso?uid=2 to get his data,but my question is if userA get the token, but he access the userB's data by the url /accout/info.jso?uid=userBId
How oauth2.0 system avoid this kind of problem?
In OAuth 2.0, the resource owner and the client who is requesting access are two different entities. In your question, it sounds like they are one and the same. OAuth exists to provide limited access to a third party, the client application.
But leaving that aside... if you are using bearer tokens, they do not provide any identification. The nature of a bearer token is that whoever presents it is granted the access associated with the token. Other token types, SAML 2.0 for example, carry more semantic information about the identity of the client.
In your case, you want to verify that the user identified in the URI is the user who sent the request. A bearer token alone will not do this. If using bearer tokens, your resource server will need to ask the authorization server if the presented token was issued to the user whose data the client is requesting. The authorization server will have to remember the access tokens it issued and who it issued them to. It should also remember the scope they were issued for and when they expire so the resource server can check that the token is still active and the requested resource is in scope for the presented token.