I'm trying to understand what each string in the Oauth 1 scheme does.
As per my understanding, the consumer key and consumer secret are used to sign a request to the api, from the calling application, and the access_token and access_secret pair are used as a proxy for the user's login credentials.
Am I right in my understanding?
Not quite. The consumer key is a value that identifies the client application that is being used to access the user resources, and the access token is the value that provides the authorization to access those resources.
A combination of the consumer secret and token secret are used to sign the request which provides verification that the request is being sent by an authorized party.
You can read more about the definitions of the oauth 1.0a spec here.
Related
I cannot understand what is the difference between API key, API key secret, Bearer Token, Access Token Access Secret. There is also Client ID and Client Secret which is something very confusing.
I wish to create a Twitter bot, but I find this very confusing. I have tried googling my question, and searching it up on youtube, but I have not found an answer that clears my question.
Admittedly the terms are a bit confusing;but these terms have the same meaning:
Consumer key = Customer key = Api key
Consumer secret = Customer secret = Api secret key
In general, tokens above and Bearer token represent the user that you are making the request on behalf of.
Access token and Access secret - they are Username and Password for your App.
And their usage:
Consumer key, Consumer secret, Access token, Access Secret (or only Access token and Access Secret depending on language and libraries you are using) - these are needed if your software make request to endpoints with POST method, that is if it tweets, replies to a tweet and etc.
If the software make request to endpoints with GET method then authenticating with Bearer Token is enough. Another use of Bearer Token is with Twitter API v2, which only accepts Bearer Token authentication if try to make requests to endpoints of this api.
For more detailed information Getting Access to Twitter API
If you want to simply read tweets, then Bearer Token is enough.
If you want to create tweets then you will need to use:
API Key
API Key Secret
Access Token
Access Token Secret
The client Id and client secret are not require.
There's a full articl here:
https://pythonhowtoprogram.com/how-to-build-a-twitter-bot-with-python-and-twitter-api-v2/
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.
I have been using Oauth for a while but have never been completely sure of the difference between these four terms (and the functionality of each). I frequently see (for instance in the Twitter Public API)
Consumer key:
Consumer secret:
Access token:
and
Access token secret:
field but I have never known exactly what they do. I know that Oauth has the ability to authorize apps (let them act on a user's behalf) but I do not understand the relationship between these four authorization terms and would love an explanation.
Basically, I am not sure how the access token or token secret are generated, where they are stored, and what relation they have to each other or to the consumer key and secret.
Thank you
Consumer key is the API key that a service provider (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) issues to a consumer (a service that wants to access a user's resources on the service provider). This key is what identifies the consumer.
Consumer secret is the consumer "password" that is used, along with the consumer key, to request access (i.e. authorization) to a user's resources from a service provider.
Access token is what is issued to the consumer by the service provider once the consumer completes authorization. This token defines the access privileges of the consumer over a particular user's resources. Each time the consumer wants to access the user's data from that service provider, the consumer includes the access token in the API request to the service provider.
Hope that clears it up. I would recommend skimming through the beginning of the oAuth 2.0 spec. It's really informative.
There are two type of authentication, the first one is called authentication which uses the consumer key and consumer secret to identify this client and be sure that it is a valid account, the second one called authorization, it allows the resources server to identify which kind of actions you have the permission to do with data or what we call a resource, this operation uses access token and access token secret.
For further details, take a look at this useful slides from google:
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1KqevSqe6ygWVj4U-wlarKU7-SVR79x-vjpR4gEc4A9Q/edit?pli=1#slide=id.g1697c74a_1_14
I've been trying to implement 'Sign in with Twitter', but I'm stuck at trying to work out how to get an OAuth token secret for the user.
The Twitter API docs (here) say:
To start a sign in flow, your application must obtain a request token by sending a signed message to POST oauth/request_token
...
The body of the response will contain the oauth_token, oauth_token_secret, and oauth_callback_confirmed parameters
And the docs for creating a signature (here) say:
The value which identifies the account your application is acting on behalf of is called the oauth token secret. This value can be obtained in several ways, all of which are described at Obtaining access tokens.
And the 'obtaining access tokens' page links back to here, completing the circle.
How can I obtain a token secret if I need a token secret to sign the request to obtain the token secret? What the heck?
From the docs on creating a signature:
Note that there are some flows, such as when obtaining a request token,
where the token secret is not yet known. In this case, the signing key
should consist of the percent encoded consumer secret followed by an
ampersand character '&'.
You received a consumer secret when you registered for an API key. This is what you want to sign with to obtain a request token.
I would highly recommend looking into using a library which implements at least the oauth basics such as signing if not a Twitter API library, assuming one is available for your language of choice.
Why does OAuth include both an access token and an access token secret as two separate values? As a consumer or OAuth, all of the recommendations that I have seen indicate that I should store the token and secret together and essentially treat them as one value.
So why does the specification require two values in the first place?
Actually, the access token secret is never transmitted to the provider. Instead, requests transmit the access token, and then use the secret to sign the request. That is why you need both: one to identify, and one to secure
There are 2 secrets, one is token secret and other is consumer secret. Secrets are used to sign the requests (to generate the oauth signature) but not transmitted in the request header where token is sent in the header to identify the client and verify if it has access.