I am currently looking to create a private web app with separate front-end and back-end on AWS using nodejs without signup and 3rd part logins, so generated user and passwords. I have looked over a few post, seems Oauth2 only provide more security when I am allowing 3rd party login or services, because it is a authorization framework. so I have a few questions:
In my case, I don't think authenticate oauth2 token is anymore secure than authenticate hash password. So I don't need oauth2 am I correct ?
Other than SSL on transfer and then use session-token after user login, what other ways I can make the backend API more secure ?
Please provide links or examples(best with nodejs )
Thanks,
Related
When a user logs in, I store the login variable in redux but when we hit the api request then firstly react.js checks the authentication using redux if loggedin then the node.js checks the authentication and returns the api.
Isn't it unnecessary using authentication on both sides? Why can't I just use authentication on server side only?
Your thoughts please on what should I follow.
I think you need not to authenticate both side. You have to just send token in headers (authentication) of every API and create middleware for authenticate user for API in nodejs.
there are multiple ways to implement authentication in you're front end projects though the most common way to do this is by using JWT (json web tokens) however for using this type of authentication you need to implement OAuth, OpenID connect or similar authentication service on you're backend .
ps: I recommend storing you're login credentials in cookies
I'm working on adding google login to my web app. It's a RESTful app, so once a user is logged in, each individual request must be authenticated with a token.
Currently, I create my own tokens using JWT. I can add useful information to the token object to help with state management.
My question is: once I add google as an authentication provider, do I then need send every request to Google to be authenticated, rather than authenticating it on my own server? Do I then lose the ability to customize the content of the token?
With external authentication providers, is it normal to manage separate JWTs for calls to your RESTful API?
Normally, you'll have the login action use the third party to identify the user. Your internal code will probably create/store/fetch an app local user profile of some sort, and you'll create your JWT based on that. Further calls to your API bearing a valid token are then trusted to have already been authenticated and therefore need no further calls to the auth provider.
I would like to give the users a possibility to login with some external oauth2 provider (facebook) in my app. The client's part is running on mobile device in a native app.
I am not sure which of the approaches below should I prefer ?
Should the client send the user's access token by facebook with each request ? At each request backend asks facebook to validate the access token. Based on the validation's result, backend performs authorization and return corresponding result to the client.
Should the backend ask facebook to validate the access token only at user logon, then issue its own access token, return the access token back to the client and client will use this access token at making requests to the server to avoid contacting facebook at each request ?
I have read some questions about how to implement the auth with facebook and most of the devs are using B, but I haven't seen any explanation why is it good/bad to use A ?
What I see as benefits of the solutions:
backend doesn't need to care about issuing, refreshing, validating access tokens since this is done only by facebook's authorization servers.
this solution seems to be more effective, since it does not require to connect to facebook at each request.
Security tokens issued by Facebook are signed with a digital signature. The API server only needs access to the public key to validate the signature. There's no need at all to contact Facebook after the user authenticates.
A reason to issue your own tokens after the user signed in with Facebook could be to add claims to the token. But obviously having your own authorization server comes at a cost. It's up to you to weigh the pros and cons.
If you do decide to have your own authorization server, make sure not to write your own! There are open source options like Thinktecture IdentityServer.
I will vote for option B and here is my explanation,
Your API must authorise the request every time with some auth token , which cannot be external provider token, in such case anyone with an access token (eg: other developers) of other provider can access your api, basically there is no auth here.
When your sever issue access token, it's easy to validate and when needed could be revoked easily (eg: on password reset)
While authenticating , your server has fully control over issuing access token , so the validation is made only once and doesn't have to do every time while calling the API.
In my web application, which happens to be a SPA (Single Page Application), I have OpenID and OAuth2.0 clients for user authentication using third party service. Namely, Google (OpenID), Yahoo (OpenID), Windows Live (OAuth2) and Facebook (OAuth2).
Now, I have setup a token endpoint which exchange user credentials for a bearer token. The goal here is to replace Cookies by an Authorization header set in all requests of the SPA.
For this, I'm using the OAuth2.0 client password authentication strategy with a 'password' grant_type to authenticate the user based on its credentials (oauth2orize + passport-oauth2-client-password).
I am wondering :
How can I keep using the token bearer authentication method for users authentified using a 3rd party service ?
Is there anything in the OAuth2.0 spec which handles this case ?
What is the common practice for this kind of implementation ?
I am developing REST API Server in Node.js and it is almost Ready. Now I am trying to implement Authentication to API server. I decided to use OAuth2 for this. I think I will be Using grant type password, as most of the Apps that will use my service will be under my control.
There are some modules available https://github.com/jaredhanson/oauth2orize, I am confused on storing access token for the authorised users and mantaining sessions. As this is REST server do i need to mantain the Session, Or should i just store active tokens and related users to db and check for each request if they are valid or not?