What I want to achieve:
Safely allow users to connect their accounts to different social medias using a Single Page Application.
What I am doing:
I am using an SPA and therefor utilizing JWT as my user authentication method. I am passing the JWT token in the OAuth call with Laravel Socialite like this:
return Socialite::driver($provider)
->with(['provider' => $provider, 'token' => $token])
->redirectUrl($redirectUri)
->stateless()
->redirect();
On the callback I get the user based on the token. Using this method allows the third party provider to get access to the JWT token. Which is very unsafe.
My Question(s):
Is there any better way to do this? Should I use some kind of hash + salt + secret?
You should check the JWT.
JSON Web Tokens are an open, industry standard RFC 7519 method for
representing claims securely between two parties.
JWT Token composes of three parts, header, payload and verify signature.
You are using stateless authentication and the only way to authenticate the user is by the JWT Token. To authenticate the user after redirect, you should create a payload containing application's user id, and pass to the third party provider, so that when redirect, they will pass the JWT token back to you.
It is no problem to pass the JWT Token to third party provider, but be aware that the payload should not contain any sensitive data. If the payload is somehow sniffed, it will not have any harm because, if hacker is trying to change the payload, the verify signature helps and the application cannot verify the token and the application will throw exception.
The signature is used to verify that the sender of the JWT is who it
says it is and to ensure that the message wasn't changed along the
way.
Related
I'm a little bit confused by the documentation. It's said:
Passport includes an authentication guard that will validate access
tokens on incoming requests. Once you have configured the api guard to
use the passport driver, you only need to specify the auth:api
middleware on any routes that require a valid access token.
So it means that Passport utilizes guards not to authenticate users but to validate access tokens on routes where these tokens are required. Did I get that right?
In this case, validating the access token is authenticating the user. To understand why this is the case, let's walk through a simplified authentication flow using JWTs (let's ignore oAuth2 for a bit).
The user is logging in on the website. This triggers a POST /login request, with the username and the password in the request body.
The backend validates the users credentials. If the credentials are valid, it will issue a JWT, which will act as an access token. The JWT payload will contain some data that allows the backend to identify a user, e. g. the user id. The JWT then is signed with a secret that only the backend knows.
The backend will return the access token to the client, who has to include the access token in any subsequent requests to the server. Usually, the client will provide the token in the Authorization header.
When handling the next request from the client, the backend will extract the access token from the Authorization header and check its signature. If the signature is valid, the backend can be sure that the token data has not been manipulated, e. g. by changing the user id on the access token. With a valid signature, the backend can extract the user id from the tokens payload and set the User model for that specific id as authenticated. With an invalid signature, the backend will probably return something like 401 Unauthorized.
My app creates a custom attribute "userType" for each new signed-up user. Now I would like this "userType" claim/attribute to be added to the JWT access token whenever the user signs in or the token gets refreshed.
Is there an option to tell cognito to add my custom claim/attribute to the JWT access token? (Without a pre token generation Lambda)
Custom attributes are not available in Cognito access token. Currently it is not possible to inject additional claims in Access Token using Pre Token Generation Lambda Trigger as well. PreToken Generation Lambda Trigger allows you to customize identity token(Id Token) claims only.
You can use ID token to get the token with custom attributes.
Access tokens are not intended to carry information about the user. They simply allow access to certain defined server resources.
You can pass an ID Token around different components of your client, and these components can use the ID Token to confirm that the user is authenticated and also to retrieve information about them.
How to retrieve Id token using amazon cognito identity js
cognitoUser.authenticateUser(authenticationDetails,{
onSuccess: function(result) {
var accessToken = result.getIdToken().getJwtToken();
console.log('accessToken is: ' + accessToken);
},
onFailure: function(err) {
alert(err.message || JSON.stringify(err));
},
});
I have the same problem when I want to create several microservice. There isn't a way I can customize an access token, but only an identity token. However, I use client credentials in the machine-to-machine which needs access token. So, in no way I can customize my token. At last, I decide to add such info(like user type) in the event header. It's not a very secure way compared to customize a token, but there isn't any other easy way to do it right now. Otherwise, I have to rewrite the authorizer in Cognito. Like rewriting a customize authorizer and it's very painful.
I have the same issue with Cognito; exist other tools like "PingFederate"Auth-server of Ping identity and Auth0 Auth-server; I know that the requirement isn't part of the standard, but these applications were my alternatives to fix this issue
The responses suggesting to use the ID Token for authorization in your backend systems are bad security practice. ID Tokens are for determining that the user is in fact logged in and the identity of that user. This is something that should be performed in your frontend. Access Tokens on the other hand are for determining that a request (to your backend) is authorized. ID Tokens do not have the same security controls against spoofing that Access Tokens have (see this blog from Auth0: https://auth0.com/blog/id-token-access-token-what-is-the-difference/).
Instead, I recommend that your backend accept an Access Token as a Bearer token via the Authorization HTTP header. Your backend then calls the corresponding /userinfo endpoint (see: https://openid.net/specs/openid-connect-core-1_0.html#UserInfo) on the authorization server that issued the Access Token, passing such said Access Token to that endpoint. This endpoint will return all of the ID Token information and claims, which you can then use to make authorization decisions in your code.
I am working on a project with PHP and angular. For the user sign in, we're using JWT. Still can't understand why we should use JWT instead of Sessions if each time the user browse a component we need to send the token to server code to check if the user still signed in or not.
Username and password will be sent to server code, where the authentication process will happen, and then generate a token and send it back to angular then save at the local storage.
Any comment on how JWT should be properly used.
EDIT
My question is about the process of checking the JWT when user surf the site and go from component into another.
If you use session for your application... Then while horizontal scaling sharing the session data becomes a burden ....you either need a specialised server .. Jwt are stateless and have no such requirement. It contain following data
Header - information about the signing algorithm, the type of payload (JWT) and so on in JSON format
Signature - well... the signature
Payload - the actual data (or claims if you like) in JSON format
Your JWT already is a proof of your authentication. So you have to send it with each request but you can simplify the authentication logic on server-side.
While on the login you will have to check the credentials you can rely on the JWT's signature and expiryDate. If the signature is still correct the token is valid and you do not have to authenticate anymore.
So regarding your horizontal authentication.
If the called service needs to be authenticated you have to check the JWT for validity on each request (normally works reasonably fast). If there are open api calls you can of course ignore the JWT on server side.
At the end of the day there is no difference to your "session" which will also send some "secret" key which maps your session context. Therefore, it will also be validated.
For some backends you can also use the JWT as your session key to get both worlds involved.
Example:
lets say you have two api roots:
api/secured/*
api/open/*
(Note that the secured and open are only here for demonstrative purposes)
The secured part will contain all the services you want to be authenticated.
The open part can contain insensitive data as well as your login services:
api/open/login -> returns your token
api/open/token/* -> refresh, check re-issue whatever you might need
So now lets say the user accesses your site. You will want to provde an authentication error if he tries to access any api/secured/* URL without a proper JWT.
In this case you can then redirect him to your login and create a token after authenticating him.
Now when he calls an api/secured/* URL your client implementation has to provide the JWT (Cookie, Request header, etc...).
Depending on your framework, language etc. you can now provide an interceptor/filter/handler on server side which will check:
If the JWT is present
if the signature is valid (otherwise the token was faked)
if the JWT is still valid (expiryDate)
Then you can act accordingly.
So to sum up:
There is no need to "authenticate" unless you want to create a new token.
In all other cases it is enough to check the validity of your JWT
I have implemented Token Authentication in my api. When I send a POST request with user credentials, I get back the token. But I can't seem to figure how to implement client side logic to use this token. I mean do I store it somewhere?
From Django Rest Framework Docs
For clients to authenticate, the token key should be included in the Authorization HTTP header. The key should be prefixed by the string literal "Token", with whitespace separating the two strings. For example:
Authorization: Token 9944b09199c62bcf9418ad846dd0e4bbdfc6ee4b1
So indeed, you need to store somewhere on the front-end.
You can read more about where is best place to store tokens here and here.
I'm considering using authenticated encrypted JWT tokens to authenticate / authorized access to an ASP.NET Web API application.
Based on what I've read so far, it seems to me like it is an option to generate JWT tokens from a token service and pass them to Web API via the http authorization header.
I have found some good code examples on implementing the JWT creation and consumption (Pro ASP.NET Web API Security by Badrinarayanan Lakshmiraghavan).
I'm trying to understand if I need a full OAuth implementation to support this, or if I can simply pass the tokens along in the auth header.
Assuming the tokens are properly encrypted and signed, is there any inherent security flaw in keeping things simple without having to use OAuth?
Trying to keep things as simple as possible for my needs without compromising security.
It is not that you must always OAuth when you use tokens. But given the fact that your application is a JavaScript app, you would be better off implementing a 3-legged authentication. Thinktecture identity server does support implicit grant. But if the client application getting access to the user credential is not a problem for you, your JavaScript app can get the user ID and password from the user and make a token request from a token issuer ensuring the user ID and password are not stored any where in JavaScript app (including DOM). This request for token can be a simple HTTP POST as well and it does not need to be anything related to OAuth. If your end user will not enter the credentials in the client application, OAuth implicit grant is the way. BTW, you don't need to encrypt JWT. TIS issues signed JWT and that will ensure token integrity. But if you are worried about the confidentiality, you can use HTTPS to both obtain the token as well as present the token.
It looks like you don't really need auth delegation as the one provided by OAuth. Isn't HMAC authentication enough for your scenario ?. With HMAC, you will not have to deal with JWT at all. This is an implementation I made for HMAC authentication for .NET
https://github.com/pcibraro/hawknet
Pablo.