I just have a quick Auth0 question. I've looked all over, but the more I look the more confused I get.
In the payload of the JWT that Auth0 gives me when I log in there is a Sub claim that look like this "sub": "facebook|123456789".
I'm just curious if sub will always be unique and if I can use it as a sort of foreign key in my database to link users to different tables.
The sub, short for subject, in this case is the User Id for the normalised user profile representing the user in Auth0.
Here, facebook|123456789 is the connection strategy (social connection of type facebook in your example) piped with the facebook ID for the user (which came from facebook). However, bear in mind, that with facebook, when you set up a Connection, you are actually setting up connection to a particular Facebook App - (the App ID and App Secret that you configure in Auth0 for that connection strategy). Long story short, for a single connection strategy of type facebook, defined under social connections in Auth0 Dashboard - then yes, this would be unique and could be a correlating identifier to a separate datastore with enriched info about that user profile etc.
Just bear in mind, if you were to create another separate App defined in Facebook, then setup a new Auth0 facebook connection to that facebook app, and login with same user - they would almost certainly receive a different sub since the facebook userId would be different. For example, it might be facebook|987654321 etc
Related
I plan to use Auth0 as my authentication service, and I'd like to know if Auth0 ID_Token, returned from Auth0 in Step 1, can be used as a unique ID for a user (i.e., it won't change during the whole life cycle of a registered user for my app).
In the above diagram, Action 3 will post an article (e.g, blog entry) to my app. And the app needs to be able to
show who published a particular article;
a user should be able to find out all the articles that she published.
Here are my questions:
Will the ID_Token from Auth0 always been same for a user, so that I can use that as my user_id?
If the answer to the above question is yes, how can Step 3 (post the article Restful call) carry such a token so that my Table_Article is able to use such an ID as a field?
Do I need maintain a Table_User in my DynamoDB on my AWS service side?
I am designing a simple REST API with Stormpath Facebook integration and wondering what would be the best pattern for user authentication. Currently I do not have any endpoint for user creation, so all requests to my endpoints are authenticated like this:
Get Stormpath Application object based on API_ID and API_SECRET configured in my app
Get Stormpath Account object based on Facebook token specified in every request
Based on account status authenticate request or reject
This follows more or less official guide and works fine because even though user account does not exist it will be created upon first get account request to Stormpath. Does it make sense and is it safe enough? I was looking for some documentation or best practices but could not find anything.
I would also need to get / generate unique user ID so I can make some relations with user data in my system - so another question, what is the best approach here:
Generate some unique ID, associate it with user email got from Stormpath and save in my system - I think this violates a little bit idea of such a service like Stormapth which encapsulates all user data
Do the same as above but store it in Stormpath Account customData
Use Stormapth user resource ID which can be obtained from user URI
Please advice.
Just for the record I am using Stormpath Java SDK and designing the API to be a backend for mobile social app so security is quite important for me.
Full disclosure, I manage Product # Stormpath. I'll be using your feedback to enhance the documentation.
It is hard to say if it is safe or not, without understanding the REST API you are building. If you made a REST API for cat pictures, my answer would be different compared to medical / financial information. One way to look at it, is that Facebook has the Graph API (REST) and they protect access requiring the same access token you are using. There are other flags that would cause me to say it isn't safe, like if you were using HTTP with no TLS.
To your second question, how to link Stormpath with your data. I wouldn't say you would violate anything about Stormpath by modeling out your application that makes sense to you and your app. Stormpath has customers that store EVERYTHING about their users in Stormpath. Stormpath also has customers that use Stormpath solely for authentication and authorization data and use customData to draw the link between a Stormpath user account and their data.
How / where you store the information is based on your needs. If you are starting with authenticating the user account with Stormpath, it would make sense to put the unique identifier / primary key in the user account's customData. If you are starting with querying your data store for the user data and need to get the Stormpath user account, then you will need to store the href for the user account in your data store.
A nice feature in the Stormpath SDK for Java is that when you do authenticate with Facebook, the returned object will disclose if the account was newly created or if Stormpath has existing account for the access token:
https://docs.stormpath.com/java/apidocs/com/stormpath/sdk/provider/ProviderAccountResult.html
This means that you will know when you need to create a record for the account in your data store and connect the two using customData and/or the user account href.
I've been reading a lot about the topic but all I find are obsolete or partial answers, which don't really help me that much and actually just confused me more.
I'm writing a Rest API (Node+Express+MongoDB) that is accessed by a web app (hosted on the same domain than the API) and an Android app.
I want the API to be accessed only by my applications and only by authorized users.
I also want the users to be able to signup and login only using their Facebook account, and I need to be able to access some basic info like name, profile pic and email.
A possible scenario that I have in mind is:
The user logs-in on the web app using Facebook, the app is granted
permission to access the user Facebook information and receives an
access token.
The web app asks the API to confirm that this user
is actually registered on our system, sending the email and the
token received by Facebook.
The API verifies that the user
exists, it stores into the DB (or Redis) the username, the token and
a timestamp and then goes back to the client app.
Each time the
client app hits one of the API endpoint, it will have to provide the
username and the token, other than other info.
The API each time
verifies that the provided pair username/token matches the most
recent pair username/token stored into the DB (using the timestamp
to order), and that no more than 1 hour has passed since we stored
these info (again using the timestamp). If that's the case, the API
will process the request, otherwise will issue a 401 Unauthorized
response.
Does this make sense?
Does this approach have any macroscopic security hole that I'm missing?
One problem I see using MongoDB to store these info is that the collection will quickly become bloated with old tokens.
In this sense I think it would be best to use Redis with an expire policy of 1 hour so that old info will be automatically removed by Redis.
I think the better solution would be this:
Login via Facebook
Pass the Facebook AccessToken to the server (over SSL for the
android app, and for the web app just have it redirect to an API endpoint
after FB login)
Check the fb_access_token given, make sure its valid. Get user_id,email and cross-reference this with existing users to
see if its a new or old one.
Now, create a random, separate api_access_token that you give back to the webapp and android app. If you need Facebook for
anything other than login, store that fb_access_token and in your
DB associate it with the new api_access_token and your user_id.
For every call hereafter, send api_access_token to authenticate it. If you need the fb_access_token for getting more info, you can
do so by retrieving it from the DB.
In summary: Whenever you can, avoid passing the fb_access_token. If the api_access_token is compromised, you have more control to see who the attacker is, what they're doing etc than if they were to get ahold of the fb_access_token. You also have more control over settings an expiration date, extending fb_access_tokens, etc
Just make sure whenever you pass a access_token of any sort via HTTP, use SSL.
I know I'm late to the party, but I'd like to add a visual representation of this process as I'm dealing with this problem right now (specifically in dealing with the communication between the mobile app and the web api by securing it with a 3rd party provider like facebook).
For simplicity, I haven't included error checks, this is mostly just to outline a reasonable approach. Also for simplicity, I haven't included Tommy's suggestion to only pass your own custom api token once the authorization flow is over, although I agree that this is probably a good approach.
Please feel free to criticize this approach though, and I'll update as necessary.
Also, in this scenario, "My App" refers to a mobile application.
I wrote a web-app that authenticated a user via Facebook connect (o-Auth).
After the user have authenticated I have a facebook token.
Using this token I send a request to Facebook to grab its basic user information.
At this point I have the user unique Facebook id and I know who it is.
How should I link between the user, the token and it's data in the database?
Right now my schema is pretty simple: facebook_id is the Primary key, and there are some other columns that includes the token and the user's data. Is that the correct way to do it?
At which point do I need to set a unique SESSION_ID (cookie) on the user request? After it authenticated?
I am confused about this part (and with Session management in general). When i set an attribute on a session does the browser remember it an send it in every request to my server? across all pages?
And the most important question is, how do i map between the SESSION ID and the user? Once i set a session id on his request, i need to figure out on every request who it is. What's the best way to do it?
That is fine, all you really want to do is to be able to match to a particular Facebook User ID with the data created by or in your web app that doesn't come from the Graph API .
At the moment you complete the Login flow (when you receive the Access Token). When you set a session the browser will remember the key-value pair in it until the session is cleared. So you want your code to be able to associate someone using a browser with a particular user in your database (or not if they don't have a session). Thus, whatever session value you use, you need to also store this in the Database alongside the User ID.
See above.
Honestly though, the very easiest way of doing this is to just use the Facebook Javascript SDK. This will handle all the access token retrieval and user persistence through cookies automatically, without you having to write code for it. Ultimately this will mean that all you need to do is store the Facebook User ID in your database alongside the app-generated content and won't need to worry about storing access tokens or session variables. There's a simple step-by-step guide here:
https://developers.facebook.com/docs/howtos/login/getting-started/
(in Step 5 you'll receive the User ID and you can make an AJAX call to server-side code from here to store it in your database)
I'm developing an HTTP api for our web application. Initially, the primary consumer of the API will be an iPhone app we're developing, but I'm designing this with future uses in mind (such as mobile apps for other platforms). I'm trying to decide on the best way to authenticate users so they can access their accounts from the iPhone. I've got a design that I think works well, but I'm no security expert, so I figured it would be good to ask for feedback here.
The design of the user authentication has 3 primary goals:
Good user experience: We want to allow users to enter their credentials once, and remain logged in indefinitely, until they explicitly log out. I would have considered OAuth if not for the fact that the experience from an iPhone app is pretty awful, from what I've heard (i.e. it launches the login form in Safari, then tells the user to return to the app when authentication succeeds).
No need to store the user creds with the app: I always hate the idea of having the user's password stored in either plain text or symmetrically encrypted anywhere, so I don't want the app to have to store the password to pass it to the API for future API requests.
Security: We definitely don't need the intense security of a banking app, but I'd obviously like this to be secure.
Overall, the API is REST-inspired (i.e. treating URLs as resources, and using the HTTP methods and status codes semantically). Each request to the API must include two custom HTTP headers: an API Key (unique to each client app) and a unique device ID. The API requires all requests to be made using HTTPS, so that the headers and body are encrypted.
Current strategy:
My plan is to have an api_sessions table in my database. It has a unique constraint on the API key and unique device ID (so that a device may only be logged into a single user account through a given app) as well as a foreign key to the users table.
The API will have a login endpoint, which receives the username/password and, if they match an account, logs the user in, creating an api_sessions record for the given API key and device id. Future API requests will look up the api_session using the API key and device id, and, if a record is found, treat the request as being logged in under the user account referenced by the api_session record.
There will also be a logout API endpoint, which deletes the record from the api_sessions table.
Does anyone see any obvious security holes in this?
I agree with the oAuth comments - you can of course make oAuth work nicely on an iPhone - the UX is totally up to you. There are mechanisms (jQuery) to pull back the PIN from oAuth and use it (without the user re-typing the PIN into the app). That reduces the UX to
1) Display web page (in embedded control)
2) user enters user and password and presses button
3) oAuth response page is parsed automatically.
This twitter oAuth implmentation does that http://github.com/bengottlieb/Twitter-OAuth-iPhone using a pre-existing oAuth library.
However, back to your original question. That looks fine. The only item you don't mention, is that you need to provide a mechanism on the web app to allow the user to logout/deauthorize a device session (in case they have lost their device).