I'm trying to set up Google OAuth2.0 from this guide and I have everything set up and running. I can get the authorization code, the access_token, and the refresh_token to show up in my console.log's. My question is which one of these tokens can I use to properly identify and log in a user to my backend?
In a normal scenario, a user would enter a username & password and that would uniquely identify them. However in the Google OAuth2.0 case, it seems the authorization code, the access_token, and the refresh_token all cannot be used to properly identify and log someone in. Is this understanding correct?
I read a similar post but it doesn't seem to provide a very recent answer that also securely identifies the logged in user.
If I cannot use any of the above mentioned tokens to securely identify and log in a user, is it even possible? How come I see other websites and apps use "sign in with Google" and "sign in with Facebook"?
Another solution I read in a different StackOverflow post said to just get the account ID and use that as an identifier. Isn't that insecure? Can't someone guess the account ID? Also this would be assuming these account IDs are private.
My question is which one of these tokens can I use to properly identify and log in a user to my backend?
the id token from open id connect.
explanation
You are confusing authorization and authentication.
Oauth2 a user to grant and authorize your application access to their data the access token gives you access to their data for a limited time (1 hour). If the user is off line you can use the refresh token to request a new access token. None of theses will tell you that a user is behind the calls.
open id connect allows you to authenticate a user logging in will return an id token
Id token verification
After you receive the ID token by HTTPS POST, you must verify the integrity of the token. Verify the integrity of the ID token
Related
I want to make a website which users can see their posted pictures on the page.
I have signed up for facebook API and have an app id and app secret.
https://graph.facebook.com/oauth/access_token?client_id={#}&client_secret={#}&grant_type=client_credentials
I send users to the oauth to get the user's access token but I don't know what to do next.
https://graph.facebook.com/v3.0/me?fields=id,name,posts&access_token={#}
I thought this would work but I had the error below
"An active access token must be used to query information about the current user.",
The URL you are using to get the Access Token is actually an App Token API.
To generate the Access Token Please replace
https://graph.facebook.com/oauth/access_token?client_id={#}&client_secret={#}&grant_type=client_credentials
with
https://www.facebook.com/v3.0/dialog/oauth?response_type=token&client_id={#id}&redirect_uri={#}&scope=publish_pages
add a redirection url here where the token is published.
OR
better option is to use the login button mentioned here.
https://developers.facebook.com/docs/facebook-login/web/login-button
Also you can read here about all Access Tokens
https://developers.facebook.com/docs/facebook-login/access-tokens/
I'm using FirebaseUI to authenticate users on my website. I have a need for checking if the user is logged in on the server side (in PHP code). How can I accomplish this?
I believe I've seen something about something called JWT, but I don't really understand what I need to do in order to make this work.
You need to get the Firebase ID token by calling currentUser.getIdToken() on the client. You can then send this ID token to your server and verify it before parsing its content and get the user's uid from it. Refer to this documentation for verifying ID tokens: https://firebase.google.com/docs/auth/admin/verify-id-tokens#verify_id_tokens_using_a_third-party_jwt_library
We have an Instagram client id and client secret, and already have gone through the documentation of generating access tokens which requires redirect url.
Note that we also have disabled the implicit OAuth flow.
Now we already have generated the access token using URL below (for authenticated user, it returns the access token appended in the response URL)
https://api.instagram.com/oauth/authorize/?client_id={client_Id}&redirect_uri={redirect_url}&response_type=token&scope=public_content
Can this token be stored in the database / configuration files and re-used for any new Instagram API requests? e.g.
https://api.instagram.com/v1/users/{user_id}/media/recent/?access_token={reusable_access_token}
Based on the official documentation, we understand that the access token can become invalid at any point of time, we would like to know if there are any specific scenarios which leads to invalidation of the access token?
What would be the best way to generate token once and use it for each API request? We definitely do not want users to enter credentials manually to generate tokens.
Unfortunately at that point it's not possible:/ Instagram doesn't provide refreshing access token in the background.
User needs to login with their credentials, so you can obtain new access token. Some kind of workaround (not nice, but it's working) is to watch for error type OAuthAccessTokenException and notify the user via e-mail about such fact. He will have to login once more, so you can get fresh and working access token.
Also, please keep in mind that access tokens has a pretty long life span. It doesn't expire after a day or two, unless Instagram API has some issues (like just now OAuth - unable to exchange code to access token for some users).
Otherwise it works really well.
However it would be super nice if Instagram could add to their API renewal option in the background for access tokens for users that autorised your app, but their token expired:)
I am building an integration component using a graphical framework who has a pre-build OAuth2 connector.
This framework required following fields for OAuth v2:
Grant type
Scope
Auth Server URL
Client Id
Client Secret
Access Token
Refresh token
I need to get data from Google Analytics API, so I went to Google Dev Console
(https://console.developers.google.com/project/927890000889/apiui/credential). I generated a 'Client ID for web application'. From the parameter of this object I was able to fill some of the parameters above
Grant type : 'authorisation_code'
Client Id : 'RANDOMCHARSam5o37nsiu730d.apps.googleusercontent.com'
Client Secret : 'RANDOMCHARSiSwBA5OH5qYLUa'
Then using Google Oauth Playground (https://developers.google.com/oauthplayground) I was able to fill the missing bits
Scope : 'https://www.googleapis.com/oauth/analytics'
Auth Server URL : 'https://accounts.google.com/o/oauth2/auth'
Access Token : 'RANDOMCHARSQAQv4HRF5-JsQEzUS61lj2YremyCocv0PQ4-agpzJe'
Refresh token : 'RANDOMCHARSLPJnL4FPaDc2KP6V8kCzjjHO2Kj4Np_3X0'
Everything works fine, I am authorised to access and I get data from Google Analytics, but just for a while, after few minutes if I retry I receive an authorisation failure error.
I believe that the problem is related to the expiration of the Access Token, but I don't know how to solve that.
Worth to mention that this activity it's batch (no human interaction), so nobody can request a new access token.
The integration framework is not extensible (I cannot write code to renew the code) so I believe there's a way to get a access token that never expire or some other mechanism to achieve the same result.
Bottom line, I am not sure if I approached the requirement correctly since the beginning (Client ID for web application).
Any help is much appreciated,
Giovanni
Access tokens typically expire after 60 minutes. If you have a refresh token you can use the refresh token to get a new (valid) access token.
This doc explains how to do that:
https://developers.google.com/accounts/docs/OAuth2WebServer#refresh
To answer your overarching question, yes, you are approaching everything correctly. All you need to do is handle the case where the access token has expired by refreshing it. Also, when you originally requested the access token the response should tell you how long it's valid for, so you should only refresh that token if it's expired.
You can use Refresh tokens to make it more long used.
The Google Auth server issued Refresh tokens never expire,
A token might stop working for one of these reasons:
The user has revoked access.
The token has not been used for six months.
The user changed passwords and the token contains Gmail scopes.
The user account has exceeded a certain number of token requests. There is currently a limit of 50 refresh tokens per user account
per client.If the limit is reached, creating a new token automatically invalidates the oldest token without warning.
This limit does not apply to service accounts.
from: https://developers.google.com/identity/protocols/OAuth2
I can not seem to find a SIMPLE answer to the question on how to persist OAuth2 authentication... Let's take Google+ OAuth2 API as an example.
User goes to page
User is not authenticated, and gets redirected to authentication page where he logs in
User logs in successfully and authorises my app
User gets redirect to specified (by me) URI with Authorisation Code
I use authorisation code to obtain a token in order to submit queries in the name of the user
All is good and well. My question is: how do you SECURELY know at step 2 that the user visiting the page is already logged in, without having to go through the whole process of redirecting him to all these pages.
I assume storing the Authorisation Code retrieved at step 4 in a cookie is not an option.
All of this will happen in a server-side (Go - if that matters) application.
Any help is much appreciated... I need a simple solution.
Thank you!
use server-side sessions to store any authentication state or even access tokens if you need them.
one solution is to use a database for session store (an encrypted cookie holds the session id)
and another is to use cookie sessions (encrypted cookies that hold the session data).
using encrypted cookies that only the server is able to decrypt should be safe enough.