I am writing an App and am trying to leverage Google for A&A. The app itself relies on access to the users Google Calendar, and so initially I leveraged their updated OAUTH2 library for A&A.
Here is my flow:
User goes to the index.html which has "https://accounts.google.com/gsi/client" script and google.accounts.oauth2.initCodeClient is called with my client_id, scopes, redirect url
<script src="https://accounts.google.com/gsi/client"></script>
<script>
let client;
function initClient() {
client = google.accounts.oauth2.initCodeClient({
client_id: 'xxxxx-xxxx.apps.googleusercontent.com',
scope:
'https://www.googleapis.com/auth/userinfo.profile \
https://www.googleapis.com/auth/userinfo.email \
https://www.googleapis.com/auth/calendar.readonly \
https://www.googleapis.com/auth/calendar.events',
ux_mode: 'redirect',
redirect_uri: 'http://localhost:5000/oauth2callback',
});
}
// Request an access token
function getAuthCode() {
client.requestCode();
}
The user clicks the login button, which kicks off requestCode() and they begin the login flow. They login or select their google account, then besides the unapproved app screen, they get to the consent screen with my requested scopes.
After, they are redirected to my expressjs endpoint and using the "googleapis" library I exchange with id_token for the access and refresh tokens.
...
const { tokens } = await oauth2Client.getToken(req.query.code); //exchange code for tokens
const userInfo = (
await oauth2Client.verifyIdToken({
idToken: tokens.id_token,
audience: config.google.clientID,
})
).payload;
if (!indexBy.email[userInfo.email]) { // check if user exists
const newUser = {
name: userInfo.name,
email: userInfo.email,
o_id: userInfo.sub,
picture: userInfo.picture,
r_token: tokens.refresh_token,
};
...
Ok, all good.... but not quite. The problem is, that next time the user wants to login to the app, they go through the entire flow again, including the consent screen (again).
So, after going through more docs, even looking at examples from google. I was surprised and I noticed that many of those apps used the passport oauth2 plugin :( Something i've done in the past, but was hoping to avoid that with the recently updated Google client and nodejs libraries.
Ok, how to not prompt for consent screen on subsequent logins?
Maybe separate A&A, so first I use "Sign In With Google" for Authentication, then when I get the user info, check if the user is already registered (hence I have already saved the refresh token) and they start the app.
On the other hand, if they are new (not in existing app user collection), after authenticating, I will then call the OAUTH2 authorization redirect, so again they on Googles site, this time to do the scopes api confirmation.
So, first question, is that the best practice with most apps with leverage a Google API via OAuth? To first Authenticate, then possibility Authorize (as needed). Hopefully this will still work ok when things come up with expired/invalid refresh token (fingers crossed the default google library handles that).
When doing the Authorize for consent, can I pass something from the previous Authenticate flow so they don't need to do that again.
Or maybe when doing the Authenticate process (Google Identity Service), there is some flag or param so that if they have already consented, they don't have to do that again on subsequent logins.
Incase I wasn't clear, in a nutshell the question is: should I be doing Authenticate for login, separately from Authorization (oauth2 token). Or should I go right into the Authorization flow, which first Authenticates the user, and can I skip the Authorization consent screens if they've already done that. Or maybe there's another way which is the best practice.
Thanks for your attention.
Background info
Authentication is the act where by a user logs in into a system using their login and password. With authentication we know that the user is behind the machine. For this we use Open id connect, which was built on top of Oauth2. Open id connect returns and id_token which can be used to identify the user, it is often a jwt containing some claims to identify the subject or the user behind the Authentication.
The scope used for open id connect is profile and email. open id connect grants you consent to access a users profile information.
This is an example of the decrypted id token returned by google from a simple call using profile scope only. All this id token is telling you is who the user behind the machine is.
{
"iss": "https://accounts.google.com",
"azp": "4074087181.apps.googleusercontent.com",
"aud": "4074087181.apps.googleusercontent.com",
"sub": "1172004755672775346",
"at_hash": "pYlH4icaIx8PssR32_4qWQ",
"name": "Linda Lawton",
"picture": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/a-/AOh14GhroCYJp2P9xeYeYk1npchBPK-zbtTxzNQo0WAHI20=s96-c",
"given_name": "Linda",
"family_name": "Lawton",
"locale": "en",
"iat": 1655219027,
"exp": 1655222627
}
In the same call google also returned an access token. Now my call contained only the scope for profile, due to the fact that its open id connect. This means that I will only have access to the data that the profile scope would grant access to. In this case most of what is behind the Google people api.
Note: The user does not see a consent screen with open id connect, even though they are consenting to profile scope. It is assumed by signing into your account that the system you are logging into would have access to your profile info.
Authorization
Authorization is the process by which a user grants your application authorization to access their private user data. The user is shown a consent screen where they consent to your application accessing data defined by some scopes.
In the case of google calendar api there are serval
https://www.googleapis.com/auth/calendar See, edit, share, and permanently delete all the calendars you can access using Google Calendar
https://www.googleapis.com/auth/calendar.events View and edit events on all your calendars
https://www.googleapis.com/auth/calendar.events.readonly View events on all your calendars
https://www.googleapis.com/auth/calendar.readonly See and download any calendar you can access using your Google Calendar
https://www.googleapis.com/auth/calendar.settings.readonly View your Calendar settings
In this case you are only given an access token this is again Oauth2 it is authorization to access the users calendar data it is not authentication this is not related to login.
Your question
So, first question, is that the best practice with most apps with leverage a Google API via OAuth? To first Authenticate, then possibility Authorize (as needed).
You would do both at the same time.
When you authencation your user make sure to include your google calendar scope then the access token and refresh token returned will grant you access to google calendar.
I am going to assume that you have some kind of user system. When you store the user be sure to store the refresh token that is returned.
As far as Authentication goes i will assume you either have a remember me system which will set a cookie on their machine and remember the user so that you can then get the refresh token from their system the next time they come back.
If they did not chose to select a remember me option then will then have to login every time they visit your site but part of the login will return the "sub": "1172004755672775346", this is the users id on google system so you can use that in your database to match the user when they come back.
Your question is quite complex and will depend upon the type of system you have what it is designed to do as well as what programming language you are using. That being said I hope this very long answer clears things up a bit.
I'm working on an application where an administrator will send a unique link to a user for them to fill out a form. The system requires authentication in order to fill out a form, however I would like this unique link to "skip" the login step for the user. ie when the user receives the link, they can simply click it and fill out the form without logging in, but behind the scenes the user is actually authenticated with a Json Web token. Ideally I would like the link to never expire, or possibly after 1 year so the user could use the link 6 months down the road and the link will seamlessly still work for the user.
The most obvious solution would be to generate a JWT token with a lengthy expiry when the admin generates the link and just include the token in the url that is sent to the user. When the user receives the link, they already have a JWT token so they don't need to login. However this feels like it may be insecure because now the user has a JWT token for their user with a long expiry sitting in their email inbox.
I think I might be able to include information in the JWT token that would restrict it for that specific purpose (filling out the form), but I'm not even sure if I'm on the right path here.
What is the best way to do this, is there any other recommended ways to create sort of a "pre-signed" url that skips the login step?
I'm using ASP.NET Core as the backend, but I'm not sure if it's relevant as this is more of a general authentication / JWT problem.
doesn't matter what precautions you take, anyone who gets a hold of the email would be authenticated. I would consider PGP (or the like) in sending email to user.
I have IdentityServer4 setup for API authentication although I have a use case where I want to verify that a guest (user) is essentially a valid user. A valid user in my case is anyone with a valid email address, so I want to do the following:
send the user an email with a verification token (preferably something which is a mash up of their email address, some salt and an expiry
the user can then enter this token into my app and they are "allowed" to go ahead
I was wondering if IdentityServer4 can/should be used to achieve the above?
Their tools show that you can generate a token although I am very new to this topic so was hoping for some guidance.
No, the tokens Identity Server deals with are access_tokens which are to do with claims-based authentication.
The tokens you need to use for email verification are commonly referred to as User Tokens, or one-time passwords (OTP). You can find a wealth of information on how to generate/consume these using those search terms but if you use the aspnet identity classes such as the UserManager you will find it has some in-built read to use. Or you can register your own UserTokenProvider with the UserManager.
In general you'd do something like this:
Use your UserTokenProvider to get a token (otp) for a specific user. The UserManager will use the security hash of that user and your own 'reason' (e.g. "EmailVerification") to generate the short OTP.
You could then wrap that OTP into an object that includes the email address, a userid maybe, and whatever you like. Safe Base64 encode it (there is a helper function within Identity Server that has this in fact, making sure it doesn't have the superfluous _ at the end which will mess with HTML links), put it in an email to the user
User clicks your link which takes them to your 'verify password' controller, with your mashed up token as payload. You decode it, work out which user it was for, get UserManager to verify the OTP part is still valid.
Job done.
If you want them to enter the OTP into your app directly, while logged in, then you could just skip the whole mash-up part of emailing a link, and email the short OTP directly.
For security reasons I hate sites that use querystring parameters.
For my registration process, I'm sending a websecurity token via email to users who register. The user checks their emails and clicks on a link emailed to them to confirm who they are.
My issue is this, I don't wish to have a page on my site that accepts a query string parameter that could automatically log someone in, giving hackers a back door into other peoples accounts.
I have put a expiry date on the tokens, but I'd like to secure it further.
Any thoughts?
This is not an issue if the token is single-use. Anybody who tries to use the token after the intended user has already consumed it will see an error. (Or you could just redirect straight to the login page.)
I am planning to develop something small in windows 8 using HTML/JavaScript project type. I have very basic question. How will i manage the session that who is logged in and what they are doing? This looks kind of absurd question so i will try to give some details of what i have in mind.
User opens the app and gets login page.
User enters username/password.
App calls WCF service or WebAPI and validates the user.
After the third step, user information has to be kept somewhere because i have to know every time who is the logged-in user so that i can check on every operation that what rights the user has and is he authorized to execute particular operation or not.
Since everything here is HTML/JS, i dont know where should i keep the user login information?
Can someone please throw some light as what am i missing here?
Use PasswordVault API to store the password or other secret
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/windows.security.credentials.passwordvault.aspx
Then you can send your auth token with the subsequent request.
Is this what you are asking? Or, I misunderstood it?