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How to store user's access tokens/API keys without hashing them? (lemmy.pe1uca.dev)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/programming

24 comments fedilink hide all child comments

In an API I have there's a requirement to use an authentication method other than OAuth2 or any kind of token generation which requires making an extra HTTP call.

With this in mind there's this https://www.xml.com/pub/a/2003/12/17/dive.html
I've only stored passwords as hashes and used functions like password_verify to know the user sent the proper credentials without actually knowing the password stored in DB.
WSSE requires to encrypt with SHA1 the credentials being sent, which means the API needs to retrieve the password in plain text to recreate the digest and compare it to the one sent by the user.
So, how should I be storing this password if the code needs it to recreate the hash?
Should I have something like a master password and store them encrypted instead of hashed?

Most of the information I've found about WSSE is very very old, and some implementations have it marked as deprecated, do you know any other type of standard authentication where the user can generate the token instead of having to make an extra HTTP call?

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[–] towerful 36 points 1 year ago (15 children)

This seems like a XY problem. You are asking how to do X, when actually you need to be doing Y.

Your description is either too vague, or something I have never encountered.
It seems like what you have is Service A, Service B, and a client.
Service B doesn't have access to user credentials stored in Service A, but Service B has to know that the client has provided valid credentials for Service A.
At no point can the client make a request to Service A.
The client only makes requests to Service B.
And this has to be a username/password combination.

Is that right?

Implementing security tech from 2003 that is deprecated, especially considering it's SHA1 (which was deprecated 10 years ago) is not a good idea. Like, just store the password plaintext level of bad idea.
You either have to reasses what you actually want to do to ensure it is actually secure, or you are not describing your goal well (XY problem : "how do I implement WSSE on SOAP" instead of "I'm trying to do Y")

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (6 children)

Based on the title you're right, I asked about how to do X when probably I need to do Y, but the first and last paragraphs mention what's my requirement: a for of authentication which doesn't require to make an extra HTTP call to generate a token.

And what I mean by this is OAuth specifies the client needs to request an access token and an optional refresh token to the authorization server, afterwards the access token can be sent to the resource server (in this case my API), if the token expires the client can make another request to the authorization server with the refresh token.
Each call to the authorization server is that "extra http call" I mentioned.

Currently the only solution I found which seemed somewhat secure was WSSE, but again, I've only worked with OAuth2 and hashing passwords (or even better, using a dedicated service like keycloak), so I'm not sure what's the best option to store the data it requires or if there's a better solution.

I don't know how to be more clear, is there a way to authenticate a client to the resource server (my API) without making the client call endpoints to generate the tokens? Is there a way for the client to generate their own tokens and for me to validate them?

[–] noli 1 points 1 year ago

Couldn't you do something like JWT except allow the client to slap on their credentials to any initial request?

From the backend side that means that if there is no valid token, you can check the request body for the credentials. If they're not there, then it's an unauthorized request.

You're eliminating a singular request in a long period of time at the cost of adding complexity to both client and backend but if the customer wants to be silly that's their fault

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