fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
On #BigIdeas2021
By: Hitoshi Kokumai
Tags: Passwords, Security, Authentication, Digital Identity, Technology

Among the #BigIdeas2021 should be a truly valid solution to the ubiquitous and generations-long password predicament.

Humans have not evolved to be capable of remembering many of hard-to-remember text-only passwords, as yet again demonstrated in this report — “After police raid onCOVID-19 whistleblower, it’s revealed password was publicly posted on Florida Department of Health’s website” https://grahamcluley.com/covid-19-florida-password/

On the other hand, sharing the same visual sensation with other animals over hundreds of millions of years, humans are very good at recognising visual objects such as images, especially when the images are emotionally linked to our own episodic memory.

By the way, logic tells that authentication products that have to rely on a default/fallback text-password can never solve this password predicament but can only spread a false sense of security.

Distractive false ideas need to get debunked for a truly big idea to get recognised all over the world, as discussed below.

What we would like to see debunked in 2021 are these two globally-spread false observations -

1. Better security can be achieved by removing the ‘indispensable’ password from digital identity

2. The password can be displaced by ‘password-dependent’ biometrics.

How to debunk these unfounded views is outlined below.

- “Bizarre Theory of Password-less Authentication”

- “Why are we so persistent in the efforts to bust thefalsehood of biometrics?”

When these misperceptions have evaporated, we will see “Identity Assurance by Our Own Volition and Memory” pervading the world.

- “Image-to-CodeConversion by Expanded Password System”

< References >

External Body Features Viewed as ‘What We Are’

History, Current Status and Future Scenarios of Expanded Password System

Negative Security Effect of Biometrics Deployed in Cyberspace

Availability-First Approach

Questions and Answers — Expanded Password System and Related Issues

< Videos on YouTube>

Demo: Simplified Operation on Smartphone for consumers (1m41s)

Demo: High-Security Operation on PC for managers (4m28s)

Demo: Simple capture and registration of pictures by users (1m26s)

Slide: Biometrics in Cyber Space — “below-one” factor authentication

< Latest Media Articles Published in 2020 Spring>

Digital Identity — Anything Used Correctly Is Useful https://www.valuewalk.com/2020/05/digital-identity-biometrics-use/

‘Easy-to-Remember’ is one thing ‘Hard-to-Forget’ is another https://www.paymentsjournal.com/easy-to-remember-is-one-thing-hard-to-forget-is-another/
Argos KYC Develops Contactless Face Authentication Visitor Management System For The Seoul Blockchain Center
Tags: Seoul Blockchain Center, Know Your Customer, Authentication, Kyc, Aml

Argos KYC Develops Contactless Face Authentication Visitor Management System For The Seoul Blockchain Center ARGOS ·Dec 23, 2020

Argos KYC develops contactless face authentication visitor management system for the Seoul Blockchain Center

Argos KYC is proud to announce that we have recently signed an agreement with the Seoul Blockchain Center, ICONLOOP, and Empti Corporation to jointly develop a blockchain-based visitor management system.

Argos KYC CEO Wonkyu Lee at the agreement signing ceremony

The blockchain-based visitor management system, which will be developed based on Argos’s contactless face authentication technology, will verify visitor’s biometric information and all data will be recorded and managed in blockchain. The new visitor management system will strengthen the security of the Seoul Blockchain Center with transparent and efficient management of the access records.

ARGOS

“Create A World Where Good People Transact Safely and Keep The Bad People Out.”

info@argos-solutions.io
Deno Alosaur JTW Authentication
By: The Lost Developer
Tags: Deno, Alosaur, Authentication, Restful Api, Jwt

Requirements

Deno 1.6

Docker

Out of the Box Alosaur supports both “JWT” and “Cookies”, but only cookies are really ready to use. So with a few tweaks you can use JTW + redis as the session storage.

First you need to setup Redis, if you already have a redis server then skip this step. But here how to set it up wio

version: "3.2" services:

redis:

container_name: redis

image: redis

restart: always

ports:

- "6379:6379"

Next we need to implement Alosaur SessionStore using Redis

Next create a JTW.ts file. This will implement the Authentication Scheme

Finally to register the security module your application code should look like the following

const app = new App({ areas: [AuthenticationArea], logging: false, }); const sessionStore = new RedisSession('127.0.0.1', 6379); await sessionStore.init(); const authMiddleware = new AuthMiddleware( [JWTSchema], ); const sessionMiddleware = new SessionMiddleware( sessionStore, { secret: 1122n, maxAge: DAYS_30, path: "/" }, ); app.use(new RegExp("/"), sessionMiddleware); app.use(new RegExp("/"), authMiddleware); app.useSecurityContext(); app.listen();

You can find an working example on github: Jordan-Hall/alosaur-jwt-redis: Example of using Deno Alosaur and JTW with help from Redis (github.com)
Tiny Tale of JSON Web Tokens. You probably logged in to medium to…
By: Shivanshu Tyagi
Tags: Authorization, Json Web Tokens, Authentication, Secure Exchange, Jwt

What are JWTs?

It’s a mechanism to verify the owner of some JSON data. It’s an encoded string containing some cryptographically signed data. It’s an open standard(RFC 7519) btw.

A server can trust the data contained in a JWT because the source signs it. Noone in the middle can modify a JWT once it’s sent; it becomes invalid if it’s tempered with). JWTs can be signed either by RSA or by using a secret string(HMAC). You don’t need to understand much about these encryption algorithms to use a JWT.

While a JWT guarantees data ownership, it’s not encrypted; it’s just serialized. In fact, anyone can see the data contained in a JWT. That’s the reason JWTs should always be used with HTTPS(well, you should always use HTTPS 😛). wanna see how they’re generated or verified?? continue reading.
Cloud-Based Public Key Infrastructure (PKI)
By: Julee Singh
Tags: Certificates, Cloud, Pki, Cloud Based Pki, Authentication

What is Public Key Infrastructure (PKI)?

Public Key Infrastructure combines different technological components for authenticating users and devices within a digital ecosystem. A PKI’s primary goals are for confidentiality and authentication i.e. allow for very private conversations over any platform while keeping individual identities available for authentication. Cryptosystems use mathematical functions or programs/protocols to encrypt and decrypt messages.

Each security process, layer, or software must implement and cover the CIA triad.

Confidentiality

It refers to the process to ensure that information sent between two parties is confidential between them only and not viewed or disclosed by/to anyone else.

Integrity

It refers to the process to ensure that the message in transit must maintain its integrity, i.e., the message’s content must not be changed. The Integration of data is secured by hashing.

Availability

Availability is the final component of the CIA Triad and refers to the actual availability of your data. Authentication mechanisms, access channels, and systems all have to work correctly for the information they protect and ensure it’s available when it is needed.

Along with these, there are some important parameters which are described below:

Authentication

The process of confirming someone’s identity with the supplied parameters like username and password. PKI offers this through digital certificates.

Authorization

The process of granting access to a resource to the confirmed identity based on their permissions.

Non-Repudiation

A process to make sure that only the intended endpoint has sent the message and later cannot deny it. PKI offers non-repudiation through digital signature.
Authentication Bypass what is it and how to protect it
Tags: Authentication Bypass, Authentication, Protect

Applications require some credentials for example Username, Email, Password, etc. To get access to the system.

Hello Friends,

Welcome To Notebility!

What is an Authentication Bypass?

Introduction

Applications require some credentials for example Username, Email, Password, etc. To get access to the system.

In general, authentication bypass is the vulnerable point from where attackers gain access to the system and they gain access to the user’s private information.

they do whatever they want. they may block the users or they use the information in other ways.

Authentication bypass vulnerability is generally caused when it is assumed that users will behave in a certain way and fail to foresee the consequences of users doing the unexpected.

What’s the issue behind the Authentication Bypass?

Authentication bypass exploit is mainly due to a weak authentication mechanism. And it causes real damage to the user’s private information because of weak authentication.

Follow the below documentation for

Methods to bypass the authentication schema How to stay protected

Thanks For Reading…
Passwordless Sign-In With Google’s One Tap for Web
By: Danny Perez
Tags: Security, Authentication, Programming, JavaScript, React

Using the Sign-In Button

Now when you refresh the page, it should be working and you should see the prompt. If you don’t see the prompt, check your developer console for errors. And if that doesn’t help, see the section on debugging below.

If this is your first time doing this, do not click the X button on the prompt before reading this warning!

Warning #1

Clicking the X button on the one-tap prompt dismisses the prompt. If you refresh the page after this, you won’t see the button come back. Why?

The One Tap library has some additional side effects around dismissing the prompt. If you’ve clicked the X button, a cookie has been added to your domain called g_state . Here's a screenshot of where you can find it. If you clear that cookie value, you'll see the prompt come back.

Warning #2

Clicking the X button more than once will enter you into an Exponential Cool Down mode (see the reference). What does that mean?
Passwordless Sign-In With Google’s 1 Tap for Web
Tags: Security, Authentication, Programming, JavaScript, React

Using the Sign-In Button

Now when you refresh the page, it should be working and you should see the prompt. If you don’t see the prompt, check your developer console for errors. And if that doesn’t help, see the section on debugging below.

If this is your first time doing this, do not click the X button on the prompt before reading this warning!

Warning #1

Clicking the X button on the one-tap prompt dismisses the prompt. If you refresh the page after this, you won’t see the button come back. Why?

The One Tap library has some additional side effects around dismissing the prompt. If you’ve clicked the X button, a cookie has been added to your domain called g_state . Here's a screenshot of where you can find it. If you clear that cookie value, you'll see the prompt come back.

Warning #2

Clicking the X button more than once will enter you into an Exponential Cool Down mode (see the reference). What does that mean?
What is an API? What does API mean? Explained in Simple English
By: Sam Ngu
Tags: Web Development, Authentication, Programming, API

API (Application Programming Interface) sounds complicated, but it just means “function”!

Photo by Caspar Camille Rubin on Unsplash

An Analogy

When we are interacting with a computer, we don’t need to care about the inner working of a computer, i.e.

how does a computer chip work?

how do the computer parts talk to each other?

how does programming work?

All we care about is how to use a keyboard and a mouse. In other words, keyboard and mouse are the interfaces for us human to use the computer. This applies to other objects as well. For example, in a car, the steering wheel, brake pedal, gear handle are all interfaces for us to drive a car.

Now, in the programming world, there are also needs for interfaces to interact with software. And we call these interfaces API! Hence the name Application Programming Interface, i.e a programming interface for applications 🎮.

Why API?

In short, API is a set of functions exposed to us so we can interact with a program.

Why do we need API? Well it is the same reason as why do we need a steering wheel in a car? Though it is technically possible for us to drive a car without a steering wheel (via 💪 and sheer determination) but it is simply impractical. A car is far too complex for an end user.

Similar to a car, the main goal of API is to let the end users be able to easily use a particular program. They only need to know how to use the interface / functions, but not the inner working of the system.

API Deep Dive

I would categorise API into 2 groups:

Programming API Web API

Programming API

These are functions provided by the programming language or library.

For example, in JavaScript, we are able to interact with the console via the console API. If we want to log something in the console, we can simply call the log function that is exposed by the console module, or logging an error using the error function, or generic info using the info function:

console.log('heeyy'); console.error('something went wrong'); console.info('some info');

These functions are collectively known as the Console API in JavaScript.

Web API

In short, web APIs allow web applications connect to each other. Web APIs are a set of functions exposed by a web app so that other users can interact with the web app, without even seeing the source code of the app.

Modern web applications are often dependent on each other. For example, although Facebook and Instagram are 2 different web app, but we can still share our Instagram post to Facebook within Instagram itself. How does Instagram do that? The magic behinds it is….Web API!
3 Steps to Phoenix Authentication
By: Sis Ccr
Tags: Phoenix Framework, Elixir, Authentication, Dependencies, Phoenix

Phoenix Auth Has never been so simple

I already written how to add social authentication in phoenix

But for email password authenitcation Its amazingly simple now.

Authentication

open mix.exs and add deps.

{:phx_gen_auth, “~> 0.6.0”}

Then run,

mix phx.gen.auth Accounts User users

mix ecto.migrate

and thats it. We have full fledge authentication system.

run the server and try it in the browser

you should see login page.

Bonus:

To guard a routes we can pass scope through the require_authenticated_user plug. It is already in our route file generate by phx_gen_auth

pipe_through [:browser, :require_authenticated_user]

To guard a specific action in controller
Using Postgresql with LoopBack4 JWT Authentication Extension
By: Diana Lau
Tags: Nodejs, Loopback4, Typescript, Authentication, Loopback

What do I need to set up if I’m using a SQL database like Postgres?

If you’re using a noSQL database like Mongodb, after you bind the datasource of the UserService to the datasource, you’re good to go.

If you’re using a SQL database like Postgres, you still need to create the tables. The database migrate script (i.e. by running npm run migrate ) only create the table schema for the models you defined in the app, and it does not include the User and UserCredentials ones.

There are a few options to do that.

Note: There might be a better way, if you know of them, please let me know!

Option 1: Inspect the models and construct the SQL command accordingly

The models are defined in https://github.com/strongloop/loopback-next/tree/master/extensions/authentication-jwt/src/models, so you can create the table with the same model name and columns with the same property names.

Keep that in mind that all the table and column names should be lower case for Postgres.

Option 2: Recreate the User and UserCredentials model and then run the migrate script

The idea is to be able to use the database migration script to create those table schemas. Here are the steps:

copy and paste the User and UserCredentials models from https://github.com/strongloop/loopback-next/tree/master/extensions/authentication-jwt/src/models

and models from https://github.com/strongloop/loopback-next/tree/master/extensions/authentication-jwt/src/models create the repository classes that bind the models with the datasource

run npm run migrate command

UPDATED (Thanks for the feedback)

If you are using this option, remember to remove the model and repository classes after running the database migration script. The User has a hasOne relationship with UserCredentials , so simply creating the repository classes using the lb4 repository command would not be sufficient. By deleting those files, the corresponding ones in the jwt-authentication will be used.

Option 3: Use the scripts I generated from Option 2

I used the steps in Option 2 to create the table schema, and then use pg_dump to get the DDL. Hence, this option is only applicable if you’re using Postgres, but the DDL might be similar for other databases.

User table

CREATE TABLE public."user" (

id text NOT NULL,

realm text,

username text,

email text NOT NULL,

emailverified boolean,

verificationtoken text

); ALTER TABLE ONLY public."user"

ADD CONSTRAINT user_pkey PRIMARY KEY (id); CREATE UNIQUE INDEX user_email_idx ON public."user" USING btree (email);

UserCredentials table

CREATE TABLE public.usercredentials (

id text NOT NULL,

password text NOT NULL,

userid text NOT NULL

); ALTER TABLE ONLY public.usercredentials

ADD CONSTRAINT usercredentials_pkey PRIMARY KEY (id);

Hope it helps!
Handle Registration in FastAPI and Tortoise ORM
By: Bartosz Konikiewicz
Tags: Registration, Python, Fastapi, Tortoise Orm, Authentication

Authentication Service

Open /app/services/auth.py and start with this stub of a method (and a class, too):

class Auth:

@staticmethod

def create_token(data: dict, expires_delta: int):

pass

The method should work this way: you provide data to encode and time (in seconds) after which the token expires. We wrap it with a staticmethod decorator because it doesn’t rely on object nor class properties. Here’s my idea for the method:

Update the provided data with an exp (expiration time) claim. This is important, because you don’t want the confirmation link to last forever. We use time in UTC. It’s a common denominator. User timezone can differ, but time in UTC will always be the same.

with an (expiration time) claim. This is important, because you don’t want the confirmation link to last forever. We use time in UTC. It’s a common denominator. User timezone can differ, but time in UTC will always be the same. Specify who issued the token ( iss claim).

claim). Encode the data with secret key and algorithm specified in the previous part of the tutorial.

For convenience, you’ll create another method, just for generating confirmation tokens. It will take user ID as an only argument. It’s going to be static as well:

sub claim is a subscriber of the token — the user. You identify him by his ID.

claim is a subscriber of the token — the user. You identify him by his ID. scope — JWT tokens can have various scopes. I only cover registration in this tutorial.

— JWT tokens can have various scopes. I only cover in this tutorial. jti — unique identifier of a token. Without it, we couldn’t invalidate a token if multiple ones were generated.

The only thing left to add is an option to generate a hashed password:

class Auth:

password_context = CryptContext(schemes=["bcrypt"], deprecated="auto")



@classmethod

def get_password_hash(cls, password: str):

return cls.password_context.hash(password)

Use bcrypt . It’s convenient and saves you from managing password salt yourself.

. It’s convenient and saves you from managing password salt yourself. Define classmethod , not staticmethod this time. That’s because class field password_context has been added.

Now you can test in. In Python REPL, include the service:

from services.auth import Auth

You will need a UUID. 00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 will do:

uuid = '00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000'

Auth.create_confirmation_token(uuid)

You will get a token depending on the secret key you’ve provided. Paste it on https://jwt.io. Everything should be sound:
Handle Registration in FastAPI and Tortoise ORM
By: Bartosz Konikiewicz
Tags: Registration, Python, Fastapi, Tortoise Orm, Authentication

And shed a tear or two in the process — Part 3

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

In the previous parts of the tutorial, you configured the application and wrote some services. Now it’s time to use them.

You are going to define two endpoints:

/api/auth/register

/api/auth/verify

I cover some obligatory features, like validating the token. I won’t cover resending a confirmation. Ideally it would be available only for authenticated users, which is out of scope of this tutorial.
Daily Stuntz — A little patching fun with VMWare Workspace One
By: Joe Stuntz
Tags: Daily Blog, Authentication, Cybersecurity

NSA put out a bulletin (https://media.defense.gov/2020/Dec/07/2002547071/-1/-1/0/CSA_VMWARE%20ACCESS_U_OO_195076_20.PDF) on a VMWare bug that is worth highlighting. Yes it is true that they identify the Russian state-sponsored actors, but I in general find attribution mostly unhelpful. Other than an idea of possible unique goals and TTPs (but they are normally very similar across actors), the issue is happening regardless of who is doing it, and the mitigations are the same or very similar. I do appreciate all the naming that goes on of various criminals and state-sponsored but for defenders in general, attribution is much less important. What is more important is it provides another visible and clear example of the complexity and challenges with authentication and why it continues to be a critical area of expertise and attention for defenders.

Most of my work and writing in government was focused on identity and access management and now as someone just commenting from the cheap seats it is good to see it still gets love. “Password-based access to the web-based management interface of the device is required to exploit the vulnerability, so using a strong and unique password lowers the risk of exploitation”. It is 2020 and this is the start of the second paragraph but sadly it is still relevant guidance as there are so so many examples of where this has fallen short.

For those who dont want to click the link to the NSA write up — “The exploitation (T11908 ) via command injection (T1059) led to installation of a web shell (T1505.003) and follow-on malicious activity where credentials in the form of SAML authentication assertions were generated and sent to Microsoft® Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS) (T1212), which in turn granted the actors access to protected data (TA0009).” SAML and ADFS bring me back a lot of joy, but also pain, a lot of pain.

SAML and other identity standards are great and have allowed interoperability and improvements in many areas, but this value also makes them attractive for those that want to do harm. When combining SAML with ADFS you have the potential for keys to the kingdom so hopefully that inspires folks to address this ASAP. Fortunately there is a patch as well as a workaround so good luck and happy defending.
Google authentication in Angular. Let your users sign in to your…
By: Daniil Rabizo
Tags: Login, Authentication, Social Media, Angular, Google

Get Google OAuth key

We will do some necessary and simple steps in your Google account in order to get the OAuth key and enable the login function for your app. For this, you can use your own google account or create a new one.

Go to the google development console and sign in. In the dashboard you should create new project, where you fill out name of application and few other fields.

create a new project

Next, go to the credentials tab and add your application base path for local environment as well as for your production environment. Here we have only added localhost.

Then press “create” and copy your client id from the popup window.
Oauth enabled web API using built-in azure AAD(Azure active directory)
By: Sravanth Baratam
Tags: Azure, Oauth2, API, Authentication, Azure Active Directory

Using Azure active directory I will be showing you the easiest way to protect your web API.

Requirements: your API should be deployed to the Azure app service and your users should be in your directory only.

I will be using .Net Core Web API to demonstrate it.

Open visual studio and click on create a new project and select ASP.NET Core Web Application template.

visual studio 2019

Name the project as ProtectedWebAPI

Select API project template

Open WeatherForecastController where u can find a default API

Click on IIS express to start your API project. you can see a json response in a browser.

Let's try hitting that endpoint in postman. you can see the same response.

Now the API is running in local lets publish it to azure app service. Right click on your project and select publish.
Are your microservices using secure communication methods?
By: Winster Jose
Tags: Authorization, Authentication, Security, Microservices

Secure communication in microservices

If you are asked to secure the communication to and from your microservice, this article may help you to know more about the requirement and possible ways of implementing it.

In many organisations, this could be a mandatory requirement irrespective of any particular condition and for others it may be applicable only in certain situations such as a microservice is receiving or sending sensitive data over payload or a microservice is deployed in a hybrid cloud environment.

Let me start with some of the disadvantages of this seemingly insubstantial requirement and ways of mitigating those challenges.

What are the challenges to implement a secure communication between microservices?

SSL offload and the overhead in the payload size (due to encryption) Authentication server can become a single point of failure Implementation of authorization sometimes becomes rigid and requires verbose code Cannot securely keep the credentials in the application Limited testability of the implementation

Though you can mitigate most of the limitations as described later in this article, your stakeholders should still tradeoff the limitations including additional development and test effort for secure inter app communication.

Read more in LinkedIn Pulse
Configuration of Apache Web Server with Authentication using Ansible-Playbook (Redhat CLI)
By: Prakash Agarwal
Tags: Ansible, Ansible Playbook, Web Server, Authentication, Cli

I am assuming, You know Basics of Ansible and have it in your system, Let’s just start configuring web server with Ansible-Playbook.

First of all, Let’s know something about Ansible-Playbook.

Playbooks record and execute Ansible’s configuration, deployment, and orchestration functions.

record and execute configuration, deployment, and orchestration functions. At a basic level, playbooks can be used to manage configurations of and deployments to remote machines.

can be used to manage configurations of and deployments to remote machines. Ansible Playbooks offer a repeatable, re-usable, simple configuration management and multi-machine deployment system, one that is well suited to deploying complex applications.

That’s Enough for Now.

Now let’s starts the fun part (Practical Part), Setting up the Ansible-Playbook.

Start with creating a .yml file. (Here, We are using YAML file format for Playbook) .

Refer for more (YAML syntax): https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/user_guide/playbooks_intro.html

As we are using only one system as Target Node, I manually wrote the IP in HOSTS or we can also use one file called “INVENTORY” which consists of all Target Nodes’ IP Addresses.

In TASKS, we write all the operations, we need to do at the target node.

PACKAGE is used for applications to install.

So in the very first step, We installed the “HTTPD” in our Target Node.

Now, As we all know, In Apache Web Server, all files are stored at “/var/www/html” , so we will copy one file using COPY tag in our Target Node, with name “index.html”.

DEST stands for destination, where file is going to copy and CONTENT tag is for, what will be stored in the file! We can also use SRC(Source) tag for directly copying one complete file from Control Node to Target Node.

Now, As we also have to add Authentication at the Web-End, We need to update the Configuration file of Apache Web Server, which is at “/etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf”. REPLACE tag is used to replace some content from a file, here REGEXP is the present content of file and REPLACE tag showing the content which is to be updated with PATH tag which is showing the Address of the file.
What travel visas teach us about software authentication
By: Christopher Knight
Tags: Xero, Oauth2, Authentication, Openid Connect, Developer

Secure authentication and authorization are foundational pillars of any successful software project. While comparing APIs to tourism might seem like a stretch, there are some interesting similarities in how a government streamlines the ability to travel between countries and how software engineers enable data to travel between different systems.

This article aims to reveal the philosophy behind many popular authentication & authorization choices, but more importantly it explores how the evolution of standards make the process of sharing digital identity easier for all of us to navigate.

The United World Tourism Organization’s Tourism Visa Openness Report found that when a country loosened its Visa restrictions, it benefited economically from increased tourism dollars spent by affluent travelers.

The report states that when more barriers to entry existed, ‘potential travelers were deterred from making a particular journey and chose an alternative destination with less hassle’.
Autentikasiýa we Awtorizasiýa
By: Merdan Durdiyev
Tags: Authorization, Biometric Data, Authentication, Biometric System, Türkmençe

Learn more. Medium is an open platform where 170 million readers come to find insightful and dynamic thinking. Here, expert and undiscovered voices alike dive into the heart of any topic and bring new ideas to the surface. Learn more

Make Medium yours. Follow the writers, publications, and topics that matter to you, and you’ll see them on your homepage and in your inbox. Explore
Securing an API using Open ID Connect from AAPIM
By: Rushank Karekar
Tags: Azure Api Management, Security, Azure, Authentication, Openid Connect

Securing an API using Open ID Connect from AAPIM

Introduction

Configuring OpenID Connect for your APIs hosted in Azure API Management adds an extra layer of security and prevents unauthorized access. This is a very important configuration form Security point of view for your Endpoints and is provided out of the box by Azure. This is the Third part of a series of Blogs on Securing your API using OpenID Connect in Azure API Management. Please go through all the parts to find easy and detailed steps that will help you configure the OpenID Connect Authentication.

Note: This Blog will demonstrate the steps to configure and test the Open ID connect Authentication with Developer portal (Legacy). The steps are similar for Developer Portal Open ID connect Authentication Configuration. But it is worth noting that the Developer Portal currently only supports Implicit Mode of Authentication and might give you a 401 Error.

Successfully call the API from the developer portal (legacy)

Note: This section does not apply to the Consumption tier, which does not support the developer portal as of Date of Blog Publish.

Now that the OAuth 2.0 user authorization is enabled on your API, the Developer Console will obtain an access token on behalf of the user, before calling the API.

Browse to any operation under the API in the developer portal and select Try it. This brings you to the Developer Console.

2. Note a new item in the Authorization section, corresponding to the authorization server you just added.

3. Select Authorization code from the authorization drop-down list, and you are prompted to sign in to the Azure AD tenant. If you are already signed in with the account, you might not be prompted.

4. After successful sign-in, an Authorization header is added to the request, with an access token from Azure AD.

4.1. Sign in to the portal

4.2. Click on accept

4.3. Note an Authorization header is added to the request

5. Select Send, and you can call the API successfully.

Links to All Blogs of this Series

Part 1: Register an application in Azure AD to represent the API https://bi-fixes.medium.com/securing-an-api-using-open-id-connect-from-aapim-5d4f46f178dc

Part 2: Configure/Setup and Enable Open ID Connect in the Developer Console https://bi-fixes.medium.com/securing-an-api-using-open-id-connect-from-aapim-bc40f432f90f

Part 3: Successfully call the API from the developer portal (legacy) https://bi-fixes.medium.com/securing-an-api-using-open-id-connect-from-aapim-bf58fad7335

Part 4: Configure a JWT validation policy to pre-authorize requests https://bi-fixes.medium.com/securing-an-api-using-open-id-connect-from-aapim-1cf4134be814
Authentication Vs Authorization
By: Champika Mendis
Tags: Security, Authorization, Identity, Authentication, Access Control

In simple terms, authentication is the process of verifying who a user is, while authorization is the process of verifying what they have access to.

More about Authentication

Authentication is the process of identifying users and validating who they claim to be. One of the most common and obvious factors to authenticate identity is a password. If the user name matches the password credential, it means the identity is valid, and the system grants access to the user.

Interestingly, with enterprises going passwordless, many use modern authentication techniques like one-time passcodes (OTP) via SMS, or email, single sign-on (SSO), multi-factor authentication (MFA) and biometrics, etc. to authenticate users and deploy security beyond what passwords usually provide.

Authentication

Popular authentication techniques

Password-based authentication is a simple method of authentication that requires a password to verify the user’s identity.

is a simple method of authentication that requires a password to verify the user’s identity. Passwordless authentication is where a user is verified through OTP or a magic link delivered to the registered email or phone number.

is where a user is verified through OTP or a magic link delivered to the registered email or phone number. 2FA/MFA requires more than one security level, like an additional PIN or security question, to identify a user and grant access to a system.

requires more than one security level, like an additional PIN or security question, to identify a user and grant access to a system. Single sign-on (SSO) allows users to access multiple applications with a single set of credentials.

(SSO) allows users to access multiple applications with a single set of credentials. Social authentication verifies and authenticates users with existing credentials from social networking platforms.

More about Authorization

Authorization happens after a user’s identity has been successfully authenticated. It is about offering full or partial access rights to resources like databases, funds, and other critical information to get the job done.

In an organization, for example, after an employee is verified and confirmed via ID and password authentication, the next step would be defining what resources the employee would have access to.

Authorization

Popular authorization techniques
Securing an API using Open ID Connect from AAPIM
By: Rushank Karekar
Tags: Azure Api Management, Security, Authentication, Azure Api Authentication, Openid Connect

Securing an API using Open ID Connect from AAPIM

Introduction

Configuring OpenID Connect for your APIs hosted in Azure API Management adds an extra layer of security and prevents unauthorized access. This is a very important configuration form Security point of view for your Endpoints and is provided out of the box by Azure. This is the first part of a series of Blogs on Securing your API using OpenID Connect in Azure API Management. Please go through all the parts to find easy and detailed steps that will help you configure the OpenID Connect Authentication.

Note: This Blog will demonstrate the steps to configure and test the Open ID connect Authentication with Developer portal (Legacy). The steps are similar for Developer Portal Open ID connect Authentication Configuration. But it is worth noting that the Developer Portal currently only supports Implicit Mode of Authentication and might give you a 401 Error.

Register an application in Azure AD to represent the API

1. Go to the Azure portal to register your application. Search for and select APP registrations.

2. Select New registration.

3. When the Register an application page appears, enter your application’s registration information:

o In the Name section, enter a meaningful application name that will be displayed to users of the app, such as “Test_OIDC”.

o In the Supported account types section, select option as required (Multi_tenant).

4. In the Redirect URI section, select Web and enter the Azure APIM Developer Portal (Legacy App) URL.

5. Select Register to create the application.

6. On the app Overview page, find the Application (client) ID value and record it for later.

7. Enable the OAuth2 implicit flow for Implicit Auth.

Now, create a client secret for this application to use in a subsequent step.

1. From the list of pages for your client app, select Certificates & secrets, and select New client secret.

2. Under Add a client secret, provide a Description. Choose when the key should expire and select Add.

Links to All Blogs of this Series

Part 1: Register an application in Azure AD to represent the API https://bi-fixes.medium.com/securing-an-api-using-open-id-connect-from-aapim-5d4f46f178dc

Part 2: Configure/Setup and Enable Open ID Connect in the Developer Console https://bi-fixes.medium.com/securing-an-api-using-open-id-connect-from-aapim-bc40f432f90f

Part 3: Successfully call the API from the developer portal (legacy) https://bi-fixes.medium.com/securing-an-api-using-open-id-connect-from-aapim-bf58fad7335

Part 4: Configure a JWT validation policy to pre-authorize requests https://bi-fixes.medium.com/securing-an-api-using-open-id-connect-from-aapim-1cf4134be814
Authenticating your Android app users: an introduction to AWS Amplify authentication
By: Clive Sargeant
Tags: Authorization, Authentication, Credentials, Android, Aws Amplify

So you’re developing an Android App and you want to manage your users.

You can use your own forms

You want to control access to certain of your app functions and your users will need secure access to your cloud back end. Oh, and you also need to give certain privileges to guest users.

This can be a challenge, taking hours and hundreds of lines of code but it does not have to be. Amazon has a set of open-source client libraries that you can use in your Android apps to not only make user management quick and easy but it also gives you the power of leveraging the AWS cloud.

Using Amplify in your Android apps will reduce the amount of code, cut development time considerably, and boost the power of your apps by giving them access to cloud resources such as lambda functions, Api’s, databases and user management.

If you want to control user access to your app and cloud back end, then you need the Amplify authentication library. The authentication library acts as an interface between your Android app and the back end Amazon User pool and Identity pool. The user pool contains your user information while the identity pool issues temporary credentials to logged in or authenticated users as well as to guest users.

You can also enable 3rd party identity providers like Google, Facebook and Amazon which your users can use to log in and get credentials to access your back end resources.

You can also use the pre-built Web Ui forms

Amplify even has pre-built registration and login forms that will handle the complete authentication flow for you. So there is no need for you to build and manage any forms.

The beauty of using the authentication library is that it is quick and easy to install and use. During installation, it builds a complete back end for you, including IAM roles, a Cognito user pool and an identity pool.

It’s easy installing Amplify authentication using the CLI in a terminal

Once installed, you only have to call the necessary functions and Amplify takes care of everything for you, seamlessly.

The installation is, as mentioned, very easy. Simply open up a terminal and install the Amplify Command Line Interface or CLI. Then install the authentication library by following the screen prompts. Most of the prompts are default settings which you simply accept.

The authentication library is essential if you’re going to use any of the other Amplify libraries such as the Api library for both GraphQl and REST requests, Analytics, DynamoDb DataStore, Predictions and S3 storage. The authentication library takes care of signing requests to the back end for you, in the background.

Here’s a quick demo of a basic authentication flow using the AWS Amplify authentication library in an Android app.
Authenticate Users and Save Data in a Database Using Firebase
Tags: Mobile, Authentication, Firebase, Kotlin, Programming

Authenticate Users and Save Data in a Database Using Firebase

Photo by Tim Patch on Unsplash

When you go about to build an application, there are a ton of considerations to take into account. And those are all mainly concerned with the client part. When you start to think about the server of your application, things can get pretty complicated. One option to alleviate some of that pressure is to use Firebase, in particular, two features from Firebase:

Authenticating users using Firebase Auth Storing data using a Realtime Database

We will show in this article :

How to build an Android application in Kotlin which authenticates users with Firebase Auth

Use Retrofit2 to make requests to our server

How to build a server in Node.js with Express that will receive requests from our application and fetch data from a Realtime Database in Firebase

If all of this might seem like a simple task, it isn’t. There is obviously a lot of setting up to do and handling various configurations, but here are also some pitfalls one would benefit from that will help save time and frustration.

Learn from my mistakes.

If you want to skip over all of the explanations, you can head over to the bottom of the article and see the entire source code there through the links.
Securing an API using OAuth 2.0 in Azure API Management
By: Rushank Karekar
Tags: Authentication, Aapim Authentication, Oauth In Azure, Securing Apis In Azure

Securing an API using OAuth 2.0 in Azure API Management

Introduction

Configuring OAuth 2.0 for your APIs hosted in Azure API Management adds an extra layer of security and prevents unauthorized access. This is a very important configuration form Security point of view for your Endpoints and is provided out of the box by Azure. This is the second part of a series of Blogs on Securing your API using OAuth 2.0 in Azure API Management. Please go through all the parts to find easy and detailed steps that will help you configure the OAuth 2.0 Authentication.

Grant permissions in Azure AD

Now that you have registered two applications to represent the API and the Developer Console, you need to grant permissions to allow the client-app to call the backend-app.

1. Go to the Azure portal to grant permissions to your client application. Search for and select APP registrations.

2. Choose your client app. Then in the list of pages for the app, select API permissions.

3. Select Add a Permission.

4. Under Select an API, select My APIs, and then find and select your backend-app.

5. Under Delegated Permissions, select the appropriate permissions to your backend-app, then select Add permissions.

6. Optionally, on the API permissions page, select Grant admin consent for <your-tenant-name> to grant consent on behalf of all users in this directory.

Links to All Blogs of this Series

Part 1: Configuration of Applications in Azure AD https://bi-fixes.medium.com/securing-an-api-using-oauth-2-0-in-azure-api-management-bcc91f4f4591

Part 2: Configuration of an Application (Client App) in Azure AD for Consumer https://bi-fixes.medium.com/securing-an-api-using-oauth-2-0-in-azure-api-management-407b021ae729

Part 3:OAUTH 2.0 Server setup https://bi-fixes.medium.com/securing-an-api-using-oauth-2-0-in-azure-api-management-ad63c6072b40

Part 4:Testing using Developer Portal and JWT Policy Configuration https://bi-fixes.medium.com/securing-an-api-using-oauth-2-0-in-azure-api-management-bd3c410bedd1
নোড — Node js ( তৃতীয় পর্ব ). complete node js developer course by…
By: Md. Jahangir Alam
Tags: Nodejs, এপিআই, API, নোড, Authentication

Regex101

Regex101 allows you to create, debug, test and have your expressions explained for PHP, PCRE, Python, Golang and…
Github | Authentication failed..?
Tags: Github Api, Authentication, Github, Git Clone

Looks like you have just pulled in a new repository in your machine but could not use any of git commands ?

To make it work all we have to do is get a token from Github and use it from your terminal. Let’s see how we can do that ?

First navigate to your Github account https://github.com then follow these:

Go to your account settings:

Then developer settings:

Then Personal Access Token and Generate new token:

Then in Note just enter the purpose of the token and select all or applicable scope (“repo” is enough for pull and push) and Generate Token. That’s it!!

Make sure to copy the access token before moving away from the page, it won’t show up again. Also you can enable SSO for newly generated access tokens if your organisation has any.

Back in the terminal you can use your Personal Access Token as password during the authentication.

Happy Coding :)
Node.js & React.js Kullanarak Google Authentication Sağlama
By: Ahmet Buğra Çakıcı
Tags: Nodejs, Reactjs, Authentication, Google, React

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Nuxt.js custom authentication
By: Nemanja Dragun
Tags: Nuxtjs, SEO, Authentication, Validation

Hello everyone. Since I saw recently that many people have struggle with authentication in their app, I’ve decided to write a small article about it!

This article will be about JWT token validation.

Ok lets talk about the flow!