Why are secrets in plain text?

[esseti]

Hello all,
I was digging in the data and I found out that all the secrets are stored in plain text in the DB.

Why so?

reading this #276 it seems that the client_secret is used to generate/calculate some value, which one precisely? so for that, there's no way to hash it.

However, what about access_token and refresh tokens? why are not they hashed? in the end, they should be, somehow, as a password, so the real value is not needed (although you will have access to the real value each request if needed).

[IvanAnishchuk]

I think the main reason is that most of the time it's not required. With the multiple factors involved (you usually need client secret + password to get an access token) and them being random, often temporary, and not reused anywhere, stealing a bunch of client secrets doesn't give intruder much more than they already have.

But I can see some value in hashing and salting not just client secrets but also all the tokens and grants. Hashing access tokens by default is usually pointless (would make requests too slow) but in case of extreme paranoia (e.g. auth servers used by important resource servers) could be possible as well (even introspection should work, I think, token is always presented plain when something needs to be done), probably with some clever optimization to speed up verifying requests or perhaps just lighter hash algo as those tokens are short-lived and random enough.

I think it could be implemented as an extension over DOT or even as an optional model mixin or something here. Feel free to PR and, you know, occasionally ask questions about how to override one method or other.

[pkarman]

The client credentials (2-legged) flow does not require an additional password, so in that sense the client_id and client_secret act like a username/password pair. Not hashing the secrets does feel like a gap, since a compromise of the database effectively gives you plain text passwords for all client credentials applications.

I'd be happy to work up a patch to address this. I did not see any mention of it elsewhere.

[pkarman]

@IvanAnishchuk I took a first pass in #1020 -- let me know what you think.

[auvipy]

will need more input for this, i personally dont think thats an big isseue. but lets wait

[pkarman]

For each registered application, you’ll need to store the public client_id and the private client_secret. Because these are essentially equivalent to a username and password, you should not store the secret in plain text, instead only store an encrypted or hashed version, to help reduce the likelihood of the secret leaking.

from https://www.oauth.com/oauth2-servers/client-registration/client-id-secret/

[n2ygk]

Since #1020 has been reverted, reopening this.

Still would be a great feature to have.