OAuth from First Principles (via) Rare example of an OAuth explainer that breaks down why each of the steps are designed the way they are, by showing an illustrative example of how an attack against OAuth could work in absence of each measure.
Ever wondered why OAuth returns you an authorization code which you then need to exchange for an access token, rather than returning the access token directly? It's for an added layer of protection against eavesdropping attacks:
If Endframe eavesdrops the authorization code in real-time, they can exchange it for an access token very quickly, before Big Head's browser does. [...] Currently, anyone with the authorization code can exchange it for an access token. We need to ensure that only the person who initiated the request can do the exchange.
Recent articles
- OpenAI o3-mini, now available in LLM - 31st January 2025
- A selfish personal argument for releasing code as Open Source - 24th January 2025
- Anthropic's new Citations API - 24th January 2025