Frontend is Vue and my backend is an express rest api that pulls data from mysql. I want to secure both the frontend (login form) and backend api, but without limiting use of the api to just my frontend. I may want to use this api for other projects in the future.
What I'm strugging with is understanding how to have a user log in on the frontend but also give them access to the api without preventing future access to the api from other projects. I know I could set a JWT, but recently there seems to be a lot of "DON'T USE JWT!" articles out there, and I can understand why they might think this. Using cookies and sessions doesn't seem practical either without needing to create a session/cookie for each frontend and backend. Then I thought maybe using cookie/sessions for frontend, and having the frontend be authenticated with an API key to the backend API. This might allow other web applications to access the api while protecting it from unauthorized access.
Apologies for the lack of knowledge and seemingly rambling. I've been stuck on this aspect of my project for a while now. I know it's due to my poverty of knowledge on the subject. Any resources and points in the right direction will be greatly appreciated.
CodePudding user response：
There is nothing wrong with JWTs, though it can depend on the implementation. The simplest way of doing it is just signing the JSON string with a private key. A little more complicated is base64 encoding it, encrypting it and signing only after that with a different key. And ofc. you need to send it through SSL. You need to add expiration time to it. Probably bind it to IP, browser, language, location, etc. too. If you want to revoke it, then you need to maintain a very small global revoked JWT database and remove it after it expired. You can add a JWT verification cache too, which spares you checking the signature for every request and which can be local too. If you want to avoid accessing it from Javascript code and probably leak it with XHR, then add it to a httpOnly cookie, though if you do so, then you need a CSRF token too. So I think all of the security issues are solveable with JWT too.
We need stateless communication between the REST client and the REST service, so if your frontend has a server side REST client, which uses for example JWT or any other method with Auhorization header, then it is perfectly fine from statelessness constraint perspective to do server side sessions with your frontend. As of the constraint itself, statelessness is needed for massive services with countless users global scale where handling server side sessions is an issue on its own, so better to move the stuff to the clients. These are typically social media services, search engines, global webshops, etc. If you have a limited user number, then you probably don't need this feature. Though using server side sessions between REST client and service would violate the statelessness constraint, which means you would not have a REST service. I don't think this is an issue. I mean it would be still a service, just not a REST service, it would work, would not scale as well as a REST service, but if this is what you need and it is simpler for you to implement it securely, then go on.
You can use API keys if you have some sort of revoke mechanism for those too. And keep in mind that API keys are server side stuff, so for mobile clients and in-browser application they are not good for identification, because they can be easily stolen by the users, so don't access your service directly from those with API keys just through a server. Another way is checking IP and using SSL to identify the clients, which is similar to using API keys, just more standard and the secret does not go through the communication channel. It really depends on your needs. If you have 3rd party clients, then you'll need OAuth too and let the users decide if they trust them.
Not sure if this helps.
CodePudding user response：
By far the best thing you can do is adopt OAuth2. It has all the necessary components solve your problem and has ton of implementations.
The issue with JWT is that lots of people get it wrong. inf3rno does a good job accidentally pointing out many of the issues.