Stripe Connect | Account id safe to expose? - javascript

I have a current setup with Stripe and Laravel as a backend. Everything is working perfectly and as expected but I have a question regarding security.
As I have a React frontend to take payments, I am using the package #stripe/react-stripe-js which is Stripes official package.
With the package you obviously have to load in Stripe and pass in you public key and in this scenario the connected accounts id. I've done this thus far, but the frontend uses a API call to see what the order is and the price etc, with that call sits the connected accounts id so I can append it into the load stripe method.
const stripePromise = loadStripe(
'xxxxx',
{
stripeAccount: 'xxxxx',
}
)
As this has to return in plain text so Stripe can read it, I wanted to know other peoples opinions on whether or not this is safe to expose the connected accounts id.
I can't really see any other way around it, I could encrypt / decrypt somehow but even still, that's accessible to the client side version so it is still visible.
I've read the Stripe documentation which can be found here https://stripe.com/docs/connect/authentication#adding-the-connected-account-id-to-a-client-side-application and it seems as though they hold it in plain text.
With all this mentioned, the secret key is obviously never exposed to the frontend and all of that creating the Payment Intent is handled in the backend.

Yes, it is fine to keep the Connect account ID public.
A Stripe account ID (e.g. acct_123) is intended to be used client-side as well as server-side, with your respective Stripe API keys.
The Account ID will only work if your Platform is "connected" to that existing Stripe account, otherwise the account ID is useless if used with an unrelated Platform's API key (the Stripe API validates that and returns an error).

Related

How to make Stripe Setup Intent with Stripe Elements

Is it possible to make Setup Intent (and generated client secret) work with Stripe Elements and how?
Asking as currently only Stripe Checkout allows users to use wallets (e.g. Google Pay, Apple Pay) on web for setup intents.
Another option for using setup intent is Stripe Payment Element that currently only support cards as well.
Looking for Stripe solution to use mobile wallets for setup intent.
Stripe's Elements product is a UI library that lets you collect payment method details client-side. It still has to be paired with a component on your server though.
Client-side, you use your Publishable API key pk_live_123 to confirm a PaymentIntent or SetupIntent that you first created server-side using your Secret API key sk_live_123.
It is not possible to create a SetupIntent client-side for that reason. You confirm an existing SetupIntent client-side, usually using PaymentElement, but you first create it on your server.

Multi-tenant authentication flow

How do companies handle authentication in their multi-tenant web apps?
Essentially I have a single PostgreSQL database instance with many tables. Each table has a workspace_id column which I will use to use to grant/deny access. You can think of a workspace as a client and a single user can be associated with multiple workspaces.
My initial thought was to:
Use the frontend app and let the user send the email and password to
the backend.
Backend validates details and returns all the workspaces the user belongs to.
The frontend app displays the workspaces.
User selects the workspace they want to login into. The id of the workspace and the user details that were passed in step 1 is again to the backend.
The backend validates again all the details and issues a jwt token containing the user details and the workspace id.
Later when the user tries to access any resource I will extract the workspace id from the token to check if the user has access to a resource or not.
I am halfway through implementing what I've described above but I am not sure if that's the best approach. What do you think?
I'm not sure I would call this multi-tenancy - really it is just a case of different users with different claims:
Users should log in once, then have access to the data that their user identity is entitled to
When your UI calls APIs, the back end should receive a JWT access token with either of these payloads. The second of these is preferred, but not all systems support that:
The user ID only
The user ID plus an array of workspace IDs
SIMPLEST OPTION
This might just be to look up the user's workspace IDs whenever an API request is received, based on the user ID in the JWT access token, as in Joe's comment above.
CLAIMS PRINCIPAL
If workspace IDs are used frequently for authorization across many API requests, then a better option is to design a Claims Principal object, containing data commonly used by the API for authorization, and containing the important IDs. It might look like this for a particular user:
{
sub: "wdvohjkerwt8",
userID: 234,
workspaceIDs: [2, 7, 19]
}
This object typically needs to be comprised of both Identity Data (stored by the Authorization Server) and also domain specific data. The above userID might be a database key, whereas the subject claim is often a generated value.
When an API request is received, you can either read all claims from the JWT access token, or combine domain specific data with the JWT data.
The Claims Principal is then injected where needed, so that your API authorization logic can be coded in a simple way. In your case this will involve filtering workspaces when working with collections, or denying access if the user specifically tries to access a workspace they are not entitled to.
Here is some sample Node.js code of mine that does this, using a region array claim:
Claims Principal Code
Authorizing Code
Doc

Send a custom token on mainnet using phantom #solana/web3.js

I'm currently trying to dev a website allowing people to buy things that are available on the web site by using tokens from our project. (so it's just about sending tokens, not a trade between tokens and a NFT).
I've done almost everything needed, and everything works using SOL. Now i want to switch the payements to our own custom token.
I've digged every posts on this forum and tried all of them but still couldn't find something working for me.
The problem is that all those answers use a hardcoded private key or the Wallet Interface which requires a Signer (keypair). Since our users will log on the site thanks to phantom it's not possible for us to get that secret key. Have you got any idea on how to implement that custom token payement?
Thanks in advance.
Checkout the solana wallet adapter https://github.com/solana-labs/wallet-adapter you can use the wallet object to sign your transactions. They have an example in the readme to transfer SOL, transferring an spl-token is very similar, i often use https://github.com/solstar-tech/easy-spl which works well together with the adapter.

Payment gateway wants the secret key in javascript. I'm concerned about the key security here

I'm using razorpay as a payment gateway for the website that I've been working on. The gateway api needs a secret key which according to the documentation, I need to put it in my javascript call. This is okay for dev environment but I'm highly skeptical about putting production key in JS as it can be abused in many ways.
What would be the ideal way of handling this scenario? Should I send keys from backend (java) which are encoded (doesn't seem right)?
There are two entities. One is secret and other is the key.
Key needs to be passed in the script to create razorpay payment form. There is no issue in that.
For all the transactions to razorpay which demands secret, you should make your own APIs on your server. Never put it in client-side javascript.
For example, when creating an order, you will need to pass the secret. So, make an api where you can pass the reference number from your system and get back the order_id from razorpay. Do all the operations to razorpay on server side code. This way secret will not be exposed to the end user.

SINGLE SIGN ON SECURITY THREAT! FACEBOOK access_token broadcast in the open/clear

02/20/2011:
It was confirmed by Facebook today that indeed there is one call in which the access_token is broadcast in the open . . . it just happens to be one call I use to make sure that the USER is still logged in before saving to my application database. Their recommendation was to use the SSL option provided as of last month for canvase and facebook as a whole. For the most part the Auth and Auth are secure.
Findings:
Subsequent to my posting there was a remark made that this was not really a question but I thought I did indeed postulate one. So that there is no ambiquity here is the question with a lead in:
Since there is no data sent from Facebook during the Canvas Load process that is not at some point divulged, including the access_token, session and other data that could uniquely identify a user, does any one see any other way other than adding one more layer, i.e., a password, sent over the wire via HTTPS along with the access_toekn, that will insure unique untampered with security by the user?
Using Wireshark I captured the local broadcast while loading my Canvas Application page. I was hugely surprised to see the access_token broadcast in the open, viewable for any one to see. This access_token is appended to any https call to the Facebook OpenGraph API.
Using facebook as a single click log on has now raised huge concerns for me. It is stored in a session object in memory and the cookie is cleared upon app termination and after reviewing the FB.Init calls I saw a lot of HTTPS calls so I assumed the access_token was always encrypted.
But last night I saw in the status bar a call from what was simply an http call that included the App ID so I felt I should sniff the Application Canvas load sequence.
Today I did sniff the broadcast and in the attached image you can see that there are http calls with the access_token being broadcast in the open and clear for anyone to gain access to.
Am I missing something, is what I am seeing and my interpretation really correct. If any one can sniff and get the access_token they can theorically make calls to the Graph API via https, even though the call back would still need to be the site established in Facebook's application set up.
But what is truly a security threat is anyone using the access_token for access to their own site. I do not see the value of a single sign on via Facebook if the only thing that was established as secure was the access_token - becuase for what I can see it clearly is not secure. Access tokens that never have an expire date do not change. Access_tokens are different for every user, to access to another site could be held tight to just a single user, but compromising even a single user's data is unacceptable.
http://www.creatingstory.com/images/InTheOpen.png
Went back and did more research on this:
FINDINGS:
Went back an re ran the canvas application to verify that it was not any of my code that was not broadcasting.
In this call: HTTP GET /connect.php/en_US/js/CacheData HTTP/1.1
The USER ID is clearly visible in the cookie. So USER_ID's are fully visible, but they are already. Anyone can go to pretty much any ones page and hover over the image and see the USER ID. So no big threat. APP_ID are also easily obtainable - but . . .
http://www.creatingstory.com/images/InTheOpen2.png
The above file clearly shows the FULL ACCESS TOKEN clearly in the OPEN via a Facebook initiated call.
Am I wrong. TELL ME I AM WRONG because I want to be wrong about this.
I have since reset my app secret so I am showing the real sniff of the Canvas Page being loaded.
Additional data 02/20/2011:
#ifaour - I appreciate the time you took to compile your response.
I am pretty familiar with the OAuth process and have a pretty solid understanding of the signed_request unpacking and utilization of the access_token. I perform a substantial amount of my processing on the server and my Facebook server side flows are all complete and function without any flaw that I know of. The application secret is secure and never passed to the front end application and is also changed regularly. I am being as fanatical about security as I can be, knowing there is so much I don’t know that could come back and bite me.
Two huge access_token issues:
The issues concern the possible utilization of the access_token from the USER AGENT (browser). During the FB.INIT() process of the Facebook JavaScript SDK, a cookie is created as well as an object in memory called a session object. This object, along with the cookie contain the access_token, session, a secret, and uid and status of the connection. The session object is structured such that is supports both the new OAuth and the legacy flows. With OAuth, the access_token and status are pretty much al that is used in the session object.
The first issue is that the access_token is used to make HTTPS calls to the GRAPH API. If you had the access_token, you could do this from any browser:
https://graph.facebook.com/220439?access_token=...
and it will return a ton of information about the user. So any one with the access token can gain access to a Facebook account. You can also make additional calls to any info the user has granted access to the application tied to the access_token. At first I thought that a call into the GRAPH had to have a Callback to the URL established in the App Setup, but I tested it as mentioned below and it will return info back right into the browser. Adding that callback feature would be a good idea I think, tightens things up a bit.
The second issue is utilization of some unique private secured data that identifies the user to the third party data base, i.e., like in my case, I would use a single sign on to populate user information into my database using this unique secured data item (i.e., access_token which contains the APP ID, the USER ID, and a hashed with secret sequence). None of this is a problem on the server side. You get a signed_request, you unpack it with secret, make HTTPS calls, get HTTPS responses back. When a user has information entered via the USER AGENT(browser) that must be stored via a POST, this unique secured data element would be sent via HTTPS such that they are validated prior to data base insertion.
However, If there is NO secured piece of unique data that is supplied via the single sign on process, then there is no way to guarantee unauthorized access. The access_token is the one piece of data that is utilized by Facebook to make the HTTPS calls into the GRAPH API. it is considered unique in regards to BOTH the USER and the APPLICATION and is initially secure via the signed_request packaging. If however, it is subsequently transmitted in the clear and if I can sniff the wire and obtain the access_token, then I can pretend to be the application and gain the information they have authorized the application to see. I tried the above example from a Safari and IE browser and it returned all of my information to me in the browser.
In conclusion, the access_token is part of the signed_request and that is how the application initially obtains it. After OAuth authentication and authorization, i.e., the USER has logged into Facebook and then runs your app, the access_token is stored as mentioned above and I have sniffed it such that I see it stored in a Cookie that is transmitted over the wire, resulting in there being NO UNIQUE SECURED IDENTIFIABLE piece of information that can be used to support interaction with the database, or in other words, unless there were one more piece of secure data sent along with the access_token to my database, i.e., a password, I would not be able to discern if it is a legitimate call. Luckily I utilized secure AJAX via POST and the call has to come from the same domain, but I am sure there is a way to hijack that.
I am totally open to any ideas on this topic on how to uniquely identify my USERS other than adding another layer (password) via this single sign on process or if someone would just share with me that I read and analyzed my data incorrectly and that the access_token is always secure over the wire.
Mahalo nui loa in advance.
I am not terribly familiar with Facebook's authentication/authorization methods, but I do believe that they implement oauth (or something close to it) for delegation, distributed authorization, and "single sign-on".
OAuth is described by RFC-5849
EDIT: Facebook Uses OAuth 2.0 which is still in working draft.
In OAuth, and similar systems, the "access_token" is only part of the picture. There is also typically a secret key, which is known only by the service provider (facebook) and the client application (your app). The secret key is the only part that is expected to stay secret - and that part is never sent over the wire (after it's initial issuance).
In the case of Facebook, I think the secret key is assigned to you when you register your application to use their API, and the 'access_token' is returned to you for a given user, whenever the user agrees to allow your app to access their info.
Messages are sent in the clear, including the user's username, and the relevant "access_token"; However, each message must also include a valid signature in order to be accepted by the server. The signature is a cryptographically computed string, that is created using a technique called HMAC.
Computing the HMAC signature requires both the token and the secret, and includes other key parts of the message as well. Each signature is unique for the given message contents; and each message uses a nonce to ensure that no two messages can ever be exactly identical.
When the server receives a signed message, it starts by extracting the access_token (clear-text), and determining which app the token was issued for. It then retrieves the matching secret from its own local database (the secret is not contained in the message). Finally, the server uses the clear-text message, the clear-text access_token, and the secret to compute the expected HMAC signature for the message. If the computed signature matches the signature on the received message, then the message must have been sent by someone who knows the same secret (i.e. your application).
Have a look at Section 3.1 of RFC-5849 for an OAuth specific example, and further elaboration on the details.
Incidentally, the same approach is used by Amazon to control access to S3 and EC2, as well as most other service providers that offer API access with long-term authorization. Suffice it to say - this approach is secure. It might be a little counter-intuitive at first, but it makes sense once you think it through.
Adding a few links and quotes from Facebook Documentation:
Facebook is indeed using the HMAC-SHA256 algorithm. Registration document (PHP Example reading signed_request section).
Always verify the signed_request:
If you are unable to validate the
signed_request because you can't embed
your application secret (e.g. in
javascript or a desktop application)
then you MUST only use one piece of
information from the payload, the
oauth_token.
The Authentication Document contains a lot of useful info about the different flows you may use to authenticate a user. Also read the Security Considerations section at the bottom of the page:
Cross site request forgery is an
attack in which an trusted
(authenticated and authorized) user
unknowingly performs an action on
website. To prevent this attack, you
should pass an identifier in the state
parameter, and then validate the state
parameter matches on the response. We
strongly recommend that any app
implementing Facebook user login
implement CSRF protection using this
mechanism.
It was confirmed by Facebook that indeed there is one call in which the access_token is broadcast in the open - it just happens to be one call I use to make sure that the user is still logged in before saving to my application database. Their recommendation was to use the SSL option provided as of last month for canvas and Facebook as a whole. For the most part the Auth and Auth are secure.
To ensure a secure interface between a third party application and a Facebook application or even any website that uses Facebook Single Sign on, an identity question would provide the extra layer when used in conjunction with the access_token.
Either that or require your users to use Facebook with the new SSL feature of Facebook and Facebook Canvas Applications. If the access_token is broadcast in the open it cannot be used to uniquely identify anyone in your third party database when needing to have a confirmed identity before database interactions.

Categories