this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2023
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What are the pros and cons of authentication with API key vs client_id+secret? (lemmy.pe1uca.dev)
submitted 1 year ago by pe1uca@lemmy.pe1uca.dev to c/programming@programming.dev
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I have an implementation for an internal API, the requirement is to implement some sort of basic authentication instead of oauth (generating a token).

Do you think there's any difference between using just an API key vs using a client id + secret?
For what I see it'd be just like saying "using a password" vs "using a user and a password".

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[–] ck_@discuss.tchncs.de 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There is no difference security wise. The benefit of the clientid is mainly that it is shared cleartext information, so it can be used in eg. support requests, password recovery, what have you.

[–] pe1uca@lemmy.pe1uca.dev 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You got me thinking in something more, are API keys stored in plain text in DB? Otherwise I don't see a way to quickly know it's valid, I'd have to validate it against all the hashes in the DB.
With client id it'd be easy to just validate the secret against a single hash for that user.

[–] ck_@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 1 year ago

Its never really a good approach to store secrets in plain text. I don't see how that would be more expensive for your database than validating clientId + secret.