Audit my code please

mepis · Apr 20, 2014

Short version: I programmed a Windows 8 Oauth app. I didn't know where to post this, but it's mostly done in javascript and HTML so I figured this forum might be best. If others have time, I'd really appreciate it if someone would audit my code. Due to the nature of the amount my request, I thought it would be best to post a link to the GitHub repo. If this is wrong, please correct me.

GitHub: https://github.com/mepis/Windows8OauthAuthenticator

Long Version: I use 2-step for a lot of my accounts. The problem is, I'm lazy. I don't feel like getting up to get my phone after I set it down at night. I wanted a metro Oauth app for Windows 8. I looked on the store, but didn't recognize any of the developers. Due to the nature of Oauth, I choose to err on the side of caution and not use the apps. I'm not saying that other devs aren't well intentioned and good devs. I'm just saying that it's a better idea in the name of security that I not use the apps if I can't verify anything. So I decided to write my own.

That leaves another issue though. Due to the nature of Oauth, the token device shouldn't be on the same device you're putting passwords in. I'm choosing to ignore this a bit. I do recognize that tokens shouldn't be stored in plain text though in the Windows storage space. Instead, I push and pull the token from the Windows Credential Manager and the password vault.

I was thinking of running the tokens, labels, and account names through an AES algorithm and then storing that information in the credential manager. This would require a user password on opening the app though. I'm not sure I want to go that route yet, though it would be easily implemented later on.

The mission of this app is simple. I want to offer an Oauth app that is open source and able to be audited by the general public. I want others to have access to a free tool that they can trust and review. I will never charge for this app nor ask for donations. It's also posted under the GNU version 3 license.

At some point, I am thinking about porting this app to Windows Phone.

I'm very much a amateur developer though. I was hoping that others could audit my app, offer suggestions, and point out mistakes. I very much appreciate any help or time that any person is willing to offer.

GoodDayToDie · Apr 20, 2014

While you may well get some takers, and some of them might even know what they're doing, you realize you're asking for something that is usually done by people who do this stuff professionally for hundreds of dollars per hour, right? It's like writing up a legal contract and posting it online and saying "do you think this will hold up in court?"

OK, training to be a security engineer doesn't take as long as training to be a lawyer. But there's *more* lawyers than there are security engineers, and our time is very much in demand (yes, I'm a security engineer; no, I will not audit your code for free unless I expect to have a use for it personally).

I'm not even sure what you mean by "OAuth app". OAuth is a standardized protocol (v2.0, RFC 6749, is more accurately described as a framework) for delegated authentication. For example, you've seen how a lot of web sites let you sign in using your Facebook account? That's because they use Facebook as an OAuth provider. The website delegates the responsibility of authenticating users to Facebook, which is handy for them because they don't have to handle passwords and so forth, handy for the user because many users already have FB accounts, and handy for FB because they gain information about what kinds of sites you visit and can use that to target ads. It also has downsides, of course; the OAuth client (web site) has to trust that FB knows what they're doing and to remain available, the user gives FB info they might not want FB to have and also ends up essentially re-using passwords across sites (a bad idea), and FB bears the cost and responsibility of managing all those logins.

Now, to make any authentication scheme (including but not limited to OAuth) stronger, you can multi-factor authentication (sometimes called two-factor auth or 2FA). The most common way of doing that is using Time-based One Time Password (TOTP, standardized as RFC 6238) security tokens, either in small hardware devices or in mobile apps. Is that what this is supposed to be? Because... that has nothing to do with OAuth.

I have a hard time imagining a situation in which I'd use a TOTP generator written by somebody who didn't know the difference between TOTP and OAuth.

mepis · Apr 20, 2014

Well, your response thus far has been excellent (I'm not being sarcastic). I need to read more about Oauth then. I must have my definitions and understanding a bit confused.

In actuality, to phrase it better, the application would be a TOTP app then - like Google Authenticator. I used Javascript provided by Google for the TOTP generation. The app itself is rather simple. My biggest concern though is the safety of the tokens. I used Windows Credential Manager to store the tokens on the device. I couldn't find much information about the security of Windows Credential Manager though. That's my biggest concern.

Other than that, thanks for the information. I'm going to do some more reading.

GoodDayToDie · Apr 21, 2014

For what it's worth (and without having read your code), it sounds like you're doing OK; TOTP generators are not complex by themselves, and usually the only threat to them is in the secret storage (which you're addressing). Of course, most of them offer things like QR code scanning (as a way to load secrets more easily) and I don't know if you have anything like that or whether there are any security pitfalls there.

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Audit my code please

mepis

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GoodDayToDie

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mepis

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GoodDayToDie

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