问题
I'm now reading some introduction materials about OAuth, having the idea to use it in a free software.
And I read this:
The consumer secret must never be revealed to anyone. DO NOT include it in any requests, show it in any code samples (including open source) or in any way reveal it.
If I am writing a free client for a specific website using OAuth, then I have to include the consumer secret in the source code, otherwise making from source would make the software unusable. However, as it is said, the secret should not be release along with the source.
I completely understand the security considerations, but, how can I solve this dilemma, and use OAuth in free software?
I thought of using an external website as a proxy for authentication, but this is very much complicated. Do you have better ideas?
Edit:
Some clients like Gwibber also use OAuth, but I haven't checked its code.
回答1:
I'm not sure I get the problem, can't you develop the code as open source retrieve the customer secret from a configuration file or maybe leave it in a special table in the database? That way the code will not contain the customer secret (and as such will be "shareable" as open source), but the customer secret will still be accessible to the application.
Maybe having some more details on the intended platform would help, as in some (I'm thinking tomcat right now) parameters such as this one can be included in server configuration files.
If it's PHP, I know a case of an open source project (Moodle), that keeps a php (config.php) file containing definitions of all important configurations, and references this file from all pages to get the definition. It is the responsibility of the administrator to complete the contents of this file with the values particular to that installation. In fact, if the application sees that the file is missing (usually on the first access to the site) it will redirect to a wizard where the administrator can fill the contents in a more user friendly way. In this case the customer secret will be one of these configurations, and as such will be present in the "production" code, but not in the "distributable" form of the code.
I personally like the idea of storing that value in the database in a table designed for it and possibly other parameters as the code needs not be changed. Maybe a installation wizard can be presented here ass well in the case the values do not exist.
Does this solve your problem?
回答2:
If your service provider is a webapp, your server needs consumer signup pages that provides the consumer secret as the user signs up their consumer. This is the same process Twitter applications go through. Try signing up there and look at their workflow, you'll have all the steps.
If your software is peer-to-peer, each application needs to be both a service provider and a consumer. The Jira and Confluence use cases below outline that instance.
In one of my comments, I mention https://twitter.com/apps/new as the location of where Twitter app developers generate a consumer secret. How you would make such a page depends on the system architecture. If all the consumers will be talking to one server, that one server will have to have a page like https://twitter.com/apps/new. If there are multiple servers (i.e. federations of clients), each federation will need one server with this page.
Another example to consider is how Atlassian apps use OAuth. They are peer-to-peer. Setting up Jira and Confluence to talk to one another still has a setup page in each app, but it is nowhere near as complex as https://twitter.com/apps/new. Both apps are consumers and service providers at the same time. Visiting the setup in each app allows that app to be set up as a service provider with a one-way trust on the other app, as consumer. To make a two-way trust, the user must visit both app's service provider setup page and tell it the URL of the other app.
来源：https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4616553/using-oauth-in-free-open-source-software