Use cases of OAuth2.0

Question

I am building a muli-tenant saas(software as a service) architecture. I have to build the authentication system for the system.

From what I have studied, I think I need to the build the authentication system based on OAuth2.0 and the bearer token with JWT tokens.

After reading a lot about OAuth2.0 of how to build an OAuth2.0 server I still didn't understand the full concept of OAuth and also have confusion about whether I need it or not or I need some other Authentication system.

What my system need is we will provide an SDK to all our customer and each client will have an Application Id and a secret key using the SDK client will connect to his application present in our system.

The application ID will map the customer to his application present in our system and the client secret key will authenticate the client inside the application.Do I still need to build an authentication system based on OAuth2.0 or can I build my own authentication system based on our need?

What are the use cases of OAUTH2.0 and when we won't need it to implement?

Jacquline

Answer 1

First, as clearly indicated in OAuth authentication

OAuth 2.0 is not an authentication protocol.

Authentication in the context of a user accessing an application tells an application who the current user is and whether or not they're present. A full authentication protocol will probably also tell you a number of attributes about this user, such as a unique identifier, an email address, and what to call them when the application says "Good Morning".

However, OAuth tells the application none of that.
OAuth says absolutely nothing about the user, nor does it say how the user proved their presence or even if they're still there.
As far as an OAuth client is concerned, it asked for a token, got a token, and eventually used that token to access some API. It doesn't know anything about who authorized the application or if there was even a user there at all.

There is a standard for user authentication using OAuth: OpenID Connect, compatible with OAuth2.

The OpenID Connect ID Token is a signed JSON Web Token (JWT) that is given to the client application along side the regular OAuth access token.
The ID Token contains a set of claims about the authentication session, including an identifier for the user (sub), the identifier for the identity provider who issued the token (iss), and the identifier of the client for which this token was created (aud).

In Go, you can look at coreos/dex, an OpenID Connect Identity (OIDC) and OAuth 2.0 Provider with Pluggable Connector.

Humanitarian