4 ms·

It's worth noting this coconut pattern (hard auth facade, soft interior), while popular and helpful for dev efficiency, is a weak security practice. Using simpl

It's worth noting this coconut pattern (hard auth facade, soft interior), while popular and helpful for dev efficiency, is a weak security practice. Using simple pre-shared keys between internal services excludes any meaningful access controls over user data. Whether that's important depends on the domain. For stripe, though, I'm surprised they wouldn't want to ensure internal data requests are being made on behalf of customers who should actually have access to the data. Also, for bigger companies (although, why not smaller ones?), you hit a point where you can't keep blindly trusting every service. Better to have internal security controls. As for when these tradeoffs are appropriate, hard to say. But a good rule of thumb could be when the product is big enough to need an SOA.

hbrn 4y ago
> As for when these tradeoffs are appropriate, hard to say And that is my biggest problem. If you don't know whether you need something, you don't need it. Or you just don't have enough expertise to understand why you need it, but that means you will implement it the wrong way anyway.
- marcosdumay 4y ago
  > If you don't know whether you need something, you don't need it. That's a bad approach for security. Starting with the solution is the wrong way to do it, but you certainly need to actively look if you have problems.
  - hbrn 4y ago
    Let's say you're a startup that's hiring it's 5th engineer. Should you do criminal background checks? Install spyware on laptops? Forbid hiring from other countries? Restrict developer access to production env? Invest all your development time into security features until you run out of those? If you actively look for problems, you will justify all of those. Security is not about knowing which problems exist and fixing them all. It's about knowing which risks are acceptable at your current stage. If you don't know which risks are acceptable, applying random security practices is worse than no security at all. At least when there's no security you are aware of it. If you can't come up with an attack vector where HTTP Basic Auth causes significant problems, you don't need JWT to secure communication. And even if you can come up with an attack vector, is it really easiest one to execute? Speaking of attack vectors, how many of the folks that use JWT for inter-service communication actually rotate encryption keys when anyone who has access to them leaves the company? My bet is very few.
  - P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
    Why do security people think security trumps everything? It's a serious question. As time goes on I more and more land on the side of Linus Torvalds wrt to security. It kills me the amount of stupid shit I've seen done in the name of security. If security people were to come up with driving standards, no one would be allowed to turn left because it's more dangerous then turning right.
schwap 4y ago
Ironically, authorization downstream of an API gateway is an application that JWTs are a good candidate for.

hbrn 4y ago

> As for when these tradeoffs are appropriate, hard to say And that is my biggest problem. If you don't know whether you need something, you don't need it. Or you just don't have enough expertise to understand why you need it, but that means you will implement it the wrong way anyway.

marcosdumay 4y ago
> If you don't know whether you need something, you don't need it. That's a bad approach for security. Starting with the solution is the wrong way to do it, but you certainly need to actively look if you have problems.
- hbrn 4y ago
  Let's say you're a startup that's hiring it's 5th engineer. Should you do criminal background checks? Install spyware on laptops? Forbid hiring from other countries? Restrict developer access to production env? Invest all your development time into security features until you run out of those? If you actively look for problems, you will justify all of those. Security is not about knowing which problems exist and fixing them all. It's about knowing which risks are acceptable at your current stage. If you don't know which risks are acceptable, applying random security practices is worse than no security at all. At least when there's no security you are aware of it. If you can't come up with an attack vector where HTTP Basic Auth causes significant problems, you don't need JWT to secure communication. And even if you can come up with an attack vector, is it really easiest one to execute? Speaking of attack vectors, how many of the folks that use JWT for inter-service communication actually rotate encryption keys when anyone who has access to them leaves the company? My bet is very few.
- P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
  Why do security people think security trumps everything? It's a serious question. As time goes on I more and more land on the side of Linus Torvalds wrt to security. It kills me the amount of stupid shit I've seen done in the name of security. If security people were to come up with driving standards, no one would be allowed to turn left because it's more dangerous then turning right.

schwap 4y ago

Ironically, authorization downstream of an API gateway is an application that JWTs are a good candidate for.