OWIN Security - How to Implement OAuth2 Refresh Tokens

Question

I am using the Web Api 2 template that comes with Visual Studio 2013 has some OWIN middleware to do User Authentication and the likes of.

In the OAuthAuthorizationServerOptions I noticed that the OAuth2 Server is setup to hand out tokens that expire in 14 days

 OAuthOptions = new OAuthAuthorizationServerOptions
 {
      TokenEndpointPath = new PathString("/api/token"),
      Provider = new ApplicationOAuthProvider(PublicClientId,UserManagerFactory) ,
      AuthorizeEndpointPath = new PathString("/api/Account/ExternalLogin"),
      AccessTokenExpireTimeSpan = TimeSpan.FromDays(14),
      AllowInsecureHttp = true
 };

This is not suitable for my latest project. I would like to hand out short lived bearer_tokens that can be refreshed using a refresh_token

I have done lots of googling and can't find anything helpful.

So this is how far I have managed to get. I have now reached the point of "WTF do I now".

I have written a RefreshTokenProvider that implements IAuthenticationTokenProvider as per the RefreshTokenProvider property on OAuthAuthorizationServerOptions class:

    public class SimpleRefreshTokenProvider : IAuthenticationTokenProvider
    {
       private static ConcurrentDictionary<string, AuthenticationTicket> _refreshTokens = new ConcurrentDictionary<string, AuthenticationTicket>();

        public async Task CreateAsync(AuthenticationTokenCreateContext context)
        {
            var guid = Guid.NewGuid().ToString();


            _refreshTokens.TryAdd(guid, context.Ticket);

            // hash??
            context.SetToken(guid);
        }

        public async Task ReceiveAsync(AuthenticationTokenReceiveContext context)
        {
            AuthenticationTicket ticket;

            if (_refreshTokens.TryRemove(context.Token, out ticket))
            {
                context.SetTicket(ticket);
            }
        }

        public void Create(AuthenticationTokenCreateContext context)
        {
            throw new NotImplementedException();
        }

        public void Receive(AuthenticationTokenReceiveContext context)
        {
            throw new NotImplementedException();
        }
    }

    // Now in my Startup.Auth.cs
    OAuthOptions = new OAuthAuthorizationServerOptions
    {
        TokenEndpointPath = new PathString("/api/token"),
        Provider = new ApplicationOAuthProvider(PublicClientId,UserManagerFactory) ,
        AuthorizeEndpointPath = new PathString("/api/Account/ExternalLogin"),
        AccessTokenExpireTimeSpan = TimeSpan.FromMinutes(2),
        AllowInsecureHttp = true,
        RefreshTokenProvider = new RefreshTokenProvider() // This is my test
    };

So now when someone requests a bearer_token I am now sending a refresh_token, which is great.

So now how do I uses this refresh_token to get a new bearer_token, presumably I need to send a request to my token endpoint with some specific HTTP Headers set?

Just thinking out loud as I type... Should I handle refresh_token expiration in my SimpleRefreshTokenProvider? How would a client obtain a new refresh_token?

I could really do with some reading material / documentation because I don't want to get this wrong and would like to follow some sort of standard.

Answer 1

Just implemented my OWIN Service with Bearer (called access_token in the following) and Refresh Tokens. My insight into this is that you can use different flows. So it depends on the flow you want to use how you set your access_token and refresh_token expiration times.

I will describe two flows A and B in the follwing (I suggest what you want to have is flow B):

A) expiration time of access_token and refresh_token are the same as it is per default 1200 seconds or 20 minutes. This flow needs your client first to send client_id and client_secret with login data to get an access_token, refresh_token and expiration_time. With the refresh_token it is now possible to get a new access_token for 20 minutes (or whatever you set the AccessTokenExpireTimeSpan in the OAuthAuthorizationServerOptions to). For the reason that the expiration time of access_token and refresh_token are the same, your client is responsible to get a new access_token before the expiration time! E.g. your client could send a refresh POST call to your token endpoint with the body (remark: you should use https in production)

grant_type=refresh_token&client_id=xxxxxx&refresh_token=xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxx

to get a new token after e.g. 19 minutes to prevent the tokens from expiration.

B) in this flow you want to have a short term expiration for your access_token and a long term expiration for your refresh_token. Lets assume for test purpose you set the access_token to expire in 10 seconds (AccessTokenExpireTimeSpan = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(10)) and the refresh_token to 5 Minutes. Now it comes to the interesting part setting the expiration time of refresh_token: You do this in your createAsync function in SimpleRefreshTokenProvider class like this:

var guid = Guid.NewGuid().ToString();


        //copy properties and set the desired lifetime of refresh token
        var refreshTokenProperties = new AuthenticationProperties(context.Ticket.Properties.Dictionary)
        {
            IssuedUtc = context.Ticket.Properties.IssuedUtc,
            ExpiresUtc = DateTime.UtcNow.AddMinutes(5) //SET DATETIME to 5 Minutes
            //ExpiresUtc = DateTime.UtcNow.AddMonths(3) 
        };
        /*CREATE A NEW TICKET WITH EXPIRATION TIME OF 5 MINUTES 
         *INCLUDING THE VALUES OF THE CONTEXT TICKET: SO ALL WE 
         *DO HERE IS TO ADD THE PROPERTIES IssuedUtc and 
         *ExpiredUtc to the TICKET*/
        var refreshTokenTicket = new AuthenticationTicket(context.Ticket.Identity, refreshTokenProperties);

        //saving the new refreshTokenTicket to a local var of Type ConcurrentDictionary<string,AuthenticationTicket>
        // consider storing only the hash of the handle
        RefreshTokens.TryAdd(guid, refreshTokenTicket);            
        context.SetToken(guid);

Now your client is able to send a POST call with a refresh_token to your token endpoint when the access_token is expired. The body part of the call may look like this: grant_type=refresh_token&client_id=xxxxxx&refresh_token=xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xx

One important thing is that you may want to use this code not only in your CreateAsync function but also in your Create function. So you should consider to use your own function (e.g. called CreateTokenInternal) for the above code. Here you can find implementations of different flows including refresh_token flow(but without setting the expiration time of the refresh_token)

Here is one sample implementation of IAuthenticationTokenProvider on github (with setting the expiration time of the refresh_token)

I am sorry that I can't help out with further materials than the OAuth Specs and the Microsoft API Documentation. I would post the links here but my reputation doesn't let me post more than 2 links....

I hope this may help some others to spare time when trying to implement OAuth2.0 with refresh_token expiration time different to access_token expiration time. I couldn't find an example implementation on the web (except the one of thinktecture linked above) and it took me some hours of investigation until it worked for me.

New info: In my case I have two different possibilities to receive tokens. One is to receive a valid access_token. There I have to send a POST call with a String body in format application/x-www-form-urlencoded with the following data

client_id=YOURCLIENTID&grant_type=password&username=YOURUSERNAME&password=YOURPASSWORD

Second is if access_token is not valid anymore we can try the refresh_token by sending a POST call with a String body in format application/x-www-form-urlencoded with the following data grant_type=refresh_token&client_id=YOURCLIENTID&refresh_token=YOURREFRESHTOKENGUID