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Should API keys be stored hashed?
Yes, you should absolutely hash your API keys. In effect, they are your passwords and should be treated as such. And note that’s hashed – not encrypted. You never need to decrypt the API keys, hence you should not be able to.
Is API key authentication secure?
API keys are generally not considered secure; they are typically accessible to clients, making it easy for someone to steal an API key. Once the key is stolen, it has no expiration, so it may be used indefinitely, unless the project owner revokes or regenerates the key.
How API keys are generated?
Registering the app with the API product generates the API key for accessing the APIs in that product. A string with authorization information that a client-side app uses to access the resources exposed by the API product. The API key is generated when a registered app is associated with an API product.
How does API authentication work?
First, the consumer application sends over an application key and secret to a login page at the authentication server. If authenticated, the authentication server responds to the user with an access token. The API server checks the access token in the user’s request and decides whether to authenticate the user.
What does it mean to have a hashed API key?
A hashed value means that even if someone gains unauthorised access to our database, no API keys are leaked and it’s all safe. The end user would send the raw API key in each API request, and we can validate it by hashing the API key in the request and compare the hashed key with the hash stored within our database.
Is it okay for API secret to be stored in plain text or?
No. The API keys need to be stored in cleartext. They are not passwords: they are cryptographic keys. These keys are used for things like authenticating requests (using SHA1-HMAC). The server needs to know the crypto key to apply the cryptographic algorithms.
Why do we need a secure API key?
Secure API Key Storage Since the API key provides direct access to data, it’s pretty much like a password that a user of a web or mobile app provides to gain access to the same data.
What kind of authentication do you need for an API?
You might have built or are thinking of building APIs for other developers to use. An API needs some form of authentication to provide authorised access to the data it returns. There are several authentication standards available today such as API Keys, OAuth, JWT, etc.