this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2023
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I have an implementation for an internal API, the requirement is to implement some sort of basic authentication instead of oauth (generating a token).

Do you think there's any difference between using just an API key vs using a client id + secret?
For what I see it'd be just like saying "using a password" vs "using a user and a password".

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[โ€“] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Consider that a 'username+password' is much harder to 'revoke' individually. As in, you can have 3-4 API keys in use, and can revoke any one of them without having to change a password.

You can also change password independently of the keys, or have it linked so keys are revoked on a password change. It also allows traceability as to where accesses are coming from (auditability). If everything is using the same client-id+secret (or usn/pwd), you don't know which 'client' is doing what.

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Yeah, mentioning password it was just an analogy, the user has their credentials independent of this implementation, so no need to reset their password for any flow here. It'd be client id+secret.