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What are the pros and cons of authentication with API key vs client_id+secret? (lemmy.pe1uca.dev)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

It's fine as long as the key/secret is never transmitted in clear text (always encrypted e.g. with https) and never exposed to the end users to prevent credential leak. What matter is if you can rotate those keys quickly enough when there is a security incident. oauth has advantage here because the token has expiry date so if you happen to have a leak, at least the leaked token won't work indefinitely.