Explaining public vs confidential clients surfaced a gap in my own design: I had
assumed a single client id, but there are two clients here with genuinely
different properties.
the Android app public + PKCE, because an APK cannot keep a secret
the admin UI confidential, because the server can keep one in
/etc/echolot-server.env and weakening it to public buys
nothing
So the audience check now accepts either registered client id - and only those
two. "Any client of this issuer" would let every other application registered
with the same IdP authenticate here, which is the entire reason the check
exists. Either id alone is enough to enable sign-in, since an operator may
register only the app or only the admin UI.
The profile advertises the *app's* client id, since that is what a phone should
authorize as.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Echolot delegates identity to whatever IdP the operator already runs and stores
no passwords - no hashing, no reset flow, no lockout policy, and no credential
database to lose. For a tool people self-host next to other services, that is
the difference between one more service and one more thing that can leak
someone's password.
Verification is stdlib-only, matching the server's no-dependency rule. Longer
than jwt.Parse, and auditable in one sitting. The part that matters is the
algorithm allow-list: taking `alg` from the token is the classic forgery, so it
is fixed in code. Tests cover the real attacks against a genuine signer - a
self-contained IdP with real keys, because a mock that returns success proves
nothing about a verifier:
alg=none, HS256/RS256 confusion, a payload swapped under a valid signature,
a token addressed to another client, a token from another issuer, expired
and future-dated tokens, and discovery that renames the issuer (which would
otherwise have us fetch a stranger's keys believing they were the provider's).
With no admin group configured nobody is an admin. An operator who has not said
who may administer the server has not thereby said "anyone who can log in".
Device and account stay separate concepts: enrollment admits a device (operator's
token), signing in attributes it to a person (POST /v1/account/link, device
credential plus ID token - both required, neither substitutes). uploads=account
now means what it says instead of refusing everyone, and signing in does not
override uploads=off.
The profile advertises the sign-in configuration so the app can offer the button
only when there is something behind it, and drive PKCE without anyone typing an
issuer URL. A discovery failure is reported rather than hidden, so "configured
but the provider is not answering" is distinguishable from "not configured".
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
