Single sign on for hackathon apps and services using OAuth 2.0

Ground Truth is an authentication mechanism for various hackathon services. It replaces various email / password systems living in multiple apps in favor of a single, long lived account that can be easily reused.

For example, at HackGT, we use Ground Truth to provide authentication for:

• Event registration
  • Users don't have to create a new account for every HackGT, HackGTeeny, BuildGT, or HackGT: Horizons event, reducing confusion.
• Event check-in and badge scanning (organizing staff only)
• Team formation site
• HackGT event mobile app

Ground Truth allows participants to create a single HackGT account that stays around for their college careers as they apply to various HackGT-hosted hackathons. This reduces confusion about whether participants already have an account or not and makes for a simpler, streamlined registration and login process.

Additionally, by consolidating all authentication code into a single, dedicated repository, Ground Truth allows for better security auditing and practices that would be impractical in multiple codebases. While non-dedicated authentication systems might only support insecure username / password logins, integrating with Ground Truth allows for external provider login (e.g. Google, GitHub, Facebook) as well as FIDO2 passwordless login and two factor authentication.

Ground Truth allows users to log in to their HackGT account using the following methods:

• Conventional password
  • Support for FIDO U2F coming soon
• Google
• GitHub
• Facebook
• Georgia Tech CAS login system
• FIDO2 passwordless login using a security key

Other OAuth 2.0 and CAS login providers can be easily added in src/auth/strategies

Admins can enable or disable whichever login methods they desire.

To setup, copy the default.json file to development.json in the config folder and configure the variables in this file. Enable certain login methods with the loginMethods config variable.

Additionally, Ground Truth can use environment variables for setup for use in production. The names of these variables can be found in src/common.ts. Note, you only need to fill in the secrets for the services you will be using.

After filling in the config file or the environment variables, follow these steps:

1. yarn install
2. yarn dev

Ground Truth acts like any other OAuth 2.0 compliant system.

As an admin, visit /login and click through to the admin panel.

To create an app, you'll need the name of your application and which URI(s) it will redirect back to once authentication is complete.

This can include something like http://localhost:3000 during development, but you should ideally create different development and production apps for better security.

Private / public app type determines whether your app can keep the client secret private (e.g. a typical server-hosted application) or if it is at risk of being revealed (e.g. a mobile app) and should use PKCE instead.

Once an app is created, it's name and redirect URIs can be changed after. Additionally, its secret can be regenerated and the app can be deleted when needed.

Scopes allow an application to access more information about a user. When an application provides a scope when authenticating, Ground Truth will include the information in the user data, and will ask the user for the necessary information if needed.

Examples of scopes include asking for a slack username or a phone number.

The scope question field determines the question to show to the user when asking for this information. The input type follows HTML input types and the icon field can be any font awesome icon.

If the scope needs to be validated, both the validation code and validation error messaged need to be provided. The validation works by using the Node.js vm.runInNewContext() method. The context object provided is of TypeScript type IScopeValidatorContext and contains these fields:

{
	name, 	// Name of user
	email, 	// Email of user
	scope, 	// Name of scope
	type, 	// Input type of scope
	value 	// The value the user provides
}

An example validator that can be used for a phone number is (/^\(?(\d){3}\)? ?(\d){3}-?(\d){4}$/).test(value).

Ground Truth follows standard OAuth 2 protocol.

Here are the URLs Ground Truth uses for authentication:

• Authorization URL: /oauth/authorize
• Token URL: /oauth/token See the API Reference below for more information.

After authorization, use the /api/user endpoint via GET to access user data. Authentication is done with a bearer token using the access token. The API will return a JSON with these fields of the user:

{
	uuid,			// UUID
	name,			// Formatted full name
	nameParts: {
		first,		// First name
		preferred,	// Preferred name (if provided)
		last		// Last name
	},
	admin,			// Boolean value if user is admin
	member,			// Boolean value if user is member
	email,			// Email
	scopes			// Object of scope data
}

Endpoint to start OAuth flow

Exchanges an authorization code for an access token