Tokens from classic OAuth App stop working after 8 hours

[ddeboer]

🏷️ Discussion Type

Bug

💬 Feature/Topic Area

Apps

Body

User tokens issued by our organization’s OAuth App stop working about 8 hours after they are issued. Every API call with the token then returns 401 Bad credentials. It’s a classic OAuth App, not a GitHub App, used by the Mattermost GitHub plugin, with one connected user.

Issued (UTC)	First 401 (UTC)
13 Oct 07:29:36	13 Oct 15:30:11
14 Oct 07:58:04	14 Oct 16:15:51
15 Oct 06:20:15	15 Oct 14:31:47
16 Oct 08:33:43	16 Oct 16:35:11

The app’s settings have no token expiration option. Nobody revoked the tokens: the user’s security log shows no oauth_authorization.destroy, password change or 2FA change. It does show an oauth_access.regenerate by “GitHub System” within a second of each oauth_access.create. The same happens for an unrelated integration (Copilot), so we assume that is routine.

Eight hours is the lifetime of expiring user tokens for GitHub Apps, so we suspect that expiry now also applies to classic OAuth Apps.

Our questions:

1. Do tokens from classic OAuth Apps now expire after 8 hours? If so, can we turn that off for an app?
2. If they are meant to expire, does the token response include a refresh_token we should use?
3. Is the oauth_access.regenerate right after each oauth_access.create expected, and could it be what invalidates the token?

We also reported this to the Mattermost plugin: mattermost/mattermost-plugin-github#1069

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[jamalkamaladdin]

Check for offline_access in authorization requests; it enables eight-hour OAuth tokens without app-wide opt-in.
OAuth tokens are long-lived by default; app-wide expiration lives under Optional features.
Expiring responses include expires_in and refresh_token; use refresh tokens to renew access.
OAuth expiration docs

[kevinjosh10]

Hi @community! GitHub OAuth Apps configured with Token expiration issue user access tokens valid for 8 hours with an accompanying refresh_token.

---

Fix: Implement Token Refresh

When the token expires after 8 hours, use the refresh token to request a new access token:

POST https://github.com/login/oauth/access_token
  client_id: YOUR_CLIENT_ID
  client_secret: YOUR_CLIENT_SECRET
  grant_type: refresh_token
  refresh_token: YOUR_REFRESH_TOKEN

This issues a fresh 8-hour access token and rotated refresh token.