frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Open Source @Github

fp.

Open in hackernews

Ask HN: Why is web auth not a solved issue?

2•zwnow•1y ago
Personally, every project I start, I quit due to not being comfortable with the auth implementation.

I've been into web development for 4 years now. During my research regarding auth in this timeframe, I have found a million reasons on why I should not roll it myself. The reason is always it being to difficult to implement, too much responsibility and basically no matter how I'd do it, it would be unsafe.

The general consensus among web developers seems to be to just let a third party do it. And I understand the reasoning, they are experts and have decades of experience on that specific thing. It makes sense as long as you're fine with third party service dependencies for your application. However, I don't want that. I do not feel comfortable submitting my users data to tech giants for obvious reasons.

I am wondering why it's so difficult to implement secure auth? Why can frameworks like Laravel or Phoenix just generate auth solutions? Why should I trust them, if everyone is saying I shouldn't roll it myself?

After all, if Laravels or Phoenix generated auth isn't safe, I am the one taking responsibility anyway, no?

To my understanding web auth has been an issue for decades now, why aren't there protocols in place to solve it? Or if they are, why aren't they talked about a lot?

Considering how often I read about auth breaches with the big players in the game (Firebase as an example) I am not comfortable trusting third parties with that task either.

So how is one supposed to do it? There are so many JWT tutorials on youtube, but apparently JWTs aren't safe either. Then there are session cookies, which also aren't safe? Why is that?

I am also not talking about authorization. I specifically mean authentication. If I wanted a micro blog platform where users can log into their accounts and write about stuff, how would I make sure it's secure without having to trust third parties, especially big tech companies who repeatedly prove they cant be trusted over and over again?

Comments

arrowsmith•1y ago
> if Laravels or Phoenix generated auth isn't safe

What makes you think they're not safe? Zillions of successful apps have been built using Laravel and Phoenix and (afaik) no-one has hacked their auth code yet. The code is open-source for anyone to inspect for vulnerabilities. I wouldn't feel unsafe using them.

You seem to misunderstand what it means to "roll your own auth".

"Don't roll your own auth" doesn't mean "use a third-party auth provider". It means "use an existing, expert-made auth solution and don't try to write it yourself."

That can be a third-party provider like Firebase, it can be a code dependency like Rails's Devise, it can be generated by `phx.gen.auth` in Phoenix, it doesn't matter - the point is that you're using a tried-and-tested auth solution written by someone who knows what they're doing.

Writing your own auth code is generally a bad idea because it's complicated, time-consuming and easy to get wrong. But there are zillions of off-the-shelf solutions you can use that have been created by security experts and battle-tested in thousands of production apps. As far as I'm concerned, web auth is a solved problem.

zwnow•1y ago
Interesting. When I generate auth for Phoenix the API endpoints are not piped through any security pipes. Only the browser endpoints. Why wouldn't I secure my API endpoints? The same kind of requests that are made for browser requests are sent to the API routes, so this is really confusing.
arrowsmith•1y ago
Ah yes. `phx.gen.auth` generates a cookie-based auth system, which is fine for the :browser pipeline but it's not generally what you want for a JSON API.

The Phoenix docs include a suggestion for how you can extend `phx.gen.auth` to add token-based authentication to your API: https://hexdocs.pm/phoenix/api_authentication.html

(No, this isn't "rolling your own auth" either, it's using someone else's pre-written auth code.)

johncoltrane•1y ago
> The general consensus among web developers seems to be to just let a third party do it.

Outside of personal projects, third-party auth providers must be audited (think GDPR or PIPL), budget must be allowed, contracts signed, etc. so web developers rarely, if ever, have their say on the matter. The decision is taken long before anyone wrote a single line of code. From a project management perspective, it's an easy trade-off to make: one sprint for integrating Okta versus who knows how many for badly implementing something that requires a level of expertise that no one on the team has reached.

For personal projects, the trade-off is a bit different. Resources are scarce so, even if implementing auth is actually not very complicated(1) and can even be quite fun, there are probably more immediately interesting things to do. So you integrate a third-party solution in a wednesday night and you move on.

[1] https://thecopenhagenbook.com/

Can escalation channels redirect reward hacking toward defect disclosure?

https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.29460
1•sbulaev•39s ago•0 comments

I am shocked, shocked to learn that this 2002 paper by Dan Ariely is

https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2026/08/31/shocked/
1•oldgradstudent•1m ago•0 comments

Serving Markdown to LLMs with Accept headers

https://www.stormkit.io/blog/serve-markdown-to-llms-content-negotiation
1•svedova•2m ago•0 comments

Website accessibility certification: facade, charade, or just virtue signaling?

https://replyresearch.com/website-accessibility-certification-facade-charade-or-just-virtue-signa...
1•replyresearch•3m ago•0 comments

New Zero-Cal Sugar Is 3500 Times Sweeter Than Sucrose, but Doesn't Spike Insulin

https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/1w48tv1/this_new_zerocal_sugar_is_3500_times_sweeter_than/
1•theanonymousone•4m ago•0 comments

Show HN: I wrote a small CLI to inspect and remove Cursor chat sessions

https://github.com/vilaca/cursor-chat-cleaner
1•vilaca•4m ago•0 comments

The Cybersecurity Apocalypse Is Coming in 'Months,' AI Giants Warn

https://www.wired.com/story/security-news-this-week-the-cybersecurity-apocalypse-is-coming-in-mon...
1•voxleone•4m ago•0 comments

Show HN: CalPrep – AI calendar agent with human-in-the-loop confirmation

https://calprep.app/
1•petritavd•4m ago•0 comments

What the Panopticon Cannot See

https://www.metanoia-research.com/essay-001-on-what-the-panopticon-cannot-see/
1•metanoia_•4m ago•0 comments

Java's String.indexOf can be slow (quadratic)

https://lemire.me/blog/2026/08/22/javas-string-indexof-can-be-slow-quadratic/
1•surprisetalk•5m ago•0 comments

Editbar – open-source inline text editor for any website, no CMS

https://editbar.online/
1•jindrabe•5m ago•1 comments

Things to try to improve your brain health

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2026/08/31/3-things-try-improve-your-brain-health/
1•elo2000•5m ago•0 comments

Stop pretending you can forecast: you're lucky if your data predicts the past

https://aiku.io/blog/stop-pretending-you-are-forecasting
1•xboro•6m ago•0 comments

Hermes, Claude Code, and Codex ran an identical model. Token use varied 70-fold

https://thenewstack.io/agent-harness-token-costs/
2•sunilkumardash9•6m ago•0 comments

Building textlog without JavaScript

https://textlog.cc/blog/building-textlog-without-javascript
1•stagas•7m ago•0 comments

Debezium loses LSN position during PostgreSQL failover and what to do about it

https://shiftmag.dev/how-to-survive-database-failover-debezium-and-postgresql-in-production-11676/
3•leachh•7m ago•0 comments

Temporal Analysis of NetFlow Datasets for Network Intrusion Detection Systems

https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.04404
1•ENOMEM•8m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Brilliant – your agent's favorite canvas

https://brilliant.design/
1•amantinband•11m ago•1 comments

Hotaru – Single dot in your macOS menu bar showing CLI coding agents status

https://github.com/ajwadjaved/hotaru
1•ajwd•13m ago•1 comments

California Lawmakers Greenlight Solar Panels You Can Plug into the Wall

https://www.kqed.org/science/2001842/california-lawmakers-greenlight-solar-panels-you-can-plug-in...
1•pseudolus•17m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: Is anyone else preparing for the EU Cyber Resilience Act?

2•dirkk0•18m ago•0 comments

Noodling on Nuclear Engines

https://spectrum.ieee.org/bimodal-nuclear-engine
1•pseudolus•18m ago•0 comments

Some Cities Reward Careful Drivers with Fewer Red Lights

https://apnews.com/article/rest-red-reward-drivers-portland-albuquerque-bcec5e0fe91dcaaaeb8f60e86...
1•apwheele•18m ago•0 comments

Trump tells FCC to punish journalist for calling his election results "mixed"

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/08/trump-tells-fcc-to-punish-journalist-for-calling-his-...
1•throw0101a•19m ago•0 comments

How Harnesses Implement Skills and MCPs

https://blog.lawrencejones.dev/demystifying-skills-and-mcps/
1•lawrjone•19m ago•1 comments

Omarchy and My Security Sweet Spot

https://blog.fidelramos.net/software/omarchy-security-sweet-spot
2•fidelramos•20m ago•0 comments

The AI-Native SDLC Starts with Your Infrastructure

https://metalbear.com/blog/ai-native-sdlc-infrastructure/
1•eyalbukchin•23m ago•0 comments

Forget the Pelican, It's Weevil-Time Benchmaxxing-Proof SVG and Vision Test

https://www.reddit.com/r/LocalLLaMA/comments/1vyw1wo/forget_the_pelican_its_weeviltime/
1•stared•24m ago•0 comments

Why Syracuse Can't Attract the Students It Needs to Pay the Bills

https://www.wsj.com/us-news/education/syracuse-student-application-enrollment-crisis-budget-ff142896
1•mooreds•24m ago•1 comments

Building Sierra's MCP Gateway: An engineering iceberg

https://sierra.ai/blog/building-sierras-mcp-gateway-an-engineering-iceberg
2•mooreds•25m ago•0 comments