frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Made with ♥ by @iamnishanth

Open Source @Github

fp.

Open in hackernews

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

2•zwnow•11mo 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•11mo 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•11mo 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•11mo 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•11mo 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/

How to Design a Memory System for Agents

https://www.okbrain.org/blog/how-to-design-memory-system-for-agents/
1•arunoda•47s ago•0 comments

Three Kinds of Not-Knowing

https://philippdubach.com/posts/three-kinds-of-not-knowing/
1•7777777phil•1m ago•0 comments

Preventing accidental NPM leaks by reviewing the final artifact

https://github.com/divohna/PackAttest
1•packattest•2m ago•1 comments

RFC 9396: OAuth 2.0 Rich Authorization Requests

https://ciamweekly.substack.com/p/rfc-9396-oauth-20-rich-authorization
1•mooreds•4m ago•0 comments

The electric fast-track for emerging markets

https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/the-electric-fast-track-for-emerging-markets/
1•mooreds•4m ago•0 comments

The Hollow Web

https://page.love/blog/01-the-hollow-web.html
1•mooreds•5m ago•0 comments

MMW: There will be a violent backlash against the weird push for digital ID laws

https://old.reddit.com/r/MarkMyWords/comments/1scjmjs/mmw_there_will_be_a_violent_backlash_agains...
1•mostcallmeyt•6m ago•0 comments

Data Anomalies in Search Console

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6211453?hl=en
1•taubek•6m ago•0 comments

Understand business logic in your code with diagram

https://www.biral.io/
1•dipikasgp•7m ago•1 comments

The People Who Shun Super-Popular Pop Culture

https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/2026/03/pop-culture-hype-aversion/686312/
1•fortran77•7m ago•1 comments

Drivers May Soon Pay Taxes Based on How Much Their Car Weighs

https://www.autoblog.com/news/drivers-may-soon-pay-taxes-based-on-how-much-their-car-weighs
1•zzzeek•8m ago•1 comments

Starving Genies, from Kent Beck

https://tidyfirst.substack.com/p/starving-genies
1•reg_dunlop•12m ago•0 comments

AI facial analysis that runs in the browser (no uploads, 17 metrics)

https://realsmile.online
1•realsmile•13m ago•0 comments

Use Keycloak to Log into Google Workspace via SAML SSO (2024)

https://medium.com/@MszPro/use-keycloak-to-log-into-google-workspace-keycloak-25-saml-sso-a9b9923...
1•walterbell•14m ago•1 comments

Show HN: Cabinet – Kb+LLM (Like Paperclip+Obsidian)

https://runcabinet.com
7•Hilash•16m ago•6 comments

Myth of the AI Oracle

https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/myth-of-the-ai-oracle
1•GiraffeNecktie•17m ago•0 comments

Consent, Intent, and Privacy in macOS

https://eclecticlight.co/2026/04/05/last-week-on-my-mac-consent-intent-and-privacy/
1•chmaynard•18m ago•0 comments

Google Fitbit is working on a screenless fitness band, to compete with Whoop

https://www.neowin.net/news/google-apparently-working-on-a-screenless-fitness-band-to-compete-wit...
1•bundie•18m ago•0 comments

Great Plains Shelterbelt

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Plains_Shelterbelt
1•xbryanx•19m ago•0 comments

Font Generator Free – 30 Unicode Font Styles for Social Media

https://fontgeneratorfree.online/
1•billyhe•20m ago•1 comments

Show HN: Crabby – Claude Code skill that reviews code like the Rust compiler

1•ekadet•20m ago•0 comments

A brain scan before a prescription? Geneva's bet on precision psychiatry

https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/ai-and-medicine/a-brain-scan-before-a-prescription-genevas-bet-on-pr...
2•giuliomagnifico•24m ago•0 comments

CVE-1999-1218 – Amiga Unix allows access to files using finger

https://exchange.xforce.ibmcloud.com/vulnerabilities/522
1•TMWNN•25m ago•0 comments

Why make Claude talk like Rocky, question?

https://github.com/Tom1827/claude-rocky-skill
1•mft_•27m ago•0 comments

Revised: 6-Gate AI Pipeline for RSpec-to-Minitest Migration

https://augmentedcode.dev/multi-agent-pipeline-minitest-migration/
1•viktorianer•29m ago•0 comments

Almost half of Gen Z women want to be Trad wives

https://edubirdie.com/blog/gen-z-women-are-done-chasing-girlboss-ranking-their-dream-lives
3•DivingForGold•34m ago•2 comments

Show HN: AI-agent instructions to restore Claude Pro/Max in OpenCode

https://github.com/jcubic/opencode-claude-plan
1•jcubic•35m ago•0 comments

Why domain specific LLMs won't exist: an intuition

https://simianwords.bearblog.dev/why-domain-specific-llms-wont-exist-an-intuition/
2•simianwords•36m ago•1 comments

Iguanaworks has closed down. USB Infrared hardware open source maker

http://iguanaworks.net/products/usb-ir-transceiver.html
14•ripe•38m ago•0 comments

Someone at BrowserStack Is Leaking Users' Email Address

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2026/04/someone-at-browserstack-is-leaking-users-email-address/
26•m_km•41m ago•5 comments