---
title: "Authentication"
description: "232 posts about Authentication, summarised, each linking to the original."
---

# Authentication
> 232 posts about Authentication, summarised, each linking to the original.

## Articles

### [Flexible Authentication: Reimagining authentication for millions of users at Airbnb](https://yomu.fyi/post/flexible-authentication-reimagining-authentication-for-millions-of-use.md)
- Company: [Airbnb](https://yomu.fyi/company/airbnb.md)
- Author: Jose Santos
- Published: Aug 12, 2026

Airbnb overhauled its login and registration architecture by transitioning to a server-driven framework called Flexible Authentication. The new system separates user identification from verification, using a backend policy engine to dynamically serve the optimal auth challenge and fallback options based on regional and user context. This shift eliminated dead ends, reduced client bundle sizes, and dramatically sped up experimentation velocity across Web, iOS, and Android.


### [Building an open Agentic Internet: readable, discoverable, callable, and payable](https://yomu.fyi/post/building-an-open-agentic-internet-readable-discoverable-callable-and-p.md)
- Company: [Cloudflare](https://yomu.fyi/company/cloudflare.md)
- Author: Jack Galilee
- Published: Aug 6, 2026
- Type: Announcement

The modern web produces billions of bot requests that repeatedly fetch unchanged pages, highlighting an architecture fundamentally misaligned with automated visitors acting on behalf of paying users. Cloudflare outlines an open Agentic Internet structured around four foundational capabilities: readability, discoverability, callability, and payability. Identity and access rely on open specifications such as Web Bot Auth and Private Access Control Tokens, while Markdown for Agents and the Kitesurf browser reduce token overhead and context window bloat. For execution and monetization, WebMCP exposes structured tools directly through the browser, and protocols like x402 paired with Monetization Gateway enable per-fetch transactions. These open standards allow domain owners to define tool contracts, verify bot identities, and monetize agent traffic without relying on legacy advertising models.


### [Four Ways to Deploy More Secure AI Agents](https://yomu.fyi/post/four-ways-to-deploy-more-secure-ai-agents.md)
- Company: [NVIDIA](https://yomu.fyi/company/nvidia-developer-blog.md)
- Author: Michelle Horton
- Published: Jul 30, 2026
- Type: Problem & solution

Connecting large language models to live tools and enterprise systems introduces severe security vulnerabilities across multiple deployment harnesses. Over six months of evaluations, the NVIDIA AI Red Team identified recurring failures in AI agents, including missing access controls, arbitrary code execution via shell or file-write tools, unrestricted network egress, and exposed plaintext credentials. Mitigations operating in the same control plane as the model, such as system prompts or LLM-as-a-judge review agents, consistently fail against adversarial manipulation. Securing agentic deployments instead requires deterministic, architectural controls enforced outside the model control plane. Effective defenses include authenticating users, isolating command execution inside hardened sandboxes, blocking network egress by default, and delivering ephemeral secrets via external managers.


### [Sign in with ChatGPT is in beta on Supabase](https://yomu.fyi/post/sign-in-with-chatgpt-is-in-beta-on-supabase.md)
- Company: [Supabase](https://yomu.fyi/company/supabase.md)
- Author: cemal\_kilic, gregor\_vand
- Published: Jul 29, 2026
- Type: Announcement

Supabase is rolling out Sign in with ChatGPT in beta on its login page and through the Supabase plugin in ChatGPT on desktop, web, and mobile. The flow lets new users create a Supabase account with their ChatGPT identity, while existing Supabase accounts with the same email are linked automatically; SSO accounts remain separate. Users can add Supabase from ChatGPT’s plugins directory, authenticate with ChatGPT, review a consent screen, and return to the conversation with the connection enabled. Authentication and plugin authorization remain separate, with access revocable from the Supabase Dashboard, and users must create an organization in the Dashboard before creating projects from ChatGPT. The beta is described as a partnership with OpenAI intended to reduce account setup between ChatGPT or Codex and a Supabase backend.


### [Coding Agent Horror Stories: The 29 Million Secret Problem](https://yomu.fyi/post/coding-agent-horror-stories-the-29-million-secret-problem.md)
- Company: [Docker](https://yomu.fyi/company/docker.md)
- Author: Jennifer Kohl
- Published: Jul 28, 2026
- Type: Problem & solution

Compromised versions of the Nx npm package, dubbed the s1ngularity campaign, used a post-install hook to repurpose installed AI coding agents as credential scanners. Because AI command-line interfaces often run with the developer's full user permissions, the malware invoked tools such as Claude Code, Gemini CLI, and Amazon Q with permission-bypass flags to map sensitive files. GitGuardian findings indicate that AI-assisted code leaks secrets at roughly twice the baseline rate, largely because models ingest live credentials into working contexts. Docker Sandboxes addresses this risk by restricting the execution environment to the project workspace and keeping actual credentials on the host. When sandboxed with sbx, agents receive sentinel placeholders, while an egress proxy injects real secrets into outgoing network requests.


### [Build a Flask App with Okta for Secure OIDC Login and Authorized API Calls](https://yomu.fyi/post/build-a-flask-app-with-okta-for-secure-oidc-login-and-authorized-api-c.md)
- Company: [Okta](https://yomu.fyi/company/okta.md)
- Author: Akanksha Bhasin
- Published: Jul 28, 2026
- Type: Tutorial

Flask web applications require dedicated mechanisms to authenticate users securely and authorize access to downstream services. Developers can address this by integrating Okta as an OpenID Connect identity provider using the Authlib library. Authlib registers Okta as a remote provider and automates the Authorization Code flow using Proof Key for Code Exchange with SHA-256 code challenge verification. After logging in through Okta and completing the callback route, the Flask web application uses the acquired OAuth 2.0 access token to query a protected backend resource server. This architecture ensures that user credentials remain managed by Okta while client requests to backend API endpoints carry valid, scoped authorization tokens.


### [Securing Infrastructure at Scale: Introducing Pinterest’s Resource Provisioner Pipeline (RPP)](https://yomu.fyi/post/securing-infrastructure-at-scale-introducing-pinterest-s-resource-prov.md)
- Company: [Pinterest](https://yomu.fyi/company/pinterest.md)
- Author: Pinterest Engineering
- Published: Jul 22, 2026
- Type: Problem & solution

Managing Infrastructure as Code across distributed repositories presents significant security and operational challenges. Pinterest developed the Resource Provisioner Pipeline (RPP), a proprietary Terraform execution engine, to securely deploy and manage AWS infrastructure across hundreds of workspaces. The pipeline utilizes centralized GitHub composite actions triggered by pull request events and enforces dual human approvals. To maintain least privilege, RPP uses GitHub OpenID Connect authentication to assume a central identity before validating repository paths and down-scoping to specific team execution roles. Automated checks include backend state validation, linting, plan generation, Semgrep static analysis, and optional LocalStack testing before deliberate comment-driven deployments execute.


### [Enable Your SAML Requesting App for Cross App Access](https://yomu.fyi/post/enable-your-saml-requesting-app-for-cross-app-access.md)
- Company: [Okta](https://yomu.fyi/company/okta.md)
- Author: Alisa Duncan
- Published: Jul 17, 2026
- Type: Tutorial

Cross App Access allows enterprise applications federated with Security Assertion Markup Language to interact with third-party resource APIs without migrating to OpenID Connect. The flow adapts the Identity Assertion Authorization Grant specification to SAML by adding three token exchange steps following the standard single sign-on handshake. First, the application exchanges the validated SAML assertion for an OAuth refresh token using Okta's token endpoint and a private key JSON Web Token. The application then uses the refresh token to request a short-lived Identity Assertion Authorization Grant token from Okta. Finally, the application presents the Identity Assertion Authorization Grant token to the third-party authorization server to obtain an OAuth access token.


### [The New DMARC is Here](https://yomu.fyi/post/the-new-dmarc-is-here.md)
- Company: [Resend](https://yomu.fyi/company/resend.md)
- Published: Jul 17, 2026
- Type: Explainer

DMARCbis is finalized as three Standards Track RFCs: RFC 9989 for the core protocol, RFC 9990 for aggregate reporting, and RFC 9991 for failure reporting. Existing DMARC records continue working as before, so most senders do not need immediate changes. The largest behavioral update replaces Public Suffix List lookups with an algorithmic DNS Tree Walk, in which receivers query \_dmarc records up the DNS hierarchy; the psd tag can declare hierarchy boundaries. The pct tag is replaced by boolean t, while np can specify a policy for non-existent subdomains, including np=reject. Reporting knobs rf and ri are removed, but rua and ruf remain available; senders using fractional pct should use a none-to-quarantine-to-reject rollout, keep reading reports, and avoid rushing to reject.


### [Build a Secure C# MCP App with Cross App Access (XAA)](https://yomu.fyi/post/build-a-secure-c-mcp-app-with-cross-app-access-xaa.md)
- Company: [Okta](https://yomu.fyi/company/okta.md)
- Author: Aasawari Sahasrabuddhe
- Published: Jul 16, 2026
- Type: Tutorial

Cross App Access (XAA) addresses the gap between a user’s authenticated identity and a downstream MCP server, API, or agent tool that must trust that identity without another login. The described flow uses OIDC and PKCE for sign-in, then RFC 8693 token exchange to turn the ID token into a JWT Authorization Grant (JAG), followed by RFC 7523 exchange at the MCP authorization server for a scoped bearer token. A C# MCP SDK IdentityAssertionGrantProvider encapsulates both exchanges, while ASP.NET Core OIDC middleware persists the ID token and an HTTP transport presents the resulting token to the MCP server. The sample connects to a Todo resource through the xaa.dev playground, completes MCP initialization, lists resources, and reads todo0://todos; the article states that the end-to-end implementation fits in under 50 lines of C#.


### [From Day 1 to Production: Building Lyft’s Analytics & Rides Intelligence Assistant as Onboarding…](https://yomu.fyi/post/from-day-1-to-production-building-lyft-s-analytics-rides-intelligence.md)
- Company: [Lyft](https://yomu.fyi/company/lyft.md)
- Author: Sagarbaronia
- Published: Jul 9, 2026
- Type: Problem & solution

Lyft developed Aria, an AI-powered assistant allowing approved employees to query ride analytics via natural language through a backend with LangGraph orchestration and SQL generation. However, Aria's user interface was limited to a Streamlit prototype that lacked standard service framework integration, Lyft authentication, and multi-user scalability. To resolve these limitations, a new engineer built a production-grade web client from scratch using Lyft's internal Node.js framework and Next.js as a three-week onboarding assignment. The implementation involved configuring Envoy routing, resolving authentication plugin incompatibilities, debugging service connectivity with Grafana, and managing interface state with an XState state machine. Aria was successfully hardened and launched into production, expanding natural language analytics access across the company.


### [Introducing Okta Journeys: A Better Way for Developers to Learn Identity](https://yomu.fyi/post/introducing-okta-journeys-a-better-way-for-developers-to-learn-identit.md)
- Company: [Okta](https://yomu.fyi/company/okta.md)
- Author: Dan Maharry
- Published: Jul 7, 2026
- Type: Announcement

Okta has introduced Journeys, a task-oriented documentation format designed to streamline how developers learn and implement identity management. Rather than requiring engineers to manually assemble information across disparate guides, articles, and API references, each Journey provides an end-to-end curriculum for a specific project. Content is organized into three distinct phases: foundational knowledge in Learn, architectural decision-making in Plan, and curated implementation steps in Build. The initial release includes six Journeys aimed at Okta Customer Identity builders who are implementing authentication, registration, branding, and user management. Future additions will address AI agent governance, integrations for the Okta Integration Network, and migrations from the Classic Engine to the Okta Identity Engine.


### [Enabling Cross App Access for SAML-Based Resource Apps](https://yomu.fyi/post/enabling-cross-app-access-for-saml-based-resource-apps.md)
- Company: [Okta](https://yomu.fyi/company/okta.md)
- Author: Updating authorization server metadata
- Published: Jul 3, 2026
- Type: Tutorial

Cross App Access (XAA) lets applications using existing SAML federation obtain API access without migrating to OpenID Connect (OIDC). An agent presents a short-lived Identity Assertion Authorization Grant (ID-JAG), which the resource authorization server validates, resolves to a user, and exchanges for its own access token; SAML processing remains upstream. For SAML identity resolution, implementations must validate the saml-nameid sub\_id and match issuer, NameID, and sp\_name\_qualifier rather than relying on NameID alone. The guide recommends binding iss to a registered SAML connection before verifying the JWT against that connection’s JWKS, then checking typ, aud, and client\_id and applying local scope policy. It also walks through Okta configuration and xaa.dev checks that redeem the ID-JAG, call the API, and export conformance results.


### [Securing Heroku CLI Credentials with System Keychain Storage](https://yomu.fyi/post/securing-heroku-cli-credentials-with-system-keychain-storage.md)
- Company: [Heroku](https://yomu.fyi/company/heroku.md)
- Author: Katy Bowman
- Published: Jul 1, 2026
- Type: Announcement

Heroku CLI 11.8.0 changes credential storage by making the system keychain the default and retaining .netrc as a fallback. The transition began in 11.6.0, when the CLI stored tokens in both locations to preserve existing workflows. The credential manager uses macOS security, Linux Secret Service through secret-tool, or Windows PasswordVault, storing credentials under “heroku-cli” with the account email as the identifier. Authentication lookup prioritizes HEROKU\_API\_KEY, then HEROKU\_NETRC\_WRITE, keychain storage, and .netrc files; unsupported or failing keychain access falls back to .netrc. Version 11.8.0 also adds a Git credential helper, so commands such as git push heroku main continue without configuration changes, while CI/CD can keep using HEROKU\_API\_KEY and Linux users may need secret-tool.


### [How to Govern Autonomous Agents in Enterprise AI Factories](https://yomu.fyi/post/how-to-govern-autonomous-agents-in-enterprise-ai-factories.md)
- Company: [NVIDIA](https://yomu.fyi/company/nvidia-developer-blog.md)
- Author: Michelle Horton
- Published: Jun 29, 2026
- Type: Problem & solution

Autonomous AI agents require governed environments to safely inspect code, execute tests, query enterprise systems, and handle sensitive business data. The NVIDIA Secure Agent Workspace Reference Design shifts agent execution away from user laptops to dedicated, single-user virtual machines managed on Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization or Microsoft Azure. Perimeter defenses enforce enterprise single sign-on access broker connections, default-deny network egress rules, and human approval gates for critical state-changing actions. Inside the workspace virtual machine, active sandboxing through NVIDIA OpenShell evaluates signed security policies before each tool invocation while credential proxies prevent direct access to raw secrets. GitOps workflows continuously reconcile infrastructure profiles and network configurations while all operational and security telemetry streams to centralized SIEM platforms in OCSF format.


### [How Verifiable Digital Credentials Are Reshaping Trust Architecture](https://yomu.fyi/post/how-verifiable-digital-credentials-are-reshaping-trust-architecture.md)
- Company: [Okta](https://yomu.fyi/company/okta.md)
- Author: Akanksha Bhasin
- Published: Jun 29, 2026
- Type: Explainer

Verifiable Digital Credentials (VDCs) are presented as a new trust layer for applications that need to verify claims such as age, licenses, employment, or eligibility without collecting documents and excess PII. The model uses an Issuer-Holder-Verifier trust triangle: authorities sign credentials, users hold them in wallets, and applications request specific proofs, with selective disclosure limiting exposed data. The standards stack combines SD-JWT VC or mdoc credential formats, OpenID4VCI for issuance, OpenID4VP for presentation, and the W3C Digital Credentials API for browser-wallet invocation. Production verification also requires issuer trust lists, trust-framework integration, and key rotation, not merely signature checks. Because browser API rollout is still progressing, the recommended baseline is redirect-based OpenID4VP with the Digital Credentials API added as a progressive enhancement, starting with one bounded verification use case.


### [Palana (Part 2): Architecting isolation, identity, and auditability for AI agents](https://yomu.fyi/post/palana-part-2-architecting-isolation-identity-and-auditability-for-ai.md)
- Company: [Grab](https://yomu.fyi/company/grab.md)
- Author: Kevin Littlejohn
- Published: Jun 21, 2026
- Type: Explainer

Palana is Grab’s Kubernetes-native secure execution platform for autonomous AI agents, designed to provide isolated, attributable, and auditable environments. It provisions per-agent namespaces, service accounts, EFS-backed storage, ingress, policies, and proxy-mediated egress, while admission webhooks inject proxy settings and enforce pod restrictions. Human identity remains authoritative for RBAC, while sanitized identifiers are reserved for object names and Vault paths; secrets are split between agent-readable values and proxy-only credentials, and the LLM wrapper derives agent identity from Kubernetes context. Layer 3/4 controls provide containment, Layer 7 OPA-backed proxy policies govern host and method access, and structured signals support audit and idle shutdown that preserves /data and platform state. The production lessons emphasize platform-level controls, a safe self-service path, namespace boundaries, proxy-mediated authentication, and lifecycle management as prerequisites for useful autonomy.


### [Payment Fraud Detection: How Banks and Businesses Stop Fraudulent Transactions](https://yomu.fyi/post/payment-fraud-detection-how-banks-and-businesses-stop-fraudulent-trans.md)
- Company: [Databricks](https://yomu.fyi/company/databricks.md)
- Author: Databricks Staff
- Published: Jun 17, 2026
- Type: Explainer

Payment fraud detection is presented as a real-time practice for identifying and blocking unauthorized transactions amid evolving card-not-present, account takeover, authorised push payment, friendly, and card-testing attacks. Modern systems combine predefined rules, machine learning, behavioral analytics, device fingerprints, geolocation, transaction history, and velocity signals to calculate risk scores within milliseconds, declining or routing high-risk payments to review. Rules are fast and interpretable but require continual tuning, while machine-learning and behavioral models can identify complex or user-specific patterns that static thresholds miss. The source also emphasizes prevention controls such as MFA, tokenization, 3D Secure, and device binding, alongside unified real-time data infrastructure that supports cross-channel signals, continuous retraining, and deployment into payment authorization flows.


### [AI agents are a confused deputy with the keys to your kingdom](https://yomu.fyi/post/ai-agents-are-a-confused-deputy-with-the-keys-to-your-kingdom.md)
- Company: [Stack Overflow](https://yomu.fyi/company/stack-overflow.md)
- Author: Fabio Salvadori
- Published: Jun 17, 2026
- Type: Problem & solution

Attackers recently compromised over twenty thousand Instagram accounts by manipulating Meta's AI support assistant to rebind recovery email addresses without verifying account ownership. This incident illustrates the classic confused deputy security problem, where a privileged process is persuaded by an unprivileged user to perform unauthorized operations. Because large language model interfaces operate purely on natural language and cannot distinguish instructions from data, the model itself cannot serve as an authorization boundary. Securing AI agents requires verifying caller identity through external policy checks against authenticated sessions rather than relying on chat context or prompt engineering. Teams must enforce least privilege with short-lived scoped credentials, place irreversible actions behind hard policy gates or human approvals, and maintain audit trails of agent actions.


### [Enhance Security and Trust: New Session Metadata in Sign in with Google](https://yomu.fyi/post/enhance-security-and-trust-new-session-metadata-in-sign-in-with-google.md)
- Company: [Google](https://yomu.fyi/company/google.md)
- Author: Sergei Akulich, Brian Daugherty
- Published: Jun 16, 2026
- Type: Announcement

Sign in with Google now provides verified applications with two OpenID Connect session metadata claims, auth\_time and amr, in ID tokens. auth\_time records the last successful Google authentication time, distinguishing session freshness from token issuance, while amr is a JSON array identifying authentication methods such as pwd, mfa, hwk, swk, tel, and sms. The claims are available across Android, iOS, and web client and server applications, and can support audit logging, step-up authentication based on session age, and authorization rules requiring stronger methods for sensitive operations. Verified applications request them through the standard OIDC claims parameter without significantly changing an existing Sign in with Google authentication flow.


[Newer posts](https://yomu.fyi/topic/authentication/page/3.md) · [Older posts](https://yomu.fyi/topic/authentication/page/5.md)