Tag: authentication

Categories
Artificial Intelligence What I’m Up To

Could ChatGPT do my job?

It’s been just over five weeks since the launch of ChatGPT (it happened on November 30, 2022). Since then, from casual conversations over the holidays to New York Times think pieces, people have been asking if ChatGPT could do their jobs.

Auth0 logo
Want to know how I landed my job at Auth0? I wrote about it back in 2020.

In case you’re wondering, I’m a Senior Developer Advocate at Okta for the Auth0 product. If that sounds confusing, it’s because Okta acquired Auth0 in May 2021, and while we’re one company, that company has two products named “Okta” and “Auth0”. It’s my job to show mobile developers how they can use the Auth0 product to authenticate and authorize users.

In the video above, I “had a conversation” with ChatGPT where I asked it some basic questions about OAuth2, OIDC, and Auth0, and it answered them correctly. However, when it got to questions about writing iOS and Android apps that used Auth0 for login, it got some details wrong — and in programming, it’s the details that get you. Watch the video to find out what happened!

Categories
Mobile Programming Video What I’m Up To

How to add Auth0 authentication to a SwiftUI app

Joey deVilla in his home office, holding an “Einstein” rubber duck up to the camera.
C’mon, how many programming tutorial videos have a scene like this?

If you’re making an iOS app, the odds are pretty good that sooner or later, you’re going to have to integrate authentication — login and logout — into it. I show you how to do that with Auth0 in both a video…

…as well as a matching two-part article series that walks you through the process:

Both the video and article present how the final app will look and work:

Tap to view at full size.

And then they’ll get you started with a starter project:

Joey deVilla appears in the corner of the screen showing the starter project of Auth0’s iOS/SwiftUI authentication video.
Tap to view at full size.

I’ll walk you through the processes of getting Auth0 set up to recognize your app and creating a user with which to log in:

Joey deVilla appears in the corner of the screen showing the Auth0 dashboard in Auth0’s iOS/SwiftUI authentication video.
Tap to view at full size.

And then, I’ll show you how to add login and logout to the project’s app:

Joey deVilla appears in the corner of the screen, while adding login and logout to the starter project of Auth0’s iOS/SwiftUI authentication video.
Tap to view at full size.

And along the way, I’ll provide a brief intro to ID tokens, JWTs, and JWT.io:

Joey deVilla appears in the corner of the screen showing the JWT.io site in Auth0’s iOS/SwiftUI authentication video.
Tap to view at full size.

Of course the video ends with an accordion number!

Joey deVilla plays accordion at the end of an Auth0 tutorial video.
Again, I ask: how many programming tutorial videos have a scene like this?

Once again, the here’s the video, How to Integrate Auth0 in a SwiftUI App, and here are the articles:

Whether you prefer to learn by watching video, reading, or a little bit of both, I hope you find these useful!

Categories
Meetups Security Tampa Bay What I’m Up To

I’m presenting “The Secret History of Login” at InfraGard Tampa Bay next Tuesday!

Are you free next Tuesday, October 18th from 9:00 a.m. to noon, for an event you can attend either in person or online? If so, perhaps you might want to catch my talk at the upcoming InfraGard Tampa Bay Members Alliance meeting. It’s titled The Secret History of Login!

Here’s the description:

If you’re reading this, the chances are very good that you’ve logged into a system or resumed a session where you logged in earlier. It’s a common enough occurrence that most of us don’t think about it unless we’re in a hurry or if we can’t remember our username/password combination.

Logging in is new enough that there are still many people alive who knew the world before usernames and passwords, yet old enough that it’s developed some problems that will take time and effort to solve. This talk will tell the strange story of how login grew from a last-minute hack to become part of our daily experience. Along the way, you’ll get an overview of some of the ways it’s been implemented, the popular software movement it inspired, how it inspired both a software movement and a whole new category of crime, and some best guesses about its future.

What is InfraGard Tampa Bay Members Alliance?

First of all, they’re affiliated with the FBI! As their About page states:

Our mission is to mitigate criminal and terrorist threats, risks and losses for the purpose of protecting our region’s critical infrastructure and the American people. Founded in 2004, the Tampa Bay chapter has established itself as a leader nationwide, setting the highest standards for programs, training and education. For the last decade, we have proudly contributed to the safety and security of Tampa Bay via an all-threats, all-hazards approach. At the national level, the InfraGard National Members Alliance was founded in 1996 and now comprises over 80 regional chapters, each linked to an FBI Field Office.

InfraGard’s success can be attributed to the unprecedented communication, collaboration and coordination it has forged at the epicenter of America’s most critical resources. Our membership is comprised of individuals that represent private businesses; local, state and federal law enforcement agencies; academic institutions; first responders and more.

All members are vetted by the FBI and pass comprehensive background checks prior to being accepted to InfraGard. The trust inherent in those who have successfully passed these checks is unmatched in any other public-private partnership in the country, making InfraGard a unique and highly successful solution to engaging the private sector in the protection of our nation’s critical infrastructure.

What’s happening at this meeting?

There’s a lot going on at this meeting — in fact, I’m not the only speaker at this one! Here’s the agenda:

TimeItem
9:00 a.m.Welcome and speaker/topic introductions by Ebony Vaz
9:05 a.m.Opening remarks by Michael Ritchie, President
9:15 a.m.Speaker 1: Kate Whitaker, Director of Cyber Outreach, Cyber Florida
10:00 a.m.Break
10:15 a.m.Speaker 2: Joey deVilla, Senior Developer Advocate, Okta — The Secret History of Login
11:00 a.m.Break
11:15 a.m.Speaker 3: Billy Sasser, Supervisory Protective Security Advisor (SPSA) CISA Region 4 — CISA’s Physical and Cyber Security Resources
12:00 p.m.Closing remarks by Michael Ritchie, President

You can attend in person or online!

They’re streaming this event, so you have the option of attending online if you can’t make it to the in-person event. Here are the registration details:

Categories
Uncategorized

Colin Bowern at the Metro Toronto .NET User Group: Authentication Alternatives for ASP.NET

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

Slide: Passwords are like pants (with picture of boxer shorts): You shouldn't leave them out where people can see them, you should change them regularly and you shouldn't loan them out to strangers!Click the photo to see it at full size.
(And yes, he’s using the word “pants” in the British English sense, as in “underpants”.)

On Thursday evening, I caught Colin Bowern’s presentation, Authentication Alternatives for ASP.NET at the monthly gathering of the Metro Toronto .NET User Group. Here’s the abstract:

Asking someone to create another username and password is presents risk. Most people use the same password across sites, or worse yet they write it down! The good news is there are smart people thinking about how to solve this problem and for web developers there are easy ways to take advantage of their hard work. In this session we will take a look at the credential management from a user perspective. We will dig into the efforts made in Active Directory, Windows Live ID, OpenID, OAuth, and Facebook Connect and how you can take advantage of them in your application.

He covered Windows Live ID, OpenID and OAuth. Not only did he show the theory, but he also presented some reasonably easy-to-follow code and showed it in action. Colin’s got a good presentation style; perhaps he picked up a thing or two at the speaker’s workshop we had a week ago as part of EnergizeIT!

Here’s the “Call to Action” slide from his presentation:

Colin Bowern's "Call to Action" slide

…which says:

    1. Stop requiring users to create more identities
    2. Leverage OpenID for authentication – see the DotNetOpenID project at Google Code
    3. Investigate OAuth for delegated resource access
    4. For apps targeting corporate scenarios, read up on the Geneva product set – see items on Channel 9 tagged “identity”

Afterwards, I joined Colin, Metro Toronto .NET User Group President Graham Marko and a few others for some post-presentation Guinness at the nearby pub The Spotted Dick and told them I’d catch them at the Toronto Code Camp in a couple of weeks.

Next Presentation: Yours Truly on ASP.NET MVC

Metro Toronto .Net user Group logo I was invited to present at the Metro Toronto .NET User Group meeting. Graham said I could present on any topic I wanted, so I asked if anyone had done one on ASP.NET MVC yet. No one had, so I figured I’d cover it. I’ve been looking into it casually for the past little bit and I’ll be diving into it over the next month, with my experience using another MVC web framework, Ruby on Rails, as my guide. I promise I’ll be informative and entertaining! You might want to come even if you’re not a .NET developer.

The next meeting will take place on Thursday, May 28th from 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. at the North Tower of the Manulife Financial Offices (200 Bloor Street East, on the north side, between Church and Jarvis). Yes, the meetings take place around dinner, but they provide some pizza and pop, and there’s always an opportunity for post-session nachos at the nearby pub.