Automattic / Automattic/jetpack

Improve authentication inside the mobile apps

Open
#7,864 1 comment 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub
[Feature] WPCOM API Enhancement
Dominant language
PHP
Stars
1.8k
Forks
898
Avg merge
1d 18h
Merged PRs (30d)
774

Description

When a user is logged in to the mobile apps with their WordPress.com account, we don't have a good way to authenticate a web view for the site, as we don't have the site's password or cookies. We can leverage SSO if it’s enabled, but we need to know beforehand if that’s the case.

The most important case to cover is the customizer. Users should be able to use it from the apps, but we need to authenticate to make it possible.
Another commonly reported issue is that since the "View Site" option is not authenticated, all the views are counted in stats.

We could consider force-enabling SSO(*) for certain actions inside the apps, or another solution similar to the `frame-nonce` we have for previews.

(*) After evaluating security implications. I still haven't thought much about this path, and it might be a terrible idea.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

Research direction

The issue names no files or tests. Begin by tracing authentication for the mobile apps' customizer and View Site flows, then review the existing SSO and frame-nonce approaches mentioned in the report. Done means users can use the customizer while authenticated, and View Site requests do not inflate site statistics.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
php, wordpress
Domain
authentication, mobile, security
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
25/100

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