Kinto / Kinto/kinto

401 versus 403

Open
#1,782 5 comments 1 reaction 0 assignees View on GitHub
enhancement question stale
Dominant language
Python
Stars
4.4k
Forks
437
Avg merge
1d 2h
Merged PRs (30d)
15

Description

I am tempted to believe that we sometimes return a 403 where a 401 would be more appropriate.

For example, when an `Authorization` header is sent and no authentication method succeeds, we consider the user as anonymous. It is very likely that a 403 will be returned when trying to create a bucket or something.

What if we return 401 when an `Authorization` header is sent and no authentication succeeds instead of considering the user as anonymous?

Do we have authentication policies that rely on a header that is not `Authorization` ? Do we want to support that?

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

Research direction

Start by tracing how an Authorization header is handled when authentication methods fail, then follow the bucket-creation path that may return 403 for an anonymous user. Review whether any authentication policies use non-Authorization headers and establish the expected distinction between 401 and 403 before defining completion criteria.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
python
Domain
api, authentication, backend
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
25/100

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.