Authentication and Authorization for Native Mobile Applications using OAuth 2.0

Abstract

OAuth 2.0 has in the recent years become the de-facto standard of doing API authorization and authentication on mobile devices. However, recent critics have claimed that OAuth does not provide sufficient security or ease-of-use for developers on mobile devices. In this thesis, I study four approaches to mobile authorization using OAuth 2.0, and suggest an improved solution based on current industry best-practices for security on Android. The end result is a solution which provides a native authorization flow for third-party developers to integrate with an existing API endpoint. However, the thesis shows that even with current industry best-practices the proposed solution does not provide a completely secure approach, and developers must keep the security consequences of that fact in mind when implementing OAuth on mobile devices.