OAuth Secrets and Desktop Application

Question

I am looking into creating a desktop app in an interpreted language that accesses Google's APIs. From what I can tell, there is a security hole. The client secret would be exposed within the code, and even if I created the application in C++ or Java, the code could be decompiled\disassembled and the secret could in theory be found. Is there anyway around that besides obfuscating the code? I'd like to be able to distribute the code for others to use.

Answer 1

OAuth 2.0 Threat Model and Security Considerations(rfc6819) has listed Obtaining Client Secrets as a threat.

And as Google doc Using OAuth 2.0 for Installed Applications says:

These applications are distributed to individual machines, and it is assumed that these applications cannot keep secrets.

So there are no Client "Secrets" in fact. Trying to obfuscate a secret in installed applications is a futile effort as the secrets can always be recovered using the abundance of reverse-engineering and debugging tools.

Of course, you should do your best to protect secrets but at the end, a highly motivated hacker can always get it in an installed application. So it's the value of the secret vs. difficulty of extraction. The value of the client secret is impersonating the application. It doesn't give any access to user data.

My suggestions: Just take the risk go ahead and obfuscate it. Or you can consider using the proxy pattern(move the secret to a web server acting as an API proxy).