OAUTH 2 support in the Neuron

The Neuron® now supports OAUTH 2.0, and can be used as an authorization server in OAUTH-compliant systems (from build 2026-07-13). The OAUTH 2 environment available in the Neuron includes the following resources:

• An authorization resource (RFC 6749) at /oauth/authorize.
• A token resource (RFC 6749) at /oauth/token.
• A dynamic client registration resource (RFC 7591 and RFC 7592), supporting both public and confidential client registrations, at /oauth/register.
• A management resource for dynamic client registrations (RFC 7591) at /oauth/registration.
• A resource providing support for the device authorization flow (RFC 8628) at /oauth/device
• A token introspection resource, in accordance with RFC 7662 at /oauth/introspect
• A server OAUTH meta-data resource (RFC 8414) at /.well-known/oauth-authorization-server allowing external parties a way to find available resources and features.
• A resource providing meta-data for protected resources (RFC 9728) at /.well-known/oauth-protected-resource.

Apart from the resources defined, there are some notable features and extensions that are supported, and merit mentioning:

• Proof Key for Code Exchange by OAuth Public Clients (PKCE) (RFC 7636), securing the authorization flow.
• Support for refresh tokens (RFC 6749)
• Implicit token generation from traditional Neuron authentication, or Mutual TLS (mTLS).
• OAUTH clients (services) that want to use the Neuron as an OAUTH authorization server, should register themselves with the Neuron using the dynamic client registration interface, and provide a human-readable name, logotype and corresponding URIs for more information.
• Dynamic login forms generated by the OAUTH environment are generated first in Markdown, and then transformed to HTML before being returned to the user. This allows opertors of the Neuron to customize the look & feel of the login form, by customizing the MasterOAuth.md file available in the web root folder. The dynamic form is embedded in this master file, before being rendered as HTML.

Authentication, scopes and privileges are related as follows:

• Scopes in OAUTH, are translated into Privileges in the Neuron, having the prefix OAUTH.Scope. followed by the scope, where colons (:) are replaced by periods (.).
• An external party can authenticate itself with the OAUTH environment, and be authorized to receive a JWT token, which it should provide in subsequent requests using a Bearer token in an Authorization HTTP header.
• Dynamic client registrations, and clients that authenticate themselves using credentials for an XMPP account, have no privileges by default. Attempts to authorize access to specific scopes using such accounts will be rejected.
• Administrative user accounts will have the privileges provided to them via the Roles defined for the corresponding user accounts.

Dynamic client registration has been integrated into the Neuron using the following principles:

• The Neuron enables dynamic client registration by creating an API Key with the name OAUTH. If there is no such API key on the Neuron, dynamic client registration is not permitted.
• A remote endpoint can register at most 2 clients (public or confidential).
• Registered clients receive a corresponding XMPP account with the same client_id. These accounts are disabled for XMPP communication by default, but can be enabled manually. (Future work may provide a mechanism to automatically enable such accounts, by validating e-mail and/or phone numbers provided in client registration.)

Security Note: You can limit access to OAUTH using the Web-Application Firewall (or WAF), by restricting access to any resource that starts with /oauth/.

#new, #features, #neuron, #api, #oauth, #security

Queue Event Sink

A new Event Sink is available (from build 2026-06-01), permitting the temporary storage of logged events into a local Queue. Queues perist elements in an encrypted manner, and processes them in accordance with FIFO (First-In-First-Out) order. A queue frees processes that generate items from processes that process these items. They can work in different paces, and can be updated/run on different times.

To configure a Queue for temporary encrypted storage, you add a EventQueue element to the event sinks section of the Gateway.config file, and restart the Neuron®. You can also add such an event sink, via the administrative interface, under Sources & Nodes, and the Gateway configuration source.

You need to provide a Name for the Queue. This Name is later used to dequeue items that have been enqueued by the event sink. You also provide a number of days which items are stored in the queue. Older items are regularly purged from the queue, to avoid it growing indefinitely. A Sink ID must also be provided. This ID appears in event logs, in case something related to the event sink needs reporting.

To access enqueued events, you can either dequeue them in local services, or use the Queue API. If you are using Postman, there’s a public repository containing a Postman collection for the Queue API.

#new, #features, #neuron, #gateway, #events, #eventsink, #api, #queue

HTTP Proxy

The TAG Neuron® now (from build 2026-05-12) has a new API: A generic HTTP Proxy at /HttpProxy. It allows clients to use the broker as a proxy to access resources on the Internet. This can be useful in multiple cases, for instance in environments where access to certain resources are limited, but the Neuron has free access. One such example is accessing HTTP-only resources from a smart phone environment, which requires use of HTTPS, and the remote web server does not have HTTPS enabled. (This is the case for certain ICAO Certificate Revocation Lists for example.)

Authentication

The HTTP Proxy resource requires authentication. The reason for this restriction is to avoid the broker to become a point for third parties to commit cyber-crime. The resource supports multiple form of authentication: Normal WWW-Authenticate is supported, mTLS (for brokers where this is enabled), or JWT Bearer tokens. Session login is also supported. This makes it possible to integrate the resource in web pages hosted by the Neuron.

JWT Bearer tokens is usedful in environments based on XMPP, where access to HTTP-based resources is required, but restricted by the operating system, such as the Neuro-Access smart phone app.

Since the app, in this case, has an XMPP connection to the broker, it can get a JWT token from the broker by using the HttpxClient class (HTTP over XMPP) in the Waher.Networking.XMPP.HTTPX library. Calling the GetJwtToken method returns a JWT token that can be used to make HTTP requests to the broker, authenticated as the XMPP account.

Redirecting HTTP links

If using InternetContent in the Waher.Content library to access content on the Internet, you can redirect HTTP-only links to a custom resource by providing an event handler to the WebGetter.HttpUriEventHandler event. Take the opportunity to provide a new URI in the event arguments, redirecting the request to the HTTP proxy resource of the Nueron to which the client is connected using XMPP. You also need to add the Bearer token to the Request headers available in the event arguments. The URI itself is then URI encoded and added as a sub-path to the /HttpProxy/ resource.

Example

The first step is to get a JWT token from the Neuron, identifying the XMPP connection the client has. We use the HttpxClient method GetJwtTokenAsync method, providing the number of seconds we want the token to be valid:

string Token = await this.httpxClient.GetJwtTokenAsync(60);

We then create an event handler to reroute HTTP-only requests to the HTTP proxy on the Neuron to which the client is using, using HTTPS. Creating an event handler for this purpose is simple (replacing DOMAIN in the example with the domain of the Neuron). We also need to add the Bearer JWT token by using an Authorization header:

private static void ViaProxy(object Sender, HttpUriEventArgs e)
{
	e.Uri = new Uri("https://DOMAIN/HttpProxy/" + WebUtility.UrlEncode(e.Uri.ToString()));
	e.Request.Headers.Add("Authorization", "Bearer " + Token);
}

We need to assign the event handler to the event:

WebGetter.HttpUriEventHandler += ViaProxy;

Later, when we do not need to redirect HTTP requests any longer, we need to unregister it:

WebGetter.HttpUriEventHandler -= ViaProxy;

While the event handler is registered, any access to web resources using HTTP, by using the static InternetContent class, will be seamlessly redirected to the HTTP proxy. Example:

ContentResponse Response = await InternetContent.GetAsync(
	new Uri("http://example.org/"),
	new KeyValuePair<string, string>("Accept", HtmlCodec.DefaultContentType));

#new, #features, #api, #security, #neuron

Validating Electronic Travel Documents & ICAO PKI Certificates

When validating electronic Travel Documents, applications need to validate against corresponding issuer certificates not managed by the operating system. To do that, the application needs to get access to these certificates somehow, and build custom X.509 chains during validation. To avoid having such an application to embed the entire list of all these issuer certificates, a list which also get regularly updated, a new repository and package is available that publishes these certificates on Neurons where the package gets installed. Applications can easily check with the corresponding neuron and download the required certificates, based on the Authority Key Identifiers available in the Electronic Travel Document certificates.

Information about the ICAO PKI Certificate package
Package	IcaoPkiCertificates.package
Installation key	vAa0l/iFHVogQYUzm+Zs6qPsw+7lYrnyFn4MNAGA7+Gso442gJJMKjknHqka/YjM6gZZSS65HL8Adbfba1067a1a27163b905869469d6f0d
More information	https://github.com/Trust-Anchor-Group/IcaoPkiCertificates

#features, #id, #kyc, #neuron, #api, #repository, #package, #new

Remote Login API

Since Build 2025-12-30, extended in Build 2025-12-31, a new API called the Remote Login API is available on the TAG Neuron®. It is a complement to the Quick Login API, in the following ways:

• The Quick Login API is initiated by the client itself, for instance, by scanning a QR-code, clicking a link or logging in to a web site, for instance.

• The Remote Login API on the other hand, is initiated by a remote service, that wants to use the digital identity of the user in a second (or multi) factor authentication process (2FA, or MFA).

• The Quick Login API allows anonymous access (on the HTTP resource level), while the Remote Login API requires authorized access. This authorized access can be granted using WWW-Authenticate or Mutual TLS (mTLS). Mutual TLS is recommended, as it avoids the use of passwords. In both cases, the administrator of the Neuron providing access to the API needs to create a corresponding user and grant the user the corresponding privileges. (See the API documentation for details.)

#new, #api, #neuron, #security, #id