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 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:

• 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/.

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