OAuth

API Token Lifecycle: From Issuance to Revocation and Secure Management

The article provides a comprehensive examination of the full API token lifecycle in browser-based applications, emphasizing that signatures alone cannot prevent token theft. It details risks introduced at issuance, storage, transmission, and revocation stages, including improper OAuth grant types and long-lived tokens. Key recommendations include short-lived access tokens, atomic refresh token rotation, and the use of Authorization Code Flow with PKCE for public clients. Storage advice strongly discourages localStorage and sessionStorage in favor of HttpOnly cookies or a Backend-for-Frontend pattern that keeps real tokens on the server. The piece also covers CSRF protections, rate limiting on authorization endpoints, and the advantages of signed client assertions over static secrets. Overall, it stresses that token security depends on the entire lifecycle architecture rather than cryptographic strength alone.

GitHub Copilot Traffic Analysis via MITM Proxy Exposes Prompt Context Handling and Local SQLite Session Storage

A detailed reverse-engineering study placed GitHub Copilot behind an mitmproxy instance to inspect all network requests made by Visual Studio Code. The analysis revealed that Copilot performs OAuth token exchange, model availability checks, and intent classification before any user input occurs. Prompts sent to the model include context from recently edited files, even when inline suggestions are disabled for sensitive extensions such as .env. Copilot maintains a local SQLite database named session-store.db that records every user prompt, LLM response, repository, and branch worked on. The extension also exposes a session_store_sql tool allowing the model to run read-only SQL queries against this history using the Copilot Chronicle skill. These findings highlight how AI coding assistants manage context, authentication, and persistent local state.