# `mutt_oauth.py`

README by Alexander Perlis, 2020-07-15

## Background on plain passwords, app passwords, OAuth2 bearer tokens

An auth stage occurs near the start of the IMAP/POP/SMTP protocol conversation.
Various SASL methods can be used (depends on what the server offers, and what
the client supports). The PLAIN method, also known as "basic auth", involves
simply sending the username and password (this occurs over an encrypted
connection), and used to be common; but, for large cloud mail providers, basic
auth is a security hole. User passwords often have low entropy (humans
generally choose passwords that can be produced from human memory), thus are
targets for various types of exhaustive attacks.  Older attacks try different
passwords against one user, whereas newer spray attacks try one password
against different users. General mitigation efforts such as rate-limiting, or
detection and outright blocking efforts, lead to degraded or outright denied
services for legitimate users. The security weakness is two-fold: the low
entropy of the user password, together with the alarming consequence that the
password often unlocks many disparate systems in a typical enterprise
single-sign-on environment. Also, humans type passwords or copy/paste them from
elsewhere on the screen, so they can also be grabbed via keyloggers or screen
capture (or a human bystander). Two ways to solve these conundrums:

- app passwords
- bearer tokens

App passwords are simply high-entropy protocol-specific passwords, in other
words a long computer-generated random string, you use one for your mail
system, a different one for your payroll system, and so on. With app passwords
in use, brute-force attacks become useless. App passwords require no
modifications to client software, and only minor changes on the server side.
One way to think about app passwords is that they essentially impose on you the
use of a password manager. Any user can go to the trouble of using a password
manager but most users don't bother. App passwords put the password manager
inside the server and force you to use it.

Bearer tokens take the idea of app passwords to the next level. Much like app
passwords, they too are just long computer-generated random strings, knowledge
of which simply "lets you in". But unlike an app password which the user must
manually copy from a server password screen and then paste into their client
account config screen (a process the user doesn't want to follow too often),
bearer tokens get swapped out approximately once an hour without user
interaction. For this to work, both clients and servers must be modified to
speak a separate out-of-band protocol (the "OAuth2" protocol) to swap out
tokens. More precisely, from start to finish, the process goes like this: the
client and server must once-and-for-all be informed about each other (this is
called "app registration" and might be done by the client developer or left to
each end user), then the client informs the server that it wants to connect,
then the user is informed to independently use a web browser to visit a server
destination to approve this request (at this stage the server will require the
user to authenticate using say their password and perhaps additional factors
such as an SMS verification or crypto device), then the client will have a
long-term "refresh token" as well as an "access token" good for about an hour.
The access token can now be used with IMAP/POP/SMTP to access the account. When
it expires, the refresh token is used to get a new access token and perhaps a
new refresh token.  After several months of such usage, even the refresh token
may expire and the human user will have to go back and re-authenticate
(password, SMS, crypto device, etc) for things to start anew.

Since app passwords and tokens are high-entropy and their compromise should
compromise only a particular system (rather than all systems in a
single-sign-on environment), they have similar security strength when compared
to stark weakness of traditional human passwords. But if compared only to each
other, tokens provide more security. App passwords must be short enough for
humans to easily copy/paste them, might get written down or snooped during that
process, and anyhow are long-lived and thus could get compromised by other
means. The main drawback to tokens is that their support requires significant
changes to clients and servers, but once such support exists, they are superior
and easier to use.

Many cloud providers are eliminating support for human passwords. Some are
allowing app passwords in addition to tokens. Some allow only tokens.

## OAuth2 token support in NeoMutt

NeoMutt supports the two SASL methods OAUTHBEARER and XOAUTH2 for presenting an
OAuth2 access token near the start of the IMAP/POP/SMTP connection.

(Two different SASL methods exist for historical reasons. While OAuth2 was
under development, the experimental offering by servers was called XOAUTH2,
later fleshed out into a standard named OAUTHBEARER, but not all servers have
been updated to offer OAUTHBEARER. Once the major cloud providers all support
OAUTHBEARER, clients like NeoMutt might be modified to no longer know about
XOAUTH2.)

NeoMutt can present a token inside IMAP/POP/SMTP, but by design NeoMutt itself
does not know how to have a separate conversation (outside of IMAP/POP/SMTP)
with the server to authorize the user and obtain refresh and access tokens.
NeoMutt just needs an access token, and has a hook for an external script to
somehow obtain one.

`mutt_oauth2.py` is an example of such an external script. It likely can be
adapted to work with OAuth2 on many different cloud mail providers, and has
been tested against:

- Google consumer account (`@gmail.com`)
- Google work/school account (G Suite tenant)
- Microsoft consumer account (e.g., `@live.com`, `@outlook.com`, ...)
- Microsoft work/school account (Azure tenant)
  (Note that Microsoft uses the marketing term "Modern Auth" in lieu of
  "OAuth2". In that terminology, NeoMutt indeed supports "Modern Auth".)

## Configure script's token file encryption

The script remembers tokens between invocations by keeping them in a token
file. This file is encrypted.

A popular choice is gpg. To use this:

- Install gpg. For example, "sudo apt install gpg".
- `gpg --gen-key`. Answer the questions. Instead of your email address you
  could choose say "My mutt_oauth2 token store", then choose a passphrase. You
  will need to produce that same passphrase whenever `mutt_oauth2.py` needs to
  unlock the token store.
- Pass your GPG identity (your email address or whatever you picked above)
  to `mutt_oauth2.py` via `--encryption-pipe`
  example: `--encryption-pipe "gpg --encrypt --recipient YOUR_GPG_IDENTITY"`
- For the `gpg-agent` to be able to ask you the unlock passphrase, the
  environment variable `GPG_TTY` must be set to the current tty. Typically you
  would put the following inside your .profile or equivalent: `export GPG_TTY=$(tty)`

## Create an app registration

Before you can connect the script to an account, you need an "app registration"
for that service. Cloud entities (like Google and Microsoft) and/or the tenant
admins (the central technology admins at your school or place of work) might be
restrictive in who can create app registrations, as well as who can
subsequently use them. For personal/consumer accounts, you can generally create
your own registration and then use it with a limited number of different
personal accounts. But for work/school accounts, the tenant admins might
approve an app registration that you created with a personal/consumer account,
or might want an official app registration from a developer (the creation of
which and blessing by the cloud provider might require payment and/or arduous
review), or might perhaps be willing to roll their own "in-house" registration.

What you ultimately need is the `client_id` (and `client_secret` if one was
set) for this registration. Those values must be passed to the `mutt_oauth2.py`
script (using the `--provider`, `--client-id`, and `--client-secret arguments`).
If your work or school environment has a knowledge base that provides the
`client_id`, then someone already took care of the app registration, and you can
skip the step of creating your own registration.

### How to create a Google registration

Go to https://console.developers.google.com and create a new project. The name
doesn't matter and could be "NeoMutt Registration Project".

- Go to Library, choose Gmail API, and enable it
- Hit left arrow icon to get back to http://console.developers.google.com
- Choose OAuth Consent Screen
   - Choose Internal for an organizational G Suite
   - Choose External if that's your only choice
   - For Application Name, put for example "NeoMutt"
   - Under scopes, choose Add scope, scroll all the way down, enable the "https://mail.google.com/" scope
   - Fill out additional fields (application logo, etc) if you feel like it
     (will make the consent screen look nicer)
- Back at console.developers.google.com, choose Credentials
- At top, choose Create Credentials / OAuth client iD
   - Application type is "Desktop app"
- On the OAuth consent screen add a test user, (email address)

The `client_id` (and `client_secret` if there is one) will need to be passed as
arguments into the `mutt_oauth2.py` script.

### How to create a Microsoft registration

Go to https://portal.azure.com, log in with a Microsoft account (get a free one
at outlook.com), then search for "app registration", and add a new
registration. On the initial form that appears, put a name like "NeoMutt",
allow any type of account, and put "http://localhost/" as the redirect URI,
then more carefully go through each screen:

Branding
- Leave fields blank or put in reasonable values
- For official registration, verify your choice of publisher domain

Authentication:
- Platform "Mobile and desktop"
- Redirect URI "http://localhost/"
- Any kind of account
- Enable public client (allow device code flow)

API permissions:
- Microsoft Graph, Delegated, "offline_access"
- Microsoft Graph, Delegated, "IMAP.AccessAsUser.All"
- Microsoft Graph, Delegated, "POP.AccessAsUser.All"
- Microsoft Graph, Delegated, "SMTP.Send"
- Microsoft Graph, Delegated, "User.Read"

Overview:
- Take note of the Application ID (a.k.a. Client ID), you'll need it shortly

End users who aren't able to get to the app registration screen within
https://portal.azure.com for their work/school account can temporarily use an
incognito browser window to create a free https://outlook.com account and use
that to create the app registration.

The `client_id` (and `client_secret` if there is one) will need to be passed as
arguments into the `mutt_oauth2.py` script.

## Running the script manually to authorize tokens

Run `mutt_oauth2.py --help` to learn script usage. To obtain the initial set of
tokens, run the script specifying a name for a disposable token storage file,
as well as `--authorize`, for example using this naming scheme:

```sh
mutt_oauth2.py userid@myschool.edu.tokens \
    --verbose \
    --authorize \
    --provider [google|microsoft] \
    --encryption-pipe "gpg --encrypt --recipient <gpg-recipient@email.com>" \
    --client-id <id> \
    --client-secret <id> \
    --authflow [authcode|localhostauthcode|devicecode]
```

The script will ask questions and provide some instructions. For the flow
question:

- "authcode": you paste a complicated URL into a browser, then manually extract
  a "code" parameter from a subsequent URL in the browser address bar and paste
  that back to the script.

- "localhostauthcode": you again paste the complicated URL into a browser but
  that's it --- the code is automatically extracted from the response relying
  on a localhost redirect and temporarily listening on a localhost port. This
  flow can only be used if the web browser opening the redirect URL sits on the
  same machine as where NeoMutt is running, in other words can not be used if
  you ssh to a remote machine and run NeoMutt on that remote machine while your
  web browser remains on your local machine.

- "devicecode": you go to a simple URL and just enter a short code.

Your answer here determines the default flow, but on any invocation of the
script you can override the default with the optional `--authflow` parameter.
To change the default, delete your token file and start over.

To figure out which flow to use, I suggest trying all three. Depending on the
OAuth2 provider and how the app registration was configured, some flows might
not work, so simply trying them is the best way to figure out what works and
which one you prefer. Personally I prefer the "localhostauthcode" flow when I
can use it.

Once you attempt an actual authorization, you might get stuck because the web
browser step might indicate your institution admins must grant approval.
Indeed engage them in a conversation about approving the use of NeoMutt to
access mail. If that fails, an alternative is to identify some other well-known
IMAP/POP/SMTP client that they might have already approved, or might be willing
to approve, and first go configure it for OAuth2 and see whether it will work
to reach your mail, and then you could dig into the source code for that client
and extract its `client_id`, `client_secret`, and `redirect_uri` and put those
into the `mutt_oauth2.py` script. This would be a temporary punt for end-user
experimentation, but not an approach for configuring systems to be used by
other people. Engaging your institution admins to create a NeoMutt registration
is the better way to go.

Once you've succeeded authorizing `mutt_oauth2.py` to obtain tokens, try one of
the following to see whether IMAP/POP/SMTP are working:

```sh
mutt_oauth2.py userid@myschool.edu.tokens --provider <provider> --verbose --test
mutt_oauth2.py userid@myschool.edu.tokens --provider <provider> --verbose --debug --test
```

Without optional parameters, the script simply returns an access token
(possibly first conducting a behind-the-scenes URL retrieval using a stored
refresh token to obtain an updated access token). Calling the script without
optional parameters is how it will be used by NeoMutt. Your `.neomuttrc` would
look something like:

```sh
set imap_user="userid@myschool.edu"
set folder="imap://outlook.office365.com/"
set smtp_url="smtp://${imap_user}@smtp.office365.com:587/"
set imap_authenticators="oauthbearer:xoauth2"
set imap_oauth_refresh_command="/path/to/script/mutt_oauth2.py \
       ${imap_user}.tokens \
       --provider ${provider} \
       --client-id ${client_id} \
       --client-secret ${client_id}"

set smtp_authenticators=${imap_authenticators}
set smtp_oauth_refresh_command=${imap_oauth_refresh_command}
```
