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Spring Authorization Server should provide native, configurable support for hashing long-lived credentials (specifically OAuth2RefreshToken) #19698

Description

@pzgadzaj

Expected Behavior

Spring Authorization Server should provide native, configurable support for hashing long-lived credentials (specifically OAuth2RefreshToken and authorization codes) at rest using a pluggable mechanism similar to PasswordEncoder. The persistence layer should store cryptographic hashes (e.g., SHA-256), and authentication providers should verify incoming tokens against these hashes without requiring plain-text storage.

Current Behavior

Authentication providers (OAuth2RefreshTokenAuthenticationProvider, OAuth2TokenRevocationAuthenticationProvider, and OAuth2TokenIntrospectionAuthenticationProvider) perform a strict plain-text .equals() comparison between the incoming token and the value retrieved from OAuth2AuthorizationService. As a result, raw tokens must be stored in plaintext within the database.

Context

How this has affected you / What you are trying to accomplish: Trying to harden the authorization server implementation against database leaks. Storing long-lived tokens in plaintext violates standard security hardening guidelines for data at rest. Additionally, indexing large plaintext token strings in relational databases creates performance bottlenecks compared to fixed-length hashes.

What other alternatives have you considered: Relying solely on short token expiration or storing tokens in an external key-value store, which increases architectural complexity.

Are you aware of any workarounds: Yes, developers currently have to implement fragile workarounds such as overriding OAuth2AuthorizationService.findByToken() to dynamically inject raw mock tokens into the domain model, or entirely unregistering and rewriting core AuthenticationProvider implementations.

Activity

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