Alexa home skill request not reaching lambda function after a while - amazon-web-services

We have an Alexa home skill developed and is under testing. For the Home devices control
ENVIRONMENT DETAILS:
Alexa Home skill
Lambda functions for the execution
Account linking has been enabled
Once I enable the skill, the skill is getting enabled successfully. Starting discovery of devices and finding the devices. Post that I was able to control the devices as well
But say after an hour. When I come back to the app or the echo devices. If I start controlling the device. it displays server is unresponsive and says something went wrong. Try disabling and enabling your skill. If I do that it works fine for an hour. Again it goes to unresponsiveness.
Did anyone experienced such behavior?

I had the exact same symptoms and the root cause was because we weren't properly providing a refresh token, and our access token had a 1 hour TTL.
From the Alexa Account Linking Debugging Tips page:
Problem: Account linking succeeds, but after some time the customer has to link accounts again
Solution: This usually indicates that Alexa was unable to use the provided refresh token to grab a new access/refresh token pair.
Ensure that the access token time to live (TTL) is more than 5 minutes.
Ensure that your authorization server can successfully refresh the access/refresh token pair when presented with a refresh token by
Alexa.
Ensure that you are not invalidating refresh tokens too early - Alexa may take some time after the access token has expired to refresh
the token, and if your authorization server has already invalidated
the refresh token, Alexa will not be able to refresh the
access/refresh token pair and your customer will have their account
linking disabled.

Does your skill implement EnpointHealth?
If not, it may affect the connectivity status in the app.

Related

error: invalid_grant , for getting access token using refresh token

After googling we came to know that invalid_grant which means refresh token is invalid.
Link to google oauth doc
We don't have any of these issues mentioned by google. Is this error related to something else rather than a refresh token.
More Info
We have access to read, write spreadsheet and send gmail
We fetch an access token for each request
Any help would be appreciated.
We're already in production and verified by google
Without seeing the full error message that being
Invalid_grant {Message here}
It is hard to help but from my experience is most often caused by one of the following.
Refresh token expire, app not in production.
There are serval reasons why a refresh token can expire the most common one currently is as follows.
A Google Cloud Platform project with an OAuth consent screen configured for an
external user type and a publishing status of "Testing" is issued a refresh token expiring in 7 days.
The fix is to go to google developer console on the consent screen and set your application to production, then your refresh token will stop expiring.
invalid_grant: Invalid JWT
{ “error”: “invalid_grant”, “error_description”: “Invalid JWT: Token must be a short-lived token (60 minutes) and in a reasonable timeframe. Check your iat and exp values and use a clock with skew to account for clock differences between systems.” }
Your server’s clock is not in sync with NTP. (Solution: check the server time if its incorrect fix it. )
invalid_grant: Code was already redeemed
Means that you are taking an authentication code that has already been used and trying to get another access token / refresh token for it. Authentication code can only be used once and they do expire so they need to be used quickly.
Invalid_grant: bad request
Normally means that the client id and secrete you are using to refresh the access token. Was not the one that was use to create the refresh token you are using.
Always store most recent refresh token.
Remember to always store the most recent refresh token. You can only have 50 out standing refresh tokens for a single user and the oldest one will expire. Depending upon the language you are using a new refresh token may be returned to you upon a refresh of the access token. Also if you request consent of the user more then once you will get a different refresh token.
User revoked access
If the user revoked your access in their google account, your refresh token will no longer work.
user changed password with gmail scope.
If your refresh token was created with a gmail scope and the user changed their password. your refresh token will be expired.
Links
Oauth2 Rfc docs for invalid_grant error rfc6749
invalid_grant
The provided authorization grant (e.g., authorization
code, resource owner credentials) or refresh token is
invalid, expired, revoked, does not match the redirection
URI used in the authorization request, or was issued to
another client.

Alexa Skill with Azure AD B2C Auth expires after an hour

I am currently building an Alexa skill backed by Azure Functions (.NET Core/C#) and Azure AD B2C for authentication.
For the initial setup, I used mostly used the instructions found in this arcticle. Since, the article was written a couple of years ago, I had to make a few changes. In the end, I landed on the following configuration:
Azure Active Directory B2C
As I mentioned, we are using AAD B2C for authentication. Users of a related application are able to sign-up and sign-in to a React application. The idea is to provide an alternative interface for said users through Alexa intents + utterances.
I created an application for Alexa in AAD B2C with the following settings:
Properties
Web App / Web API: Yes
Allow implicit flow: Yes
Reply URLs: I entered the values provided by the Alexa skill setup (e.g. https://pitangui.amazon.com/api/skil/link/...); there are three different ones. I also added one for my azure function app (this is something that could be incorrect. It was part of what I did while diagnosing other earlier problems); it's in the format: https://myfuncname.azurewebsites.net/.auth/login/aad/callback (Do I even need this???)
App ID URI: https://myorg.onmicrosoft.com/alexa
Include native client: No
Keys
I generated a single App Key, which I'm using as the Secret in the Account Linking section in the Alexa Developer Console.
Many of the examples online mention setting an explicit expiration date here of 1 or 2 years; however, I am not presented with any options at all (i.e. no expiration option), just the code. Could this be part of the problem???
API Access
In the Published scopes section, the Scope's name is user_impersonation. The description is "Access this app on behalf of the signed-in user". The full scope value is: https://myorgsname.onmicrosoft.com/alexa/user_impersonation.
For API Access, I have to API entries here:
One that uses the user_impersonation scope mentioned above.
The second, titled "Access the user's profile", uses:
Acquire an id_token for users (openid)
Acquire a refresh_token for users (offline_access)
AAD B2C User Flow
The user flow that I'm using allows signing up and signing in, it utilizes the following configuration:
Properties
Misc
Enable JavaScript enforcing page layout (preview): On
Token lifetime
Access & ID token lifetimes (minutes): 60
Refresh token lifetime (days): 14
Refresh token sliding window lifetime: "Bounded".
Lifetime length (days): 90
Token compatibility settings
Issuer (iss) claim: https://<domain>/<b2c-tenant-guid>
Subject (sub) claim: ObjectID
Claim representing user flow: tfp
Session behavior
Web app session lifetime (minutes): 1440
Web app session timeout: Rolling
Single sign-on configuration: Tenant
Require ID Token in logout requests: No
Azure Function Authentication Middleware
For the authentication layer within the Azure Function, I'm utilizing the method described in the article mentioned above.
Alexa Developer Console
On the Alexa side of things, I have a really simple skill setup with the following settings:
Endpoint
My endpoint uses the HTTPS option with the default region set to the fully-qualified HTTPS endpoint of my Azure Function App's handler function.
The certificate set to "My development endpoint is a sub-domain of a domain that has a wildcard ..."
Account Linking
The account linking settings are as outlined below:
Do you allow uses to create an account or link to ...: Toggled On
Allow users to enable skill without account linking: Toggled On
Allow users to link their account to your skill from within your application or website: Toggled Off
Auth Code Grant: On
Authorization URI: https://myorg.b2clogin.com/myorg.onmicrosoft.com/oauth2/v2.0/authorize?p=<sign-in-user-flow-policy-name>
Access Token URI: https://myorg.b2clogin.com/myorg.onmicrosoft.com/oauth2/v2.0/token?p=<sign-in-user-flow-policy-name>
Your Client ID: AAD B2C App GUID
Your Secret: Key generated in App settings in AAD B2C for my Alexa Skill App (mentioned in the AAD B2C setup info above).
Your Authentication Scheme: HTTP Basic
Scope: openid and https://myorg.onmicrosoft.com/alexa/user_impersonation
Domain List: login.microsoftonline.com and myorg.b2clogin.com Note: This is probably wrong as I didn't know what to put here. The article above doesn't mention this setting at all
Default Access Token Expiration Time: 3600
Note: The Alexa Redirect URLS at the bottom are what I put in AAD B2C for the Reply URL section.
The Problem
Now for the most important part, The Problem. Everything seems to work at first...I'm able to go to alexa.amazon.com and utilize Link Account (which redirects me to and from my AAD B2C-driven login screen). Once I link accounts, I'm able to successfully utilize an utterance and receive a reply.
The problems starts when I wait an hour (I believe it's an hour). Attempting to initiate the Intent after an hour yields an error on the Azure Function app side of things when it tries to validate the Auth Token.
Can anyone provide me some guidance as to what I may have setup incorrectly or at least some things that I should look into? As I mentioned at the start of this question, many of the references that I'm finding online are out-of-date and do not cover all of the settings that I'm expected to utilize. Many of them are still using microsoftonline.com authority vs. b2clogin.com.
At a glance, I would assume that the problem is that the Alexa skill is failing to refresh its token after it expires after an hour. What do I need to do to ensure that it refreshes correctly?
I think that I have enough information at this point to go ahead and answer my own question. What I found was that the offline_access scope is necessary for Token Refresh to be possible.
Per Microsoft, "The offline_access scope gives your app access to resources on behalf of the user for an extended time. On the consent page, this scope appears as the "Maintain access to data you have given it access to" permission. When a user approves the offline_access scope, your app can receive refresh tokens from the Microsoft identity platform token endpoint. Refresh tokens are long-lived. Your app can get new access tokens as older ones expire.".
You can read more about it here.
To resolve the issue, I ensured that this scope was available in AAD B2C and added it as a referenced scope in the Alexa developer console.
Thanks for giving insight on offline_access. It took few hours to figure out how to implement offline_access. Interestingly offline_access works only with Azure AD, OAuth 1.0 endpoint and not with 2.0.
While trying with 2.0 it kept failing while account linking when multiple scopes were mentioned in Alexa configurations. The scopes I tried were as follows.
https://samplealexabackendapi/
https://graph.microsoft.com/offline_access
Finally I ended up working with OAuth 1.0 endpoint and using the scope https://samplealexabackendapi/.default which considers all scopes available to the app registered.

AWS Amplify "Refresh Token has expired" after less than configured time (30 days)

I'm using React Native and Expo. Also using aws-amplify to manage users with Cognito's user pool.
Every so often my users are getting kicked out of the system because of "Refresh Token has expired" error. Those users were in the system in the previous week so their refresh token should still be valid. Any ideas?
I'm using:
aws-amplify 2.2.0
aws-amplify-react-native 2.2.3
react-native 0.59
expo 35
I think this is a misunderstanding of the docs. I was under the impression that the refresh token is being re-issued on every session, thus users should never get to the expiration time while they are active.
Apparently this is not the case, as users are issued a refresh token upon login only and that token is being persistent on the client side storage. No matter if they are active or not, this token is expired after 30 days (or else configured) and then need to re-login again.
(of course I'm aware that this is not an Amplify implementation)

MSGraph invalid refresh token due to inactivity

We are integrating on our application the Office 365 functionality throught MSGraph rest api and we are currently getting trouble with the validation of Refresh Tokens, this is the response error code from the server on a invalid petition:
"error":"invalid_grant","error_description":"AADSTS70002: Error
validating credentials. AADSTS70008: The refresh token has expired
due to inactivity.??The token was issued on
2016-04-27T11:44:49.4826901Z and was inactive for 14.00:00:00.
This is annoying because we need the users to aquire their credentials again logging in on Microsoft servers.
Is there any option to avoid Refresh token being invalidated due to inactivity? Or to make longer this expiration?
Refresh tokens have a finite lifetime. If a new token (and refresh token) isn't requested before that time they will expire. Once this happens the user must re-authenticate.
If you need to have perpetual access to the account, you will need to manually refresh the token periodically. You may want to look at this article. It covers the basics of how v2 Endpoint works (and the various token lifetimes).
In most of my implementations I use a queue to handling refreshing tokens. I queue each token to be refreshed at 10 days. If it fails I resubmit to the queue. If it is still failing at day 12 I email the user to inform them there was an issue and they will need to re-authenticate.
UPDATE
Refresh token lifetime was recently changed to until-revoked. You can read about the change here
This is general OAuth (not AAD-specific): obtaining an access token is a 2-step process. The first step is to obtain an auth code which requires the user to authenticate. The second step is to redeem an access token and a refresh token from the auth code. This second step is purely programmatic, i.e. the user need not be present. The app can keep repeating the second step, i.e. redeeming a new access token and a new refresh token from the latest refresh token without the user even know about it.
Your app should schedule frequent 'refreshes' of the refresh token. You can do this at any time while the app is running.
If the user doesn't use the app for an extended period of time, like about 2 weeks (I believe), the refresh token would naturally expire. If you want to avoid that, you'll have to schedule a dedicated job to refresh the token.
Zlatko

offline access. After July 5, will desktop appl. be able to have access to FB data if user, associated with access token, logged out from FB?

The situation is still unclear for me – After July 5th 2012, will desktop application be able to have access to Facebook data if user, associated with access token, logged out from Facebook?
Are talking here about TOTAL deletion of offline access AT ALL or just limitation for offline access by 60 days?
Document - https://developers.facebook.com/roadmap/offline-access-removal/ doesn’t give clear answer (IMHO). Quote: “Once the migration setting has been enabled, Desktop applications will automatically get user access_tokens returned that have the longer expiration time. However, there is no way to get a long-lived user access_token without having the user login to your app again.”
As of April 30 I’m able to request access token WITH ‘offline_access’ permission for desktop application (using URL: https://graph.facebook.com/oauth/authorize?client_id=APPLICATION_ID&redirect_uri=http://www.facebook.com/connect/login_success.html&scope=manage_pages,read_stream,publish_stream,offline_access
) . And everything work fine. Even if user logged out. In spite of “Remove offline_access permission” was enabled for the application.
Your answers will be very much appreciated.
Just completed a patch to accommodate these changes. At least in my experience, we were working within a web app where renewing the access tokens was as simple as changing everything over to the Javascript SDK and relying on the browser's login state. This seemed a much more logical approach than cross-checking a server-side saved long-expiry access token with every action to see if it was still good.
Essentially, what is going to happen for desktop implementations is the access tokens will be longer-lived by default, but still require the renewal at the end of the sixty day period. You should have logic in your app that will check that validity of the access token with facebook before taking action with it (or just try and fail with a prompt) and then prompt the user to login and revalidate if the access_token has expired. So long as this logic is in place the access tokens that expire will trigger re-validation.
If your app receives short-expiry access tokens...
If you would like to refresh a still valid long-lived access_token, you will have to get a new short-lived user access_token first and then call the same endpoint below. The returned access_token will have a fresh long-lived expiration time, however, the access_token itself may or may not be the same as the previously granted long-lived access_token.
Short-lived access tokens, the kind that only last for a session until logout, are going to need to be converted to the sixty-day, long-expiry access tokens using the endpoint documented in that article. Desktop apps configured to the new setting will receive these kind by default, but these will still need to be regenerated with a new login after 60 days.
I agree that this is a lot clumsier to implement, especially for desktop apps, but it is certainly a lot more secure from facebook's standpoint. If you start to think of the access token as a transient rather than permanent access credential and start changing your logic to check validity via curl or some other http post mechanism, rather than referencing your database, you'll have a much easier time with the adjustment. Don't allow your architecture to assume that the presence of a saved access token guarantees access, and be sure to cross check them over to the facebook endpoints and prompt for re-login where necessary.