What is the OAuth 2.0 Bearer Token exactly?

Bearer Token
A security token with the property that any party in possession of the token (a "bearer") can use the token in any way that any other party in possession of it can. Using a bearer token does not require a bearer to prove possession of cryptographic key material (proof-of-possession).

The Bearer Token is created for you by the Authentication server. When a user authenticates your application (client) the authentication server then goes and generates for you a Token. Bearer Tokens are the predominant type of access token used with OAuth 2.0. A Bearer token basically says "Give the bearer of this token access".

The Bearer Token is normally some kind of opaque value created by the authentication server. It isn't random; it is created based upon the user giving you access and the client your application getting access.

In order to access an API for example you need to use an Access Token. Access tokens are short lived (around an hour). You use the bearer token to get a new Access token. To get an access token you send the Authentication server this bearer token along with your client id. This way the server knows that the application using the bearer token is the same application that the bearer token was created for. Example: I can't just take a bearer token created for your application and use it with my application it wont work because it wasn't generated for me.

Google Refresh token looks something like this: 1/mZ1edKKACtPAb7zGlwSzvs72PvhAbGmB8K1ZrGxpcNM

copied from comment: I don't think there are any restrictions on the bearer tokens you supply. Only thing I can think of is that its nice to allow more than one. For example a user can authenticate the application up to 30 times and the old bearer tokens will still work. oh and if one hasn't been used for say 6 months I would remove it from your system. It's your authentication server that will have to generate them and validate them so how it's formatted is up to you.

Update:

A Bearer Token is set in the Authorization header of every Inline Action HTTP Request. For example:

POST /rsvp?eventId=123 HTTP/1.1
Host: events-organizer.com
Authorization: Bearer AbCdEf123456
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/1.0 (KHTML, like Gecko; Gmail Actions)

rsvpStatus=YES

The string "AbCdEf123456" in the example above is the bearer authorization token. This is a cryptographic token produced by the authentication server. All bearer tokens sent with actions have the issue field, with the audience field specifying the sender domain as a URL of the form https://. For example, if the email is from [email protected], the audience is https://example.com.

If using bearer tokens, verify that the request is coming from the authentication server and is intended for the the sender domain. If the token doesn't verify, the service should respond to the request with an HTTP response code 401 (Unauthorized).

Bearer Tokens are part of the OAuth V2 standard and widely adopted by many APIs.

As I read your question, I have tried without success to search on the Internet how Bearer tokens are encrypted or signed. I guess bearer tokens are not hashed (maybe partially, but not completely) because in that case, it will not be possible to decrypt it and retrieve users properties from it.

But your question seems to be trying to find answers on Bearer token functionality:

Suppose I am implementing an authorization provider, can I supply any kind of string for the bearer token? Can it be a random string? Does it has to be a base64 encoding of some attributes? Should it be hashed?

So, I'll try to explain how Bearer tokens and Refresh tokens work:

When user requests to the server for a token sending user and password through SSL, the server returns two things: an Access token and a Refresh token.

An Access token is a Bearer token that you will have to add in all request headers to be authenticated as a concrete user.

Authorization: Bearer <access_token>

An Access token is an encrypted string with all User properties, Claims and Roles that you wish. (You can check that the size of a token increases if you add more roles or claims). Once the Resource Server receives an access token, it will be able to decrypt it and read these user properties. This way, the user will be validated and granted along with all the application.

Access tokens have a short expiration (ie. 30 minutes). If access tokens had a long expiration it would be a problem, because theoretically there is no possibility to revoke it. So imagine a user with a role="Admin" that changes to "User". If a user keeps the old token with role="Admin" he will be able to access till the token expiration with Admin rights. That's why access tokens have a short expiration.

But, one issue comes in mind. If an access token has short expiration, we have to send every short period the user and password. Is this secure? No, it isn't. We should avoid it. That's when Refresh tokens appear to solve this problem.

Refresh tokens are stored in DB and will have long expiration (example: 1 month).

A user can get a new Access token (when it expires, every 30 minutes for example) using a refresh token, that the user had received in the first request for a token. When an access token expires, the client must send a refresh token. If this refresh token exists in DB, the server will return to the client a new access token and another refresh token (and will replace the old refresh token by the new one).

In case a user Access token has been compromised, the refresh token of that user must be deleted from DB. This way the token will be valid only till the access token expires because when the hacker tries to get a new access token sending the refresh token, this action will be denied.

Bearer token is one or more repetition of alphabet, digit, "-" , "." , "_" , "~" , "+" , "/" followed by 0 or more "=".

RFC 6750 2.1. Authorization Request Header Field (Format is ABNF (Augmented BNF))

The syntax for Bearer credentials is as follows:

     b64token    = 1*( ALPHA / DIGIT /
                       "-" / "." / "_" / "~" / "+" / "/" ) *"="
     credentials = "Bearer" 1*SP b64token

It looks like Base64 but according to Should the token in the header be base64 encoded?, it is not.

Digging a bit deeper in to "HTTP/1.1, part 7: Authentication"**, however, I see that b64token is just an ABNF syntax definition allowing for characters typically used in base64, base64url, etc.. So the b64token doesn't define any encoding or decoding but rather just defines what characters can be used in the part of the Authorization header that will contain the access token.

This fully addresses the first 3 items in the OP question's list. So I'm extending this answer to address the 4th question, about whether the token must be validated, so @mon feel free to remove or edit:

The authorizer is responsible for accepting or rejecting the http request. If the authorizer says the token is valid, it's up to you to decide what this means:

• Does the authorizer have a way of inspecting the URL, identifying the operation, and looking up some role-based access control database to see if it is allowed? If yes and the request comes through, the service can assume it is allowed, and does not need to verify.
• Is the token an all-or-nothing, so if the token is correct, all operations are allowed? Then the service doesn't need to verify.
• Does the token mean "this request is allowed, but here is the UUID for the role, you check whether the operation is allowed". Then it's up to the service to look up that role, and see if the operation is allowed.

References

• RFC 5234 3.6. Variable Repetition: *Rule
• RFC 2616 2.1 Augmented BNF

Please read the example in rfc6749 sec 7.1 first.

The bearer token is a type of access token, which does NOT require PoP(proof-of-possession) mechanism.

PoP means kind of multi-factor authentication to make access token more secure. ref

Proof-of-Possession refers to Cryptographic methods that mitigate the risk of Security Tokens being stolen and used by an attacker. In contrast to 'Bearer Tokens', where mere possession of the Security Token allows the attacker to use it, a PoP Security Token cannot be so easily used - the attacker MUST have both the token itself and access to some key associated with the token (which is why they are sometimes referred to 'Holder-of-Key' (HoK) tokens).

Maybe it's not the case, but I would say,

• access token = payment methods
• bearer token = cash
• access token with PoP mechanism = credit card (signature or password will be verified, sometimes need to show your ID to match the name on the card)

BTW, there's a draft of "OAuth 2.0 Proof-of-Possession (PoP) Security Architecture" now.