Micah Silverman

Micah Silverman

Micah Silverman is a Senior Security H@X0R. With 25 years of Java Experience (yup, that's from the beginning), he's authored numerous articles, co-authored a Java EE book and spoken at many conferences. He's a maker, who's built full size MAME arcade cabinets and repaired old electronic games. He brings his love of all things Java and Developer Advocacy to you!

All posts by Micah Silverman


  1. Introducing the Okta CLI

    6 min read

    Okta is an Identity Management Platform that takes all the hassle out of authentication and authorization. It's feature-packed with everything from workforce integrations for G-Suite to the latest version of OAuth 2.0 as-a-service for developers writing their own APIs.

    Read more
  2. Over the past few months, I have been working on a side project that I am really excited about. If you know me well, you probably know I enjoy using my side projects to help other teams meet their goals (and if you don't, I am a Senior Security H@X0R…

    Read more
  3. Browser and mobile feature enhancements move fast. Often times, these technologies move faster than security standards designed to protect them can keep up. OAuth 2.0 offers the best and most mature standard for modern applications. However, there hasn't been an official release of this standard since 2012. Eight years is…

    Read more
  4. Imagine two levers that are inversely connected. That is, as one goes up, the other goes down. One lever is User Experience and the other is Security. It's not a perfect analogy, but most developers can attest that as user experience goes up, security goes down.

    Read more
  5. Vue.js is known as a "progressive framework for building user interfaces". There's a lot to unpack in this simple statement. It's easy to get started with Vue.js, with a minimal feature set, and then layer in more of the framework as you need it.

    Read more
  6. Single sign-on used to be the "Holy Grail" of enterprise size companies and was usually only available companies that could afford it. Nowadays, we take SSO as a matter of course. For instance, you would think it was completely weird (and unpleasant) if you logged into GMail and then had…

    Read more
  7. Welcome Micah Silverman

    3 min read

    My name is Micah Silverman and I just joined the Developer Advocacy team at Okta. TL;DR - There are some easter eggs in this post. If you want to know what they're all about - jump to the bottom.

    Read more
  8. Okta has a great multi-factor authentication (MFA) service that you can use right away with a free developer account. It provides additional security by requiring a second factor after authentication and supports a variety of factor types including SMS, soft tokens like Google Authenticator, hard tokens like Yubikey and the…

    Read more
  9. Multi-factor authentication is an important tool in your security arsenal. If your password is compromised, your account can still be protected by using high quality second factors, such as Authy, Google Authenticator, or Okta Verify. In this tutorial, I'll show you how to authenticate, enroll in multi-factor authentication with Okta…

    Read more
  10. Multi-factor authentication (MFA) is the most reliable way to ensure the security of your users' PII (personally identifiable information), and with Okta it's easier than ever to implement in your application! Why is MFA super-secure? It's simple: While a user may have a terrible password, many additional factors are inherently…

    Read more
  11. Play Zork, Learn OAuth

    9 min read

    In the early '80s, some of the best "video" games were text-based adventures. These games would print out descriptive text of your surroundings and you would interact with the game using simple, but natural language commands like: "go north" or "take sword". Fast forward some 30 years and a specification…

    Read more
  12. In the first installment of this OpenID Connect (OIDC) series, we looked at some OIDC basics, its history, and the various flow types, scopes, and tokens involved. In this post, we'll dive into the mechanics of OIDC and see the various flows in action.

    Read more
  13. In the beginning, there were proprietary approaches to working with external identity providers for authentication and authorization. Then came SAML (Security Assertion Markup Language) – an open standard using XML as its message exchange type. Then, there was OAuth and OAuth 2.0 – also open as well as being a…

    Read more