A review of the authentication and authorization tool known as wwwhisper. For CS3560 at Ohip University

1. MEGAN NICOL
Review of wwwhisper

2. History of wwwhisper
 First started in March of 2012
 Created by Jan Wrobel, a senior software engineer at
Google
 Design Goals
 Simplify how web-based resources are shared
 Eliminate need for site-specific username and password
databases

3. Comparison to other Tools
 Wawp – Uses PHP and MySQL in order to login and
restrict web access. Cost - Free
 phpSecurePages- A PHP module that restricts access
using a user account with password, stored in a
MySQL database. Cost - $20
 wwwhisper does not require a username, password,
or account. Instead, it uses “approved” email
addresses (with Persona to verify email address to
grant access). Cost – Both Free and Charged ($10 &
$25) Options

4. What is wwwhisper?
 wwwhisper is a Heroku add-on tool that is used for
authentication and authorization for an application.
 Instead of using a username and password in order
to limit the use of the app, wwwhisper grants access
based on approved email addresses.
 It also allows you to easily add or remove admins

5. Sustainability, Performance, & Pricing
 wwwhisper supports Node.js, Ruby Rack and Rails
based applications
 There are 3 pricing options
 Starter – Free, 2 users, admin web interface, authorization lib
version monitoring, 10,000 authorization requests per month.
 Basic - $10/month, 10 users, custom login page, admin web
interface, authorization lib version monitoring, open locations,
1,000,000 authorization requests per month
 Plus - $25/month, unlimited users, custom login page, admin
web interface, authorization lib version monitoring, open
locations, unlimited authorization requests

6. Benefit/Cost Analysis
 For my final project, using wwwhisper will be
extremely beneficial. Eliminates the writing of
thousands of lines of code. It is free, and supports
Node.js, so it can support smaller projects without
cost. If more users or requests are needed, I believe
that the cost ($10 or $25) are not exorbitant and will
pay for themselves in terms of man hours to create
and upkeep a user/password database.

7. Why use wwwhisper?
 wwwhisper eliminates the need for writing
authentication and authorization code, while still
giving the user the ability to limit who can use their
web application.
 It is extremely simple to quick to install, requiring
only 4 lines of code to implement.
 Works very well with Persona.

8. Step 1: Provisioning the Add-On

9. Step 2: Obtain wwwhisper URL
 Using the follow command gives you the ability to
communicate with the wwwhisper service.

10. Step 3: Configuring with Node.js
 Incredibly simple!

11. Demo

15. Maintenance
 If necessary, you will be notified of any security
updates that your authorization library may need.

16. Resources Citations
 http://www.bigismore.com/web-development-tools/tools-for-web-
authentication-and-authorization/
 https://addons.heroku.com/wwwhisper
 http://mixedbit.org/blog/2014/01/08/wwwhisper_add_on_for_nod
e_js.html
 https://wwwhisper-demo.herokuapp.com/
 https://github.com/wrr/wwwhisper