“We hope this series has helped educate the broader industry on the nature of potential OAuth implementation errors and how to close these API-based security gaps to better protect data and use ...

Analysis of The Attacker’s Behavior GitHub analysis the incident include that the attackers authenticated to the GitHub API using the stolen OAuth tokens issued to accounts Heroku and Travis CI.

That's where OAuth comes into play. It's the first step towards delivering a standard protocol for password-less Web authentication that works across the Web and the desktop.