[Openid-specs-fapi] Alive and kicking: draft-cavage-http-signatures

[Dave Tonge]

Hi Joseph

The problem is that there is lots of non-standard stringification and
parsing as well as other weirdness.

Here are the problems I encountered:
1. the draft defines its own set of algorithms rather than just using the
JWA
2. the signing material should be new line separated (why?)
3. the header which specifies the alg, what is being signed and the
signature should be of the form 'Signature key="value",key="value"'
4. the header names are case sensitive (against http specs and caused me no
end of grief as some http client libraries automatically lowercase http
header names)
5. requirement on a date header in a non-standard form
6. requirement that http body is completely untouched or the digest will
break
7. relies on the http digest spec (https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3230) for
actual content integrity
8. uses a custom header to pass the http method and path (but leaves out
host?)

When we are mainly talking about signing JSON API requests and responses I
really don't think its the right way to go.

I agree that it would be a good topic for discussion at the OAuth Security
Workshop.

Dave

On Wed, 13 Mar 2019 at 17:25, Joseph Heenan via Openid-specs-fapi <
openid-specs-fapi at lists.openid.net> wrote:

> I presume the interoperability issues are solvable one way or another?
>
> The early reports about OBUK’s signing algorithm seem to be cautiously
> pessimistic. I’m not sure if OB gave any reasons for not using the IETF
> cavage draft.
>
> I know we’ve discussed it before, but it does seem like the FAPI working
> group should try and favour one standard, which would also allow us to
> build interoperability/certification tests for that standard. I think the
> oauth working group feels similarly. Justin Richer pulled together some of
> the thoughts at IETF 101 (
> https://datatracker.ietf.org/meeting/101/materials/slides-101-oauth-sessa-http-signing-00
> ) but I’m not sure if the conversation moved on from there.
>
> Perhaps it’s one to put on the agenda for the oauth security workshop
> face-to-face?
>
> Joseph
>
>
>
> On 13 Mar 2019, at 16:15, Dave Tonge via Openid-specs-fapi <
> openid-specs-fapi at lists.openid.net> wrote:
>
> Having integrated against it - the draft is terrible.
>
> I highly doubt that it is being implemented in an interoperable way.
>
> We need a better solution and I'm very much in favour of JSON based
> signatures - cleartext json would be great, but detached JWTs are still a
> lot better than http-signatures.
>
> On Wed, 13 Mar 2019 at 16:41, Anders Rundgren via Openid-specs-fapi <
> openid-specs-fapi at lists.openid.net> wrote:
>
>> After posting
>> https://cyberphone.github.io/ietf-signed-http-requests/hotrfc-shreq.pdf
>> in the https://open-banking-global.slack.com forum it became clear that
>> quite a bunch of API builders in the financial sector (including Starling)
>> indeed have settled on
>> https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-cavage-http-signatures-10.
>>
>> Under those circumstances it seems a bit premature suggesting that other
>> entities should not use it.  That a draft has expired doesn't make it
>> worthless.
>>
>> What's surprising is that I found no traces of any discussions within the
>> IETF regarding this draft (which IMO doesn't look that bad).
>>
>> Note: I'm not advocating for adoption of http-signatures, but for a more
>> open discussion about the alternatives.
>>
>> Thanx,
>> Anders
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>>
>
>
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DISCLAIMER: This email (including any attachments) is subject to copyright,
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