[Openid-specs-fapi] HTTP Signing

Dave Tonge dave.tonge at momentumft.co.uk
Wed Jan 6 15:15:35 UTC 2021


Dear WG

The FAPI2 Advanced spec requires a mechanism for HTTP signing.

Brian and I have worked on the following spec based on DPoP that could be
used to enable this:

https://bitbucket.org/openid/fapi/src/581a0350bca97240f104fa27f4e9f0d9d851aab0/Financial_API_Simple_HTTP_Message_Integrity_Protocol.md
(SHIMP)
There has been some discussion in this issue
<https://bitbucket.org/openid/fapi/issues/309/decision-on-message-signing-for-fapi-2>

I'll provide some more info below, but my ask of the WG is:

*Should the FAPI WG adopt this document as a WG draft and start working on
it?*

I would be grateful for any feedback. If there is not support to work on
such a spec within the WG then we can leave it and potentially in FAPI2
advanced require http signing but without specifying the method to use.

---

Here is an overview of the spec from the intro:









*The OAuth working group at the IETF has defined the DPOP standard which
"enables a client to demonstrate proof-of-possession of a public/private
key pair by including a DPoP header in an HTTP request". DPOP specifies a
way for a client to sign a proof which contains claims for the HTTP method
and URI. The specification allows DPoP proofs to be extended to protect
additional HTTP data.This specification is an extension to DPoP that
supports the following 1. Signing a digest of the HTTP body data 2. Using
DPoP proofs in HTTP responses 3. Allowing a signed HTTP response to be
cryptographically linked to a signed HTTP requestThe aim of this
specification is to provide a simple, interoperable method of signing HTTP
requests and responses. By utilizing DPOP (which itself utilizes the JOSE
suite of standards) and DIGEST there is no need for custom canonicalization
rules. The DPoP proof is a simple self-contained JWT and is therefore
simple to verify.*
----

I personally think that the ability to have a standards based approach to
link the request and response for http signing will be important for the
non-repudiation use-case.

Issues with other solutions:

1. Draft Cavage - custom (error prone) canonicalization and algorithm
specification
2. OBE / ETSI - same problem as Cavage, but with the addition of a strange
use of detached JWS for signing caoniclisated http headers rather than the
body
3. Detached JWS (used by OB UK) - only signs the body, requires custom JWT
header claims

In contrast SHIMP has these advantages:
 - uses simple JWTs, easy to implement, interoperable
 - no need for custom JWT header claims
 - no error-prone canonicalization

I look forward to receiving your feedback.

Dave

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