[OpenID] Too many providers... and here's one reason
Tatsuki Sakushima
tatsuki at nri.com
Tue Sep 16 22:41:01 UTC 2008
I am not so pessimistic about the future of OpenID. I think that OpenID
is not something that guarantees security and accountability of user
credentials. It is just a mean to discover an arbitrary identity
provider and to deliver a message from it to RPs even though the
security of the pipe was considered. Assurance is something that
guarantees security and accountability of user credentials. In terms of
assurance, I don't see any difference between SAML and OpenID. Their
role is exactly the same. We should look at protocol and assurance
separately. Technology is not the only way to build high assurance of
credentials. It can be processes of issuing and managing credentials. If
OpenID will be used for business purposes, these are required anyway.
I think the decision OpenID should make is whether it accommodates
assurance in its design or not. I experimented with the PAPE library
(adding signature and so forth) this summer, I thought it was possible
to use OpenID with assurance programs.
If we can make OpenID work with assurance programs, it will takes us to
the next level. BTW, how to drive assurance programs is another issue. I
believe that OpenID still has huge advantage on ease of implementation
compared to other technologies. Especially for RPs, this is very important.
Tatsuki Sakushima
NRI Pacific - Nomura Research Institute America, Inc.
Peter Williams さんは書きました:
> Folks in the liberty alliance message (openly and convincingly) that openid cannot ever - inherently - be used for any purpose requiring "assurance". They point to the undisputed claim that the open designers knowingly made design tradeoffs in the crypto handshake and security critical securty service composition rules, so as to make it all easy to deploy and adopt. Because of this precept, openid cannot even *be* fixed (since low assurance is the actual goal).
>
> This relegates openid to business needs that really cannot benefit from membership secrecy or strong auth - since it doesn't aim to provide for these today, or even in the future.
>
> Sigh. Cannot use it, and cannot fix it. Meantime, only choice is to use openid competition: saml/wsfed/wstrust (high end) or oauth (really low end).
>
> Doenst this seem a frustrating position to take, or accept?
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Tatsuki Sakushima <tatsuki at nri.com>
> Sent: Tuesday, September 16, 2008 10:31 AM
> To: Peter Williams <pwilliams at rapattoni.com>
> Cc: Andrew Arnott <andrewarnott at gmail.com>; general at openid.net <general at openid.net>
> Subject: Re: [OpenID] Too many providers... and here's one reason
>
>
> Mixi's use case is a casual one. Their membership authentication will be
> used for filtering who can comment user's blog based on whether visitors
> are user's friend or a member of specific groups. (Mixi is in a good
> position to provide this kind of information.)
>
> The use case of this topic is a business case. When OP plays a important
> role behalf of its users such as managing membership information to many
> different channels, I think that assurance is a key to make this happen.
>
> If OP can have trustworthiness backed up by an assurance program, RPs
> can engage users directly through OP. Nat's Trusted Exchange spec is one
> way to create this information back channel behind OP.
>
> I started the discussion to make PAPE assurance program ready in the WG.
> Please join us if interested.
>
> Tatsuki Sakushima
> NRI Pacific - Nomura Research Institute America, Inc.
>
> Peter Williams さんは書きました:
>> Ignroing the desire to keep membership secret, isn't even the original delegation model of openid 1 more or less sufficient for openid grade (rough and ready) assurances?
>>
>> One posts as many delegation meta files at as many organizations as one want to allow one during url data etry to specify ones membership-name to the rp, which delegates to the opby std discovery. If metadata exists on theorganization site, the organization obviously has "some role" in managing part of the users (multi homed) identity.
>>
>> Without a formal signature (like in xri) its hard to do much better with openid1.
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Tatsuki Sakushima <tatsuki at nri.com>
>> Sent: Monday, September 15, 2008 10:39 PM
>> To: Andrew Arnott <andrewarnott at gmail.com>
>> Cc: Peter Williams <pwilliams at rapattoni.com>; general at openid.net <general at openid.net>
>> Subject: Re: [OpenID] Too many providers... and here's one reason
>>
>>
>> Mixi, the largest SNS in Japan, does membership authentication in a
>> simple manner. They just let RPs specifiy URL of OP that users should
>> have membership. However, this way won't reduce the number of OPs that
>> users have to manage even thought it is straight forward and easy to
>> understand.
>>
>> I think that having a master OP to manage all other OPs that users have
>> membership with. But users must manage the list somehow. From users'
>> perspective, I don't know which is a better way to do it.
>>
>> Another way to think this is that RPs should consider they engage
>> directly to users through OPs with certain conditions such as providing
>> information that RPs require. We also should think about purposes of
>> membership. Do they have to belong to organizations that RPs specify to
>> get a deal?
>>
>> Tatsuki Sakushima
>> NRI Pacific - Nomura Research Institute America, Inc.
>>
>> Andrew Arnott さんは書きました:
>>> That's sounding like what I was hoping existed.
>>>
>>> Now, since I'm hoping to separate authentication from this membership
>>> test, and if I didn't want my membership in Org XYZ to be public
>>> knowledge, from a user's perspective it seems the only way to get this
>>> to work would be this:
>>>
>>> 1. I log into RP using an Identifier of my choice, and an asserting
>>> OP of my choice
>>> 2. The RP is interested in my membership in Org XYZ, so it asks Org
>>> XYZ if my Identifier is a member of the org.
>>> 3. Similar to OpenID OP's list of sites I trust, Org XYZ checks if
>>> the requesting RP is trusted by me. If it is, then it just
>>> answers yes. If not, it tells the RP to take the long route.
>>> 4. The long route would be the RP redirecting me to Org XYZ to go to
>>> a page where I would grant permission for the RP to find out that
>>> I am a member.
>>> 5. The redirect (like OpenId) would tell the RP that I am in a
>>> confirmable way.
>>>
>>> Blah, that sounds way just like the org being an OP. So maybe for
>>> purposes of this investigation we'll just say it can be public
>>> knowledge, but confirmable the way Peter just described.
>>>
>>> On Mon, Sep 15, 2008 at 5:30 PM, Peter Williams <pwilliams at rapattoni.com
>>> <mailto:pwilliams at rapattoni.com>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Couldn't this be handled by the XRI support, in the openid 2 world?
>>>
>>> Doesn't the XRI resolver allow the organizational claim to be tested?
>>>
>>> XRI essentially has a yellow-pages resolver built in. For any yellow
>>> page index, you can resolve a name via that particular naming path.
>>> The XRI resolver thus tests that one is listed in a particular
>>> "organizational" index, or which there can be n. In trusted XRI,
>>> furthermore, the SAML assertions would provide additional proof that
>>> the particular resolver listener is authorized to speak for those
>>> organizations. In the HXRI trusted resolver variety, the usual trick
>>> of the proxy resolver having n*1000 SSL server, one per
>>> organization, would be sufficient to know that the listener speaks
>>> for the organization (over https)
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: general-bounces at openid.net <mailto:general-bounces at openid.net>
>>> [mailto:general-bounces at openid.net
>>> <mailto:general-bounces at openid.net>] On Behalf Of Dick Hardt
>>> Sent: Monday, September 15, 2008 5:12 PM
>>> To: Andrew Arnott
>>> Cc: general at openid.net <mailto:general at openid.net>
>>> Subject: Re: [OpenID] Too many providers... and here's one reason
>>>
>>>
>>> On 15-Sep-08, at 4:45 PM, Andrew Arnott wrote:
>>>
>>> > I just spoke with an organization that wants to become a Provider so
>>> > that other RP web sites can specifically tell if the logging in user
>>> > is a member of this organization by whether their OpenID Identifier
>>> > was asserted by that org's OP.
>>> >
>>> > Ideally, I'd like this org to choose to be an RP instead of an OP
>>> > because there are already too many OPs out there and not enough RPs,
>>> > IMO.
>>> >
>>> > How can an RP accept an OpenID Identifier from arbitrary OPs, but at
>>> > each login determine whether the Identifier represents a user who
>>> > belongs to a particular Organization? Basically the Organization
>>> > needs to send an assertion about the Identifier's membership, but
>>> > only be willing to do so if that identifier is confirmed as having
>>> > logged in successfully to that RP. This would be easy to do if that
>>> > Org was an OP, but I'm trying to reduce the # of reasons to be an OP.
>>>
>>> I have envisioned this as a chain of assertions / claims.
>>>
>>> The user has a claim that their identifier is a member of the org.
>>> This claim could be cached or obtained each time it is needed.
>>>
>>> The user then presents that claim (binding identifier to org
>>> membership) and also proves that they control the identifier presented
>>> to the RP.
>>>
>>> InfoCards has this flow speced out ... will be interesting to see if
>>> there is interest in this from the OpenID community, particularly
>>> since this is where the identity protocols really start to
>>> differentiate themselves from existing username/password and form fill.
>>>
>>> -- Dick
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
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>>> general at openid.net <mailto:general at openid.net>
>>> http://openid.net/mailman/listinfo/general
>>>
>>>
>>>
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