[OpenID] TransparencyCamp and OpenID (U)

[Brett McDowell]

To (what I think is) Chris' point about changing/up-leveling the  
discussion out of a "OpenID vs. SAML" or "OpenID is insecure"  
sidetrack, and to (what I think is) Johannes' point about capturing  
the security requirements that we can base a new work stream on... I  
humbly suggest we look at the requirements our friends in the US  
Government (and others) are requiring now and are confident they will  
continue to require regardless of (and independent of) private sector  
innovation.  I'm specifically referring to their requirement to  
compliance to the NIST defined levels of assurance (LOA).

If I were to peer into my crystal ball I would probably see that most  
of the compelling applications that governments will open to 3rd-party  
credentialed citizens are likely to be set to LOA 2 or LOA 3.  How  
about we shift this conversation to focus on how OP's can offer OpenID- 
based services to their users that achieve government recognized  
compliance to LOA 2 (and soon after, LOA 3)?

Some work on this has already been *started* but not progressed in  
earnest.  Project Concordia has some use cases that look at this  
problem space.  The Identity Assurance Framework looks at how any  
particular credential service can achieve LOA 1 through LOA 4.  What  
we don't have is any analysis of what an OP could achieve with OpenID  
2.0.  Knowing this will provide a clear gap analysis of what we have  
vs. what we need. We can base our deliberations on these hard facts.   
I can only believe this will be more productive than... actually I  
don't see any alternative to this approach if we are serious about  
making progress.

Next Steps?

Since I work closely with the primary US Government agency in charge  
of procurement (which is quite important to the issue of what/which IT  
infrastructure Federal agencies deploy), and because they already  
require our certification for all federation technology prior to being  
considered by agencies for procurement (this is all SAML and/or PKI   
today -- just to clear up any confusion about the usage of SAML in  
eCitizen applications), and since they are working closely with us to  
adopt our credential assessment framework for LOA 1-2 in the very near  
future (and LOA 3-4 down the road), I would be happy to talk with them  
about co-hosting a kick-off event to drill into this issue as it  
relates to OpenID specifically.   I assume they will be interested.   
They, like I, would like to see citizens be able to use whatever  
private sector credentials they "already have" to access government  
applications.  If those are OpenID's, then lets make sure those  
OpenID's are going to be acceptable to these federal Relying Parties  
(who knows, we might learn something that helps us win more RP  
adoption in other markets as well).

Thoughts?


Brett McDowell | +1.413.652.1248 | http://info.brettmcdowell.com

On Mar 12, 2009, at 9:05 PM, Peter Williams wrote:

>
> I’ve been playing with dynamic SAML metadata modes recently. Instead  
> of reading a signed XRDS file, peers dynamically  sign SAML metadata  
> files. A SAML metadata file is only XML, and has extensions:  one of  
> which could include an XRD or 2 (and thus get signed XRD off the  
> ground). You can look at the SAML endpoints as funky XRD services,  
> all expressed in their own markup.
>
> The best thing that ever happened to SAML2 was openid – as [most of]  
> the SAML crowd have largely got off their ultra high horse and been  
> forced to match openid in simplicity and effectiveness (or be made  
> irrelevant).
>
>
>
>
>
> From: general-bounces at openid.net [mailto:general-bounces at openid.net]  
> On Behalf Of Chris Messina
> Sent: Thursday, March 12, 2009 3:59 PM
> To: Johannes Ernst
> Cc: OpenID List
> Subject: Re: [OpenID] TransparencyCamp and OpenID (U)
>
> On Thu, Mar 12, 2009 at 4:37 PM, Johannes Ernst <jernst+openid.net at netmesh.us 
> > wrote:
>
> On Mar 12, 2009, at 9:46, Ben Laurie wrote:
> I agree that all of SAML is way too large a pill to swallow but
> there's no reason subsets that are usable cannot be defined, and,
> indeed, have been.
>
> I would love it if somebody was actually starting a working group  
> (in Apache they would call it "incubate") that would propose all the  
> gory details of a "more secure" form of OpenID that still fits into  
> the decentralized, discovery-based OpenID architecture. Only then  
> can we tell what may or may not be the better approach.
>
> +1.
>
> I'm not the person to do it, simply because I don't have the  
> background, but I'm really no longer interested in the discussion  
> that "OpenID isn't good enough for high-value transactions". Tell  
> that to the Japanese who are already pushing payments over/with  
> OpenID.
>
> If it's got security issues, as Johannes said, we should collect a  
> list of them as issues and go about finding suitable solutions, best  
> practices or explanations for WONTFIX-type resolutions.
>
> The reality is, people will use OpenID in all kinds of cases that we  
> can't be able to anticipate; SAML (again, from what I hear — being  
> mostly SAML ignorant) is that SAML requires sysadmins to maintain  
> and more and more organizations want to move away from that kind of  
> model.
>
> HTTP succeeds because (among many, many other reasons) you can jack  
> up your service to things like S3 once you realize that you're not  
> really saving any money as a small to mid-sized organization running  
> a server farm. The same thing applies to user authentication and  
> security over time, where it'd be nice to have a fairly straight- 
> forward, interoperable protocol for doing authentication. From what  
> I've heard, I don't question the sophistication or technological  
> pedigree of SAML; it's just that when I hear people say that OpenID  
> isn't secure enough, it's like saying we should all switch to RDF  
> because it's OMG-so-much-better.
>
> I don't doubt that either are, if your primary concerns in life are  
> centered around the problems that these technologies solve; but for  
> folks for whom security isn't necessarily their only responsibility,  
> and they no longer have an IT department or staff to manage a SAML  
> solution and look to OpenID as a potential answer — saying that  
> OpenID isn't secure enough doesn't seem to be an answer to the  
> question "well, then what do I use?"
>
> How do we get from where we are today to a point where OpenID really  
> does solve a large number of security problems — if only because it  
> hopefully means fewer passwords in use overall — and fewer unique  
> accounts to maintain? Look, let's take another look at this: it  
> isn't just "is OpenID by itself secure?" It's: "given how OpenID  
> changes the makeup of and behavior in the overall ecosystem, are we  
> now more secure than we were before?" In general, I think the answer  
> is yes, though of course good security necessitates vigilance and  
> constant improvement.
>
> To Johannes point: are we capturing these needed improvements  
> anywhere, and if not, can we begin to?
>
> Chris
>
>
> -- 
> Chris Messina
> Citizen-Participant &
>  Open Web Advocate-at-Large
>
> factoryjoe.com # diso-project.org
> citizenagency.com # vidoop.com
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