[policy-charter] Authorization API Proposal

[Omri Gazitt]

Added my comments to the issues Alex opened (thanks!) and also put in a
couple of PRs on things that I hope are not controversial.


On Wed, Jun 28, 2023 at 2:42 PM Omri Gazitt <omri at aserto.com> wrote:

> ogazitt
>
> Thanks!
>
> On Wed, Jun 28, 2023 at 9:50 AM Atul Tulshibagwale <atul at sgnl.ai> wrote:
>
>> Hi Omri,
>> Thanks for your feedback here. I think GitHub issues are a good way to
>> provide feedback. I'll be happy to add you as a collaborator in the repo
>> (and anyone else who would like to collaborate in updating / editing the
>> draft). Please send me your GitHub ID.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Atul
>>
>> On Tue, Jun 27, 2023 at 10:47 PM Omri Gazitt <omri at aserto.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Thanks Atul - it's clear you and the SGNL team put some thought into
>>> this.
>>>
>>> I'm still looking through this but I like that you're specifying both a
>>> "check" function (Access Evaluation) and an "expand" function (Search
>>> API).  Both are important, but perhaps only the Access Evaluation API ought
>>> to be required.
>>>
>>> I'm not sure what is the best way to provide feedback. Github issues?
>>> PRs? put it in a google doc and use comments?
>>>
>>> Here are some thoughts (sorry, no particular order):
>>>
>>> > Policy Distribution Point
>>> Nit - this should be "Policy Decision Point" (which you name correctly
>>> in other places in the doc)
>>>
>>> > The Authorization API is itself authorized using OAuth 2.0 ([RFC6749
>>> <https://sgnl-ai.github.io/authzapi/#RFC6749>])
>>> I think this is overspecified. I can certainly see clients that call an
>>> Authorization API using an API key.
>>>
>>> > Terminology
>>> A bit of a quibble, but perhaps we tip the hat to XACML and use the
>>> terms "subject" and "resource" instead of "principal" and "asset". I'm not
>>> religious about these terms, but "asset" in particular seems less common
>>> than "object" or "resource".
>>>
>>> > Principals
>>> In many systems, subjects will be extracted from a JWT "sub" claim,
>>> which is a string. I'm not sure that specifying that this must be a JSON
>>> structure, and further specifying two optional fields (ipAddress and
>>> deviceId) is necessary, and feels overspecified.
>>>
>>> > Assets
>>> Having a type and id makes sense, but could these be specified in a
>>> single string?  For example, zanzibar defines these as type:id
>>>
>>> I do like having the ability to pass in properties in addition to the
>>> object identifier - but it seems like this should be a json object
>>> (key:value pairs), not just an array of attribute names.
>>>
>>> > Actions
>>> It's not clear to me that separating actions into "standard" and
>>> "custom" is useful. I think the types of actions you list (CRUD) are common
>>> examples but should not be normative.
>>>
>>> I do think it's possible to use the generic concept of "Action" to
>>> encompass permissions and relations.
>>>
>>> > Queries (as array)
>>> I think that allowing a set of decisions to be requested at once is
>>> valuable, but IMO the spec should not mandate that implementations must
>>> support more than one query at a time. Some PDPs don't support that
>>> semantic and it should be considered optional.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Tue, Jun 27, 2023 at 4:38 PM Atul Tulshibagwale via policy-charter <
>>> policy-charter at lists.openid.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hi all,
>>>>
>>>> Here's a proposal of an Authorization API that we would like to
>>>> contribute to this group (in its current form or if / when we find a home
>>>> in a standards body). This is similar to at least a few vendors' current
>>>> offerings, so I hope everyone finds this helpful, and we can accelerate our
>>>> standardization efforts as a result.
>>>>
>>>> You can read the proposal in HTML format here:
>>>> https://sgnl-ai.github.io/authzapi/
>>>>
>>>> The sources (under the MIT License) are here:
>>>> https://github.com/SGNL-ai/authzapi
>>>>
>>>> - Atul Tulshibagwale, Erik Gustavson and Marc Jordan
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>>
>>>> <https://sgnl.ai>
>>>>
>>>> Atul Tulshibagwale
>>>>
>>>> CTO
>>>>
>>>> <https://linkedin.com/in/tulshi> <https://twitter.com/zirotrust>
>>>> <atul at sgnl.ai>
>>>> --
>>>> policy-charter mailing list
>>>> policy-charter at lists.openid.net
>>>> https://lists.openid.net/mailman/listinfo/policy-charter
>>>>
>>>
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