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Re: [Iotops] Authorization for IoT devices

Michael Richardson <mcr+ietf@sandelman.ca> Wed, 28 July 2021 18:25 UTC

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From: Michael Richardson <mcr+ietf@sandelman.ca>
To: Hannes Tschofenig <Hannes.Tschofenig@arm.com>
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Date: Wed, 28 Jul 2021 14:25:39 -0400
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Subject: Re: [Iotops] Authorization for IoT devices
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Hannes Tschofenig <Hannes.Tschofenig@arm.com> wrote:
    mcr> 2) but in any case, it's the form of the rules which the AS evaluates to
    mcr> make the authorization decision that I care about.  AFAIK, neither
    mcr> OAUTH2 or ACE-OAUTH standardizes that (or intends to).

    Hannes> In deployments today the rules are not standardized because they
    Hannes> are configured by the user/admin into the AS. What gets pushed
    Hannes> around are permissions, which are defined for specific
    Hannes> application domains. These permissions are called "scopes" in the
    Hannes> OAuth language. Some of those scopes have been standardized.

Thank you for confirming my understanding.
I'm looking for a standard for the rules.

Why? because auditing, because humans need to understand them, because
configuring the rules needs to be something non-experts can do.

    > There has also been an attempt to standardize more generic ACLs,
    > see draft-ietf-ace-aif.

Not even close, I think.

    mcr> If I'm wrong please correct me.
    mcr> How would ACE-OAuth identify the local Sheriff?

    Hannes> The purpose of an authorization framework is not to identify a
    Hannes> specific person. That's the role of an identity management
    Hannes> framework.

It's not a specific person, it's a specific role in an particular geography.
That's why this problem is non-trivial.

    > If you also want to add the identity management piece to ACE/OAuth
    > (which people have obviously done), then you can add OpenID Connect
    > and, for example, FIDO to the mix.

If we can really do this with those specifications, I'd be interested in
knowing how, or seeing an example of a system which has done that.

I'm actually convinced that we don't need a lot of new work ("new
ingredients") to make things go, but I think that we need a clear
architecture on combining existing work ("better recipes")

--
Michael Richardson <mcr+IETF@sandelman.ca>   . o O ( IPv6 IøT consulting )
           Sandelman Software Works Inc, Ottawa and Worldwide

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