Re: [OAUTH-WG] Second OAuth 2.0 Mix-Up Mitigation Draft

[Hans Zandbelt <[e-mail]>]

Note that the argument was not about message-level protection: it was 
about not disclosing the state value verbatim over the token endpoint.

I don't feel strongly about it either; it was just what was agreed at 
first. Since no-one actually came up with even a hypothetical attack I 
guess it makes sense to revert that decision.

Hans.

On 1/21/16 7:58 PM, Justin Richer wrote:
> Thank you for removing state hashing and please don’t add it back. It’s
> security theater, and that’s giving it the benefit of the doubt.
> Remember, this is being sent in a  request where other parameters (code,
> client_id, client_secret, redirect_uri) are all sent plain over TLS as
> well. Either come up with a general mechanism to hash everything or
> don’t hash anything. The latter is more likely to win, and it’s the only
> thing that makes sense currently.
>
> Also, keep in mind that if the client hashes the state on the second
> request, then the server can’t store the state parameter using its own
> hash methods (for data-at-rest protection) and still be able to do the
> comparison. Having the client send it over plain is really better all
> around in terms of simplicity and adoptability.
>
> Now if we really wanted to have message-level protection of HTTP
> requests, I can think of a good way to do that…
>
>   — Justin
>
>
>> On Jan 21, 2016, at 9:41 AM, John Bradley <[e-mail]
>> <mailto:[e-mail]>> wrote:
>>
>> We merged the state verification in with this rather than forcing
>> people to also look at the JWT encoded State draft.
>> https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-bradley-oauth-jwt-encoded-state.
>>
>> While JWT encoded state is how I would do state in a client and
>> at-least one client I know of uses it, it is not the only way to
>> manage state, and I am hesitant that developers might be scared away
>> by thinking they need to encode state as a JWT.
>>
>> I decided that cross referencing them is better.   This made sending
>> much simpler to describe.
>>
>> I also removed the hashing from state.   That cut the text by about
>> 2/3 by not having to describe character set normalization so that both
>> the client and the AS could calculate the same hash.
>> That also achieved the goal of not requiring a simple OAuth client
>> doing the code flow to add a crypto library to support SHA256.
>>
>> Once we make a algorithm mandatory, we need to defend why we don’t
>> have crypto agility eg support for SHA3 etc.  We would be forced by
>> the IESG to add another parameter to the request to specify the hash
>> alg if we went that direction.
>>
>> Given that we assume state to be public info in the request that an
>> attacker can see, hashing state provides not much value for a lot of
>> complexity that people may get wrong or not implement.
>>
>> I appreciate why from a theory point of view hashing it would have
>> been better.
>>
>> If people really want it I can add it back.
>>
>> John B.
>>
>>> On Jan 21, 2016, at 3:28 AM, Mike Jones <[e-mail]
>>> <mailto:[e-mail]>> wrote:
>>>
>>> John Bradley and I collaborated to create the second OAuth 2.0 Mix-Up
>>> Mitigation draft.  Changes were:
>>> ·Simplified by no longer specifying the signed JWT method for
>>> returning the mitigation information.
>>> ·Simplified by no longer depending upon publication of a discovery
>>> metadata document.
>>> ·Added the “state” token request parameter.
>>> ·Added examples.
>>> ·Added John Bradley as an editor.
>>> The specification is available at:
>>> ·http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-jones-oauth-mix-up-mitigation-01
>>> An HTML-formatted version is also available at:
>>> ·http://self-issued.info/docs/draft-jones-oauth-mix-up-mitigation-01.html
>>>                                                           -- Mike
>>> P.S.  This note was also posted
>>> athttp://self-issued.info/?p=1526andas@selfissued
>>> <https://twitter.com/selfissued>.
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-- 
Hans Zandbelt              | Sr. Technical Architect
[e-mail] | Ping Identity