Re: [OAUTH-WG] OAuth for institutional users

[Yunqi Zhang <[e-mail]>]

Thank you very much guys.

What is the trade off between using nested resources (e.g.,
https://hostname/users/:user_id/records/:record_id/) v.s. flattened
resources (e.g., https://hostname/users/:user_id/ and
https://hostname/records/:record_id/)?

Thank you!

Yunqi

On Fri, Feb 3, 2017 at 9:53 AM, Justin Richer <[e-mail]> wrote:

> Hi Denis,
>
> The book is being published very shortly and the text is completed, so
> there aren't any more updates to be made to it. Additionally, this isn't
> really the forum for comments on the book (there's an online form for
> discussion if you're interested: https://forums.manning.com/
> forums/oauth-2-in-action), this is a list for discussing and developing
> OAuth itself. Still, most of your comments are general enough
> misconceptions of OAuth that they may be of interest to others so I'll
> answer them on the list here, inline below.
>
> On 2/2/2017 5:47 PM, Denis wrote:
>
> Justin,
>
> Your are making the promotion of your book (OAuth 2 In Action), soon to
> be published.
>
> I browsed through the 23 pages of Chapter 1 that are provided as a free
> download.
>
> I saw the footnote from Manning Publications Co. which states:
>
> "*We welcome reader comments about anything in the manuscript*"
>
> Since Manning Publications Co. asked for it, I hope that you will be able
> to take into consideration some of my comments before this book is
> published.
>
> I will only comment on a few sentences.
>
> 1. Page 1: "The application requests authorization from the owner of the
> resource and receives tokens that it can use to access the resource".
>
> Such a model is rather restrictive and does not cover the general case
> where an application is willing to perform an operation on a resource
> and where the resource tells to the application which kind of attributes
> need to be presented by the application for that specific operation.
> In such a case, the resource owner is not involved in anyway at the time
> of the request. If this restriction remains, this should be clearly stated.
>
>
> This is the model of OAuth: it's a delegation protocol, delegating from a
> resource owner to a client. What you're describing is a different protocol
> where the client and resource negotiate attributes for the client to
> present to the resource to fulfill its requirements. OAuth specifically
> abstracts that process using the authorization server, and to great success.
>
> 2. Page 10:" To acquire a token, the client first sends the resource owner
> to the authorization server in order to request that the resource owner
> authorize this client".
>
> This sentence is not English. You cannot "send the resource owner to the
> authorization server". This sentence should be rephrased.
>
>
> Yes you can send the resource owner to the authorization server --
> generally by redirecting their web browser to a page on the authorization
> server (the authorization endpoint) for the resource owner to interact with
> the authorization server.
>
> 3. Page 16: "Even worse, some of the available options in OAuth can be
> taken in the wrong context or not enforced properly, leading to insecure
> implementations.
> These kinds of vulnerabilities are discussed at length in the OAuth Threat
> Model Document and the vulnerabilities section of this book (chapters 7, 8,
> 9, and 10)."
>
> Bear in mind that RFC 6819 was issued four years ago (in January 2013).
> Collusions between servers was considered, but collusions between clients
> was omitted,
> typically the ABC attack (Alice and Bob Collusion attack). See:
> https://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/oauth/current/msg16767.html
>
> You should add some text in section 7.6 to deal with the ABC attack.
>
>
> Sharing bearer tokens is a well known attack surface and there's really no
> way to stop that. Even PoP-style tokens can be shared since nothing stops
> Bob and Alice from sharing their secrets with each other. I've read
> everything you've written about the so-called ABC attack and don't think
> there's more to say about it, especially in an introductory book.
>
> 4. Page 16: " Ultimately, OAuth 2.0 is a good protocol, but it’s far from
> perfect. We will see its replacement at some point in the future, as with
> all things
> in technology, but no real contender has yet emerged as of the writing of
> this book.
>
> I can agree with you that "OAuth 2.0 is far from perfect". Can a protocol
> with so many options be a "good protocol" ? Can interoperability be
> achieved ?
> I don't think so. You then say: " but no real contender has yet emerged as
> of the writing of this book". I would rather suggest that you delete
> " but no real contender has yet emerged as of the writing of this book".
>
>
> I address the optionality and interoperability issues in that chapter,
> more in chapter 2, and even more in chapter 6. Yes, it's a good protocol,
> and I'm sorry you don't like it. When there's a delegation protocol that's
> similarly used across millions of sites and APIs all over the internet,
> then we can talk about a real contender for replacement. I look forward to
> that day, but we're not there yet (and I don't think we're anywhere near
> there).
>
> 5. Page 17: "OAuth assumes that the resource owner is the one that’s
> controlling the client".
>
> I do hope that it is not the case. The client should only be controlled by
> an end-user or by a local application and no one else.
>
>
> The resource owner *is* the end user. Your "should" is the same as the
> assumption I'm stating.
>
>
> 6. Page 17: " OAuth isn’t defined outside of the HTTP protocol. Since
> OAuth 2.0 with bearer tokens provides no message signatures,
> is it not meant to be used outside of HTTPS (HTTP over TLS). Sensitive
> secrets and information are passed over the wire, and
> OAuth requires a transport layer mechanism such as TLS to protect these
> secrets".
>
> The HTTPS protocol indeed needs to be used for resource data origin
> authentication and confidentiality protection of the data being exchanged.
> However, protecting sensitive secrets and information passed over the wire
> using TLS does not prevent in anyway an ABC attack. TLS binding
> does not provide either any extra protection in case of an ABC attack.
> This should be stated since this is an important issue. I really wonder
> if you can still say: " OAuth 2.0 is a good protocol". In any case, OAuth
> 2.0 is not a protocol but a framework.
>
>
> It doesn't prevent people from sharing secrets with each other out of
> band, as we've just talked about, but it does prevent a whole raft of other
> non-collusive attacks which are significantly more malicious and
> problematic.
>
> 7. Page 18: "OAuth doesn’t define a token format".
>
> How do you want to interoperate if no token format is being defined ? IETF
> RFCs on the standards track are primarily intended to be used to address
> interoperability.
>
>
> It all is based on *what* OAuth defines interoperability between. OAuth
> says how a client talks to an AS and how a client talks to an RS. It says
> nothing about how an RS and AS get along. Since the token format is opaque
> to the client, OAuth defines no token format because it didn't need to
> define one to be interoperable in the way it was intended to be.
>
> 8. Page 18 "In fact, the OAuth protocol explicitly states that the content
> of the token is completely opaque to the client application.
>
> This is even worse. In such a case, the client will be unable to make sure
> that what he got in the token is really what he was asking for: nothing
> more and nothing less.
>
>
> This is one of OAuth's best features, as it make things simpler.
>
> 9. Page 18: " OAuth 2.0 is also not a single protocol. As discussed
> previously, the specification is split into multiple definitions and flows,
> each of which has
> its own set of use cases. The core OAuth 2.0 specification has somewhat
> accurately been described as a security protocol generator, because it can
> be used
> to design the security architecture for many different use cases. As
> discussed in the previous section, these systems aren’t necessarily
> compatible with each other."
>
> This is indeed a very good description of the current mess.
>
>
> Yes, and I hope you read the rest of the paragraph that explains the
> nature of that "mess" and why it's set up the way that it is. There's a
> reason for it, which is why that section is there in the book.
>
> 10. Section 15.2 is not provided. Its title is : *Proof of possession
> (PoP) tokens*. I am really curious to read how you can achieve PoP in the
> case of an ABC attack.
>
>
> That's in chapter 15, which you don't have because you haven't bought the
> book. :) Same with all of the other forward references throughout that
> section.
>
> And you can still share secrets if they're given to you in the PoP case.
> Or you can just skip the security layer and share the results of the API
> calls. There's literally nothing in the world that can prevent that level
> of collusion -- PoP, token binding, DRM... nothing.
>
> 11. I also observed that there is no chapter dealing with *privacy
> issues.* Nowadays, it is an important topic. In particular on how to
> prevent an authorization server
> to act as *Big Brother*. A section should be added to deal with privacy
> issues.
>
>
> This is a topic that has been covered in great depth on the web, and since
> this is a technical book we didn't feel the need to get into it. I
> encourage you to write a treatise yourself, please let us know when you do.
>
> 12. Finally a typo on page 18: "Since OAuth 2.0 with bearer tokens
> provides no message signatures, *is it* not meant to be used outside of
> HTTPS (HTTP over TLS)".
>
> The preview chapters are not the latest copy of the manuscript text as
> it's being prepared for final publication, so a lot of typos and format
> errors have been fixed already.
>
> Thanks for the feedback, but as I said above, in the future please don't
> bring up issues you have with the book on this mailing list.
>
>  -- Justin
>
>
>
> Denis
>
> +1 to Phil's reference to SCIM, and since it looks like you're looking to
> do end user authentication you should look at OpenID Connect:
>
> http://openid.net/connect/
>
> There are a lot of ways to get an authentication protocol based on OAuth
> very, very wrong, and I've covered some of the big ones in an article I
> wrote (with the community's help) a few years ago:
>
> http://oauth.net/articles/authentication/
>
> Furthermore, I've covered the topic in my upcoming book, OAuth 2 In
> Action, which you might find useful:
>
> https://www.manning.com/books/oauth-2-in-action
>
> All said, the space is not as easy as you may think it is at first and
> there are a lot of pitfalls. But the good news is that you're not the first
> to dive in here and there are a lot of really good solutions already
> available.
>
>  -- Justin
>
> On 2/2/2017 10:52 AM, Phil Hunt (IDM) wrote:
>
> You are headed down the road to a very big domain called identity
> management and provisioning.
>
> You might want to look at SCIM (RFC7643, 7644) for a restful api pattern.
>
> SCIM is usually OAuth enabled but the scopes/rights have not yet been
> standardized. There is however some obvious access control patterns that
> apply from the old ldap directory world.
>
> Phil
>
> On Feb 1, 2017, at 6:36 PM, Yunqi Zhang <[e-mail]> wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
> I'm working on a set of API endpoints to allow institutions to manage
> their users and records, and their users to read their own records.
>
> Specifically, each institution will get a {client_id} and a {secret} after
> registering with us, which allows them to create users under its
> institution using [POST https://hostname/users/]. Then the institution
> can also insert records for each user using [POST
> https://hostname/users/:user_id/]. Once a user has been created, he/she
> can read his/her own records using [GET https://hostname/users/:user_id/].
>
> In this process, there are two types of authentications I would like to
> achieve, which I'm thinking about using oauth. However, I am super new on
> oauth and have four questions.
>
> Institution authentication (e.g., company FOO will have READ and WRITE
> access to https://hostname/ to create users under its own institution,
> insert records for specific users): (1) Since this part of the system will
> be created and run by the institution, this should be a "client credential
> grant" using {client_id} and {secret} of the institution, correct?
>
> End-user authentication (e.g., user John Doe of company FOO will have READ
> access to https://hostname/users/:john_doe_user_id/ to read his own
> personal records): (2) Because this part of the system will probably run on
> the web/mobile app created by company FOO, this should be a "resource owner
> credential grant" using {username}, {password} of the specific user,
> correct?
>
> (3) Because I am allow two types of different authentications, which will
> use two types of different {access_token}s I assume, would that be
> something weird (or hard to build) under the oauth model?
>
> (4) What if the web/mobile app created by a subset of the companies
> already has its own authentication and does not want to create another
> password for each of its users, what should I do? For example, company FOO
> has its own authentication for its web/mobile app and does not want to
> bother creating another password for each of its user (i.e., requires only
> {username}), whereas company BAR would like to create another password for
> each user (i.e., requires {username} and {password}). What kind of
> authentication model should I use for a scenario like this?
>
> Thank you very much for your help!
>
> Yunqi
>
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