Re: [OAUTH-WG] What's the use case for signing OAuth 2.0 requests?

Yaron,

You have referenced the SAML browser SSO protocol  (POST profile) in 
your blog posting, and correctly observed that the same problem would 
manifest itself there as well.

As a counter-measure, the SAML POST profile explicitly requires that the 
target  (destination) URL or similar identifier be carried as part of 
the SAML payload, and, that further the SAML payload is signed. This 
allows for the recipient to determine whether it was the intended target 
and to ignore payloads directed at other targets.

I dont believe that similar constraints have been placed on the OAuth 
access token - it is essentially undefined? - but maybe I missed that in 
my reading of the specification draft.

- prateek
>
> My understanding of Eran's article 
> (http://hueniverse.com/2010/09/oauth-2-0-without-signatures-is-bad-for-the-web/) 
> is that Eran believes that bearer tokens are not good enough as a 
> security mechanism because they allow for replay attacks in discovery 
> style scenarios. He then, if I understood the article correctly, 
> argues that the solution to the replay attack is to sign OAuth 2.0 
> requests.
>
> In http://www.goland.org/bearer-tokens-discovery-and-oauth-2-0/ I 
> tried to demonstrate that in fact one can easily prevent replay 
> attacks in discovery scenarios using OAuth 2.0 and bearer tokens. If 
> the article is correct then it is not a requirement to introduce 
> message signing into OAuth 2.0 in order to prevent the attacks that 
> Eran identified.
>
>  
>
> So this leaves me wondering, what's the critical scenario that can't 
> be met unless we use sign OAuth 2.0 requests?
>
>  
>
>                 Thanks,
>
>  
>
>                                                 Yaron
>
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