Re: [OAUTH-WG] WGLC on draft-ietf-oauth-v2-threatmodel-01, ends 9 Dec 2011

I think the threat draft should simply say, "OAuth does not and can not protect the user against credential compromise as a result of phishing, malware, social engineering, or machine compromise."

Get rid of the fancy rhetoric, we don't need to explain a lot more than this.  

I don't agree that OAuth purports to solve these problems. What it solves is limiting the credentials granted to allow the user more control and limited damage in the event of credential misuse.

-bill

________________________________
 From: Michael Thomas <mike@mtcc.com>
To: Barry Leiba <barryleiba@computer.org> 
Cc: oauth WG <oauth@ietf.org> 
Sent: Wednesday, January 4, 2012 1:06 PM
Subject: Re: [OAUTH-WG] WGLC on draft-ietf-oauth-v2-threatmodel-01, ends 9 Dec 2011

On 01/04/2012 12:41 PM, Barry Leiba wrote:
> up being a compromised browser or a native application that the user
> perhaps unwisely installed, all the security in the framework goes out
    ^^^^^^^^^
> the window, because an untrustworthy UA can fiddle with pretty much
> everything.
>

I think the "perhaps unwisely" goes to the heart of my objection. You
might as well be talking about "perhaps unwisely" driving a car,
or "perhaps unwisely" eating food: the reality is that people download
apps by the *billions*.  When I was initially blown off, many of the
participants including document editors implied that only idiots get
apps for their phones. That is *completely* unhelpful as the reality
is that OAUTH's use is hugely if not primarily deployed in that sort of
environment.

This is a threat that cuts to the very heart of what OAUTH is, and purports
to defend against: keeping user credentials out of the hands of an
untrusted third party. If there really aren't any good ways to mitigate this
in an app environment, why is OAUTH being deployed so aggressively there?
Shouldn't the threat draft say in blinking bold: "DEPLOYING OAUTH
IN NATIVE APPS CONSIDERED HARMFUL"?

Mike
_______________________________________________
OAuth mailing list
OAuth@ietf.org
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/oauth