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Re: [OAUTH-WG] MAC: Cookie name or value as MAC key id

"Manger, James H" <James.H.Manger@team.telstra.com> Tue, 14 June 2011 02:17 UTC

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From: "Manger, James H" <James.H.Manger@team.telstra.com>
To: Adam Barth <ietf@adambarth.com>
Date: Tue, 14 Jun 2011 12:17:21 +1000
Thread-Topic: [OAUTH-WG] MAC: Cookie name or value as MAC key id
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Cc: oauth <oauth@ietf.org>
Subject: Re: [OAUTH-WG] MAC: Cookie name or value as MAC key id
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>> This is a bit hacky, too hacky. Wouldn't it be better for a client that
>> recognizes a special MAC cookie to use it to construct Authorization headers
>> and omit it from Cookie headers?

> Nope.  Sending the value in the Cookie header is important to help
> servers implement this scheme without breaking themselves.

Why? How? Could you explain this a bit more?

Is this so the cookie can be reused as a session id that load balancers can use to implement "sticky" sessions? A key id doesn't sound like a great session id. Wouldn't a separate session cookie be better?

Is this so a server can issue MAC credentials, but still accept clients that are unaware of the MAC scheme? That seems possible either way.

Is this so a central security server can start issuing MAC credentials while some of its content servers don't understand MAC and just treat the key id as a bearer token? That sounds bad -- client's think they are getting MAC security when they are not.

--
James Manger

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