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

[Michael Thomas <[e-mail]>]

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