Re: [OAUTH-WG] Native clients & 'confidentiality'

[Michael Thomas <[e-mail]>]

On 12/19/2011 04:19 AM, Paul Madsen wrote:
> Hi, the Online Media Authorization Protocol (OMAP) is a (as yet 
> unreleased) profile of OAuth 2.0 for online delivery of video content 
> based on a user's subscriptions (the TV Everywhere use case)
>
> We want to support both server & native mobile clients. It is for the 
> second class of clients that I'd appreciate some clarification of 
> 'confidentiality' as defined in OAuth 2.
>
> OAuth 2 distinguishes confidential & public clients based on their 
> ability to secure the credentials they'd use to authenticate to an AS 
> - confidential clients can protect those credentials, public clients 
> can't.
>
> Notwithstanding the above definition, the spec gives a degree of 
> discretion to the AS
>
>     The client type designation is based on the authorization server's
>     definition of secure authentication and its acceptable exposure
>     levels of client credentials.
>
>
> Give this discretion, is it practical for the OMAP spec to stipulate 
> that 'All Clients (both server & native mobile), MUST be 
> confidential', ie let each individual OMAP AS specify its own 
> requirements of clients and their ability to securely authenticate?

Hi,

Can you say exactly what your security requirements are before trying to 
determine which
(if either) is the right answer? I've got some concerns in this area 
that I'm trying to understand
and am not sure if they're related to your concern or not. Part of this 
is that I really don't
understand what the difference is between a "public" client and a 
"confidential client" and
rereading the draft isn't helping me. In particular, can a iPhone app 
with a UIWebView *ever*
be a "confidential" client, and if so how?

Mike