Re: [OAUTH-WG] client secret used in Native App profile

Bouiaw <bouiaw@gmail.com> Fri, 25 June 2010 14:16 UTC

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Date: Fri, 25 Jun 2010 16:08:24 +0200
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From: Bouiaw <bouiaw@gmail.com>
To: Marius Scurtescu <mscurtescu@google.com>
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Cc: Brian Dunnington <briandunnington@gmail.com>, oauth@ietf.org
Subject: Re: [OAUTH-WG] client secret used in Native App profile
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If we consider HTML5 browser, I am not sure there is a clear
separation betweeen native apps and user agent clients. What is the
technical difference between a native app and a browser that support
HTML 5 localStorage ?

On Fri, Jun 25, 2010 at 9:22 AM, Marius Scurtescu <mscurtescu@google.com> wrote:
> I think the main difference is that User-Agent clients (aka JavaScript
> clients) cannot store a secret while Native Apps can safely store a
> secret, but the secret cannot be distributed (or, even if it can be
> distributed, it may not have much value).
>
> The difference is important. Each native app instance could require a
> registration phase that would provide a unique secret and possibly Id.
> This registration phase could be completely automatic or could involve
> the end user. There have been proposals for both. How much value there
> is in such a registration is not clear to me.
>
> Marius
>
>
>
> On Thu, Jun 24, 2010 at 6:50 PM, Brian Dunnington
> <briandunnington@gmail.com> wrote:
>> In the 'User-Agent' profile, it says:
>>
>> "This user-agent profile does not utilize the client secret since the
>>   client executables reside on the end-user's computer or device which
>>   makes the client secret accessible and exploitable"
>>
>> However, the 'Native Apps' profile does not include such verbiage and
>> in fact specifically requires the use of the client secret. Native
>> apps' executables also reside on the end-user's computer or device,
>> making the client secret just as accessible and exploitable, so why
>> the difference?
>>
>> Specifically, as a native app developer, there is no good (secure) way
>> to distribute the client secret without it being compromised. Any
>> open-source application would have even more problems keeping their
>> secret secure, but even complied apps are easily exploitable. in this
>> scenario, there is no single, secure repository to keep the client
>> secret safe, so I would expect that the requirement of the client
>> secret for native apps be removed and made conformant with the
>> user-agent profile.
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