[OAUTH-WG] PAR: pushed requests must become JWTs

["Richard Backman, Annabelle" <[e-mail]>]

Hi all,

The current drafts of PAR (-00) and JAR (-20) require that the AS transform all pushed requests into JWTs. This requirement arises from the following:

  1.  PAR uses the request_uri parameter defined in JAR to communicate the pushed request to the authorization endpoint.
  2.  According to JAR, the resource referenced by request_uri MUST be a Request Object. (Section 5.2<https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-oauth-jwsreq-20#section-5.2>)
  3.  Request Object is defined to be a JWT containing all the authorization request parameters. (Section 2.1<https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-oauth-jwsreq-20#section-2.1>)

There is no need for this requirement to support interoperability, as this is internal to the AS. It is also inconsistent with the rest of JAR, which avoids attempting to define the internal communications between the two AS endpoints. Worse, this restriction makes it harder for the authorization endpoint to leverage validation and other work performed at the PAR endpoint, as the state or outcome of that work must be forced into the JWT format (or retrieved via a subsequent service call or database lookup).

–
Annabelle Richard Backman
AWS Identity