It is used as a hint, but one the end-user can help verify. The security 
consideration section needs to make this clear.

EHL


On 7/3/10 12:15 PM, "Andrew Arnott" <andrewarn...@gmail.com> wrote:

(this sounds sarcastic, but I'm no being sarcastic... it's a serious 
question/challenge)...

Why not just remove the client_id parameter from the user-agent flow?  It's 
absolutely meaningless to security.  It's only perceivable benefit is that the 
auth server can possible display to the user the client being authorized or the 
list of previously authorized clients.  But again, that's totally meaningless 
if not verified.

--
Andrew Arnott
"I [may] not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your 
right to say it." - S. G. Tallentyre


On Sat, Jul 3, 2010 at 12:12 PM, Andrew Arnott <andrewarn...@gmail.com> wrote:
On Fri, Jul 2, 2010 at 9:12 PM, Eran Hammer-Lahav <e...@hueniverse.com> wrote:
You are putting too much weight on the value of redirection URI registration. 
Since the same problem exists between the user-agent script and the server-side 
component used in the user-agent profile, anyone can imitate that flow. In most 
cases, the redirection URI will simply include a script that will pass the 
parameter to the *parent* window which can be anything. If the server-based 
page is an active page, it still needs to communicate with the user-agent, 
which again, can pretend to be that.
Good point.  I wasn't imagining that far through it.  Not to deny that most 
redirection URLs may just return a straight script that passes it to the parent 
window, but that seems pretty irresponsible to the host that's doing it -- 
because of the enormous security hole it opens up.  Some client is trusted 
enough to authorize (by the user and auth server), receives an access token it 
wasn't expecting, and then blindly forwards it onto whoever wants it.  Yikes.  
I sure hope these access tokens have very limited scope (like, I'd prefer none 
myself).

I was about to describe how an active server could alleviate that by signing 
the original request using the state parameter, but I realized I'm solving a 
problem that the web server flow (or nowadays that the authorization code mode 
as I guess it's called) already solves.  So I guess I just need to bite the 
bullet and accept that the user agent flow is totally insecure for web clients, 
and thus very special care must be taken to enable native clients without 
opening up the web client hole.

Sorry to sound so negative about it.  Enabling this scenario seems really 
important to me as well -- I just am against doing it when it can't be secured 
in some way.  Seriously... as is, once you authorize any client, you've 
authorized them all, including clients not even running on your computer.  I 
guess this answers how I was visiting a site a few days ago and was amazed that 
it knew who I was (via Facebook) and was displaying my name and photo when I 
never logged into the site.  I was shocked it knew who I was.  Enter living in 
Incognito mode from now on.


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