There are definitely use cases for un-scoped credentials, which the
implementations I have seen implement as an empty scope. Are you worried
specifically about the scope parameter in the HTTP requests, or as represented
in the credential used to access the PR?
________________________________
From: agks mehx <agksm...@gmail.com>
To: SM <s...@resistor.net>; Eran Hammer <e...@hueniverse.com>; oauth@ietf.org
Sent: Monday, January 9, 2012 4:17 PM
Subject: Re: [OAUTH-WG] Seeking Clarification: Potential Ambiguity in
Specification
Hi SM and Eran,
I am confused again, after re-reading Eran's response, whether or not an
implementation that rejects *missing* (as opposed to empty) scope is conformant
or not. (Eran, your response was a bit ambiguous on whether an implementation
is free to error out on an missing scope parameter or not -- I can clearly see
it is free to error out on an empty scope parameter, but that's a different
situation than the one I am concerned about.)
The vendor definitely gives a higher priority to claiming conformance and I
believe they would change their implementation, but they believe they are
conformant.
I do feel the IETF Working Group should make this part of the spec less
ambiguous -- why not just make 'scope' REQUIRED and end the misery? Or, make
it clear that an implementation is not conformant to the spec if it requires
optional parameters?
Additionally, I will resend a use-case for the no-scope parameter because my
earlier reply unintentionally went privately to Eran and not to the list:
I can suggest a spec modification that says that an implementation MUST accept
a request without a scope parameter, in which case one possibility for an
implementing server is to return an access token or code that does not allow
any operations. The purpose of this otherwise "useless" token/code is that the
OAuth server confirms that the user is *some* user without any information on
*which* user it is. (If the user is not authenticated by the vendor then of
course no valid token/code is returned.)
An example might help: Facebook, when it started, would manage social networks
based on college email domain -- harvard.edu, etc. Facebook used to do it by
asking for your email address and sending a confirmation mail. But what if I
wanted to tell Facebook just the fact that I was at foo.edu but I did not want
to share my email address with Facebook, or any other unique identifier? If
the spec required implementations to work without a scope parameter, it would
solve this use case perfectly. Facebook wouldn't really care about my school
email address or unique id -- I could use my non-school personal email and all
Facebook wanted to know was whether I should be in that school network or not
simply by using the barebones no-scope OAuth request.
Vendors do not lose anything if the spec requires such no-scope requests to be
fulfilled. They are merely confirming that a user is *some* user with the
user's consent. There are valid cases on the client side such as determining
network membership without needing network identity. And it cleans out the
optional semantics of scope.
Users win in that they have a way to confirm network membership without having
to reveal a unique identifier.
Clients win in that users will be more willing to confirm network membership if
they are not also required to reveal a unique identitfier.
This is off-the-cuff but I will be very happy to formalize it and present it to
the list. I hope the essential concept made it through my writing!
A.
On Mon, Jan 9, 2012 at 3:47 PM, SM <s...@resistor.net> wrote:
Hello,
>
>At 15:14 09-01-2012, agks mehx wrote:
>
>Thank you for the response. If I understand correctly, the vendor is
>correctly that their implementation conforms to the specification even though
>it rejects requests that do not specify the scope parameter. That answers my
>question.
>>
>
The better answer is from Eran (
http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/oauth/current/msg08194.html ).
>
>
>
>Whether I was asking for (i) a clarification; or (ii) trying to resolve a
>disagreement. I think I was trying to verify whether indeed there was a
>disagreement. I. e. whether my understanding of the specification was correct
>or not. It seems I was mistaken in understanding the spec.
>>
>
See comment below.
>
>
>
>There is no disagreement with the vendor at this point because the two
>responses from this list indicate that the vendor is right. (I still don't
>understand why scope isn't made a required parameter in the specification so
>that such confusion can be avoided, but that's a minor point.)
>>
>
You locked in on the term "optional" without going into the details of the
draft. I would not claim conformance with a specification if my API specifies
that the optional parts are required as someone writing an implementation from
the draft will run into the same problem as you. Saying that the vendor is
wrong will not get them to fix it.
>
>Regards,
>-sm
>
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