There have been a lot of discussions. I think Hannes posted some minutes of the 
F2F meeting we had with the security researchers.

The problem can’t be mitigated without some action on the client side.  It 
boils down to the client making a request to AS1 (From it’s perspective) and 
getting back a response from AS 2 (that it thinks is AS1)

This can be done if AS1 is a good AS but has it’s logs compromised so that an 
attacker can read them. Hans Zandbelt built a proof of concept for the attack. 

In some cases the attacker gets the code and the credential to use it at the 
good AS token endpoint and in others it just gets the code and can replay that 
at the client to extract information from the API through the client by binding 
the api access to a new account.

PKCE unfortunately mitigates a different attack, where the client is 
impersonated and trys to replay a intercepted code.  It however assumes the 
token endpoint is good, and is no help in the case of a compromised token 
endpoint.

The client in these attacks is vulnerable because it relies on some local 
state, or the value of the state parameter to know who the response is coming 
from.  This allows a authorization request that is intercepted to be used to 
create a new request in that browser to a different AS, or trick the client 
into using a Authorization endpoint for a different authorization server.

One problem is that OAuth doesn’t really have a unified concept of what a AS 
is.  Traditionally it is a Authorization endpoint URI, token end point URI and 
resource server URI that some one gives the client in some documentation.   

As ling as a client only talks to one AS then there is no problem.   However 
once a client is configured to talk to more than one AS, we have problems if 
one of those AS lies about it’s endpoints, or is compromised and used to attack 
another AS.   As a design goal you don’t want the overall  security to be 
limited by the weakest system.

One approach as Nat promotes is to have the authorization endpoint return the 
next hop, token endpoint for code or RS URI for token. The token endpoint must 
also return the RS URI or the client must push the RS URI to the token endpoint 
or the attacker just replaces the RS URI in the config and captures the token 
that way. 

The other way is to provide a name for each AS as part of registration and the 
client not allow duplicate registrations with the same name.  When the response 
comes back the client checks the name against the one it made the request to.  
If the name dereferences to a discovery document then the client can check that 
name at registration or runtime to validate the net hops.

I think the two approaches mitigate the attack in similar ways.  Nat’s is more 
REST friendly and returns the next hop as a parameter of header.  

The one Mike and I wrote up based on the meeting in Germany provides 
identifiers (iss and client_id) that can be checked for validity in the simple 
case and be dereferenced via .well-known to get the information Nat’s proposal 
is providing.

Perhaps the main difference is Nat is using the token endpoint as the 
identifier for the AS and Mike’s is using location for a discovery document as 
the identifier.

I don’t recall the reasons using the token endpoint as the identifier was 
rejected at the meeting.  Perhaps others can post the reasons.

We need to close on this quickly, otherwise if we are indecisive fixes will not 
go into products for another year or so until this is a RFC.

That is my main concern.

John B.





> On Jan 21, 2016, at 11:50 AM, Josh Mandel <jman...@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Thanks Nat - that's helpful. If both mitigations *can* work effectively, then 
> I would like to see this group consider the decision between them carefully 
> (if that hasn't happened yet). Again, don't hesitate to let me know if this 
> is the wrong place/time for such discussion.
> 
> At a high level, I would rather ask server developers to do some "coding", 
> for two reasons:
> 
> 1. Most OAuth servers talk to many, many clients. So consolidating the 
> security critical work in one place (server) is a net savings of work (rather 
> than asking each client to implement these checks.
> 
> 2. OAuth server developers are typically more sophisticated than client 
> developers, and therefore more likely to understand the implications and more 
> likely to get these critical details correct. Asking each client developer to 
> do something right is likely to result in heterogenius implementation and 
> persistent security holes. But if the server does the heavy lifting, and 
> clients just have to pass along an extra parameter, this is more likely to 
> see consistent implementation (for example, clients will fail to work if 
> misconfigured, which will prompt developers to fix them).
> 
> On Jan 21, 2016 09:40, "Nat Sakimura" <sakim...@gmail.com 
> <mailto:sakim...@gmail.com>> wrote:
> Hi Josh, 
> 
> It is similar but slightly different IMHO. 
> 
> Section 4.6.4 of the RFC6819 is the access token phishing by a counterfeit 
> resource server. 
> The mix-up attack described here is the code phishing by a counterfeit token 
> endpoint. 
> 
> In my view, both can be mitigated by the server returning the next step: 
> i.e., authorization endpoint returning the legitimate token endpoint uri, and 
> token endpoint returning legitimate resource endpoint uris. This involves no 
> discovery endpoint, which is good. 
> 
> Your way also works. It is just the reverse of my proposal. The difference 
> being that my proposal does not need any coding on the server but just 
> configuration, and it can return more metadata if needed. 
> 
> Cheers, 
> 
> Nat
> 
> 2016年1月21日(木) 23:04 Josh Mandel <jman...@gmail.com 
> <mailto:jman...@gmail.com>>:
> Apologies if this is the wrong forum for my comment (and please direct me to 
> the appropriate place in that case), but I have two questions about the 
> propose mitigation (and the thinking behind it) that I think the write-up 
> could address:
> 
> 1. Could the writeup clarify whether/how the primary "mixup" threat differs 
> from what RFC6819 identifies as in section 4.6.4?
> 
> 2. Has the workgroup considered a mitigation that puts more responsibility on 
> the authorization server, and less on the client? For example, if would be 
> helpful for the writeup to clarify why having the client send an "audience 
> field" (in the terminology of RFC6819) to the authorization endpoint would 
> not mitigate the threat. (In that scenario, the authorization server can 
> recognize that the audience does not correspond to a resource server it 
> knows, rather than asking clients to make this check). I assume this approach 
> has been considered and rejected as an incomplete mitigation, but I don't 
> have visibility into where/how that discussion went.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Josh 
> Hi all,
> 
> this is the call for adoption of OAuth 2.0 Mix-Up Mitigation, see
> https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-jones-oauth-mix-up-mitigation-00 
> <https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-jones-oauth-mix-up-mitigation-00>
> 
> Please let us know by Feb 9th whether you accept / object to the
> adoption of this document as a starting point for work in the OAuth
> working group.
> 
> Note: This call is related to the announcement made on the list earlier
> this month, see
> http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/oauth/current/msg15336.html 
> <http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/oauth/current/msg15336.html>. More
> time for analysis is provided due to the complexity of the topic.
> 
> Ciao
> Hannes & Derek
> 
> 
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