On 8/10/23 10:25, Warren Parad wrote:
You've lost me at this:
Some site, which I'm registered in is trusting some oauth provider
I'm not even knowing about. I'm not registered at this provider.
If this provider is (independent how or from whom) is used in a
malicious way, they can access my account, without my knowledge by
sending a valid token including my email.
Nothing stops a site you are using, registered with your email
address, from just selling your data to a third party, or blanket
publishing it publicly. There is nothing we can do to stop this unless
the data we care about is encrypted on the client side. OAuth doesn't
really have anything to do with it.
Yes but that's the point: The site itself has to do it. If they are not
willing to it's ok.
But: With the actual concept using auth providers, even if the the site
is NOT willing to sell it, my account could be accessed by using the
trusted auth provider without the site itself needs to do anything. And
the problem is, that such sites wouldn't be technically forced to use
such auth providers by active permission granting from user side.
That's the difference I'm trying to point at.
Sorry I'm really struggling to explain it in another way (will think about).
Because it has nothing to do with OAuth, the suggested solution of
course must have a hole with it. And indeed it does. What if the site
offers the token strategy, but then decides to outsource the whole
authentication process to a different third party? We are back at the
same problem again. However it sounds like what you are saying is that
there should be a standardized mechanism for handling the site <=>
user token verification. If we use OAuth terminology that would be: We
should allow *step-up authentication* to occur solely between the
*resource server (RS)* and the *user agent* without involving the
*authorization server (AS)*. But then who generates the new JWTs? If
the AS generates the new one then, we didn't stop anything. And if the
RS generates the new one then actually the AS isn't needed to do anything.
No that's not what I was suggesting.
It's not about excluding the authorization server it's more about a
additional verification, that the user is granting the RS explicit
permission to use the AS on behalf.
AFAIK the actual situation is the following:
The site is providing the login via AS and the AS can then on behalf any
user of this site just login. The site can of course implement some
permission granting but that's not required. This is done via signed
JWT, etc. which are verified on the RS side.
Now my suggestion would be more like adding an additional verification
before the AS can be used:
*The following is just some rough idea on how to add such verification
in a safe way*
The RS side will use a signed jwt that will be included into the access
token send from AS to verify that the user has granted permission to use
this AS.
This could be done automatically during registration, so it wouldn't
break this feature in a way that the RS will create this token during
registration and send it to the AS. The AS will need to include this
token for requests and if this cannot be verified on the RS side it will
not be accepted.
Further (ae. existing accounts) the user could provide a signed jwt to
the AS and a pub key to the RS. If the jwt cannot be verified than the
user did not granted the permission to use the AS on behalf.
For companies, etc. using RS / AS on premise this could all be
implemented to be done automatically and it would not create any
additional effort on administration side.
And that latter case is actually the reality if we consider these
tokens to be a 2FA mechanism that is managed by the site/resource
server. So I read this as, we should standardize *WebAuthn
*communication between a *user agent* and the *resource server. *That
already exists though, doesn't it?
Yes and no: Think about the widely used TOTP (ae. github) the Secret Key
is created on the AS side and therefore under full control of it. This
is not helping to protect the user from malicious intents.
On Thu, Aug 10, 2023 at 12:59 AM Matthias Fulz <mf...@olznet.de> wrote:
I'm trying to explain my concern more deeply, please try to follow
my thinking.
First: Everything you've written is correct and I fully agree.
But: The difference is: I'm deciding, that I'm using email from
xy, I'm deciding, that I'm using this email to register at some
site or anything.
Anything of these services could be hacked of course, and then
they can use my mail to reset password, use the accounts, etc.
Now think from the other side:
Some site, which I'm registered in is trusting some oauth provider
I'm not even knowing about. I'm not registered at this provider.
If this provider is (independent how or from whom) is used in a
malicious way, they can access my account, without my knowledge by
sending a valid token including my email.
I'm not sure how to explain the main concern about this in more
detail and of course I can avoid services providing these type of
logins without my permission, but as said what about the future?
On 8/10/23 00:40, Warren Parad wrote:
Let me try that differently, is OAuth more vulnerable than email
usage? If you hacked any email provider that's arguably a bigger
goldmine than just ones protected by oauth. As long as sites are
protected by email, oauth gives a more secure strategy. Most
providers that accept email as authentication allow you to reset
your password via email.
Going further, "email is insecure" because providers that send
email can impersonate you. How about telecom companies, they can
pretend to send SMS from you. Or the government, they could
issue a new password in your name and pretend to be you. The horror.
In all seriousness, it's about your threat modal more than
anything. Concerned about your email, then that's your weak
point, concern about oauth, we'll first be concerned about your
email, and then you can be concerned about oauth.
If we assume that everything was on oauth, then there's the
question of why don't providers just implement a FIDO2 compliant
strategy. Wouldn't that solve everything?
Don't get me wrong: I'm not telling everything is on oauth as far
(I'm not so deep into the protocol) it's acting only as
authorization not as authentication, than it is anyway the wrong
point to address this issue.
But if it would be possible to eliminate this specific issue
inside the protocol directly, it would be the best solution to not
even run into this situation at any later point of time.
As total naive approach I could about something like:
Client is trusting Provider for user authentication/authorization
Client must set some random verification token (normally requested
/ set by the user)
User is registering this token under the provider
Only if this token is valid the token is accepted by the client
If something like this would be included in the protocol itself,
it would be working in all situations like companies because they
can control both sides and generate such tokens automatically
And yes if the site is working together with the provider than
it's over, but that's exactly the point: Than the target itself
must be included not only the single provider, where the user
might not even have an relationship with.
Further I could think of extended security, by using signed tokens
with user provided public key, so it's technically secured to just
fake tokens.
On Thu, Aug 10, 2023 at 12:27 AM Matthias Fulz <mf...@olznet.de>
wrote:
Thank you for the responses so far.
On 8/9/23 22:20, Warren Parad wrote:
I can tell you I definitely read it. I actually read it
multiple times. But I don't know what to tell you. The
problem you've identified exists, but that doesn't
necessarily mean it is a problem. In a way it is a bit like,
You create a bank account at a bank and you give them all
your money. They then decide to never give it back.
Yep I know, but the difference is, that I've full control
over my decision to give my money to this bank or not.
While banks are regulated in most countries and things like
GitHub are not, in essence this interaction is based on
trust. Of course solutions like WebAuthn via FIDO2 used as a
first party authentication can solve this, and arguably this
is the remit of the entire web3.0 domain.
I don't think anyone would suggest this isn't a problem,
just that it isn't that big of a problem. I think
realistically, in order for this problem to have a closed
form solution, it would need to start with a suggestion on
how to solve it, rather than a bunch of us agreeing that it
is. Because right now there doesn't seem to be any
fundamental solution available for this. And honestly, the
bigger problem is the digital assets at risk at the third
parties is not due to impersonation, but just general
negligence. GitHub isn't trying to malicious log into my
StackOverflow account, and Google isn't trying to log into
my bank. That's because these organizations have supposedly
bound themselves to not grant this ability to their internal
engineers to abuse. And they are spending tons of resources
attempting to stop external attackers.
That being said, it's hard to know if this problem hasn't
already transgressed in the wild. While it is certainly
possible, it seems internal users are more likely to act
maliciously on behalf of the user via their owned data in
their own company, rather than attempt to impersonate their
users at third party sites.
These points are totally correct, but I think also about
something like official Authorities (ae. Patriot Act, etc.)
that would definitely be interested in such things (ok not on
me personally), but this is another topic.
For me to be more safe, I'm using now a unique mail for
Github, etc., which is sufficient for now, but if you think
into the future and especially about oauth with more than a
handful widely used trusted Providers and that they could be
hacked, infiltrated forced to grant malicious access, etc.
Than this could become to a huge problem in no time.
As example: Think about one widely used trusted provider
that's hacked, or similar. You could access so many accounts
on multiple sites, even if the users are never used this
oauth for these sites.
Sorry to insist here, but just because it is not an issue
now, I can't agree that this not a big deal in general.
I mean in the above scenario even a unique mail wouldn't help
because that could send any mail, they want to these sites.
Think about such provider acting malicious and you would not
even HAVE an account at any of them: every site, that trusts
them could be accessed under your account just by knowing the
user identifier, which is in 99% time the mail.
- Matthias
- Warren
On Wed, Aug 9, 2023 at 10:06 PM mfulz <mf...@olznet.de> wrote:
Anyone read this topic or could tell if there is a
better place to adress this?
Sent from Nine <http://www.9folders.com/>
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Von:* mfulz
*Gesendet:* Sonntag, 16. Juli 2023 03:38
*An:* oauth@ietf.org
*Betreff:* [OAUTH-WG] OAuth Trust model
Hi Together,
I was thinking about some (at least I see it in that
way) problem in the whole oauth/openid design:
The problem is the following:
The user has no control about what providers are
accepted by the clients (websites, etc.) and this opens
access to these providers without any way to protect
against that.
Example:
I've created an account with email/password login at
stackoverflow
I've created an account with the same email at github
-> logged out from stackoverflow
-> logged in via github oauth -> working and connected
to the email/pw account from stackoverflow
Stackoverflow has the possibility to remove the github
login now, but the main problem is, that I would be out
of control, that some of these oauth providers
(please don't go into the discussion WHY they or anyone
should do it) could access my accounts, when such site
would allow them as provider.
In my opionion it would be good to avoid such issues, by
including something in the standard, that the user MUST
allow the connection on both sides on the client
and on the provider.
Yes for sso without any existing account that's some
kind of an issue, but still it could be added some
verification process like sending confirmation link
That the user is accepting the oauth provider on the
Client side.
Then the oauth provider would also need access to my
emails to access my account.
Not sure if I'm wrong here but I think my description is
correct.
BR,
Matthias
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