Re: [OAUTH-WG] Reevaluating Assumptions (Important!)

[Eran Hammer-Lahav <eran at hueniverse.com>]

Thanks James, George.

If we are going to support sending authentication credentials in the URI query, what are the requirements to make sure it works well with proxies and caches? What headers do we need to require the server to return to make sure it doesn't get cached? Do we need to require a nonce value for all signature methods to ensure making the request more unique and less likely to repeat?

In these two use cases, is there a reason for the URI to be used more than once? Can we simplify the credentials passed via the URI query to provide adequate security but without the need for a long and ugly URI with multiple oauth_ prefixed parameters?

These are valid use cases and something we need to worry about to get this new protocol deployed where other proprietary ones are deployed. But I am not that concerned about the use case mentioned earlier of 'just making it easier to send requests'. So if we support query parameters but after some processing of the parameters to make the URI simpler, that would be acceptable to me.

EHL

> -----Original Message-----
> From: George Fletcher [mailto:gffletch at aol.com]
> Sent: Friday, October 02, 2009 5:04 AM
> To: oauth at ietf.org
> Cc: Eran Hammer-Lahav; Brian Eaton
> Subject: Re: [OAUTH-WG] Reevaluating Assumptions (Important!)
> 
> In addition to the use case James described, we use this to enable
> single sign on from a client/desktop app into a browser session. The
> client signs the URL and then opens the browser with that URL. The
> backend validates the signature and access token and then establishes
> an
> authentication session for the user.
> 
> A variant of this case is where a partner uses a back-channel
> federation
> call to authenticate their user to the AOL authentication service. A
> successful response includes an access token and secret (the equivalent
> of) which the partner can then user to sign an URL when their user
> invokes an AOL service (again providing SSO).
> 
> Thanks,
> George
> 
> P.S. Documentation on this signed API call can be found here:
> http://dev.aol.com/authentication_for_clients#client2web
> 
> P.P.S. While these APIs are not OAuth specifically, the patterns are
> needed for OAuth compliant APIs to be developed
> 
> Eran Hammer-Lahav wrote:
> > Can you describe the actual use case?
> >
> > EHL
> >
> >
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> From: oauth-bounces at ietf.org [mailto:oauth-bounces at ietf.org] On
> Behalf
> >> Of Brian Eaton
> >> Sent: Thursday, October 01, 2009 9:01 PM
> >> To: George Fletcher
> >> Cc: oauth at ietf.org
> >> Subject: Re: [OAUTH-WG] Reevaluating Assumptions (Important!)
> >>
> >> On Thu, Oct 1, 2009 at 7:52 PM, George Fletcher <gffletch at aol.com>
> >> wrote:
> >>
> >>> One use case (I think I saw it mentioned somewhere else on the
> list)
> >>>
> >> where
> >>
> >>> we've used the URI parameters is when we want the server to sign a
> >>>
> >> URL and
> >>
> >>> then pass that signed value to the browser to load. This can be
> done
> >>>
> >> with a
> >>
> >>> simple 302 and the signed URL. Switching to just supporting the
> >>> Authorization header will make this more difficult but probably not
> >>> impossible.
> >>>
> >> Yep.  I've seen that done multiple places.
> >>
> >> One more unexpected use of OAuth...
> >> _______________________________________________
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> >> OAuth at ietf.org
> >> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/oauth
> >>
> >
> >