In a private thread with Eran an issue came up regarding how to handle
unrecognized arguments in OAuth requests and responses.
For example, if a token endpoint receives an access token request that contains
both a client_id and a client_foo_bar argument, what should it do? Should it
reject the request since it doesn't recognize client_foo_bar? Should it ignore
client_foo_bar and just process the request based on client_id?
Similarly imagine that a response to an access token request contains a JSON
member with some unrecognized name. What's the right behavior? Ignore the
unrecognized value? Or treat the response as badly formatted and fail out?
We need to define in the spec how to deal with unrecognized extensions.
Typically the rule is 'ignore what you don't recognize' but there is a
countervailing rule which applies here which is "security is different".
Typically ignoring unrecognized elements in a security context can lead to
security holes.
Just looking at the history of OAuth I suspect we need to go with the ignore
rule and then explore ad nauseam in the security considerations section all the
ways that the ignore rule can go wrong if extensions aren't handled carefully.
Thoughts?
Thanks,
Yaron
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