David, I believe your objections below are actually about the JWK Thumbprint 
[RFC 7638<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7638.html>] computation used by 
this specification, and not the operation defined by this specification.  JWK 
Thumbprint became an RFC in 2015.

This 
specification<https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-ietf-oauth-jwk-thumbprint-uri-00.html>
 defines how to create a JWK Thumbprint URI by concatenating the URI prefix 
“urn:ietf:params:oauth:jwk-thumbprint” to an RFC 7638 JWK Thumbprint.  That’s 
all it does.  That’s why Rifaat’s statement “The JWK Thumbprint URI document is 
a simple and straightforward specification” is indeed correct.

                                                       Best wishes,
                                                       -- Mike

From: OAuth <oauth-boun...@ietf.org> On Behalf Of David Chadwick
Sent: Friday, February 4, 2022 9:55 AM
To: oauth@ietf.org
Subject: Re: [OAUTH-WG] WGLC for JWK Thumbprint URI document

On 02/02/2022 12:18, Rifaat Shekh-Yusef wrote:
All,

The JWK Thumbprint URI document is a simple and straightforward specification.

Actually this is a complex and inefficient specification compared to other 
possibilities.

I have written an Internet-Draft outlining an alternative scheme, the JWK URI, 
which provides OIDC SIOPv2 with all the requirements that it needs with much 
less effort than implementing JWK Thumbprint URIs. I am currently formatting 
this I-D correctly to submit to the IETF. The rationale for this new Internet 
Draft is as follows.

To produce or validate a JWK Thumbprint, both the sender and the receiver have 
to have the JWK available to them. Then they have to canonicalise the JWK as 
described in [RFC7638], and finally hash the octets of the UTF-8 representation 
of this JSON object with a pre-agreed algorithm in order to both obtain the 
same hash value. The way that the JWK Thumbprint URI is used in SIOPv2 [SIOPv2] 
is as follows:

  1.  the SIOP creates an asymmetric key pair and encodes the public key as a 
JWK
  2.  the SIOP creates the JWK Thumbprint as described in [RFC7638] and 
converts it to a URI as described in [JONES],
  3.  the SIOP passes both the JWK and JWK Thumbprint URI to the RP in the JWT,
  4.  the RP extracts the JWK and JWK Thumbprint from the JWT
  5.  the RP re-computes the JWK Thumbprint from the JWK
  6.  the RP compares the computed JWK Thumbprint with the received JWK 
Thumbprint to confirm that they are equal.

One can see that the use of JWK Thumbprint URIs is both inefficient (in all 
cases) and a significant disadvantage (in some cases). If the JWK URI is 
transferred instead of the JWK and JWK Thumbprint URI then:

a) The SIOP will never need to create the JWK Thumbprint URI. The RP may only 
need to create the JWK Thumbprint if it needs this, for example, as a unique 
subject identifier. Even in this case, there is still an advantage to the RP in 
receiving the JWK URI instead of the JWK Thumprint URI, in that the RP no 
longer needs to pre-agree a hashing algorithm with the SIOP. Thus the RP can 
independently determine which hashing algorithm to use when creating its own 
JWK Thumbprint. (Note. If the SIOP were able to canonicalise the same public 
key in a JWK in different ways and produce different thumbprints from the same 
public key, then the canonicalisation algorithm is broken, and the RP would 
never to able to deterministically produce the same thumbprints each time.)

b) In those cases where the SIOP uses ephemeral key pairs and a different 
public key each time it communicates with an RP, then neither party needs to 
produce the JWK Thumbprint as it will never be seen again. It is a significant 
disadvantage to have to use JWK Thumbprints in this case.

I therefore kindly request that the JWK Thumbprint URI document does not 
progress until the WG has had chance to compare and contrast the two methods.

Kind regards

David



This is a WG Last Call for this document:
https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-ietf-oauth-jwk-thumbprint-uri-00.html

Please, provide your feedback on the mailing list by Feb 16th.

Regards,
 Rifaat & Hannes





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