Kevin, thanks for the well articulated argument. I do see this as something that is completely within the End Users control, and if the End User chose to ignore it, then that is their choice.
The use case is that for convenience, a site wants to let the user do certain functions without having to have authenticated recently. Some functions require a fresh authentication. For example it is easy to browse around Amazon.com, but when you go to purchase something, they want to make sure that it is still you, and prompt you for your password. Of course I can have my browser configured to autocomplete the password prompt and all I have to do is press enter, which circumvents proving it is me since someone walking up to my computer does not need to know my password to complete a purchase. The point is that the Amazon.com has made an effort to increase the certainty that it is me, and it is my choice to not take advantage of it. If OpenID does NOT have this functionality, sites that have requirements similar to Amazon.com will be reluctant to adopt OpenID. In the spec, I would say auth age is a request the RP MAY make, and that the IdP SHOULD accept, and that there is no certainty that the IdP will accept it. To look at it another way, there is no requirement for the IdP to ask me if I want to respond to an RP that I have never been to before. I could have an IdP that responds positively to ever request with no interaction from myself. There is nothing in OpenID that proves I approved the request, or for that matter that there is actually a person at the end of the browser. On 4-Oct-06, at 6:29 PM, Kevin Turner wrote: > Pretty much the *only* relationship that exists between the RP and the > IdP is that the authentication method is trustworthy because the user > has decided it is. I believe this proposal places additional > demands on > that, and that those are demands that the protocol cannot fully > support. > > When you ask an OpenID IdP for information, you are not asking some > ultimately trusted third party, you're asking whomever End User > chose to > appoint as her agent. Which is quite possibly an entity entirely > controlled by End User herself. All information sent by the IdP is > *only as true as the user wants it to be.* > > So I think the question is, who will catch the blame when the RP's > requirements for credentials checking aren't followed? Will you be > able > to say "End User chose to ignore our requirements, so it's End User's > problem."? If so, this proposal is okay. But if your Draconian > Security Officer will say "When I said to require up-to-the-moment > credential checks to access our resources, I did mean REQUIRE, not > just > 'require *if the user feels like it.*' Your implementation failed to > enforce our requirements. You're fired," then that is not so good for > you. > > My worry is that features like this will mislead the RP developers > into > thinking they have more control over the authentication protocol than > they really do, into thinking that they can exert the level of control > required by that Draconian Security Officer, when OpenID actually > leaves > all those controls in the hands of the user and their chosen IdP. > > Session age isn't the only thing application developers will be > accustomed to having control over. Password strength and password > lifetime are a few other obvious examples. (Although I think it's > rare > to see password lifetime restrictions on the Web these days, it was > popular to do in other applications for a while.) But with OpenID, > the > RP won't have real control over of any of those things. I'm concerned > that adding parameters that suggest it does will do more harm than > good. > > The RP doesn't even have the capacity to audit any of those processes, > to find out what procedure was followed. Now that I think about it, > that may be the real problem: How useful is it to specify security > requirements that you can't audit? > > > _______________________________________________ > specs mailing list > specs@openid.net > http://openid.net/mailman/listinfo/specs > > _______________________________________________ specs mailing list specs@openid.net http://openid.net/mailman/listinfo/specs
