Musings on Digital Identity

Category: Software Page 2 of 3

U-Prove Specifications Licensed and Sample Code Released

U-Prove logoThis morning at the RSA conference, Scott Charney announced that Microsoft has licensed the U-Prove technology under the Open Specification Promise and released sample implementations in C# and Java under the BSD license. Implementers will be interested in two specifications: the “U-Prove Cryptographic Specification V1.0”, which documents U-Prove’s cryptographic operations, and “U-Prove Technology Integration into the Identity Metasystem V1.0”, which documents how to use U-Prove tokens with WS-Trust. These specifications are intended to enable interoperable implementations.

The U-Prove technologies enable two key properties: minimal disclosure and unlinkability. For more about U-Prove and today’s Community Technology Preview (CTP) release, see the Microsoft U-Prove site, the post announcing the release, and Vittorio’s post (with links to videos).

Updated Federated Identity Product Releases

Today Microsoft announced the availability of new releases of several identity products: Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS) 2.0, the Windows Identity Foundation, and CardSpace 2 (which collectively were formerly referred to as “Geneva“), as well as Federation Extensions for SharePoint. See Announcing the AD FS 2.0 Release Candidate and More and Announcing WIF support for Windows Server 2003 for the release announcements as well as links to numerous step-by-step guides, samples, docs, and video. Thanks to all those who did interop work with us (including at Catalyst, Liberty, and pair-wise) to help ensure that these releases will work well with other’s implementations.

An Experimental Identity Selector for OpenID

OpenID logoThe OpenID community has been talking about the value that an optional active client could bring to OpenID for well over a year. To concretely explore this possibility, as many of you know by now, a team at Microsoft built a prototype multi-protocol identity selector supporting OpenID, starting with CardSpace 2, which I and others demonstrated at the OpenID Summit and the Internet Identity Workshop. We did this to stimulate discussion and engage the community about the value of adding active client support to OpenID. And I’ll say up front that enormous thanks go to Joseph Smarr at Plaxo, the team at JanRain, and Andrew Arnott for building demonstration relying parties that worked with the prototype, which made the demonstrations possible.

While you may have read about it on Kim’s blog and many of you were there in person, I wanted to capture screen shots from the demos to make them available, so those who weren’t there can join the discussion as well. Plus, I’ve posted the presentation that accompanied the demos, rather than reproducing that content here. Now, on to the demo, which closely follows the one actually given at the Summit…

 


Using a selector for the first time

I start by demonstrating the user experience for a first-time selector user at a a selector-enabled OpenID relying party.

 

Plaxo signin
The first screen shot shows a standard Plaxo login screen, but augmented behind the covers to enable it to pass its OpenID authentication request parameters to an active client, if present. I will click on the “Sign in with OpenID” button on the Plaxo signin page, invoking the selector.

In the prototype, selector-enabled relying parties use a variant of the Information Card object tag to communicate their request parameters to the selector. The object tag parameters used on Plaxo’s RP page are:
<object type="application/x-informationCard" id=infoCardObjectTag>
<param name=protocol value="http://specs.openid.net/auth/2.0"/>
<param name=tokenType value="http://specs.openid.net/auth/2.0"/>
<param name=issuer value="Google.com/accounts/o8/id Yahoo.com myOpenID.com"/>
<param name=issuerExclusive value=false/>
<param name=OpenIDAuthParameters value=
"openid.ns:http://specs.openid.net/auth/2.0
openid.return_to:http://www.plaxo.com/openid?actionType=complete
openid.realm:http://*.plaxo.com/
openid.ns.sreg:http://openid.net/extensions/sreg/1.1
openid.sreg.required:email
openid.sreg.optional:fullname,nickname,dob,gender,postcode,country,language,timezone
openid.sreg.policy_url:http://www.plaxo.com/about/privacy_policy
"/>
</object>

 

Plaxo empty selector
Here I’ve clicked on the “Sign in with OpenID” button, invoking the selector. (The “Google” and “Yahoo” buttons would have invoked the selector too.) This shows the first-time selector user experience, where it isn’t yet remembering any OpenIDs for me. The three OPs suggested by Plaxo — Google, Yahoo, and MyOpenID, are shown, as well as the option to type in a different OpenID. I click on the Yahoo suggestion.

 

Plaxo Yahoo first time
Clicking on Plaxo’s Yahoo suggestion resulted in a Yahoo OpenID card being made available for use. Note that, by default, the selector will remember this card for me. (Those of you who know OpenID well are probably thinking “Where did the selector get the Yahoo logo and friendly name string”? For this prototype, they are baked into the selector. Longer term, the right way is for the selector to retrieve these from the OP’s discovery document. The OpenID UX working group is considering defining discovery syntax for doing just that.)

Once I’ve clicked “OK” to select the identity to use, the selector (not the RP) redirects the browser to the OP — in this case, to the Yahoo login page. The selector’s work is done at this point. The remainder of the protocol flow is standard OpenID 2.0.

 

Yahoo Plaxo signin
This is the standard Yahoo OpenID signin page, which the selector redirected the browser to after I choose to use the suggested Yahoo OpenID. I sign into Yahoo.

 

Yahoo Plaxo permission
The signin page is followed by the standard Yahoo permissions page. I click “Agree”.

 

Plaxo signed in
After logging with Yahoo, I’m redirected back to Plaxo. Because I’d previously associated my Yahoo OpenID with my Plaxo account, I’m now logged into Plaxo. My status “Michael is demonstrating an OpenID selector at the OpenID Summit”, which I updated live during the demo at the OpenID Summit, is shown.

 


Selector defaults to the OpenID last used at the site

At this point in the demo, I’ve signed out of Plaxo and returned to the selector-enabled sign-in page. After clicking “Sign in with OpenID” again, the selector reappears.

Plaxo Yahoo second time
This time, the selector has remembered the OpenID I last used at the site and tells me when I last used it there. (This is one of the ways that a selector can help protect people from phishing.) By default, the OpenID last used at a relying party is automatically selected — in this case, Yahoo. I click “OK” to select it, with the rest of the flow again being the standard OpenID 2.0 flow.

 


Experience at a new RP plus a trusted OP experience

Interscope homepage
JanRain selector-enabled several production sites, including interscope.com, uservoice.com, and pibb.com, which use JanRain’s hosted RPX service. This could be done with no impact on users without a selector by using JavaScript to detect whether a selector is present or not, and customizing the page accordingly. The page above is the production Interscope Records page. I click the OpenID button on the right under the “Join The Community” banner.

 

Interscope signon
The OpenID button invokes the RPX “NASCAR” experience. (Arguably, this page could be omitted from the experience if a selector is detected.) I click the OpenID button on the “NASCAR” page.

 

Interscope Yahoo never used here
The selector is invoked by Interscope (really, by RPX) to let me choose an OpenID. My Yahoo OpenID is shown and the “Never used here” tells me that I haven’t used it at this site before. I could choose it by clicking OK or hitting Enter. Instead, I click the “Other OpenIDs” button to explore other options.

 

Interscope other OpenIDs
The “Other OpenIDs” tile shows me the OpenID providers suggested by Interscope — in this case, Flickr, Yahoo, and Google. I click on the Google suggestion.

 

Interscope Google first time
The selector has created a Google OpenID card for me to use. It is marked “Verified” because it (like Yahoo) was on a whitelist in the selector and considered “safe” to use. Of course, in production use, such a whitelist would have to be maintained by a neutral third party or parties and dynamically updated. In the prototype, we hard-coded a few common providers so we could show a user experience that relies on a whitelist of OPs, to start the discussion about that possibility. I hit Enter to use the new Google card at Interscope.

 

Google UniversalMusic signin
Once I chose to use my Google card, the selector redirected me to Google’s signin page, with the actual RP for Interscope being signup.universalmusic.com. I sign into Google.

 

Google UniversalMusic permission
Following signin, Google asks me permission to release information to signup.universalmusic.com. I allow it.

 

Interscope registration
I’m redirected back to Interscope, which asked me to complete a sign-up process by supplying more information via a web form.

 


Selector remembering which OpenID’s you’ve used where

Interscope Google second time
When visiting Interscope again after having signed out, signing in with OpenID shows me that I last used my Google OpenID here. For that reason, it’s selected as the default. I can also see that I haven’t used my Yahoo OpenID here.

 


Trusted versus untrusted OpenIDs

test-id signin
Andrew Arnott created the first selector-enabled relying party site for us, which is shown above. I click “Log in using your OpenID Selector”.

 

test-id Google never used here
Now I have both Yahoo and Google cards, but neither have been used at test-id.org. I notice that I can get more details about my cards, and click “More details” on the Google card.

 

test-id Google more details
“More details” tells me where and when I used the card (signup.universalmusic.com), the discovered OpenID endpoint, and that this OpenID was on the selector’s whitelist. I could now use either of these OpenIDs, but I select “Other OpenIDs” instead.

 

test-id other OpenIDs
The “Other OpenIDs” panel shows me OPs suggested by the site, as well as a dialog box to enter another OpenID. I decide to enter my blog URL self-issued.info, which is also an OpenID.

 

test-id self-issued being entered
Here I’m entering my blog URL self-issued.info into the selector. I then click Verify or OK to have the selector perform discovery on the OpenID to add it as one of my choices.

 

test-id self-issued not verified
Discovery has succeeded, but the OP my blog is delegated to, signon.com, is not on the selector’s whitelist. Because it’s not, a warning shield is shown, rather than the OP logo. I’ll also have to make an explicit decision to trust this OpenID provider before the selector will let me use it. The same would have happened if I chose an OP suggested by the RP if the OP was not on the whitelist. This is another aspect of the selector’s phishing protection. I check the “Continue, I trust this provider” box.

 

test-id self-issued trusted
After checking the “Continue, I trust this provider” box, the warning shield is replaced by either the OP logo, if it can be discovered, or a generic OpenID logo, as in this case. I click OK to use this OpenID.

 

signon test-id signin
The selector follows my delegation link from self-issued.info and redirects me to signon.com. (Ping, are you going to fix the signon.com UX issue above someday?) I sign into signon.com.

 

test-id signed in
Having signed into my OpenID at signon.com, I’m redirected back to the test site, which received an authentication response from the OP. I click “Reset test” to sign out, in preparation for another test.

 


More details

test-id self-issued second time
Upon a second visit to test-id.org, the selector has remembered that I last used the OpenID self-issued.info, which is actually delegated to mbj.signon.com. I click “More details” to learn more about this OpenID.

 

test-id self-issued more details
“More details” tells me where and when I last used the OpenID and that the OpenID has been verified. But unlike my Google OpenID, which was verified via the whitelist, I told the selector to trust this OpenID myself.

 


Delegation to a trusted OP

test-id davidrecordon being entered
At the OpenID Summit, people wanted to see the untrusted user experience again, so I entered an OpenID that I was sure wasn’t on our built-in whitelist — davidrecordon.com. However, verifying the OpenID actually brought me and those in attendance a surprise…

 

test-id davidrecordon verified
Because davidrecordon.com is delegated to myopenid.com, which is on the whitelist, it turns out that the prototype considered davidrecordon.com to be trusted as well. Upon reflection, this is probably the right behavior, but I’d never seen it until giving the demo live. (Great job, Oren!) I tried factoryjoe.com next and got the same result. Finally Will Norris helped me out by saying that willnorris.com isn’t delegated, so we got to see the untrusted user experience again.

 


Conclusion

I’d like to thank Chuck Reeves and Oren Melzer for quickly building a killer prototype and to thank Ariel Gordon and Arun Nanda for helping design it, as well as others, both from Microsoft and other companies, who provided feedback that helped us fine-tune it as we built it. See the presentation for a much more comprehensive list of thank-yous.

I’ll close by saying that in the OpenID v.Next planning meeting at IIW, there was an unopposed consensus that optional active client support should be included as a feature of v.Next. Hopefully our demo, as well as those by others, including Markus Sabadello of Higgins, helped the community decide that this is a good idea by enabling people to concretely experience the benefits that an active client can bring to OpenID. If so, I’d call the experiment a success!

Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule

I’m working directly with developers on a prototype project at the moment. I’ve tried to keep the lessons from this great post by Paul Graham about how programmers work most efficiently in mind when interacting with them. Here’s a teaser excerpt to get you to read the rest of it:

When you’re operating on the maker’s schedule, meetings are a disaster. A single meeting can blow a whole afternoon, by breaking it into two pieces each too small to do anything hard in. Plus you have to remember to go to the meeting.

(Come to IIW if you want to see what we’ve been working on and talk with the developers yourself. :-) )

Liberty Alliance SAML 2.0 Interoperability Testing Results

Liberty Interoperable logoI’m pleased to report that Microsoft passed the Liberty SAML 2.0 interoperability tests that it participated in, as did fellow participants Entrust, IBM, Novell, Ping Identity, SAP, and Siemens. Testing is an involved process, as you can read about on the team blog, with numerous tests covering different protocol aspects and scenarios, which are run “full-matrix” with all other participants. Microsoft participated in the IdP Lite, SP Lite, and eGov conformance modes, which our customers told us were important to them.

As Roger Sullivan reported in the Liberty press release, this round of testing included more vendors than ever before. Related to this, I was pleased that Microsoft decided to let other vendors know up front that it would be participating. (Typically vendors don’t say anything about their participation until there’s an announcement that they’ve passed.) This openness enabled me to personally reach out to others with SAML 2.0 implementations, many of whom did choose to participate (and of course who might have also done so without my encouragement to join the party!).

For more about this accomplishment, see John Fontana’s ComputerWorld story, the Interoperability @ Microsoft blog, Vittorio’s blog, and the full test results.

CA and Microsoft Identity Products Interop

Microsoft logoCA logoCA and Microsoft have published a whitepaper describing interop work the two companies have done between their identity products, ensuring that they work well together. SiteMinder and CA Federation Manager from CA and Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS) 2.0 and Windows Identity Foundation from Microsoft were the products tested. The interop work covered both the SAML 2.0 protocol and the WS-Federation protocol, with each companies’ products configured in both Identity Provider and Relying Party roles. For instance, one scenario tested was using using a CA-hosted identity to access a SharePoint 2007 installation via the Windows Identity Foundation using the WS-Federation protocol. You can download the whitepaper either from CA or from Microsoft.

I’d like to thank Dave Martinez for all the expert work he put into getting this done, which included configuring products, running tests, doing the writing, and herding cats! I’d also like to extend my sincere thanks to Wes Dunnington, Mark Palmer, and Jeff Broberg of CA, who have been exemplary and diligent partners throughout this effort, rolling up your sleeves and working closely with your Microsoft counterparts to diagnose issues that arose, until we demonstrated all the scenarios working.

I’ll close by quoting a note that Wes sent to both teams upon the successful conclusion of our work together:

We are truly happy that this joint effort has resulted in the successful interop between our two products. This kind of work is crucial to get more and more businesses to adopt standards based solutions as they start to reach across the Internet for their application needs.

I couldn’t agree more!

“Geneva” Beta 2 is Here

Microsoft announced the availability of the second beta of its forthcoming “Geneva” claims-based identity software today during Tech•Ed. This is a significant milestone for the team along the path to releasing production versions of the “Geneva” software family, which includes the server, framework, and CardSpace. I’m personally particularly proud of all the interop work that has been done in preparation for this release. I believe that you’ll find it to be high-quality and interoperable with others’ identity software using WS-*, SAML 2.0, and Information Cards.

For more details, see What’s New in Beta 2 on the “Geneva” Team Blog. Visit the “Geneva” information page. Check out the Identity Developer Training Kit. Learn from team experts on the ID Element show. Download the beta. And let us know how it works for you, so the final versions can be even better.

Enjoy!

Document Signing and Access Control with Avoco Secure Information Cards

Avoco Secure CardSandy Porter of Avoco Secure recently let me know that their secure2trust document security product now supports both document signing and document access control using managed Information Cards. The cards and the Avoco software enable perimeterless, secured access to documents and online web form signing.

Avoco has hosted an instance of their Identity Provider and sample document signing and document access control scenarios online, so people can give it a try now. Using the “Create an ID” tab at https://www.secure2cardspace.com/ to create a card, and then following the instructions at the “Securing with Identity” tab, I was able to obtain a document a document that can only be opened by using the card I created.

When I open this doc (in my case, “Mike Jones.docx”), CardSpace is launched. When I submit my card, access control is granted and the document shown below is opened.

Document protected by Avoco Secure Information Card

For more information, see the page “Create and Manage your own Digital Identities with Avoco Secure’s Identity Provider“, their https://www.secure2cardspace.com/ demo site, and also try document signing using your Avoco Secure managed card at http://www.secure2signonline.com/.

SUSE Linux Now Includes an Identity Selector

DigitalMe Logo

My thanks to Dale Olds for pointing out that the SUSE Linux distribution now contains an Identity SelectorDigitalMe (from the Bandit Project). He’s right — it’s important to mark significant milestones such as these. That’s now two platforms and counting…

Novell Product Release with Information Cards and WS-Federation

Novell logoAs announced in Dale Olds’ post Information Card breakthrough with Novell Access Manager 3.1, Novell has released a version of Access Manager that adds support for Information Cards and WS-Federation, partially courtesy of the Bandit Team. I was on the show floor at BrainShare in March 2007 when Novell first demonstrated WS-Federation interop (showing eDirectory users on Linux accessing SharePoint on Windows via an early version of Access Manager and ADFS), so I’m particularly glad to see that the scenarios we jointly demonstrated then can now be deployed by real customers.

It was also at that BrainShare where Novell demonstrated the first cross-platform Identity Selector (an event significant enough that I decided it was time to start blogging). It’s great to likewise see Novell’s Information Card work progress from show-floor demos to shipping product. Congratulations to Novell and the Bandits!

Even More News from the PDC: First Look at the Next Version of CardSpace

CardSpace IconI’m excited that the first beta of the next version of CardSpace — Windows CardSpace “Geneva” — is now available. You can download the bits for this and the other “Geneva” betas at the “Geneva” Connect site. The team posted a detailed introductory piece about the new version on the team blog, so I won’t repeat that here.

This version of CardSpace is a rewrite on a new code base designed to be much smaller, faster, and easier to use. While it’s an early build and far from feature-complete, we nonetheless wanted to get it out now so you can see the directions we’re headed and give us feedback early in the development cycle. This build runs on Windows Vista (32 and 64 bit), Windows Server 2008, and Windows 7.

We’ll be writing more about the key features of CardSpace “Geneva” soon, and as well as the rest of the “Geneva” family that enables claims-aware applications, so watch this space and the team blog. It’s great to now be able to show and discuss the work the team has been doing. I’m looking forward to the ensuing conversation…

More News from the PDC: Beta Releases of “Geneva” Platform Components

As just announced on the “Geneva” Team Blog (formerly known as the CardSpace Team Blog), beta releases of all three components of Microsoft’s “Geneva” identity platform are now available at the “Geneva” Connect site. The components are:

  • “Geneva” Framework: Previously called “Zermatt“, the Geneva Framework helps developers build claims-aware .NET applications that externalize user authentication from the application and helps them build custom Security Token Services (STSs). It supports WS-Federation, WS-Trust, and SAML 2.0.
  • “Geneva” Server: Geneva Server is an STS that issues and transforms security tokens and claims, manages user access, and enables easy federation. Based on the “Geneva” framework, it also supports WS-Federation, WS-Trust, and SAML 2.0.
  • Windows CardSpace “Geneva”: CardSpace “Geneva” will be the next version of Windows CardSpace. It has a much smaller download footprint, starts fast, and has some innovative user interface improvements made in response to feedback from the first version.

All are early betas that are works in progress, but I highly encourage those of you who are interested in claims-based identity to download them and let us know what you think. Also, be sure to check out the “Introducing ‘Geneva’” whitepaper by David Chappell.

Next News from the PDC: SAML 2.0 Protocol Support in “Geneva” Server

As Don Schmidt wrote this morning, Microsoft’s “Geneva” Identity Server product will support the SAML 2.0 protocol. Specifically, we will be supporting the SAML 2.0 IdP Lite and SP Lite profiles and the US Government GSA profile. Customers had told us that these SAML profiles are important to them and we’re responding to that feedback by implementing them in “Geneva” Server. Those of you who were at Kim Cameron’s “Identity Roadmap for Software + Services” presentation at the PDC got to see Vittorio Bertocci demonstrate SAML federation with “Geneva” Server to a site running IBM’s Tivoli Federated Identity Manager.

The “Geneva” Server is the successor to Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS). It will, of course, interoperate with existing ADFS and other federation implementations using the WS-Federation protocol. In addition, it adds WS-Trust support for issuing Information Cards, letting it work with Windows CardSpace and other Identity Selectors.

I’ll add that the SAML 2.0 support doesn’t stop with the server. SAML 2.0 is also supported by the “Geneva” Identity Framework — a .NET application development framework formerly known as “Zermatt” and “IDFX”, which likewise also supports WS-Federation and WS-Trust. In short, the same identity development framework components that are being used to build “Geneva” Server will be available to all .NET developers as the “Geneva” Identity Framework.

Finally, I’ll close by thanking the folks on the Internet 2 Shibboleth project, IBM, and Ping Identity who helped us with early interop testing of our code. You have been valuable and responsive partners in this effort, helping us make sure that what we’re building truly interoperates with other SAML 2.0 implementations deployed in the wild.

IBM Product Release for Information Cards and OpenID

IBM logoAs reported in InternetNews (and brought to my attention by Tony Nadalin), IBM has expanded the scope of its Tivoli Federated Identity Manager product to include support for Information Cards and OpenID. This is a fantastic development, as it puts software enabling use of these user-centric identity technologies into the hands of IBM’s numerous important customers, ranging from enterprises to Internet businesses. Congratulations to IBM and the Tivoli team for this significant achievement!

The Certificate Odyssey

I was just reading Ryan Janssen‘s post Becoming an RP with the Pamela Project (pt. 1) and when I got to the end where he wrote “Since it’s going to take a few hours to get my SSL cert issued and installed, I think I’ll post this and go outside for a break!” it reminded me of the certificate odyssey I went through in April last year. After eventually getting the certificate created and installed, I wrote this about it at the time to Stuart Kwan (hip Internet terminologist):

Getting and installing the certificate was an unbelievable odyssey. It was an *incredibly complicated* process, that in my case, involved many visits to Network Solutions’ and GoDaddy’s support sites, several hours of my afternoon on Saturday, using cryptic openssl commands on Linux to create a key pair and a cert signing request (and later to strip the password off the key pair so Apache would start without the password), lots of help on IM from Pam Dingle, and the creation or use of 6 different passwords. Oh, and the cert wasn’t even installed by that point!

And it would have been *so easy* to get any of the steps wrong and have a cert request that was incorrect or to obtain a cert that didn’t do what I wanted it to. I understand the value that certificates provide (and it’s substantial). But we, as an industry, haven’t exactly made it easy for people to obtain and use them…

I’m tempted to blog about that, but I won’t… :-)

But seeing that Ryan is about to go through the same odyssey, I’ve reconsidered, hence this post. I’m now eagerly awaiting part two of his description to see how his experience compares to mine.

Of course, now that CardSpace and other identity selectors have support for no-SSL sites, hopefully this will be an optional odyssey soon — employed only when the security benefits of SSL certificates are called for. I know that Pamela plans to add no-SSL support to PamelaWare for WordPress soon, so after that, the pain that I went through and that Ryan’s in the midst of during a beautiful sunny day on the Lower East Side can be a thing of the past.

CA Announces Support for Information Card Authentication in SiteMinder

CA logoToday CA published the whitepaper “CA and Microsoft Support for User-Centric Identity and the Identity Metasystem” in which they describe their shared vision with Microsoft to build the Identity Metasystem. In particular, the whitepaper describes CA’s plans to enable SiteMinder customers to authenticate to resources protected by SiteMinder using Information Cards and to enable claims to be delivered to applications. Read Jeff Broberg‘s introduction to the paper and the whitepaper itself.

This is a fantastic development for the Identity Metasystem, as SiteMinder is a key component of the identity infrastructure for numerous businesses large and small across heterogeneous platforms, including some of the largest consumer web sites. I can’t wait to see the valuable and creative uses of Information Cards that will result from CA’s commitment to the Metasystem.

User-Centric Identity Interop at RSA in San Francisco

33 Companies…
24 Projects…
57 Participants working together to build an interoperable user-centric identity layer for the Internet!

Come join us!

Tuesday and Wednesday, April 8 and 9 at RSA 2008, Moscone Center, San Francisco, California
Location: Mezzanine Level Room 220
Interactive Working Sessions: Tuesday and Wednesday, 11am – 4pm
Demonstrations: Tuesday and Wednesday, 4pm – 6pm
Reception: Wednesday, 4pm – 6pm

Logos of RSA 2008 Interop Participants

Curtain Lifted on Information Card Support in OpenSSO

OpenSSO logo

Congratulations to Gerald Beuchelt of Sun Microsystems and the rest of the OpenSSO team for their release of Information Card support in OpenSSO. As Gerald wrote:

It took quite a while, but by now it is out. Please welcome the Windows CardSpace Information Card extensions for OpenSSO:

https://opensso.dev.java.net/source/browse/opensso/extensions/authnicip/

When I started working on this last spring, I was not even hoping to see this released in open source and part of the OpenSSO extensions family in less than a year. It took the goodwill and talent of quite a few people to get this off the ground, but with the public release of this code and the upcoming OSIS interop during the RSA conference, OpenSSO is now “speaking ISIP” …

Just in time for the in-person interop testing at RSA!

Zend PHP Information Card Software

Zend logoThe Zend Framework is an open source object-oriented web application framework for PHP used by parties large and small for building mission-critical web applications. As of release 1.5, the Zend Framework now includes support for accepting Information Cards. Read about it in Chapter 18 of the Zend Framework Programmer’s Reference Guide: Zend_InfoCard.

Furthermore, the Zend Information Card implementation can be used either as part of the Zend Framework or independently. A standalone download is available here.

Congratulations on the Higgins 1.0 Release

Higgins logoI’d like to extend congratulations to my colleagues from the Higgins Project for their Higgins 1.0 release today. This is a significant milestone in the development and deployment of interoperable identity software that lets people use their Information Cards on any platform or system.

This release includes a broad range of implementations, including Identity Selectors for Linux, FreeBSD, and Mac OS X, support for rich client applications, and a browser-based selector for Firefox on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X, plus Identity Provider and Relying Party software. They’re even shipping a prototype “Selector Selector”, letting people choose between different Identity Selectors. See their Solutions page for more details.

From a personal perspective, I’ll say that it’s been a pleasure watching Higgins evolve from the vision statements discussed at the Berkman Center Workshops starting in early 2005 to today’s dynamic multi-faceted identity software project. Congratulations to the long-tailed mouse for today’s achievements! I know there’s lots more to come…

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