Musings on Digital Identity

Category: Events Page 4 of 5

OpenID Connect Discussions at EIC 2016

OpenID logoOn May 10, during the OpenID Workshop at the 2016 European Identity and Cloud (EIC) conference, I gave a status update on the OpenID Connect working group to the 46 workshop attendees, including continued progress with OpenID Certification. You can view the presentation in PowerPoint or PDF format.

While I was happy to report on the working group activities, what I really enjoyed about the workshop was hearing many of the attendees telling us about their deployments. They told us about several important OpenID Connect projects each in Europe, Australia, South America, North America, and Asia. Rather than coming to learn what OpenID Connect is, as in some past EIC workshops, people were coming to discuss what they’re doing. Very cool!

Perspectives on the OpenID Connect Certification Launch

OpenID Certified logoMany of you were involved in the launch of the OpenID Foundation’s certification program for OpenID Connect Implementations. I believe that OpenID Certification is an important milestone on the road to widely-available interoperable digital identity. It increases the likelihood that OpenID Connect implementations by different parties will “just work” together.

A fair question is “why do we need certification when we already have interop testing?”. Indeed, as many of you know, I was highly involved in organizing five rounds of interop testing for OpenID Connect implementations while the specs were being developed. By all measures, these interop tests were highly effective, with participation by 20 different implementations, 195 members of the interop testing list, and over 1000 messages exchanged among interop participants. Importantly, things learned during interop testing were fed back into the specs, making them simpler, easier to understand, and better aligned with what developers actually need for their use cases. After improving the specs based on the interop, we’d iterate and hold another interop round. Why not stop there?

As I see it, certification adds to the value already provided by interop testing by establishing a set of minimum criteria that certified implementations have been demonstrated meet. In an interop test, by design, you can test the parts of the specs that you want and ignore the rest. Whereas certification raises the bar by defining a set of conformance profiles that certified implementations have been demonstrated to meet. That provides value to implementers by providing assurances that if their code sticks to using features covered by the conformance tests and uses certified implementations, their implementations will seamlessly work together.

The OpenID Foundation opted for self-certification, in which the party seeking certification does the testing, rather than third-party certification, in which a third party is paid to test the submitter’s implementation. Self-certification is simpler, quicker, and less expensive than third-party certification. Yet the results are nonetheless trustworthy, both because the testing logs are made available for public scrutiny as part of the certification application, and because the organization puts its reputation on the line by making a public declaration that its implementation conforms to the profile being certified to.

A successful certification program doesn’t just happen. At least a man-year of work went into creating the conformance profiles, designing and implementing the conformance testing software, testing and refining the tests, testing implementations and fixing bugs found, creating the legal framework enabling self-certification, and putting it all in place. The OpenID Connect Working Group conceived of a vision for a simple but comprehensive self-certification program, created six detailed conformance profiles based on the requirements in the specs, and quickly addressed issues as participants had questions and identified problems during early conformance testing. Roland Hedberg did heroes’ work creating the conformance testing software and responding quickly as issues were found. Don Thibeau shared the vision for “keeping simple things simple” and extended that mantra we employed when designing OpenID Connect to the legal and procedural frameworks enabling self-certification. And many thanks to the engineers from Google, ForgeRock, Ping Identity, NRI, PayPal, and Microsoft who rolled up their sleeves and tested both their code and the tests, improving both along the way. You’ve all made a lasting contribution to digital identity!

I think the comment I most appreciated about the certification program was made by Eve Maler, herself a veteran of valuable certification programs past, who said “You made it as simple as possible so every interaction added value”. High praise!

Here’s some additional perspectives on the OpenID Certification launch:

10 Years of Digital Identity!

How time flies! In March 2005 I began working on digital identity. This has by far been the most satisfying phase of my career, both because of the great people I’m working with, and because we’re solving real problems together.

An interesting thing about digital identity is that, by definition, it’s not a problem that any one company can solve, no matter how great their technology is. For digital identity to be “solved”, the solution has to be broadly adopted, or else people will continue having different experiences at different sites and applications. Solving digital identity requires ubiquitously adopted identity standards. Part of the fun and the challenge is making that happen.

Microsoft gets this, backs our work together, and understands that when its identity products work well with others that our customers and partners choose to use, we all win. Very cool.

Those who of you who’ve shared the journey with me have experienced lots of highs and lows. Technologies that have been part of the journey have included Information Cards, SAML, OpenID 2.0, OAuth 2.0, JSON Web Tokens (JWTs), JSON Web Signing and Encryption (JOSE), and OpenID Connect. Work has been done in OASIS, the Information Card Foundation, the OpenID Foundation, the Open Identity Exchange (OIX), the Liberty Alliance, the IETF, the W3C, the FIDO Alliance, and especially lots of places where the right people chose to get together, collaborate, and made good things happen — particularly the Internet Identity Workshop.

It’s worth noting that this past week the Internet Identity Workshop held its 20th meeting. They’ve been held like clockwork every spring and fall for the past 10 years, providing an indispensable, irreplaceable venue for identity practitioners to come together and get things done. My past 10 years wouldn’t have been remotely the same without the past 10 years of IIW. My sincerest thanks to Phil, Doc, and Kaliya for making it happen!

I won’t try to name all the great people I’ve worked with and am working with because no matter how many I list, I’d be leaving more out. You know who you are!

While we’re all busy solving problems together and we know there’s so much more to do, it’s occasionally good to step back and reflect upon the value of the journey. As Don Thibeau recently observed when thanking Phil Windley for 10 years of IIW, “these are the good old days”.

OpenID Connect working group presentation at April 6, 2015 OpenID workshop

OpenID logoI’ve posted the OpenID Connect working group presentation that I gave at the April 6, 2015 OpenID Workshop. It covers the current specification approval votes for the OpenID 2.0 to OpenID Connect Migration and OAuth 2.0 Form Post Response Mode specifications, the status of the session management/logout specifications, and OpenID Connect Certification. It’s available as PowerPoint and PDF.

The Increasing Importance of Proof-of-Possession to the Web

W3C  logoMy submission to the W3C Workshop on Authentication, Hardware Tokens and Beyond was accepted for presentation. I’ll be discussing The Increasing Importance of Proof-of-Possession to the Web. The abstract of my position paper is:

A number of different initiatives and organizations are now defining new ways to use proof-of-possession in several kinds of Web protocols. These range from cookies that can’t be stolen and reused, identity assertions only usable by a particular party, password-less login, to proof of eligibility to participate. While each of these developments is important in isolation, the pattern of all of them concurrently emerging now demonstrates the increasing importance of proof-of-possession to the Web.

It should be a quick and hopefully worthwhile read. I’m looking forward to discussing it with many of you at the workshop!

JWT and JOSE have won a Special European Identity Award

IETF logoToday the JSON Web Token (JWT) and JSON Object Signing and Encryption (JOSE) specifications were granted a Special European Identity Award for Best Innovation for Security in the API Economy. I was honored to accept the award, along with Nat Sakimura and John Bradley, on behalf of the contributors to and implementers of these specifications at the European Identity and Cloud Conference.

It’s great to see this recognition for the impact that these specs are having by making it easy to use simple JSON-based security tokens and other Web-friendly cryptographically protected data structures. Special thanks are due to all of you have built and deployed implementations and provided feedback on the specs throughout their development; they significantly benefitted from your active involvement!

These specifications are:

The authors are:

Dirk Balfanz, Yaron Goland, John Panzer, and Eric Rescorla also deserve thanks for their significant contributions to creating these specifications.

EIC 2014 Award Mike Jones EIC 2014 Award Certificate EIC 2014 Award Nat Sakimura, Mike Jones, John Bradley

OpenID Connect Presentation at IETF 87

OpenID logoI’ve posted the OpenID Connect presentation that I gave at the OpenID Workshop at IETF 87. Besides giving an overview of the specification status, unsurprisingly given the setting at IETF 87, it also talks about the relationship between OpenID Connect and the IETF specifications that it depends upon. It’s available as PowerPoint and PDF.

OpenID Connect Update Presentation at CIS 2013

OpenID logoI’ve posted the OpenID Connect Update presentation that I gave today during the OpenID Workshop at the Cloud Identity Summit 2013. I’ve trimmed down the presentation to be lighter on the “how” and focus more on the “what” and “why”, relative to the one I gave at EIC in May. It’s available in PowerPoint and PDF formats.

OAuth 2.0 has won the 2013 European Identity Award

OAuth logoI’m pleased to report that OAuth 2.0 has won the 2013 European Identity Award for Best Innovation/New Standard. I was honored to accept the award from Kuppinger Cole at the 2013 European Identity and Cloud Conference on behalf of all who contributed to creating the OAuth 2.0 standards [RFC 6749, RFC 6750] and who are building solutions with them.

EIC 2013 Award Mike Jones EIC 2013 Award Chuck Mortimore, Mike Jones, John Bradley EIC 2013 Award Presentation EIC 2013 Award Acceptance

OpenID Connect Update Presentation

OpenID logoI’ve posted the OpenID Connect Update presentation that I gave today during the OpenID Workshop at the European Identity and Cloud Conference. It’s available in PowerPoint and PDF formats.

Fourth Release Candidates for OpenID Connect Implementer’s Drafts

OpenID logoA fourth set of release candidates for the upcoming OpenID Connect Implementer’s Drafts has been released. Changes since the third release candidates mostly consist of editorial improvements. There were only two changes that will result in changes to implementations. The first was replacing the “updated_time” claim, which used a textual date format, with the “updated_at” claim, which uses the same numeric representation as the other OpenID Connect date/time claims. The second was replacing the “PKIX” JWK key type with the “x5c” JWK key member (a change actually made this week by the JOSE working group).

These are ready for discussion at Monday’s in-person OpenID Connect working group meeting. All issues filed have been addressed.

The updated specifications are:

These specifications did not change:

Thanks to all who continued reviewing and implementing the specifications, resulting in the improvements contained in this release. I’ll look forward to seeing many of you on Monday!

The Emerging JSON/REST-Based Identity Protocol Suite

IETF logo Last week at the Japan Identity and Cloud Symposium I gave a presentation on this topic: A new set of simple, open identity protocols is emerging that utilize JSON data representations and REST-based communication patterns, including OAuth, JSON Web Token (JWT), JSON Object Signing and Encryption (JOSE), and WebFinger. I’ve posted PowerPoint and PDF versions of the presentation.

Thanks again to the organizers of JICS 2013 for a great event!

Platform Support for JWA Crypto Algorithms

IETF logoIn preparation for discussions at the JOSE working group meeting at IETF 84 in Vancouver, BC, I did some investigation into the state of support for the JWA algorithms in common Web development platforms. This table contains the data gathered. It was also discussed at the July 2012 W3C WebCrypto F2F Meeting. I’m posting it now because I’d recently received a request for it and because it may be useful at the upcoming WebCrypto meeting at TPAC in Lyon and at IETF 85 in Atlanta.

Thanks to Roland Hedberg, Axel Nennker, Emmanuel Raviart, Nov Matake, Justin Richer, Edmund Jay, Wan-Teh Chang, Christopher Kula, and Ryan Sleevi for the data they provided. If you have more data that I should add, or believe that there are additional columns or rows we should track, please let me know.

OpenID Connect has won the 2012 European Identity Award

OpenID logoI’m thrilled to report that OpenID Connect has won the 2012 European Identity Award for Best Innovation/New Standard. I appreciate the recognition of what we’ve achieved to date with OpenID Connect and its potential to significantly change digital identity for the better. As Dave Kearns wrote in the OpenID Foundation announcement about the award:

I’m pleased that Kuppinger Cole has granted OpenID Connect the award for Best Innovation/New Standard this year. What’s most impressive is that this elegantly simple design resulted from the cooperation of such a diverse global set of contributors. I expect OpenID Connect to have a substantial positive impact on usable, secure identity solutions both for traditional computing platforms and mobile devices. My congratulations to the OpenID Foundation!

My thanks to all who have contributed to the OpenID Connect specifications to date and especially to the developers who have implemented draft versions, providing essential feedback needed to refine the specs on the road to final standards. I look forward to seeing what people will accomplish with OpenID Connect!

OpenID Connect Interop in Progress

OSIS logoOpenID logoThe Third OpenID Connect Interop is currently under way — this time based upon approved Implementer’s Drafts. Currently 7 implementations are being tested, with I believe more to be added. The interop is designed to enable people to test the implementations they’ve built against other implementations and verify that specific features that they’ve built are working correctly. This has several benefits: it helps debug implementations, it helps debug the specifications, and it results in greater interoperability among OpenID Connect implementations.

As background, like the other OSIS interops, the OpenID Connect interop is an opportunity for implementers to try their code against one another’s in a systematic way. It is not a conformance test; participants do not “pass” or “fail”. There is no requirement that you must support particular features to participate or that you must participate in all aspects of the interop.

If you’d like to participate in the interop, join the OpenID Connect Interop mailing list and send us a note there saying who your interop contact person will be, the name of your organization (can be an individual), the name of your implementation (can be your name), and a list of the online testing endpoints for your implementation. Testing is performed online on your schedule, with results recorded on the interop wiki. That being said, an in-person meeting of interop participants will also be held on Friday, March 2 in San Francisco (the week of RSA) for those who are able to attend.

The Emerging JSON-Based Identity Protocol Suite

W3C  logoMy submission to the W3C Workshop on Identity in the Browser discusses The Emerging JSON-Based Identity Protocol Suite. The abstract is:

A new set of open identity protocols is emerging that utilizes JSON data representations and simple REST-based communication patterns. These protocols and data formats are intentionally designed to be easy to use in browsers and modern web development environments.

I hope you’ll find it worthwhile reading. I’m looking forward to discussing it with many of you at the workshop!

Join me at the Internet Identity Workshop

IIW Banner

Come be part of moving Internet identity forward! The early bird discount is available through Friday, March 25th. And as always, Microsoft will be sponsoring a workshop dinner. See you at IIW!

2010 OpenID Summit EU

OpenID logoA European OpenID summit will be held in London on Tuesday, June 8th at the Microsoft Offices at Cardinal Place, 100 Victoria Street, London SW1E 5JL, UK. This is the same location as the European e-Identity Management Conference, which follows it June 9th and 10th. Topics are expected to include: use cases, issues and problems encountered, solutions proposed, the OpenID v.Next effort, and EU trust profile topics.

Register at http://openid-eu-summit-2010.eventbrite.com/. If you’re interested in presenting, please include your proposed topic in your registration.

This summit builds upon the recent 2010 OpenID User Experience (UX) Summit and the 2010 OpenID Technology Summit West. I’m looking forward to seeing many of you there!

I’m registered for the Internet Identity Workshop

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Are you? It’s where Internet identity work gets done. The super-early bird discount is still available through February 1st. (And yes, Microsoft is buying dinner again.) See you at IIW!

OpenID v.Next Goals

OpenID logoThe OpenID v.Next session at IIW run by David Recordon and Dick Hardt reached some important conclusions about the future of OpenID. The motivation for the v.Next discussion was the sense that we’ve learned enough since the OpenID 2.0 specification was finalized that it’s time to revise the spec to incorporate what we’ve learned. This session attempted to reach a consensus on the priorities for the next version of OpenID, with a large number of the important players participating. I haven’t seen the decisions made published elsewhere, so I’m recording them here.

David organized the session around a stated goal of producing an evolved OpenID specification within the next six months. The consensus goals reached were as follows. The numbers represent the number of participants who said that they would work on that feature in the next six months.

  • Integrating the UX extension (in which the user interacts with the OP in a pop-up window) into the core specification: 12
  • Evolving the discovery specification for OpenID, including adding OpenIDs using e-mail address syntax: 10
  • Integrating attributes (claims) into the core specification: 9
  • Integrating the OAuth Hybrid specification into the core specification: 8
  • Supporting an optional active client (identity selector) and non-browser applications: 8
  • Improve security, including investigating enabling use at levels of assurance above NIST level 1: 8
  • Better support for mobile devices: 8
  • Addressing the problem of long URLs (where browsers limit URL length to 2048 or sometimes 256 characters): 6

And in case it isn’t obvious from reading the above, there was also an explicit consensus in the room that OpenID v.Next would not be backwards compatible with OpenID 2.0. (It will be related to, but not compatible with OpenID 2.0, analogously to how SAML 2.0 is related to, but not compatible with SAML 1.1.) I believe we have interesting and exciting times ahead!

Thanks to Hannes Tschofenig for publishing photos of the whiteboard and some of the votes.

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