I’m thrilled to report that the FIDO2 Client to Authenticator Protocol (CTAP) is now a published FIDO Alliance standard! Together with the now-standard Web Authentication (WebAuthn) specification, this completes standardization of the APIs and protocols needed to enable password-less logins on the Web, on PCs, and on and mobile devices. This is a huge step forward for online security, privacy, and convenience!
The FIDO2 CTAP standard is available in HTML and PDF versions at these locations:
I’m thrilled to report that the Web Authentication (WebAuthn) specification is now a W3C standard! See the W3C press release describing this major advance in Web security and convenience, which enables logging in without passwords. Alex Simons, Microsoft Vice President of Identity Program Management is quoted in the release, saying:
“Our work with W3C and FIDO Alliance, and contributions to FIDO2 standards have been a critical piece of Microsoft’s commitment to a world without passwords, which started in 2015. Today, Windows 10 with Microsoft Edge fully supports the WebAuthn standard and millions of users can log in to their Microsoft account without using a password.”
The release also describes commitments to the standard by Google, Mozilla, and Apple, among others. Thanks to all who worked on the standard and who built implementations as we developed the standard — ensuring that that the standard can be used for a broad set of use cases, including password-less sign-in with platform authenticators, mobile devices, and security keys.
The Proof-of-Possession Key Semantics for CBOR Web Tokens (CWTs) specification has been updated to address issues identified by Roman Danyliw while writing his shepherd review. Thanks to Samuel Erdtman for fixing an incorrect example.
The specification is available at:
An HTML-formatted version is also available at:
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has published a Proposed Recommendation (PR) for the Web Authentication (WebAuthn) specification, bringing WebAuthn one step closer to becoming a completed standard. The Proposed Recommendation is at https://www.w3.org/TR/2019/PR-webauthn-20190117/.
The PR contains only clarifications and editorial improvements to the second Candidate Recommendation (CR), with no substantial changes. The next step will be to publish a Recommendation – a W3C standard – based on the Proposed Recommendation.
Key ID confirmation method considerations suggested by Jim Schaad have been added to the Proof-of-Possession Key Semantics for CBOR Web Tokens (CWTs) specification. Per discussions in the working group meeting in Bangkok, it’s now time for the shepherd review.
The specification is available at:
An HTML-formatted version is also available at:
The JSON Web Token (JWT) Best Current Practices (BCP) specification has been updated to address the review comments from Security Area Director (AD) Eric Rescorla. Thanks to Eric for the review and to Yaron Sheffer for working on the responses with me.
Note that IETF publication has already been requested. The next step is for the shepherd review to be submitted and responded to.
The specification is available at:
An HTML-formatted version is also available at:
The Proof-of-Possession Key Semantics for CBOR Web Tokens (CWTs) specification has been updated to addresses a few additional Working Group Last Call (WGLC) comments. All of the (few) changes were about improving the clarity of the exposition. I believe that this completes addressing the WGLC comments.
Thanks to Roman Danyliw for helping to categorize the remaining comments that needed to be addressed.
The specification is available at:
An HTML-formatted version is also available at:
W3C has published a second W3C Candidate Recommendation (CR) for the Web Authentication (WebAuthn) specification. The second Candidate Recommendation is at https://www.w3.org/TR/2018/CR-webauthn-20180807/.
This draft contains a few refinements since the first candidate recommendation but no substantial changes. The new CR was needed to fulfill the W3C’s IPR protection requirements. The few changes were based, in part, upon things learned during multiple interop events for WebAuthn implementations. The working group plans to base coming the Proposed Recommendation on this draft.
The three core IETF Token Binding Specifications have been sent to the RFC Editor, which means that their normative content will no longer change. It’s time to move implementations to version 1.0! The abstract of the Token Binding over HTTP specification describes Token Binding as:
This document describes a collection of mechanisms that allow HTTP servers to cryptographically bind security tokens (such as cookies and OAuth tokens) to TLS connections.
We describe both first-party and federated scenarios. In a first-party scenario, an HTTP server is able to cryptographically bind the security tokens it issues to a client, and which the client subsequently returns to the server, to the TLS connection between the client and server. Such bound security tokens are protected from misuse since the server can generally detect if they are replayed inappropriately, e.g., over other TLS connections.
Federated token bindings, on the other hand, allow servers to cryptographically bind security tokens to a TLS connection that the client has with a different server than the one issuing the token.
This document is a companion document to The Token Binding Protocol.
This is a huge step towards cryptographically protecting data structures that had previously been bearer tokens, such as browser cookies, refresh tokens, access tokens, ID Tokens, etc., so that they can only be used by the intended party. Congratulations especially to the editors Andrei Popov, Dirk Balfanz, and Jeff Hodges, as well as the chairs John Bradley and Leif Johansson for getting us to this important milestone!
The three specifications are:
The OpenID Connect Token Bound Authentication specification has been updated in response to developer feedback and in anticipation of the IETF Token Binding specifications finishing. Changes were:
tbh” value doesn’t include any trailing pad characters, line breaks, whitespace, etc.(The representation of the Token Binding ID in the ID Token is unchanged.)
Thanks to Brian Campbell for doing the editing for this draft.
The specification is available at:
A new draft of the Proof-of-Possession Key Semantics for CBOR Web Tokens (CWTs) specification has been published that addresses the Working Group Last Call (WGLC) comments received. Changes were:
Thanks to Samuel Erdtman and Hannes Tschofenig for contributing to the editing for this version and to Jim Schaad and Roman Danyliw for their review comments.
The specification is available at:
An HTML-formatted version is also available at:
I gave the well-received presentation “Deprecating the Password: A Progress Report” at the May 2018 European Identity and Cloud Conference (EIC). The presentation is available as PowerPoint (large because of the embedded video) and PDF.
The presentation abstract is:
If you ask almost anyone you meet if they have too many passwords, if they have trouble remembering their passwords, or if they are reusing the same passwords in multiple places, you’re likely to get an ear-full. People intuitively know that there has to be something better than having to have a password for everything they do!
The good news is that passwords are being used for fewer and fewer identity interactions. They are being replaced by biometrics (sign into your phone, your PC, or your bank with your face or fingerprint), local PINs (prove it’s you to your device and it does the rest), and federation (sign in with Facebook, Google, Microsoft, etc.). This presentation will examine the progress we’ve made, the standards and devices making it possible, and stimulate a discussion on what’s left to do to deprecate the password.
Key takeaways are:
Thanks to Steve Hutchinson for this photo from the presentation and his vote of confidence.
Extra: See all the Microsoft presentations at EIC 2018, including videos of Joy Chik’s and Kim Cameron’s keynotes.
The JSON Web Token (JWT) Best Current Practices (BCP) specification has been updated to address the Working Group Last Call (WGLC) feedback received. Thanks to Neil Madden for his numerous comments and to Carsten Bormann and Brian Campbell for their reviews.
Assuming the chairs concur, the next step should be to request publication.
The specification is available at:
An HTML-formatted version is also available at:
The “CBOR Web Token (CWT)” specification is now RFC 8392 – an IETF standard. The abstract for the specification is:
CBOR Web Token (CWT) is a compact means of representing claims to be transferred between two parties. The claims in a CWT are encoded in the Concise Binary Object Representation (CBOR) and CBOR Object Signing and Encryption (COSE) is used for added application-layer security protection. A claim is a piece of information asserted about a subject and is represented as a name/value pair consisting of a claim name and a claim value. CWT is derived from JSON Web Token (JWT) but uses CBOR rather than JSON.
Special thanks to Erik Wahlström for starting this work and to Samuel Erdtman for doing most of the heavy lifting involved in creating correct and useful CBOR and COSE examples.
Next up — finishing “Proof-of-Possession Key Semantics for CBOR Web Tokens (CWTs)“, which provides the CWT equivalent of “Proof-of-Possession Key Semantics for JSON Web Tokens (JWTs)” [RFC 7800].
I’m pleased to report that a public Implementation Draft of the FIDO2 Client to Authenticator Protocol (CTAP) specification has been published. This specification enables FIDO2 clients, such as browsers implementing the W3C Web Authentication (WebAuthn) specification, to perform authentication using pairwise public/private key pairs securely held by authenticators speaking the CTAP protocol (rather than passwords). Use of three transports for communicating with authenticators is specified in the CTAP specification: USB Human Interface Device (USB HID), Near Field Communication (NFC), and Bluetooth Smart/Bluetooth Low Energy Technology (BLE).
This specification was developed in parallel with WebAuthn, including having a number of common authors. This CTAP version is aligned with the WebAuthn Candidate Recommendation (CR) version.
The CTAP Implementation Draft is available at:
Congratulations to the members of the FIDO2 working group for reaching this important milestone. This is a major step in our journey to deprecate the password!
The WebAuthn working group has published the “COSE Algorithms for Web Authentication (WebAuthn)” specification, which registers COSE algorithm identifiers for RSASSA-PKCS1-v1_5 signature algorithms with SHA-2 and SHA-1 hash algorithms. RSASSA-PKCS1-v1_5 with SHA-256 is used by several kinds of authenticators. RSASSA-PKCS1-v1_5 with SHA-1, while deprecated, is used by some Trusted Platform Modules (TPMs). See https://www.iana.org/assignments/cose/cose.xhtml#algorithms for the actual IANA registrations.
Thanks to John Fontana, Jeff Hodges, Tony Nadalin, Jim Schaad, Göran Selander, Wendy Seltzer, Sean Turner, and Samuel Weiler for their roles in registering these algorithm identifiers.
The specification is available at:
An HTML-formatted version is also available at:
The JSON Web Token (JWT) Best Current Practices (BCP) specification has been updated to add guidance on how to explicitly type Nested JWTs. Thanks to Brian Campbell for suggesting the addition.
The specification is available at:
An HTML-formatted version is also available at:
The W3C Web Authentication (WebAuthn) specification is now a W3C Candidate Recommendation (CR). See the specification at https://www.w3.org/TR/2018/CR-webauthn-20180320/ and my blog post announcing this result for the WebAuthn working group at https://www.w3.org/blog/webauthn/2018/03/20/candidate-recommendation/.
This milestone represents a huge step towards enabling logins to occur using privacy-preserving public/private key pairs securely held by authenticators, rather than passwords. Its contents have been informed by what we learned during several rounds of interop testing by multiple browser and authenticator vendors. The Web Authentication spec has also progressed in parallel with and been kept in sync with the FIDO2 Client To Authenticator Protocol (CTAP) specification, so that they work well together.
The eighth working draft of the W3C Web Authentication (WebAuthn) specification has been published. The WebAuthn working group plans to submit this draft for approval by the W3C Director (Tim Berners-Lee) to become a W3C Candidate Recommendation (CR), after a few days’ review by the working group.
This milestone represents a huge step towards enabling logins to occur using public/private key pairs securely held by authenticators, rather than passwords. Its contents have been informed by what we learned during several rounds of interop testing by multiple browser and authenticator vendors. The Web Authentication spec has also progressed in parallel with and been kept in sync with the FIDO 2 Client To Authenticator Protocol (CTAP) specification, so that they work well together.
A few local improvements have been made to the Proof-of-Possession Key Semantics for CBOR Web Tokens (CWTs) specification. Changes were:
Thanks to Samuel Erdtman for sharing the editing.
The specification is available at:
An HTML-formatted version is also available at:
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