Mike Jones: self-issued

Musings on Digital Identity

Month: July 2018

IETF Token Binding specifications sent to the RFC Editor

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On July 20, 2018

In Cryptography, IETF, Phishing Resistance, Specifications

IETF logoThe 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:

Security Event Token (SET) is now RFC 8417

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On July 10, 2018

In Claims, IETF, JSON, OpenID, Specifications

IETF logoThe Security Event Token (SET) specification is now RFC 8417. The abstract describes the specification as:

This specification defines the Security Event Token (SET) data structure. A SET describes statements of fact from the perspective of an issuer about a subject. These statements of fact represent an event that occurred directly to or about a security subject, for example, a statement about the issuance or revocation of a token on behalf of a subject. This specification is intended to enable representing security- and identity-related events. A SET is a JSON Web Token (JWT), which can be optionally signed and/or encrypted. SETs can be distributed via protocols such as HTTP.

SETs are already in use to represent OpenID Connect Back-Channel Logout tokens and to represent Risk and Incident Sharing and Coordination (RISC) events. Thanks to my co-editors, members of the IETF ID Events mailing list, and members of the IETF Security Events working group for making this standard a reality!

OpenID Connect Token Binding Specification Updated

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On July 1, 2018

In Cryptography, OpenID, Specifications

OpenID logoThe 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:

  • Adjusted the metadata to indicate supported confirmation method hash algorithms for Token Binding IDs in ID Tokens.
  • Updated references for draft-ietf-tokbind-protocol to -19, draft-ietf-tokbind-https to -17, draft-ietf-oauth-token-binding to -07, and draft-ietf-oauth-discovery to -10.
  • Explicitly stated that the base64url encoding of the “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:

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