A new IETF working group has been proposed in the Applications Area. The IESG has not made any determination as yet. The following draft charter was submitted, and is provided for informational purposes only. Please send your comments to the IESG mailing list (iesg@ietf.org) by Tuesday, May 5, 2009. Open Authentication Protocol (oauth) ------------------------------------- Last Modified: 2009-04-06 Current Status: Proposed Working Group Chair(s): TBD Applications Area Director(s): Alexey Melnikov <alexey.melnikov@isode.com> Lisa Dusseault <lisa@osafoundation.org> Applications Area Advisor: TBD Mailing Lists: https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/oauth Description of Working Group: OAuth allows a user to grant a third-party Web site or application access to their resources, without necessarily revealing their credentials, or even their identity. For example, a photo-sharing site that supports OAuth would allow its users to use a third-party printing Web site to access their private pictures, without gaining full control of the user account. OAuth consists of: * A mechanism for exchanging a user's credentials for a token-secret pair which can be used by a third party to access resources ontheir behalf. * A mechanism for signing HTTP requests with the token- secret pair. The Working Group will produce one or more documents suitable for consideration as Proposed Standard that will: * Improve the terminology used. * Embody good security practice, or document gaps in its capabilities, and propose a path forward for addressing the gap. * Promote interoperability. * Provide guidelines for extensibility. This specifically means that as a starting point for the working group OAuth 1.0 (i.e., draft-hammer-oauth-00.txt), which is a copy of the original OAuth specification in IETF draft format, is used and the available extension points are going to be utilized. In completing its work to profile OAuth 1.0 to become OAuth 1.1, the group will strive to retain backwards compatibility with the OAuth 1.0 specification. However, changes that are not backwards compatible might be accepted if the group determines that the changes are required to meet the group's technical objectives and the group clearly documents the reasons for making them. Furthermore, OAuth 1.0 defines three signature methods used to protect requests, namely PLAINTEXT, HMAC-SHA1, and RSA- SHA1. The group will work on new signature methods and will describe the environments where new security requirements justify their usage. Existing signature methods will not be modified but may be dropped as part of the backwards compatible profiling activity. The applicability of existing and new signature methods to protocols other than HTTP will be investigated. The Working Group should consider: * Implementer experience. * The end-user experience, including internationalization. * Existing uses of OAuth. * Ability to achieve broad implementation. * Ability to address broader use cases than may be contemplated by the original authors. After delivering OAuth 1.1, the Working Group may consider defining additional functions and/or extensions, for example (but not limited to): * Discovery of OAuth configuration, e.g., http://oauth.net/discovery/1.0. * Comprehensive message integrity, e.g., http://oauth.googlecode.com/svn/spec/ext/body_hash/1.0/draf ts/1/spec.html. * Recommendations regarding the structure of the token. * Localization, e.g., http://oauth.googlecode.com/svn/spec/ext/language_preferenc e/1.0/drafts/2/spec.html. * Session-oriented tokens, e.g., http://oauth.googlecode.com/svn/spec/ext/session/1.0/drafts /1/spec.html. * Alternate token exchange profiles, e.g., draft-dehora- farrell-oauth-accesstoken-creds-00. The work on extensions is within the scope of the working group charter and requires consensus within the group to add new milestones. The Working Group will also define a generally applicable HTTP authentication mechanism (i.e., browser-based "2-leg" scenerio). Goals and Milestones: Apr 2009 Submit 'OAuth: HTTP Authorization Delegation Protocol' as working group item (draft-hammer-oauth will be used as a starting point for further work.) Jul 2009 Submit a document as a working group item providing the functionality of the 2-legged HTTP authentication mechanism Jul 2009 Start of discussion about OAuth extensions the group should work on Oct 2009 Start Working Group Last Call on 'OAuth: HTTP Authorization Delegation Protocol' Nov 2009 Submit 'OAuth: HTTP Authorization Delegation Protocol' to the IESG for consideration as a Proposed Standard Nov 2009 Start Working Group Last Call on the 2-legged HTTP authentication mechanism document Nov 2009 Prepare milestone update to start new work within the scope of the charter Dec 2009 Submit 2-legged HTTP authentication mechanism document to the IESG for consideration as a Proposed Standard _______________________________________________ IETF-Announce@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf-announce
