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Well a lot of value in application architectures like this is, I want to give something access to my Google Calendar forever, to schedule tasks and read stuff,
by doctorpangloss 2y ago
Well a lot of value in application architectures like this is, I want to give something access to my Google Calendar forever, to schedule tasks and read stuff, expressly without user intervention. Most people want token exchange - that an all-powerful user token gets exchanged for a token with the privileges specific to the service that holds onto it. I don't really want Google or Apple or whoever has, for idiosyncratic reasons, possession of a private key, to sign every request I make to Google Calendar, because they will inevitably revoke it sooner for obnoxious business reasons than any good security reason. And if I give a signing key to the service doing this deed for me, it's kind of redundant to an ordinary exchanged JWT.
Really the ergonomics are why this hasn't been adopted more readily. I wonder why it's possible to have OpenTelemetry inject a header into thousands of different APIs and services for dozens of programming languages, more or less flawlessly. But if I wanted to do this at process boundaries, and the content of my header was the result of a stateless function of the current value of the header (aka token exchange + destination service): you are shit out of luck. Ultimately platform providers like Google, Apple and Meta lose their power when people do this, so I feel like the most sophisticated and cranky agitators are more or less right that the user experience is subordinate to the S&P top 10's bottom line, not real security concerns.
- EthanHeilman 2y agoThe first case sounds more like a case for OAuth which doesn't have to use JWTs or digital signatures. > I don't really want Google or Apple or whoever has, for idiosyncratic reasons, possession of a private key, to sign every request I make to Google Calendar, because they will inevitably revoke it sooner for obnoxious business reasons than any good security reason. Can you provide more context on this? I would assume asymmetric signing keys are less likely to be revoked than say an HMAC key since an HMAC key must be securely stored at both the client and server whereas you can just put a asymmetric signing key in an HSM at the client and be done with it.
- radicalbyte 2y agoWhich we have in modern computers and mobiles (the EU identity wallet concept is built around them).
- EthanHeilman 2y agoI thought the EU wallet was using JWTs that attest to public key. You don't use them as bearer tokens, you use them as certificates and then do verifiable credential presentation via proof of possession and SD-JWTs.