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> Nobody understands SAML because it doesn’t really exist. It’s not so much a standard as a bag of standard parts from which a protocol can be assembled. It’s p

by 7bit 2y ago

> Nobody understands SAML because it doesn’t really exist. It’s not so much a standard as a bag of standard parts from which a protocol can be assembled. It’s possible for two implementations to be fully compliant and yet incompatible. I die Not make this experience. The specs exist and are detailled. I'm Not convinced your Last sentence ist true.

jiggawatts 2y ago
To be fair, SAML 1.0 was much worse than SAML 2.0 at interoperability, but there are still "profiles" in 2.0: https://docs.oasis-open.org/security/saml/v2.0/saml-profiles-2.0-os.pdf https://docs.oasis-open.org/security/saml/v2.0/saml-profiles... Even within the same profile, I've seen some major incompatibilities. For example, some Microsoft products interpret XML signing ever so slightly differently to many other libraries, breaking the protocol. (From what I could tell, MS was interpreting the standard correctly, others weren't, they were just testing against each other.) The biggest gripe I have about SAML is that it's one of "those" committee-designed standards that has an inner-platform effect of using it's own custom extensibility model on top of the eXtensible Markup Language (XML). It's like the bad database schemas that have one table with three or four columns holding all data because the developers couldn't be bothered to learn SQL. So instead of just this: <claims> <name>John Smith</name> <email>john.smith@test.com</email> <claims> You have this monstrosity: <saml:AttributeStatement> <saml:Attribute Name="uid" NameFormat="urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:attrname- format:basic"> <saml:AttributeValue xsi:type="xs:string">test</saml:AttributeValue> </saml:Attribute> <saml:Attribute Name="mail" NameFormat="urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:attrname-format:basic"> <saml:AttributeValue xsi:type="xs:string">test@example.com</saml:AttributeValue> </saml:Attribute> <saml:Attribute Name="eduPersonAffiliation" NameFormat="urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:attrname-format:basic"> <saml:AttributeValue xsi:type="xs:string">users</saml:AttributeValue> <saml:AttributeValue xsi:type="xs:string">examplerole1</saml:AttributeValue> </saml:Attribute> </saml:AttributeStatement> I was just troubleshooting SAML issues yesterday, and the library used for that is about 750 KB of compiled bytecode. The source must be over 2 MB, not including also heavyweight dependencies like XML, XML Schema, and XML Signing. For something as trivial as "send me a token with some attributes and a signature" it's way, waaaaay overcooked.

by 7bit 2y ago

jiggawatts 2y ago

To be fair, SAML 1.0 was much worse than SAML 2.0 at interoperability, but there are still "profiles" in 2.0: https://docs.oasis-open.org/security/saml/v2.0/saml-profiles-2.0-os.pdf https://docs.oasis-open.org/security/saml/v2.0/saml-profiles... Even within the same profile, I've seen some major incompatibilities. For example, some Microsoft products interpret XML signing ever so slightly differently to many other libraries, breaking the protocol. (From what I could tell, MS was interpreting the standard correctly, others weren't, they were just testing against each other.) The biggest gripe I have about SAML is that it's one of "those" committee-designed standards that has an inner-platform effect of using it's own custom extensibility model on top of the eXtensible Markup Language (XML). It's like the bad database schemas that have one table with three or four columns holding all data because the developers couldn't be bothered to learn SQL. So instead of just this: <claims> <name>John Smith</name> <email>john.smith@test.com</email> <claims> You have this monstrosity: <saml:AttributeStatement> <saml:Attribute Name="uid" NameFormat="urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:attrname- format:basic"> <saml:AttributeValue xsi:type="xs:string">test</saml:AttributeValue> </saml:Attribute> <saml:Attribute Name="mail" NameFormat="urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:attrname-format:basic"> <saml:AttributeValue xsi:type="xs:string">test@example.com</saml:AttributeValue> </saml:Attribute> <saml:Attribute Name="eduPersonAffiliation" NameFormat="urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:attrname-format:basic"> <saml:AttributeValue xsi:type="xs:string">users</saml:AttributeValue> <saml:AttributeValue xsi:type="xs:string">examplerole1</saml:AttributeValue> </saml:Attribute> </saml:AttributeStatement> I was just troubleshooting SAML issues yesterday, and the library used for that is about 750 KB of compiled bytecode. The source must be over 2 MB, not including also heavyweight dependencies like XML, XML Schema, and XML Signing. For something as trivial as "send me a token with some attributes and a signature" it's way, waaaaay overcooked.