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Subject: RE: [wsn] Use case for double opt-in and other mechanisms for preventing unwanted subscriptions


Title: Message
 
Hi David,
 
Just to be clear -  Are you proposing DOI as a solution for the security concern of Consumer receiving unwanted Notifications. If yes, then I am not sure how it will work. DOI in essence depends upon a discipline followed by the NP to contact Consumer before bombarding it with Notifications. A rouge NP may not heed such a discipline to begin with.
 
On the the hand, DOI seems to be useful for a normal, non-security use case such as - Provide an ability to the Consumer to accept/reject notifications from a NP (for a particular Subscription). The questions in that case will be - how does a Consumer know which NP will provide DOI and which one not.
 
By the way, the proposed solution for a currently logged issue (WSN2.21: Consumer can not identify the subscription causing notifications) might provide a partial solution here, except that the WSN2.21 resolution depends upon useNotify option and it will require at least one Notification message being sent to the Consumer.
 
Thanks,
Sanajy
-----Original Message-----
From: David Hull [mailto:dmh@tibco.com]
Sent: Monday, Nov 22, 2004 13:53 PM
Cc: wsn@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: Re: [wsn] Use case for double opt-in and other mechanisms for preventing unwanted subscriptions

Thanks for the clarification.  I'm still not sure what other message exchanges between NP and consumer there might be.  We only define one, namely notify, and that only if useNotify is true.

I think the key point of WSN is its third-party nature.  The Subscribe MEP between Subscriber and Producer contains a pointer (EPR) to the Consumer, and the rest of the message flow happens between Producer and Consumer.  Intuitively, this seems different from a case where the Consumer makes a request to the Producer and gets a response.

Does that apply to what you're saying?  I'm afraid we're going to end up talking in circles around each other if we're not careful.

Tom Maguire wrote:

Forgive my tortured english in the last post clarification below.

Problems cannot be solved at the same level of awareness that created
them.  -Albert Einstein
T o m   M a g u i r e

STSM, On Demand Architecture
Poughkeepsie, NY  12601

David Hull <dmh@tibco.com> wrote on 11/22/2004 04:20:07 PM:

  
Tom Maguire wrote:



In double opt-in the consumer knows about the subscriber,
    
 should have been two sentences; comma should have been a ?

so it should have read
"In double opt-in the consumer knows about the subscriber?  I believe
the consumer would just know about the producer."

  
No.
    
agree
  
First, DOI is a message exchange between producer and consumer.  The
subscriber is not involved at all.
Second, in the typical use case, the consumer may or may not know
the identity of the subscribing entity.  DOI applies in either case.
I believe it
would just be the producer?
No.  Generally something other than the producer (or consumer) is
making the subscription, and the producer has no way of knowing a
priori whether the subscription is appropriate.
Nevertheless how is this any different from
any other message exchange on the consumer?

I'm not sure what this means.  In the case I have in mind, the
consumer is not a web service at all in the usual sense (yes, that
is still covered by WSN).
    

What I meant was; why is the 'notify' message exchange being treate
differently
then any other message exchange between the producer and the consumer
w.r.t. auth?

  
Tom

Problems cannot be solved at the same level of awareness that created
them.  -Albert Einstein
T o m   M a g u i r e

STSM, On Demand Architecture
Poughkeepsie, NY  12601

David Hull <dmh@tibco.com> wrote on 11/22/2004 03:47:29 PM:


Tom Maguire wrote:



Is it not sufficient that security assertions or claims about the sender
handle this?  Why is the 'notify' MEP (as opposed to all the other MEPs

the

Notification consumer exposes) given special treatment in this regard?

I

do not understand why composition with WS-Security does not handle the
requirement.



What security assertions would handle the case where a consumer does not
even know the subscriber exists?


Tom

Problems cannot be solved at the same level of awareness that created
them.  -Albert Einstein
T o m   M a g u i r e

STSM, On Demand Architecture
Poughkeepsie, NY  12601






            David Hull



            <dmh@tibco.com>



To

            11/22/2004 03:07          wsn@lists.oasis-open.org



            PM

cc



Subject

                                      [wsn] Use case for double opt-in



                                      and other mechanisms for

preventing

                                      unwanted subscriptions


















The Use Case:

Because subscriptions may be made by a third party on behalf of the

actual

consumer, there must be some means of ensuring that the consumer only
receives notifications it is interested in.  There are many possible
relationships among the subscriber, producer and consumer.  For example
     The subscriber is provably the same entity as the consumer.  The
     producer should accept any subscription from the consumer on its

own

     behalf.
     The subscriber, producer and consumer are all in the same isolated
     environment and implicitly trust each other.  Again, there is no

need

     to restrict subscription.
     The consumer has supplied the subscriber with a secure token

(which

     the NP is able to recognize) authorizing it to subscribe on the
     consumer's behalf.  The NP should reject subscription requests
     without proper authorization.
     The consumer does not know the subscriber even exists, but might

be

     interested in some unsolicited subscriptions.  It is thus up to

the

     producer to determine interest, generally by sending a test

message

     under the double-opt-in pattern.
     Either of the previous cases may apply.  The producer should look

for

     the appropriate secure token, and if it's missing, ask the

consumer

     via double-opt-in.
     A notification producer may impose a quota on subscriptions

directed

     toward a given consumer (perhaps because the consumer asked it

to).

     In this case, a given subscription may either succeed or fail
     depending on what other subscriptions are open.
Clearly, many more variants are possible.
Discussion:
In cases where the producer must query the consumer before beginning the
subscription, arbitrarily much time may pass between the subscription
request and the definitive answer.  This asynchronous reply would best

be

handled through a callback mechanism, but we would probably rather not
build this into the core subscribe exchange.  In the case of secure

tokens,

it might make sense for the subscriber to be able to submit and verify a
token for a particular consumer once (in the context of a secure
connection) instead of passing it with every subscribe request.

It would be desirable to push all such message exchanges out of the core
Subscribe request/response.  This is one driver behind having the
subscriber and producer be able to first negotiate a "destination"

cookie

and then use that cookie in the actual subscribe request.  Naturally,

this

is not the only way to cover these use cases.




>



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