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Subject: RE: Representing anonymous Subjects
Tim, Sorry, I was being indistinct. All kinds of assertions may be bearer assertions I presume. Any kind of assertion may have any kind of authenticator, including authorization and decision assertions. Depending on your trust model, any kind of assertion can have the (essentially) null authenticator you describe in your other message. If I'm not still confused, I think we agree on everything. --bob Bob Blakley (email: blakley@us.tivoli.com phone: +1 512 436 1564) Chief Scientist, Security and Privacy, Tivoli Systems, Inc. Tim Moses <tim.moses@entrust.com> on 08/20/2001 02:47:24 PM To: security-services@lists.oasis-open.org cc: Subject: RE: Representing anonymous Subjects Bob - I agree with you on all fronts, and the schema accommodates these ideas. There is one exception, though. Reference your second paragraph ... if the "bearer assertion" is an "authentication assertion", then it MUST contain an authenticator. Now, the "authenticator" may have no value; i.e. its authentication protocol identifier is "assertion bearer", but it is an authenticator nonetheless, and it says: "if a subject presents an artifact referencing this assertion, then he/she is the owner of the attributes in (or linked to) this assertion". There is a browser profile that has no artifact, then the bearer authentication assertion must still have an authenticator (as above). In this case, the authenticator says: "if a subject presents this assertion, then he/she is the owner of the attributes in (or linked to) this assertion". No? Best regards. Tim. -----Original Message----- From: George Robert Blakley III [mailto:blakley@us.tivoli.com] Sent: Monday, August 20, 2001 3:04 PM To: Tim Moses Cc: security-services@lists.oasis-open.org Subject: RE: Representing anonymous Subjects I think we're having two different discussions at the same time. I think a bearer assertion is an assertion which refers indexically to an unnamed subject and does not require an authenticator. It should be possible to generate such an assertion without having to generate an artifact AT ALL. I think the mechanism by which an artifact refers to an assertion should not vary depending on which subject reference type is used within the assertion. I DO NOT think that the assertion should refer to the artifact; the reference should be strictly one-way (from the artifact to the assertion). But surely an artifact should be able to refer to an assertion with ANY subject reference type... right? --bob Bob Blakley (email: blakley@us.tivoli.com phone: +1 512 436 1564) Chief Scientist, Security and Privacy, Tivoli Systems, Inc. Tim Moses <tim.moses@entrust.com> on 08/20/2001 01:38:58 PM Please respond to Tim Moses <tim.moses@entrust.com> To: security-services@lists.oasis-open.org cc: Subject: RE: Representing anonymous Subjects Bob - Are you just arguing that the assertion should reference the artifact (in its "Assertion bearer" element), as well as the artifact referencing the assertion? All the best. Tim. -----Original Message----- From: George Robert Blakley III [mailto:blakley@us.tivoli.com] Sent: Monday, August 20, 2001 2:32 PM To: Tim Moses Cc: security-services@lists.oasis-open.org Subject: RE: Representing anonymous Subjects Tim, Right... regardless of this though it seems to me that an implementation which would support this could easily be achieved and I don't see any downside to doing it in a way which would preserve our flexibility in this regard. I could make a more abstract argument here. If "bearer" is a way of describing a subject, in the same way that "name" or "authenticator" is a way of describing a subject, we should use the same mechanism to describe "bearer" subjects which we use to describe other types of subjects, so that the processing of subject descriptors can be localized to a single piece of logic. :-) --bob Bob Blakley (email: blakley@us.tivoli.com phone: +1 512 436 1564) Chief Scientist, Security and Privacy, Tivoli Systems, Inc. Tim Moses <tim.moses@entrust.com> on 08/20/2001 01:22:58 PM Please respond to Tim Moses <tim.moses@entrust.com> To: security-services@lists.oasis-open.org cc: Subject: RE: Representing anonymous Subjects Bob - I don't believe the bindings group currently considers your scenario "in scope". That would change if we had a use case, of course. Best regards. Tim. -----Original Message----- From: George Robert Blakley III [mailto:blakley@us.tivoli.com] Sent: Monday, August 20, 2001 2:19 PM To: Hallam-Baker, Phillip Cc: Marlena Erdos; security-services@lists.oasis-open.org Subject: RE: Representing anonymous Subjects Phill, I "sort of agree" -- I think that whether "bearer" is the default or not should be up to the specifier of the binding, which is to say that I think "bearer" ought to be a first-class subject option like the other three, and that it ought not be possible to specify any of these options by simply omitting the element -- you ought to have to explicity choose a subject representation and put the element in in order to get anything. As far as implementation of the "bearer" element is concerned, I guess what I'm worried about is that if we want to be able to pass assertions along a chain of calls and achieve the same effect as delegation but by the mechanism of passing bearer assertions, we can't do that unless the "bearer" nature of the assertion appears inside the assertion structure itself. Or am I missing something? PS I realize this is really dangerous, but there are trust structures where it makes sense INSIDE a distributed application with several components. --bob Bob Blakley (email: blakley@us.tivoli.com phone: +1 512 436 1564) Chief Scientist, Security and Privacy, Tivoli Systems, Inc. "Hallam-Baker, Phillip" <pbaker@verisign.com> on 08/20/2001 12:48:45 PM Please respond to "Hallam-Baker, Phillip" <pbaker@verisign.com> To: George Robert Blakley III/Austin/IBM@IBMUS, Marlena Erdos/Austin/Contr/IBM@IBMUS cc: security-services@lists.oasis-open.org Subject: RE: Representing anonymous Subjects Actually 'Bearer' does appear in section 4 as one of the Authenticator protocols. My recollection of the F2F was that bearer was mentioned but not specifically brought up as a topic. Tim wanted bearer to be possible but was not that bothered how it was implemented. I did not want bearer to be the default - for much the same reason that Dave O. is proposing to squelch defaulting to wildcard. Phill Phillip Hallam-Baker FBCS C.Eng. Principal Scientist VeriSign Inc. pbaker@verisign.com 781 245 6996 x227 > -----Original Message----- > From: George Robert Blakley III [mailto:blakley@us.tivoli.com] > Sent: Monday, August 20, 2001 1:06 PM > To: Marlena Erdos > Cc: security-services@lists.oasis-open.org > Subject: Re: Representing anonymous Subjects > > > Hmmmm..... > > At FTF3 we took it as implied that we were going to have a > "bearer" option > in the subject specifier. > > However we were pretty sure that our thinking on the topic > was confused; to > quote from FTF3 minutes: > > >ISSUE:[F2F#3-35]: BobB said in an aside that there is something wrong > >with at least some of the occurrences of our use of the "bearer" in > >Subject specifiers in all of the above constructs. Need to get him to > >elaborate in detail on what his observations are. > > I didn't do this, but it also appears that "bearer" has > disappeared from > the schema , probably because I couldn't > find our whiteboard mentions of it at all in the minutes (!) > > We need to add it back and discuss how to get it right. > > I agree with Marlena that we don't currently capture the concept: > > >Summary: I don't think we currently have a good way of representing > >either "bearer" assertions or anonymous assertions gotten > via an artifact. > > A possible solution is the extension of the Subject field to > >include an "anonymous" type. But I'm no > >XML expert. I'm hoping that if others agree that there is a need, > >we can work out the XML specifics. > > I see three possibilities: > > (1) A distinguished name, to be used within the "name" field > of a subject > definition. > > (2) A distinguished public "key" field to be used with the > "holder of key" > (is it called "authenticator" now?) field > > (3) A type-distinct fourth subject option, called "bearer". > > I don't like either (1) or (2) -- I'd rather have (3). I > don't necessarily > think that bearer = anonymous, however, since in either an > authentication > assertion or an attribute assertion, other asserted data may in fact > identify > the subject. However you could USE a bearer token to > implement anonymity. > > Now I need to think about what the issues are and how to get > it right.... > > > --bob > > Bob Blakley (email: blakley@us.tivoli.com phone: +1 512 436 1564) > Chief Scientist, Security, Tivoli Systems, Inc. > > > Marlena Erdos <marlena@us.ibm.com> on 08/20/2001 12:59:25 AM > > To: security-services@lists.oasis-open.org > cc: > Subject: Representing anonymous Subjects > > > > Dear SAML'ers, > > Recent discussions of the http binding have brought up > two flows that result in assertions about (potentially) anonymous > subjects. These flows either involve an artifact (or "handle" in > Shibboleth) that is used to retrieve an assertion about the > browser user, or involve the assertion being "redirected" (so > to speak) > through the user's browser (via interesting uses of javascript > and "post"). > Various discussions have flowed about impersonation > countermeasures and other aspects of these http-based flows. > I won't repeat them here. Instead, I'd like to raise up the > question of the "Subject" element in the assertion. > > In both flows (artifact or "bearer" assertion), it is possible for > the assertion to have an anonymous (or pseudonymous) subject. (Note > that the assertion could be either an authN or attribute assertion.) > Currently, the Subject element in the SAML schema (version 14) > doesn't seem to have a graceful way of dealing with the sorts of > anonymous subjects that arise from the http binding. > (I'll continue to say "anonymous subjects" to refer to both > anonymity and > pseudonymity, and to mean the http binding case.) Here's > what it does > allow for (to the extent that I understand the schema correctly). > I'll follow with a brief discussion on why none of the options seem > to have a good fit for the anonymous subject case. > > The Subject element allows for 3 different types of identifiers. It > allows for > -- a string "name" qualified by a security domain > -- an "authenticator" field (mostly related to a subject > authenticating with a key) > -- a reference to another assertion or inclusion > ofthat assertion > > Why these don't really fit: > - The string name could be used to convey the contents of > the handle > or the "assertion id" part of the artifact, but neither of these is in > any way a subject 'name'. I suppose that the RP could use the fake > name as a real name in its continued processing, but that is > conceptually incorrect, and it feels like looking for trouble to me. > (One concrete difficulty is how an RP could meaningfully have > the notion > of "anonymous" in an authZ policy if it can't tell the difference > between a fake name referring to an anonymous user and a real > user name.) > - The authenticator field strikes me as being mostly related to > subjects with keys, but Phill (in a phone call with me) suggested > that it could be used for the anonymous browser user case. I feel > reluctant about this because the association between an anonymous > browser user and an assertion is just that -- an association. > To refer > to it as an authentication just seems like a distortion of > both the term authentication and what is really going on from a > processing standpoint. (That is, the RP validates the association of > user and assertion rather than validating the identity of the user. ) > - The reference to an assertion or inclusion of one doesn't seem > to apply, because anonymous assertions in the http binding are (often) > the initial ones. There is not necessarily any other > assertion to refer > to (and there would still be the question of representing anonymity > in that assertion!). > > > Summary: I don't think we currently have a good way of representing > either "bearer" assertions or anonymous assertions gotten via > an artifact. > A possible solution is the extension of the Subject field to > include an "anonymous" type. But I'm no > XML expert. I'm hoping that if others agree that there is a need, > we can work out the XML specifics. > > > Regards, > Marlena > IBM/Tivoli > > PS My apologies if I've misunderstood the meaning of the fields in > the current schema. I welcome enlightenment. > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------- > To subscribe or unsubscribe from this elist use the subscription > manager: <http://lists.oasis-open.org/ob/adm.pl> > > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------- > To subscribe or unsubscribe from this elist use the subscription > manager: <http://lists.oasis-open.org/ob/adm.pl> > ---------------------------------------------------------------- To subscribe or unsubscribe from this elist use the subscription manager: <http://lists.oasis-open.org/ob/adm.pl> ---------------------------------------------------------------- To subscribe or unsubscribe from this elist use the subscription manager: <http://lists.oasis-open.org/ob/adm.pl>
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