Issue 100: Lack of Rationale for choices of Authentication for WS-SC operations

["Marc Goodner" <mgoodner@microsoft.com>]

Issue 100.

-----Original Message-----
From: Hal Lockhart [mailto:hlockhar@bea.com] 
Sent: Monday, August 07, 2006 1:50 PM
To: ws-sx@lists.oasis-open.org
Cc: Marc Goodner
Subject: NEW Issue: Lack of Rationale for choices of Authentication for WS-SC operations


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Protocol:  ws-sc  

http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/download.php/18840/ws-secureconvers
ation-1.3-spec-ed-01-r06-diff.pdf

Artifact:  spec 

Type: design

Title: 

WS-SC defines 4 operations: Issue, Amend, Renew and Cancel. 

In the case of Amend, WS-SC does not specify what Authentication is required. In the case of Renew, it says the original claims must be re-authenticated. If the SCT has expired, its key must not be used to authenticate. The examples for Amend and Renew both show signatures which use both the long term Token and the SCT.

In the case of Cancel, WS-SC says that the client must provide PoP of the SCT secret. The example shows only one signature, which uses the SCT.

It is not clear a) the reason for these choices and b) why they are all different.


Description: 

For Amend and Renew, it seems to me that the Principle of Perfect Forward Secrecy suggests that the long term Identity be used in all these cases to authenticate the client. That way if the SCT secret is compromised, the request will still be protected. (If the long term secret is compromised, all bets are off anyway.) 

Also I don't understand why a Cancel requires specifically PoP of the SCT secret.

Related issues:

78

Proposed Resolution:

Rationalize the choices and provide rationale for them.

Hal