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Passport vs. Plan 9
netphilter writes "LinuxWorld is carrying an article about how Apache and Plan 9 are going to defeat Microsoft's Passport. I hate Passport's integration with XP (although that might be because I hate XP). An Open Source single-sign on would be a real blessing. Will we ever get a good single sign-on solution?"
The question should be: Do we really want a single sign in solution? I don't like passport, or its integration into XP and I probably won't like a Linux version. Single sign in sounds terribly insecure. I suppose the Linux version might be more secure since as Microsoft says, their products aren't made for security.
FoundNews.com - get paid to blog.,
Here I was worried that a company with billions of dollars would be able to dominate the market with their single sign on technology, but apparently some technology I have never heard of that is named after an Ed Wood movie will defeat it.
Can we mod the article -1, Presumputous?
Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball(TM)
but isn't the biggest thing against single-sign-on the fact that there's a single point of failure? why would open source change that?
FreeBSD for the impatient.
Not only does Passport go against the KISS philosophy embraced by many Unix and Linux developers, but the potential for security breaches is only magnified when a single universal authentication system is developed. It seems to me we'd be better off leaving authentication procedures up to the individual site owner rather than having a universal authentication protocol built-into Apache. This would also be a more practical solution as a single authentication system cannot be tailored to fit all sites. I sure don't want to trust all of my on-line bank transactions to something like Passport, so the need exists for highly encrypted ultra-secure authentication on some sites, while other less secure sites like Slashdot which transmit passwords across the 'net in plain text could probably get by with using a much more basic authentication system.
-atrowe: Card-carrying Mensa member. I have no toleranse for stupidity.
Will we ever get a good single sign-on solution?
Yes; several of them.
Wait a minute...
Plan 10: Blank Passwords.
/. that I can
Why Plan 10? Heres why...
1) No one cares about me
2) Steal my credit cards they're maxed out anyways
3) I probably wouldn't mind if you changed my investments you probably would make more money that I do in the stock market
4) All of my email is mailing lists and spam, I have no friends
5) You could probably accumulate more karma on
6) Sneak preview of my bank account $0.02 (which I'm giving away here right now)
7) My social security number has been reused more times than the sayings "going forward" and "at the end of the day" combined
8) All passwords are hackable by the NSA anyways
9) At some point all information will be decrypted
10) You can have my body, but you cant take my mind
(B) + (D) + (B) + (D) = (K) + (&)
I too will question the very advisability of single sign on. There are good reasons I keep multiple banking, credit card and merchant accounts. I specifically * don't want* one single authority to be tracking my every move. I * don't want* all my finacial and personal assets and records piled up in one location. I keep a *diversified* portfolio.
What good is having your system backed up on removable media if your house burns down and * you don't have a copy off site?*
When Egghead was hacked I knew for a fact that I had to be concerned about *one* of my credit card accounts. I could watch that *one* like a hawk and the risk didn't steamroll through my whole life. The argument is, of course, that there is less risk with a well protected central account, but that account is an all or nothing sort of deal. You're either safe, or you lose everything.
I'll take the slightly greater overall risk at sustaining *some* sort of loss against the lower risk of complete and total devestation.
Do you have sort of financial insurance? Say on your car? Exact same deal. You "lose" your insurance payment against the protection from greater potential loss.
Obviously others disagree but I think that single access is just plain dumb, and all to save you a rather miniscule risk to save a few minutes of typing a year.
KFG
Single Sign On (SSO) works within a limited realm under the same control, such as within the scope of a government agency, a corporation, or a school. These bodies already exist deal with issues of various policies including privacy policies within the scope of the "realm" (i.e. the laws of the nations a multinational corporation is functioning within).
Universial SSO, such as this plan and Passport, breaks that and cannot be consistant since different companies want different privacy policies, are governed by different government legistation, yet are suppose to "control" and use the same information (the online identity credientials).
So the goal of only needing one online identity, whether a username/password, or a PIN and smartcard, within a given controlled realm such as your university does make sense. This is possible through sensible use of existing services like directory services and secure network authentication. The use of directory services such as X.400, RADIUS, and more recently LDAP (and LDAP perversions like Active Directory) can help towards this. As well as secure network authentication like Kerberos.
Universial SSO does not make sense, because of the shift of power and control is not carefully thought out in the contexts of legal issues (privacy, evidence, children online protection), contractual issues, limited and total revocation, ownership, and other issues.
Universial identities for an unlimited number of purposes does not make sense, it is a nightmare of management logistics, a total lack of correctness, legal quandary, and telemarketing hell.
This will also be The Day for Increased Finger Theft.
Mordor...a magical, mythical land where women are more rare than dragons--but where every man would rather find a dragon
It's a common misunderstanding what "single signon" actually means. Even in this article that doesn't cover Passport in detail, when indicating the passport authentication process, look at step 3:
#3 Which redirects it back to its authorized Passport server
Notice that it's not "the" passport server, it's "its authorized...". The passport server may or may not be at Microsoft!
I'm busy setting up an LDAP server to allow a rapidly growing (and I do mean RAPIDLY growing, 4x growth in the last year) ISP to scale. We need to allow for future virtual servers, FTP, email, etc. and do so with a single authentication scheme.
LDAP does all this, and more, in a distributed, secure and encrypted fashion. Why are we bothering with HTTP "web services", when LDAP will do all this and lots more?
(Scratches head)
"Single Signon" doesn't mean there's some Microsoft server someplace the whole world logs in to, it means there's ONE server provided by somebody you trust, that authenticates you as YOU and which manages information on your behalf to determine what you should be granted/denied access to. You sign in once, and have immediate access to all the services you have set up.
There can be any number of authentication servers!
Passport, Plan 9, Kerberos, LDAP, and to a lesser extent, NIS and a few others give that ability!
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
The terms "linux" and "single" seem to go hand in hand.
Finally, math books without any of that base 6 crap in them.
haahhhhahahah
i love keeping track of 40 accounts/passwords.
Who said you had to do that?
We have already solved the problem of single password authentication, it is built right into SSH. Basically, you send you public key to anyone you want to authenticate to. Your private key resides on your computer and is password protected. A local key agent manages your private key. When you authenticate the first time, your key agent asks you for your private key's password. Note that this password is never transmitted over the network, neither is the private key. The key agent makes it unnecessary to enter the password again for any site that has your public key, a real single sign on for any system that has your public key.
Even if your system is compromised, your private key is protected by the passphrase you set for it. If the Internet sites are compromised, all the attacker gets are worthless public keys.
Why hasn't someone implemented this instead of this passport silliness? The technology has been around to do this right, why do people keep trying to do it wrong?
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Start/Run/RunDll32 advpack.dll,LaunchINFSection %windir%\INF\msmsgs.inf,BLC.Remove
This worked for me. It finally stopped telling me to register my .NET Passport, and doesn't run Messenger all the time.
Here is a site with more info: http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_messenger.htm
PS: Am I violating the DMCA by posting this? Well I'm not an American citizen, but if I was?
Random is the New Order.
factotum (plan 9's authentication agent) is not a single sign-on solution, although it can be when used in conjunction with secstore. what it does mean is that applications do not have to be burdened with complex and error-prone authentication code, and that there is one, well-verified, point in the system that holds secrets and understands the protocols.
in the factotum scheme, you can mark certain accounts (e.g. your bank account access) so that they will always require a password to be entered; you can also use the scheme without secstore (which is what i'm doing currently) which just forces you to type in each password the first time it's required. secstore is a means to store all your passwords in one place securely, which you can then use to prime factotum.
this is the essence of the plan 9 approach - choose an abstraction and write it in a simple, modular way so that it's applicable to a wide range of previously unanticipated scenarios. it's a wonderful system, and one that carries forward the true unix tradition, something that UNIX lost long ago.