Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Liberty Alliance Plans Passport Interoperability

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the last-nail-in-that-coffin dept.

EvanDelay writes "The Liberty Alliance Project, which is developing Web technology to facilitate single sign-on authentication, plans to support interoperability between its system and Microsoft Corp.'s rival Passport system. Computerworld has the story."

3 of 81 comments (clear)

  1. I thought Passport was dead. by Futurepower(R) · · Score: 5, Informative


    In the past, Passport has been shown to have zero security. See the Wired News article, Stealing MS Passport's Wallet.

    On August 8, 2002, the U.S. Government's Federal Trade Commission (FTC) ordered Microsoft to stop lying about its Passport service. The FTC's order is titled Microsoft Settles FTC Charges Alleging False Security and Privacy Promises.

    From: Windows XP Shows the Direction Microsoft is Going.

  2. A few things for people who didn't read it by IamTheRealMike · · Score: 5, Informative
    1) This is merely an offer from the Alliance to Microsoft. MS probably won't take it up.

    2) Even if they did decide to co-operate, it'd largely be meaningless. There are so few websites using Passport the list can fit into less than a screenful.

    3) Even if this wasn't a problem, making Passport interoperate with anything would be a major technical headache. It simply wasn't designed for that at all. It's centralised so badly it'd need to be ripped apart and rebuilt to allow for "federation". Notice how that using Kerberos to open it up idea seems to have faded away? That's because Kerby was never meant for that anyway, and because it's extremely hard to open up Passport.

    4) Passport is growing at a snails pace, with good reason. The gain you get from it is small (often the user needs to give a password anyway, regardless of whether they use passport or not) and the cost is huge, both in developer time and various costs involved in working with Microsoft.

  3. SunNetwork demo of Liberty was Orwellian by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative


    I was at SunNetwork last week. They had a demo of Liberty in one of the Keynotes. As the demo went on, my stomach turned and I blanched.

    Instead of Microsoft holding your balls, Sony will.

    Feel better now?

    Clearly there's a whole whack of MANAGERS and BUSINESS TYPES at Sun and in the Alliance who are simply putting together their own version of Passport, which allows the corporation who sets up the given "circle of trust" between inter-acting corporations to hold the bag. Guess whose likely to be holding the bag? Whoever has the most clout. In the demo, it was Sony.

    It's *not* a bunch of techies doing the right thing. Somehow we've all been conned into "oh it's not Microsoft and so it's less evil".

    Bullshit.