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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. Nice for us. by miffo.swe · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I really hope it will work with linux. If it does we will have a free ride onto passport-only sites. I cant imagine MS letting off a passport client for linux by themselves (or anyone using it for that matter).

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    HTTP/1.1 400
  2. Re:DO we want that? by IamTheRealMike · · Score: 5, Interesting
    But personally, i agree with what another Slashdot reader said: its the browser's job to look after a user's password. a single username and password for all your site's is absolutly retarded security-wise.

    No, it's extremely smart security wise. Now, for all I know you may be the paragon of good security practice, but most people are not. In fact, most people, faced with a morass of passwords for various different services do something that is extremely bad and set all their passwords to the same thing. I've done this, for instance, because it's either that or write down all my passwords (which of course some people do) and keep them on my computer, which means I cannot access any services when I don't have that list.

    There is this fantastically common misconception that centralising your various digital identities will somehow decrease security. Not true! There's a reason most of us have 1 (perhaps 2) personal email accounts. We don't have 100 email accounts with different user names and passwords because the truly minor increase in security that would bring is nowhere near worth the major increase in hassle.

    Single sign on is coming people, and when it arrives not only will 95% of the computer using population be more secure because of it, but computers will be dramatically easier to use as well.

    I've read the liberty specs in more detail than most of the people here on slashdot I'd bet, as I'm working on a server that contains an (open source) implementation of them. No, it's not released yet, perhaps in a few months. But believe me, the LA specs are not scary, they will not force you to tell the government what your favourite colour is, they will not take your first born child. They will make your life easier.

  3. Re:DO we want that? by IamTheRealMike · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Single sign-on, whether Passport or Liberty Alliance, seems like a disaster waiting to happen, although if properly designed and correctly implemented (bloody big "if"), it'd be safer than multiple sign-ons all using the same password (because the latter gives multiple points of attack). But it's also painting a huge target and sign on itself that says "crack me!".

    Possibly, but bear in mind if you break into somebodies email account you can usually compromise most of their web passwords anyway, as almost all sites have an "email me my password feature". In effect, your email account is your digital identity, as it holds the keys to all your other passwords too. So that's also a pretty big target in a way, yet email breakins are fairly rare - possibly because people recognise its importance and choose good passwords?