Slashdot Mirror
OpenID Foundation Embraced by Big Players
An anonymous reader writes "The OpenID Foundation has announced that Google, IBM, Microsoft, VeriSign and Yahoo! have all joined its board. It's exciting to see OpenID being embraced by such large players, but its also a concern that such big corporates are now directly influencing the fledgeling foundation. 'Today there are over a quarter of a billion OpenIDs and well over 10,000 websites to accept them. OpenID has grown to be implemented by major open source projects such as Drupal, cornerstone Web 2.0 services such as those by 37signals and Six Apart, as well as a mix of large companies including as Apple, Google, and Yahoo!. Today is about truly recognizing the accomplishments of the entire OpenID community which has certainly grown beyond the small grassroots community where it started in late 2005.'"
Not only do I not have an OpenID, I've never even seen an OpenId login! Until it really starts getting around, I seriously doubt the quarter billion number.
Very secure. Think about it- that means that every scummy admin on the internet doesn't have access to your password. You don't need a "junk websites that probably sell my username/password" tier, since authentication is handled by openid and not the scummy web server itself.
But the big questions on everyones lips are: "Will Slashdot support OpenID?", and "Is Anonymous Coward already taken?".
May the Maths Be with you!
I'm no expert on such things, but wouldn't you want an extremely restrictive license, to prevent providers from "improving" the concept and breaking interoperability? Or having the more "trusted" providers begin charging for the service? Although I suppose this depends on Fitzpatrick's definition of liberal.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. indymedia
http://www.plaxo.com/api/openid_recipe
As someone that used to work for a company that developed strong authentication systems, I can tell you that big-business has been having some kind of orgasm about this for quite a while now.
The typical big-dreamer sees "identity" as a problem of too many logins/passwords. Yahoo and IBM have different customers, but similar goals simplifying authentication/identity for their customers. As usual, Microsoft is conspicuously absent because they think they've got the proprietary solution already.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
This isn't about having one password. This is about having one account. There's ample opportunity for improved security without the need for passwords. Have your OpenID provider authenticate you via an SSL cert on your USB flash drive if you want, or even via fingerprint recognition, you or your provider can implement whatever level of security you need and there's no need for the relying parties to mess about with their authentication system to accommodate you, it all just works automatically with any OpenID-capable website or web application because it's the OpenID provider doing the authentication, not the websites or web applications themselves.
Websites and web applications are relatively limited in what they can offer in terms of authentication options. OpenID allows people to experiment with alternative authentication schemes without having to drag websites and web applications along with them.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
The way OpenID works (the "for dummies" version) is you go to a service which supports it and tell them "I'm Joe Joe from joejoe.com". The service then goes to joejoe.com and checks for the information there that would tell the service who to contact to verify you. It could be at joejoe.com itself, it could be openid.randomguy.com. It doesn't matter.
After the service knows who is allowed to verify that you are Joe Joe from joejoe.com, it asks them to do it. How they do it is entirely up to them. They could use a password/username. They could use a 32 point authenticaion scheme that at some point requires your mom to log in and ask you questions. It doesn't matter.
Once they've verifed you are Joe Joe, from joejoe.com, they tell the service that. Now, if the service considers itself 'high security' they can always do some extra checking before it logs you in fully (and some do). But if it's 'just Slashdot' then that's all that needs to happen.
So, someone hack your account with the group verifying you? Change authentication methods.
If you are implementing your side of OpenID correctly (and no it's not a given that you are) you have control over who verifys you as you and simply need to setup a different group to do the verification. YOU are in control of that. Unlike things like MS Passport, where you have to trust Microsoft not to foul up.
Of the single login setups I've seen OpenID is the best implementation I've run into. Yes, single sign on is inheritantly less secure than multiple sign ons, ASSUMING the authentication layer is equivalent across the board.
BUT, and this is the catch, YOU pick the level of authentication with OpenID. You get to decide how secure is secure, if you think it's ok to just go with a username/password. Then that's your choice and you can do that. But if you would prefer to go 'Fort Knox', it's entirely possible for you to do so, because you get to choose who does the authentication and therefore what authentication is being done.
For practically everybody, this is already the case. At present, the username and password they need to crack are for your email account. Then they can access all your other accounts by extension via their forgotten password features.
So the downside of OpenID is a downside that is already present. Something to think about, for sure, but hardly a deal-breaker that should prevent adoption.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
No, you are mixing up OpenID providers with OpenID relying parties. Yahoo and AOL are both OpenID providers, which means that if you have an account with them, then you have an OpenID. The sites you log into are OpenID relying parties, which means that if you have an OpenID you can log into them.
Yahoo and AOL don't have any services that are OpenID relying parties as far as I know (AOL say they are "actively working on it"). But you can use Yahoo and AOL OpenIDs to log into an OpenID relying party, for instance, if you have an AOL account, you can use your OpenID to log into LiveJournal, which is an OpenID relying party.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
Also, there is one 'higher class' authentication layer implemented already, mentioned on episode 107 of security now podcast http://www.grc.com/securitynow.htm :
Verisign has an OpenID implementation, https://pip.verisignlabs.com/, with a plugin for firefox that makes it easy to manage signing into sites.
Verisign's implementation is already behind the paypal and ebay security fobs, and if you get a pip account, you can buy one and use it for secure authentication everywhere. They cost $30 from verisign, but only $5 from paypal: http://paypal.com/securitykey
Talking about FUD, it seems you are the guilty one here. here is some facts for you: 1) Passport has nothing to do with CardSpace. 2) CardSpace does not rely on Active Directory. Totally false FUD. CardSpace (as implemented in IE) insists on using a seperate "desktop" to avoid potential spoofing when you decide which card to "hand over". The "cards" are NOT kept in AD. Plugins exists for FF as well. 3) CardSpace is a totally open protocol which - unlike OpenID - ensures your anonymity across websites. 4) CardSpace is compatible with OpenID. It is not a competing technology; they complement eachother. In other words your CardSpace card can be OpenID based; it all about the "claims" part. Kim Cameron actually wrote the "laws of identity". Before being hired by Microsoft. Have you read them? Do you disgagree with any of them. Do you feel they are incomplete? Part of spreading FUD is playing on uncertainty by not being concrete in critisism. That way you can avoid rebuttals. What is your problem with that #7 item here? Please?
Reading slashdot one-liner: (irm http://rss.slashdot.org/Slashdot/slashdot).rdf.item | fl title,desc*
https://certifi.ca/ actually offers a free provider that works with any SSL certificate. As you point out, this makes phishing almost impossible. You need a certificate from somewhere else, but there is a list of certificate providers on that site, some of which are free. There is one other provider I know of that offers this, but I couldn't get their service to work.
Yea, I was wondering if I was missing something there. I read the article and all the comments in the gp link, and basically I see Kim Cameron trying to explain what seem like some pretty reasonable security issues to some retard who keeps insisting that the current system is perfect because he knows how to read the address bar and certificate dialog....
I thought that too at first, and then I "got" it: Right now, every website I go to, I create a new account. New account, new password, new entry in my passmanager. I usually use the same login name/user name, for simplicity's sake. You probably do this also.
:).
Now, I can use OpenID to stop dealing with my passmanager! I can get the same login name everywhere. If I want the simple route, I simply use diggity.myopenid.com. If I want the advanced "I control it all" route, then I can host it myself using phpMyID (although that makes it a fair bit less anonymous
The best part though, and I think this is where you are confused, is that you can create as many OpenIDs, using as many providers, as you want to keep track of! You could have ten different logins to Slashdot if you wanted. You can have that already right now, but OpenID allows you to take this the extra step and take any of these logins with you to any other site in the future. If you want extra security, you can use a provider in a foreign country that deletes all logs, never tracks IPs, and understands full deniability. Whatever. This is totally up to you!.
- DaftShadow
No, listen. You're wrong. This has nothing to do with sharing users, it has everything to do with YOU not having to create YET ANOTHER LOGIN. OpenID is about YOU not about the companies implementing it sharing users.
This isn't a trivial thing to understand and I encourage you to read up on OpenID.
Here's, in a nutshell, what it means. You have a Yahoo! or AOL account (so, you have a login & password, that you can remember). When you want to start using a product at 37signals, like basecamp or highrise, or whatever - you can CHOOSE to use your OpenID. You still have to sign up with 37signals, you still have to PAY 37signals, but you don't get another login & password.
When you provide your OpenID to 37signals, the APIs they use will ask your OpenID provider (e.g. Yahoo! or AOL) if you're authorized, your OpenID provider will ask YOU if you want to authorize 37signals, and you'll say YES.
That's it. Trust is setup, you've been in control the whole time, and now you can access your 37signals account without ever having created a new username & password.
It really, really is powerful. And it really, really is not trivial or necessarily easy to understand. But it works, and folks are getting on board with it.
Cheers,
[/rant]
OK, that's nice. But how do I get Yahoo to accept my i-name or my AIM OpenID? On Yahoo's OpenID setup page, I only see options for creating my Yahoo OpenID.
I'm not going to count the big players as embracing OpenID until I can tie any one of my existing OpenIDs to my account.
So, you want to see an actual example of a site with a seemingly perfectly valid SSL certificate but still sporting an exploit? Look no further than here: http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2008/01/08/italian_banks_xss_opportunity_seized_by_fraudsters.html. This is just a recent example.
This one example totally defeats all of your "security checks". And it is in the wild. You will of course claim that this particular attack was made possible by two factors: A XSS vuln at the banks website and users clicking on a link in an email sent to them. But the domain of that link was the banks domain. The XSS script was obfuscated. Once you arrived at the page everything seemed OK: There's a https:/// at the front of the url, and the domain name is in fact the banks own domain name. Is the bank to blame? yes! Should anyone follow a link sent to them in an email? no! Did it succeed in having users giving up their details? you bet!
Incidently you don't "throw up a deceptive IFRAME". Iframes are embedded into the actual html. You can't tell it is there. Your address bar only tells you about the "parent" page. If the actual form lives inside an iframe - possibly generated by a XSS vulnerability like in this example, validating the URI means s***.
I really don't know which articles you've read on CardSpace. Do you only read the headlines and when CardSpace and Passport are mentioned together you assume that they are one and the same or that they are intrinsically linked?
Instead of FUDing (referring to "articles" without any concrete references) maybe you would like to point out what the problem with CardSpace is? I mean, apart from the fact that it originated from Microsoft which obviously is very disturbing to you.
Let me summarize CardSpace for you:
Reading slashdot one-liner: (irm http://rss.slashdot.org/Slashdot/slashdot).rdf.item | fl title,desc*
I don't think that's too much of a problem - if you're using a site enough to be doing something like keeping your own journal, it's not too much hassle to get an account. It is hassle to get an account just to make a single comment, which is the major hurdle OpenID overcomes.
join a community
I agree, this limitation seems a bit strange, especially as they allow OpenID users to keep friends lists.
comment on posts that have restricted comments to LiveJournal users
Although that's a choice that's up to the journal owner. They had to have that really, as originally there was the option to disallow anonymous comments, but for backwards compatibility, I think OpenID would have to fall into the same category. But it would be nice to have an option that says "Allow LiveJournal or OpenID comments, but not anonymous". But setting up an OpenID server that automatically authenticates anybody who types in that url (does not attempt to verify identity) is trivial. Any such URL is then an anonymous OpenID. That more or less would defeat the point, would it not?
Stylish sheet to fix many problems in Slashdot's D3: https://gist.github.com/801524