Mozilla BrowserID: Decentralized, Federated Login

An anonymous reader writes "Mozilla Labs has just launched the prototype of its BrowserID project and the accompanying Verified Email Protocol standard. Basically, BrowserID is a browser-based federated login provider like Facebook Connect, but without the privacy leaks. Fundamentally, BrowserID is public key encryption. You register an email address with your browser, which is then confirmed with a standard 'click here to confirm' email. A public/private key pair is then generated; your browser keeps the private key, and your email provider keeps the public key. Now, when you visit Facebook (or any site that supports BrowserID), your browser gives Facebook your email address and an identity token signed with your private key. Facebook queries your email provider for your public key, decrypts your identity token, and logs you in — voila, secure, private, browser-based logins. Oh, and the prototype is written in HTML and JavaScript — so it works across every modern browser, too."

Comments

i'm no security expert

[Anonymous Coward]

isn't the browser basically the most targeted piece of software on a computer? if the private key is stored in the browser, doesn't that mean that potentially one successful exploit in the browser would let a hacker log into any website as you?

Let me get this straight

[Errol backfiring]

My browser will automatically provide my e-mail address? The very thing I do NOT want to provide when signing in with the majority of sites?

Also, as a web developer, I think it is a real bad design error to use an e-mail address as a login. What happens if you change your provider? Do you log in with your new (thus unknown) e-mail address? Or do you want to send the lost password to the no longer existing one?

Damn government

[PopeRatzo]

a browser-based federated login provider

Got damn Feds is getting involved in everything these days.

Hell, pretty soon they're gonna be all up in my Social Security and Medicare. That's why I'm a-voting for that pretty Mi-chele Bachmann. And let me tell you, I'd like to show her what a real man is. You know she ain't getting it from that big homo she's married to. And by homo, I mean gay as pink ink. Dude has to tie weights to his shoes so they don't float right out of the closet. He's queerer than a box of monkeys on DMT. Gay cubed.