[whatwg] TLS Logout - Re: window.cipher HTML crypto API draft spec

Henry:

There is no reason a login and logout (that work properly) cannot be added to window.crypto, however, the scope and focus of 'DOMCrypt' is as narrowly-defined as possible. Adding features like this would only slow progress.

Regards,

David

----- Original Message -----
From: "Henry Story" <henry.story@bblfish.net>
To: "David Dahl" <ddahl at mozilla.com>
Cc: whatwg at lists.whatwg.org, public-identity at w3.org
Sent: Saturday, August 6, 2011 6:16:22 AM
Subject: TLS Logout - Re: [whatwg] window.cipher HTML crypto API draft spec

Hi,

  I have been looking at how a client can logout from a TLS session recently, so that if a user
sends the wrong certificate to the server, the server can propose a way for the user to choose a 
different one. 

The correct way to do this would be to build it right into the browser, so that at all times the user is in control of his Persona, i.e. to extend Aza Raskin's work to the TLS layer [1]. 

The second best way is to have a Javascript API to logout the user, that web page authors can use to offer this feature. Firefox and Internet explorer have such an API. The Firefox one is described in the WebCrypto API [2] by Channy Yun, which was discussed on this list recently. 

The code to run both in IE and Firefox is quite simple. I submitted a bug report to Chrome with the 
code to suggest that they could implement this there too

  http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=90676

But they want the DOMCrypt spec approval before implementing. Is that something that could be added to DOMCrypt? Or should one look somewhere else? 

  This is a really simple function, but it is so useful. 

Henry


[1] http://www.azarask.in/blog/post/identity-in-the-browser-firefox/
[2] http://html5.creation.net/webcrypto-api/
    (the login method does not work currently in Firefox, on has to use logout, where the connection then asks the client for a certificate)


   


On 20 May 2011, at 17:04, David Dahl wrote:

> Hello WHATWG members,
> 
> With user control and privacy in mind, I have created a spec and an implementation for an easy to use cryptography API called DOMCrypt. This API will provide each web browser window with a 'cipher' property that facilitates:
> 
> * asymmetric encryption key pair generation
> * public key encryption 
> * decryption
> * signature generation
> * signature verification
> * hashing
> * easy public key discovery via meta tags
> 
> I have created a Firefox extension that implements all of the above, and am working on an experimental patch that integrates this API into Firefox.
> 
> The draft spec is here: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Privacy/Features/DOMCryptAPISpec/Latest
> 
> The project originated in an extension I wrote, the home page is here: http://domcrypt.org
> 
> The source code for the extension is here: https://github.com/daviddahl/domcrypt
> 
> The Mozilla bugs are here: 
> https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=649154
> https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=657432
> 
> You can test the API by installing the extension hosted at domcrypt.org and addons.mozilla.org, and going to http://domcrypt.org
> 
> Best Regards,
> 
> David Dahl
> 
> Firefox Engineer, Mozilla Corp.

Social Web Architect
http://bblfish.net/

Received on Saturday, 6 August 2011 07:01:38 UTC