RE: A Somewhat Critical View of SOP (Same Origin Policy)

Yes, a single legal entity (like a company) can control several origins, and a single origin can be controlled by many entities (via subdomains). The SOP needs to be re-enforced by a Single Entity Policy, i.e. by secure declaration of what legal entity manages a subdomain or domain (or set of them)

Mike


-----Original Message-----
From: Anders Rundgren [mailto:anders.rundgren.net@gmail.com] 
Sent: 29 August 2015 09:21
To: public-web-security@w3.org; public-webappsec@w3.org
Subject: A Somewhat Critical View of SOP (Same Origin Policy)

A core part of the Web Security model is based on SOP.

However, the world (outside of the Web) isn't working according this model; it is rather ad-hoc.

This has lead to the "App-explosion" which is better aligned (for good or for worse) to needs of the world than a SOP-crippled Web.

Since SOP (if taken literally) would more or less kill the Web, the "Super-Providers" have come to rescue.  That is, browsers still adhere to SOP but this is effectively short-circuited by services like PayPal which enable payments to any domain.

This is where it (IMO) gets wrong.  If Super-Providers are trusted for mediating access to arbitrary domains, why couldn't [properly designed] applications also perform this task?

In addition, payments and authentication (to take an example), typically exhibit quite different privacy- and security-characteristics making the SOP-hammer a pretty blunt tool.

-- Anders

Received on Saturday, 29 August 2015 11:24:00 UTC