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

Supposed "Specs" that do not respect the same origin policy as a
starting point will *not* be implemented by browser vendors or have
security/privacy properties that make any sense on the Web.

I believe almost any technology probably can be made to work with the
same origin policy, i.e. for example per-origin key derivation.

For further reading, see here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Same-origin_policy.

In detail, https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6454

Again, I do not believe explaining, much less debating, the Same Origin
Policy is a good use of people's time on any W3C mailing list given the
abundance of resources on the topic.

In terms of privacy and security, it is precisely super-cookies and
universal identifiers that have been abused much in the past. It is
possible that certain specs such as Anders' WebPKI and Henry's WebID+TLS
are not implemented or widely adopted because they are simply do not fit
the Web Security Model and would not pass a privacy review. Rather than
complain or claim there is a conspiracy against them, I would suggest
going back to a Community Group and rewriting the spec with the help of
people with adequate background knowledge (or doing reading yourself)
and then come back when the spec is properly baked. Sending endless
emails to W3C lists where there is chartered work to be done or work
under charter is not doing anyone any favors, and likely simply
increasing the amount of mail from W3C lists that gets put in spam filters.

       cheers,
          harry


On 09/23/2015 10:30 AM, henry.story@bblfish.net wrote:
>> On 23 Sep 2015, at 14:57, Harry Halpin <hhalpin@w3.org> wrote:
>>
>> On 09/23/2015 03:42 AM, Anders Rundgren wrote:
>>> In my opinion the #1 problem with this discussion is that when you
>>> mention
>>> things that doesn't match the SOP vision like the fact that Android-,
>>> Apple-,
>>> and Samsung-Pay doesn't work on the Web, dead silence is all you get.
>> Since the same origin policy is the primary meaningful security boundary
>> on the Web, I expect for most people interested in security and privacy
>> that emails that dismiss SOP are generally put in the spam folder.
> Dismissing SOP out of hand would indeed be foolish. What this discussion 
> is about is how SOP actually relates to security, privacy, linkability 
> and user control. Perhaps we can make the following intial distinctions:
>
> - SOP is  a technical concept at the layer of information flow
> - privacy is a  concept that is in the political space
> - linkability is a key logical concept, and central to the web
> - use control is in the ethical and technical space ( control requires
>   the ability of a human agent to transform decisions into actions easily )
>
> I am sure we could with a few iterations get to some consensus along 
> these lines. 
>
>> I do understand some people are interested in creating, for example,
>> 'unique identifier' across all websites such as in the form of a X.509
>> certificate.
> A URI is a global identifier, a public key is a mathematical construct, which
> indirectly identifies an agent. 
>
> FIDO enables global identifiers to be used as you can see in their web architectural
> document here:
>
> https://fidoalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/html/fido-uaf-overview-v1.0-ps-20141208.html#relationship-to-other-technologies
>
>
>> These sort of  totalitarian identity scheme (often based on
>> broken crypto, such as <keygen>) will likely implemented across all
>> browsers, as would any payment scheme that makes the same broken
>> assumptions.
> So FIDO is helping totalitarian schemes?
>
> In a previous e-mail we have shown that WebCrypto allows JS from one origin
> to create keys with which it can sign documents sent to other origins. There
> is not really any way that webcrypto can stop this.  A simplistic application
> of SOP would mean that WebCrypto presents a security hole. Can you help
> us find a principled way of coming to understand how SOP, privacy, use control
> and linkability are related?
>
>> Supporters of such positions seem to have a lack of
>> understanding of the modern Web and/or basic cryptography and while to
>> some extent basic education can be done on Web-related mailing lists, I
>> doubt many people find it is a productive use of their time given the
>> large amount of high quality online courses out there and relatively
>> important work that has to be done in terms of Web standards.
> This type of dismissal of people trying to engage in a conversation
> is not conductive to coming to an understanding of the complexities 
> involved. It is not the kind of attitude that suits someone whose
> role at the W3C is to engage people into a process of consensus.
>
>> In particular, it is likely more productive for various non-SOP schemes
>> to find a way to adopt to SOP in a principled manner and so maintain
>> security and privacy properties. Payment schemes, identity schemes, and
>> the rest should and can do this.
> Yes, but things are not so easy. Do we remove WebCrypto because it does not
> fit SOP? Or does it actually fit SOP? Is there a document where these issues
> have been written up that we can refer to? For the moment it seems to me
> the discussion is actually quite confused. 
>
> Henry
>
>>            cheers,
>>              harry
>>
>>> -- Anders
>>>
>>>
> Social Web Architect
> http://bblfish.net/
>

Received on Wednesday, 23 September 2015 14:44:20 UTC