Re: IETF JOSE WG seeking review of drafts

On 07/19/2015 11:25 PM, Wendy Seltzer wrote:
> Would anyone be available to review this draft to provide comments
> to that WG? I sent the below ping to their list.

Digital Bazaar would be happy to do a review of the draft and provide
comments. Note that we performed a review two years ago with unfavorable
results (no changes, that we know of, were made to JOSE as a result):

http://manu.sporny.org/2013/sm-vs-jose/

Here were the takeaways from the prior review of JOSE:

* The Linked Data Signatures specification utilizes a much simpler
approach than the JSON Web Algorithms specification while supporting the
same level of algorithm agility.

* The Linked Data Signatures specification provides four major
advantages over the JSON Web Key format: 1) the key information is
expressed at a higher level, which makes it easier to work with for Web
developers, 2) it allows key information to be discovered by
dereferencing the key ID, 3) the key information can be published (and
extended) in a variety of Linked Data formats, and 4) it provides the
ability to assign ownership information to keys.

* The Linked Data Signatures specifications use of a native Linked Data
format removes the requirement for a specification like JSON Web Token.
As far as the Linked Data Signatures specification is concerned, there
is just data, which you can then digitally sign and encrypt. This makes
the data easier to work with for Web developers as they can continue to
use their application data as-is instead of attempting to restructure it
into a JSON Web Token.

* The major difference between the Linked Data Encryption and JSON Web
Encryption specifications has to do with how the encryption parameters
are specified as well as how many of them there can be. The Linked Data
Encryption specification expresses only one encryption mechanism and
outlines the algorithms and keys external to the message, which leads to
a reduction in complexity. The JSON Web Encryption specification allows
many more types of encryption schemes to be used, at the expense of
added complexity.

* The Linked Data Signatures specification does not need to encode its
payloads, but does require a normalization algorithm. It supports
discovery of signature key data so that signatures can be verified using
standard Web protocols. The JSON Web Signatures specification is more
flexible from an algorithmic standpoint and simpler from a signature
verification standpoint. The downside is that the only data input format
must be from the message itself and can’t be from an external Linked
Data source, like an HTML+RDFa web page listing items for sale. Linked
Data Signatures signatures are natively cross-format compatible, JSON
Web Signatures are not.

The response thread to the prior review can be found here:
https://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/jose/current/msg03736.html

Linked Data Signatures
https://web-payments.org/specs/source/ld-signatures/

Linked Data Encryption
https://web-payments.org/specs/source/secure-messaging/#message-encryption-algorithm

Note that if the draft-jones-jose-jws-signing-input-options-00 spec were
to continue, it would only partially address one of the issues above.
That said, we're happy to try doing a review again and see if this new
approach that the JOSE group is suggesting would move us closer to
converging.

We're under a bit of a heavy workload at the moment, when would the
review be due?

-- manu

-- 
Manu Sporny (skype: msporny, twitter: manusporny, G+: +Manu Sporny)
Founder/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
blog: Web Payments: The Architect, the Sage, and the Moral Voice
https://manu.sporny.org/2015/payments-collaboration/

Received on Monday, 20 July 2015 04:12:38 UTC