My favourite SAML horror story, is that it used to be, that by default the main c implementation of xmlsig would not just check the sig with the public key specified but would also:
- check it against an hmac using a password specified in the attacker controlled document.
- check the signature using web pki (so the attacker could sign the saml document with their TLS key for their own personal domain and it would always be considered valid)
I honestly dont know how sites with saml arent getting hacked all the time. The only thing worse than the absolute terrible standards are the absolute terrible implementations.
I saw multiple implementations that looked for a signature, verified it, then just trusted the document as a whole rather than only the part that was signed. So as long as you had any signed SAML doc, you could provide an attention of your choosing and just bundle the signed one somewhere arbitrary inside of it.
It’s also enormous, I assume from the attempt to have nominally composable parts that could be reused for other flows.
It’s three entire specs bundled as one. One for the XML components, another for the documents you build from them, and another for the authentication flows built on top.
It is truly surprising how large the specs for each of these ecosystems are: PKI, Kerberos, TLS, OAuth, SAML, etc. They are gargantuan, especially when you include essential dependencies like DER codecs and ASN.1 compilers (PKI, Kerberos) or XML (SAML).
The thing is that they don't have to be that big at all, you could probably specify enough of PKI and TLS and SSH to cover most uses cases in, I dunno, 30-40 pages. However the standards bodies that produced them, termed "working groups", are more like standing committees that will (a) standardize any random idea that any member brings along and (b) are worse than the energizer bunny, they just keep going and going and going and going. Even ones that have been forcibly shut down like PKIX just keep going in other forms (LAMPS). You can't stop these standards mills, they'll just keep grinding out more stuff that no-one ever asked for, for all of eternity.
Well, no-one held a gun to their head but there was a general "enough, already", aided by the fact that several of the main characters were retiring which helped wind it up. And then they just kept going as before under a new name and with an influx of new people who were unaware of how the original mess was made and why.
So if a WG is wound up and then continues under another name with mostly the same people doing the same things the original WG did it's not really wound up, is it? It's just changing the sign over the door with business continuing as usual.
First, anyone can participate. The only cost is the value of your time.
Second, yes, there are the usual suspects -- the ones who've decided to spend a lot of their time on whatever the area of tech we're talking about.
Third, working groups have charters that delineate what RFCs they will publish. Sometimes the work runs out. Sometimes the people run out of energy. Sometimes the tech is 'done', at least for a while. Then the WGs shut down.
Fourth, sometimes new work gets brought to the IETF in an area where the relevant WG has concluded, so then a new WG _may_ get spun up to take on that work.
bawolff · · focus · HN ↗
- check it against an hmac using a password specified in the attacker controlled document.
- check the signature using web pki (so the attacker could sign the saml document with their TLS key for their own personal domain and it would always be considered valid)
I honestly dont know how sites with saml arent getting hacked all the time. The only thing worse than the absolute terrible standards are the absolute terrible implementations.
stouset · · focus · HN ↗
tptacek · · focus · HN ↗
stouset · · focus · HN ↗
It’s three entire specs bundled as one. One for the XML components, another for the documents you build from them, and another for the authentication flows built on top.
cryptonector · · focus · HN ↗
pseudohadamard · · focus · HN ↗
cryptonector · · focus · HN ↗
Was the IETF PKIX WG "forcibly" shut down, or it merely concluded, with new WGs popping up to do similar things when needs arose?
pseudohadamard · · focus · HN ↗
cryptonector · · focus · HN ↗
pseudohadamard · · focus · HN ↗
cryptonector · · focus · HN ↗
First, anyone can participate. The only cost is the value of your time.
Second, yes, there are the usual suspects -- the ones who've decided to spend a lot of their time on whatever the area of tech we're talking about.
Third, working groups have charters that delineate what RFCs they will publish. Sometimes the work runs out. Sometimes the people run out of energy. Sometimes the tech is 'done', at least for a while. Then the WGs shut down.
Fourth, sometimes new work gets brought to the IETF in an area where the relevant WG has concluded, so then a new WG _may_ get spun up to take on that work.