[keycloak-user] Token generation: possibilities to improve performance

Marek Posolda mposolda at redhat.com
Thu Aug 4 06:17:08 EDT 2016


In OIDC specification, there is mentioned that OIDC requests always need 
to contain "scope=openid" in the initial Authorization request. If it 
doesn't contain it, it is treated as the OAuth2 request, but not OIDC 
request. In future releases, we plan to not include IDToken for such 
requests, which don't contain "scope=openid" . See JIRA 
https://issues.jboss.org/browse/KEYCLOAK-3237

Isn't it sufficient to have just this possibility instead of introduce 
another config switch?

Marek

On 25/07/16 19:10, Thomas Darimont wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I couldn't find the JIRA for the optional exclusion of the IDToken 
> when refreshing Access Tokens so I created:
> https://issues.jboss.org/browse/KEYCLOAK-3360
>
> I also did a PR which implements that:
> https://github.com/keycloak/keycloak/pull/3069
>
> Cheers,
> Thomas
>
> 2016-05-31 8:59 GMT+02:00 Marek Posolda <mposolda at redhat.com 
> <mailto:mposolda at redhat.com>>:
>
>     On 30/05/16 21:04, Stian Thorgersen wrote:
>>
>>
>>     On 30 May 2016 at 12:03, Marek Posolda <mposolda at redhat.com
>>     <mailto:mposolda at redhat.com>> wrote:
>>
>>         On 30/05/16 11:51, Stian Thorgersen wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>         On 30 May 2016 at 11:13, Marek Posolda <mposolda at redhat.com
>>>         <mailto:mposolda at redhat.com>> wrote:
>>>
>>>             On 30/05/16 08:02, Stian Thorgersen wrote:
>>>>             Create a JIRA for ECDSA. I don't think we could/should
>>>>             change the default, but could be a configuration option
>>>>             for clients.
>>>             Added https://issues.jboss.org/browse/KEYCLOAK-3057 with
>>>             fix version 2.0.0.CR1 for now.
>>>>
>>>>             Looking at OpenID Connect spec it looks like ID token
>>>>             should always be generated in token response [1].
>>>>             However, it should not be generated in refresh [2]
>>>>             response.
>>>>
>>>>             [1]
>>>>             http://openid.net/specs/openid-connect-core-1_0.html#rfc.section.3.1.3.3
>>>>             [2]
>>>>             http://openid.net/specs/openid-connect-core-1_0.html#rfc.section.12.2
>>>             hmm... I am reading 12.2 that refresh response "might
>>>             not" contain ID Token, hence it's nothing bad if it
>>>             contains it. So looks we are currently specs compliant
>>>             if we have IDToken in both code-to-token response and
>>>             refresh response.
>>>
>>>             What I mean is, that flag for skip IDToken generation
>>>             might be just optional and disabled by default. So by
>>>             default, IDToken is available and all the communication
>>>             is OIDC compliant. However if someone doesn't need
>>>             IDToken and wants to save some performance, he may skip
>>>             the IDToken generation.
>>>
>>>             A week before, I've tried some JProfiler testing of
>>>             login-logout test and token generation was the main CPU
>>>             consumption (I still had just 1 hashIteration during
>>>             this profiling, with 20000 it will be likely very
>>>             different though). I saw 40% of CPU time in
>>>             TokenManager$AccessTokenResponseBuilder.build()due there
>>>             are 3 tokens signature here. The option to reduce it
>>>             from 3 to 2 might slightly improve some CPU cycles "for
>>>             free" (security won't be reduced).
>>>
>>>
>>>         I'd argue that we should just include ID token from the
>>>         authorization response, while never in the refresh response.
>>>         That results in better performance without the need for a
>>>         config option.
>>         Won't that break compatibility for some client applications,
>>         which actually use IDToken and rely on the fact that it's
>>         properly refreshed every time? Among other things, IDToken
>>         contains fields like "exp" , which might then contain 
>>         expired value as it won't be updated during refreshes. Not
>>         sure if users won't be confused due to this.
>>
>>
>>     Surely the exp for an IDToken should be set to the session
>>     expiration and not to the expiration of access token though? Do
>>     we even update the profile details in the token or just fill it
>>     with whatever was there before?
>     That's not what we are doing now. Right now, all IDToken claims
>     (including expiration) are copied from accessToken. So IDToken
>     expiration is by default defacto just 5 minutes or so. And all the
>     claims are always updated during refresh. So if we don't refresh
>     IDToken we lost this and IDToken will always contain claims from
>     the time of login. Not sure if it's too bad or not, however some
>     client apps, which use IDToken (like our demo for example) might
>     be confused that IDToken will still contain old values after
>     refresh...
>
>     Marek
>>
>>         Marek
>>
>>>
>>>
>>>             Marek
>>>
>>>
>>>>             On 27 May 2016 at 19:19, Marek Posolda
>>>>             <mposolda at redhat.com <mailto:mposolda at redhat.com>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>                 Regarding this, I wonder if we should add support
>>>>                 for ECDSA based signatures as an alternative to
>>>>                 RSA? Just went through some interesting blog [1] ,
>>>>                 which mentions that 256-bits ECDSA has around 9.5
>>>>                 times better performance of signature generation
>>>>                 than 2048-bits RSA. The time of signature
>>>>                 verification seems to be slightly worse for ECDSA
>>>>                 (see second comment), however there is also
>>>>                 increased security (256-ECDSA is equivalient of
>>>>                 3248 RSA according to blog). Maybe it's something
>>>>                 we can look at?
>>>>
>>>>                 Also the optional flag to skip IDToken generation
>>>>                 will be good too IMO. AFAIK the point of IDToken is
>>>>                 the compliance with OIDC specification. However in
>>>>                 case of Keycloak accessToken usually contains all
>>>>                 the info like IDToken (+ some more) and it's the
>>>>                 accessToken, which is used in REST endpoints. So
>>>>                 with regards to that, most of the Keycloak-secured
>>>>                 applications can live just with access+refresh
>>>>                 token and don't need ID Token at all. So if just 2
>>>>                 tokens needs to be signed instead of 3, we have
>>>>                 performance gain "for free" (no decrease of
>>>>                 security, just one less useless token).
>>>>
>>>>                 [1]
>>>>                 https://blog.cloudflare.com/ecdsa-the-digital-signature-algorithm-of-a-better-internet/
>>>>
>>>>                 Marek
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>                 On 24/05/16 15:43, Bill Burke wrote:
>>>>>                 Are you sure the performance gains are worth less
>>>>>                 security? What kind of performance are you
>>>>>                 actually worried about? Network (size of tokens)
>>>>>                 or CPU (signatures/marshaling/unmarshalling)? If
>>>>>                 anything, these signatures are only going to get
>>>>>                 stronger in future releases.
>>>>>
>>>>>                 On 5/24/16 5:46 AM, Matuszak, Eduard wrote:
>>>>>>                 Hello
>>>>>>                 Motivated by considerations on how to improve the
>>>>>>                 performance of the token generation process I
>>>>>>                 have two questions:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>                   * I noticed that Keycloak’s token generation
>>>>>>                     via endpoint
>>>>>>                     “auth/realms/ccp/protocol/openid-connect/token”
>>>>>>                     generates a triple of tokens (access-,
>>>>>>                     refresh- and id-token). Is there any
>>>>>>                     possibility to dispense with the id-token
>>>>>>                     generation?
>>>>>>
>>>>>>                   * Is there a possibility to cause Keycloak to
>>>>>>                     generate more “simple” bearer tokens then
>>>>>>                     complex jwt-tokens?
>>>>>>
>>>>>>                 Best regards, Eduard Matuszak
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>                 _______________________________________________
>>>>>>                 keycloak-user mailing list
>>>>>>                 keycloak-user at lists.jboss.org
>>>>>>                 <mailto:keycloak-user at lists.jboss.org>
>>>>>>                 https://lists.jboss.org/mailman/listinfo/keycloak-user
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>                 _______________________________________________
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>>>>>                 <mailto:keycloak-user at lists.jboss.org>
>>>>>                 https://lists.jboss.org/mailman/listinfo/keycloak-user
>>>>
>>>>
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>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>
>
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