[keycloak-dev] Keycloak as OAuth 2 compliant authorization server?

[Marek Posolda]

Hi,

On 27.8.2013 22:27, Bill Burke wrote:
>
> On 8/27/2013 4:14 PM, Matt Wringe wrote:
>> On Tue 27 Aug 2013 03:50:19 PM EDT, Bill Burke wrote:
>>>
>>> On 8/27/2013 3:22 PM, Matt Wringe wrote:
>>>> On 27/08/13 02:20 PM, Bill Burke wrote:
>>>>> Well, you need to remember that OAuth 2 is a framework and not a
>>>>> complete protocol.  The actual authentication part with the auth server
>>>>> is the most "flexible" part of the API.  I'd like to follow it as
>>>>> closely as possible though.
>>>> Yep, agreed. OAuth does not provide a complete protocol and leaves a lot
>>>> of stuff to the implementors to decide. It also makes a lot of stuff
>>>> optional and allows for custom extensions. It does however clearly
>>>> defined some areas and provides a defined protocol for them.
>>>>
>>>> Unfortunately we are not exactly in line with the specification in all
>>>> areas and would need to make some changes to become compliant.
>>>>
>>>> I am assuming that trying to 'follow it as closely as possible' means we
>>>> do want to be compliant and that issues should be filled where it does
>>>> not follow the defined sections?
>>>>
>>> What sections do you mean?
>> For starters, the authorization grant access is invalid according to the
>> spec.
> I have an idea, but still not exactly sure what you're talking about.
> Section 4.4 talks about getting access tokens through a direct grant.
> Section 4.3 talks about getting a token by providing both the
> username/password and the client's username/password.
>
> We can't really follow these protocols exactly as we're not going to be
> using Basic Auth.  IMO, the spec is really unclear at what is required
> and what is optional for authentication in section 3.2.1.
Actually the section 3.2.1 points to section 2.3 and in section 2.3.1 is 
mentioned that "The authorization server MUST support the HTTP Basic 
authentication scheme for authenticating clients that were issued a 
client password. "

In specs is also mentioned alternative that authorization server may 
support credentials in request body in parameters "client_id", 
"client_secret", which is currently the case used in Keycloak. But 
instead of "client_secret" Keycloak is using parameter named "password" 
in Access Token Request (request for exchange code to access token). I 
think that this is due to simplification as same parameter "password" 
could be used by AuthenticationManager to authenticate both normal users 
and client applications, not sure if this could be treated as breaking 
the specs or not. I agree that spec is quite unclear in many points...

Marek
>
>> Not sure which auth grants we want to support in oauth exactly, if
>> any since technically we could have just a custom one instead. But even
>> with custom auth grants, we still have to conform to the protocol.
>>
> Again, you aren't specifying where we're not compliant.
>
>> It gets tricky depending on how customized we want to go with things
>> though. If we decide not to support any of the default auth grants or
>> the other optional features, then most of the specification no longer
>> applies to us.
>>
> We'll definitely support 4.1 irregardless.  Not sure I want to ever
> support 4.2, Implicit, as JSONP has security implications.  4.3 and 4.4
> should have a switch on whether to allow them or not.