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

[Matt Wringe]

On 28/08/13 05:45 AM, Marek Posolda wrote:
> 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.

So just for clarification, keycloak is not planning on being oauth 
compliant, we are planning on being something oauth like. Is this 
correct? If so, does it even make sense to mention oauth in the project? 
Its probably just going to confuse people.

Is there any reason why we are not trying to make keycloak compliant 
with oauth? Is this due to trying to create a more locked down 
experience and not exposing some of the more riskier scenarios that 
oauth supports?

>> 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.
>