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

Mon May 30 15:04:49 EDT 2016

On 30 May 2016 at 12:03, Marek Posolda <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> 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>
>> 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>
>> 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?

>
>
> Marek
>
>
>
>>
>>
>> Marek
>>
>>
>> On 27 May 2016 at 19:19, Marek Posolda < <mposolda at redhat.com>
>> 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
>>>
>>>
>>>
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>>
>>
>>
>
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