Service Registration and Security - Secrecy of Passcode

[John Breen]

Hello Casshib Project,

I have a development implementation of Casshib setup and in reviewing everything I have some questions about the service registration and security. Specifically, the items documented here:
https://code.google.com/p/casshib/wiki/CASShibExplained?ts=1239060016&updated=CASShibExplained#Service_registration_and_security

Why is a passcode required to be secret?

It seems to me that because all services must be registered, then there is no risk of a bogus service creating tickets. Then why is a secret passcode also required? Does it really need to be kept secret?
Knowing the passcode exposes the ticket validator, and it seems to me without knowing the ticket no user attributes would be exposed and knowing the ticket is a hard thing to do. So it is not clear to me why the passcode must remain a secret.

Thanks,
John

[bko...@gmail.com]

John, it's been a long time now since I originally wrote that code, but the thinking there may have been not so much protecting against bogus unregistered service providers, but preventing two registered legitimate service providers from being able to see each others attributes.

i.e., service 1 may only get 'eduPersonPrincipalName' and service 2 may get a whole lot more than that.  We wouldn't want service 1 to act like service 2 and get attributes it shouldn't be getting.