The Goldilocks API

[Dan Callahan]

The Get API did too little. By introducing always-on session management,
the Observer API did too much.

Nevertheless, we *must* standardize on something to unblock various
native efforts.

Rather than take another stab in the dark, let's buy ourselves time by
standardizing on a basic, v1 API that doesn't do session management.

Something that behaves like the much-beloved .get(), but mitigates its
one flaw by registering the login callback somewhere accessible to the
browser. In this way we could close the loop, support redirect-based
loginflows, and handle chrome-initiated logins.

The maintainers of django-browserid, James Shore, and many others have
enthusiastically endorsed the idea of building a v1 API without session
management, and tackling that as a separate problem.

Let's heed those calls and deliver a simple foundation, suitable for
inclusion in Firefox, and easy to integrate into existing sites.

This feels like a "Q4 Goal" to me. Does it to you?

-Callahad

PS: This explicitly punts on cross-domain SSO and automatic session
renegotiation for the v1 API. Those are extremely advanced, niche use
cases that need more exploration and experimentation before we bake them
into Firefox. Sites that need them can continue to use the
shim-supported Observer API in the interim.

[Dan Callahan]

On 9/26/13 9:49 AM, Dan Callahan wrote:
> Rather than take another stab in the dark, let's buy ourselves time by
> standardizing on a basic, v1 API that doesn't do session management.
>
> Something that behaves like the much-beloved .get(), but mitigates its
> one flaw by registering the login callback somewhere accessible to the
> browser.

For instance, the API could look like this:

navigator.id.configure({
login: function (assertion) { ... },
});

navigator.id.prompt();

This behaves exactly like navigator.id.get -- no session management or
other magic. It invokes the configured login callback by default.

If you want custom behavior for a button ("Change Email" / "Add Email" /
"Subscribe" / etc.), you can override the behavior by passing an
alternative callback to the prompt function:

navigator.id.prompt(function (assertion) { ... });

It is an error to call prompt with an override if .configure() has not
previously been called.

Because the login callback is available to the browser, Native UI can
initiate logins, and we can queue login events to fire automatically --
once -- in response to redirects or email verification links. There's no
always-all session management.

How does that feel to people?

-Callahad

[Sean McArthur]

Is there a reason we can't keep the methods that already exist? I feel like
that is less complex for users: "Use .request() and watch(). If you want
session management, add a onlogout handler to watch()."

Basically, the change would be that if you omit a onlogout handler, we
don't do session management. Likewise if you pass a function to request().

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[Dan Callahan]

On 9/27/13 1:38 PM, Sean McArthur wrote:
> Is there a reason we can't keep the methods that already exist? I feel like
> that is less complex for users: "Use .request() and watch(). If you want
> session management, add a onlogout handler to watch()."
>
> Basically, the change would be that if you omit a onlogout handler, we
> don't do session management. Likewise if you pass a function to request().

Discussing things in terms of watch and request makes it really, really
hard to talk about new behaviors in isolation. (I tried with two people
off-list, and it totally threw them.)

So yes, this API *could* be seamlessly integrated into the existing
Observer API, but let's leave that to a separate discussion.

-Callahad

[Dan Callahan]

On 9/27/13 2:25 PM, Michael Kelly wrote:
> I really like this proposal! It solves a lot of the issues
> django-browserid has had with the watch API.

Yay, thanks!

The maintainer of the Drupal module also mentioned, and I quote, "this
fixes so many things. All of my problems were related to session
management in the Observer API. All of my workarounds were because of that."

> On 9/27/13 10:59 AM, Dan Callahan wrote:
>> It is an error to call prompt with an override if .configure() has not
>> previously been called.
>

> This is the only part I understand. Why must configure be called first?

This constraint ensures that the browser always has access to a login
callback (the one defined in .configure), which is mandatory for
supporting platforms like Windows Phone and Chrome on iOS, amongst other
things.

-Callahd

[Sean McArthur]

Alright, I can start on this api on Monday. I'll act like it's configure
and prompt. That's just a few lines in include.js anyways.

I wonder if that confusion comes from already identifying watch() to mean
session management. I wonder if it would make more sense to people who have
never seen navigator.id

[Lloyd Hilaiel]

Rembemer the last time we did this? Then it was a cage-match between Observer (an "events" based API) and watch (what we have today). APIs are hard, who wants to go shopping?

My optimism comes from the fact Goldilocks and Paris proposals are really close - and I believe either sets us up for the next huge wave of adoption and application of browserid protocols (in mozilla products at scale, and pending that multi-million user dogfooding and commitment, on the internets at large). The differences seem to be:

1. should we ask sites to tell us when a user logs out (by calling .logout())
2. should we fire .onlogin events only once after a login occurs, or should we fire them as long as we believe a user is logged in.

Either Paris or Goldilocks comes with tradeoffs and some implementation challenges, and some nasty corner cases. But I believe the net result of either is something that solves the 80% case much better and more simply than what we have today. What we need now is two people to sit down and do their best to reason about the tradeoffs in a dispassionate manner and come to a well thought out joint decision.

First question: Does anyone think the general direction of Paris/Goldilocks is wrong? (divesting from session management - logout completely in the shim, and )?

Second question: Does anyone have a problem with Dan and I having a cage match in Bulgaria (he'll be here with me on sunday, we'll film it and put it on youtube) and coming back to the list in agreement with a concrete proposal?

<3,
Lloyd

On Sep 26, 2013, at 5:49 PM, Dan Callahan <dcal...@mozilla.com> wrote:

> The Get API did too little. By introducing always-on session management, the Observer API did too much.
>
> Nevertheless, we *must* standardize on something to unblock various native efforts.
>

> Rather than take another stab in the dark, let's buy ourselves time by standardizing on a basic, v1 API that doesn't do session management.
>

> Something that behaves like the much-beloved .get(), but mitigates its one flaw by registering the login callback somewhere accessible to the browser. In this way we could close the loop, support redirect-based loginflows, and handle chrome-initiated logins.
>
> The maintainers of django-browserid, James Shore, and many others have enthusiastically endorsed the idea of building a v1 API without session management, and tackling that as a separate problem.
>
> Let's heed those calls and deliver a simple foundation, suitable for inclusion in Firefox, and easy to integrate into existing sites.
>
> This feels like a "Q4 Goal" to me. Does it to you?



> -Callahad
>
> PS: This explicitly punts on cross-domain SSO and automatic session renegotiation for the v1 API. Those are extremely advanced, niche use cases that need more exploration and experimentation before we bake them into Firefox. Sites that need them can continue to use the shim-supported Observer API in the interim.
>

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[Jared Hirsch]

+1 cage match, great idea

[Dan Callahan]

On 9/27/13 9:59 AM, Dan Callahan wrote:
> If you want custom behavior for a button ("Change Email" / "Add Email" /
> "Subscribe" / etc.), you can override the behavior by passing an
> alternative callback to the prompt function:
>
> navigator.id.prompt(function (assertion) { ... });
>

Shane brought up an excellent point: We can't support custom behavior in
this way for the same reason we can't use the .get() API -- it hides the
callback from the user agent, so we can't invoke it if we have to
redirect the user during login.

So we'll move ahead with the rest of the proposal, and ignore this clause.

Are there any other blind spots or corner cases that this makes worse?

-Callahad

[Shane Tomlinson]

Thanks for mentioning the problems with passing the callback to prompt, Dan.

One final question, does the basic premise still hold that RPs only call
.configure if they believe the user is not signed in? It seems so, I
just want to make sure.

There are still "closing the loop" issues [1] we could work to take care
of, but this API is *SO* much simpler. Vastly simplified. Usable. Nice work.

Shane

[1] -
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/mozilla.dev.identity/cTN4ik4vHGQ/eYEG7oS8X-cJ

[Dan Callahan]

On 10/1/13 2:24 AM, Shane Tomlinson wrote:
> One final question, does the basic premise still hold that RPs only call
> .configure if they believe the user is not signed in? It seems so, I
> just want to make sure.
>
> There are still "closing the loop" issues [1] we could work to take care
> of, but this API is *SO* much simpler. Vastly simplified. Usable. Nice
> work.

I think that's up to the RP. You need to call .configure() on any page
with a login button, or any page that returnTo references, but beyond
that...

Still, it's probably a good idea to reccommend calling .configure() on
all pages so that the user can initiate a login through browser chrome.

Since we're not trying to manage state, the call to .configure()
wouldn't necessarily need to set up a communication iframe or do any of
that business.

-Callahad

[Shane Tomlinson]

I'm not following, if one of the purposes of calling configure with
onlogin is to allow post-verification redirect, for shimmed
implementations, the communication iframe is needed to see if the user
is signed in.

Shane

[Dan Callahan]

On 10/1/13 2:49 AM, Shane Tomlinson wrote:
>> Since we're not trying to manage state, the call to .configure()
>> wouldn't necessarily need to set up a communication iframe or do any of
>> that business.
>
> I'm not following, if one of the purposes of calling configure with
> onlogin is to allow post-verification redirect, for shimmed
> implementations, the communication iframe is needed to see if the user
> is signed in.

Sorry, I took a bit of a mental leap. Right now, .watch() *always* needs
to do a bunch of network stuff to fire the appropriate callbacks.

.configure() only needs to set up that communication when it's in the
process of completing a post-verification redirect (or a normal
redirect-based login).

That means we have the ability to optimize away the communication_frame
most of the time (not actively trying to log in? don't set it up.)

So, how do we know if the user is in the midst of a login? Shove
something into sessionStorage, like we do with returnTo :)

.configure() could look for a signal there, and decide to set up the
communication iframe or not based on that.

Does that make sense?

-Callahad

PS: We wouldn't need to implement this particular optimization
immediately. Our first pass just needs to get the API design right; we
can do fun optimizations after that.

[Dan Callahan]

On 10/1/13 3:04 AM, Dan Callahan wrote:
> That means we have the ability to optimize

...And this is all premature optimization :) Presume normal
communication iframe semantics for now. Sorry for the derail!

-Callahad

[Francois Marier]

On 01/10/13 03:43, Dan Callahan wrote:
> On 10/1/13 2:24 AM, Shane Tomlinson wrote:
>> One final question, does the basic premise still hold that RPs only call
>> .configure if they believe the user is not signed in? It seems so, I
>> just want to make sure.
>

> I think that's up to the RP. You need to call .configure() on any page
> with a login button, or any page that returnTo references, but beyond
> that...
>
> Still, it's probably a good idea to reccommend calling .configure() on
> all pages so that the user can initiate a login through browser chrome.

Some of the feedback I got about the watch API is that until
https://github.com/mozilla/browserid/issues/3035 is fixed, setting up
Persona on every page is too expensive. All we can tell these RPs right
now is to use the get API and only load include.js on the login page.

Francois

[Austin King]

I like the proposal!

I think we should document configure as being required on every page.

* Gives us flexibility in the future
* "Don't make me think" for developers
* Probably this API won't have the same overhead as the Watch API did

I would like to see websites call navigator.id.logout. I'd like lloyd
and callahad to publish cagematch highlights, such as explaining why the
trade-offs for logout don't add up.

Bikeshedding:
Sorry... I'd like to see "navigator.id.authenticate" instead of prompt.
* navigator.id.configure
* navigator.id.authenticate
* navigator.id.logout

Great work everybody!
-- ozten

>
> Francois

[Sean McArthur]

Which localStorage? Shame on us if we pollute (nor can we trust) the
storage of the RP site. To access login.persona.org localStorage, we would
need to setup an iframe...

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[Dan Callahan]

On 10/1/13 3:25 PM, Austin King wrote:
> I would like to see websites call navigator.id.logout. I'd like lloyd
> and callahad to publish cagematch highlights, such as explaining why the
> trade-offs for logout don't add up.

Logout adds a huge hurdle for potential RPs. Generally speaking:

- Every single major site that's attempted to implement Persona has
gotten logout wrong. GNU MediaGoblin got this wrong, and only found it
24 hours before their 0.5.0 release. Ting gets (got?) this wrong. GNU
Mailmain v3 got this wrong. And so on. These are projects from really
smart people. If they're all getting it wrong in the same way (just
clearing their own session cookie, not calling .logout), then there's
likely something wrong with our API.

- Hooking logout means we can't fit into existing frameworks like
OmniAuth, since they don't provide those hooks. Eliminating .logout
means we fit like a glove, and our integration story is trivial.

- Needing to hook logout means that sites must write custom code to keep
Persona-specific state to track which login mechanism their user used.

- Logout implies that we're keeping track of the user's preferred
session state on that site. If Persona has a long-lived opinion, and any
ability to act on it, then we're back into risking "inifinite login loop
hell," as peterbe put it.

Full session synchronization enables some really, really beautiful
things, but even adding logout is empirically very difficult for our
users in their chosen tools / libraries / frameworks.

-Callahad

[Austin King]

I'm not arguing for Persona controlled sessions, of course.

Did we consider calling logout as an optional "hint" to improve the
Persona experience?

Why? Logout improves our UX, but isn't strictly necessary.

-- ozten


>
> -Callahad
>
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[Dan Callahan]

On 10/1/13 3:48 PM, Austin King wrote:
> Did we consider calling logout as an optional "hint" to improve the
> Persona experience?

Tell me more :)

-Callahad

[Austin King]

Some UX for Fx Desktop prototypes have different state depending on if
the user is signed into a website or not.

For the shim, maybe we want to improve the user's security once they
sign out of a website (by clearing out storage or whatever).

Sorry this is somewhat hand-wavy.

[Francois Marier]

On 01/10/13 16:25, Austin King wrote:
> I would like to see websites call navigator.id.logout. I'd like lloyd
> and callahad to publish cagematch highlights, such as explaining why the
> trade-offs for logout don't add up.

One of the advantages of being in the logout loop (in some way) is that
it makes it possible to implement Real Logout (tm) in the future.

We already lost an RP a while back because he had to teach his users to
go to login.persona.org after logging out of his site to ensure that
they were actually logged out and couldn't just log back in without a
password.

Francois

[Lloyd Hilaiel]

On Oct 2, 2013, at 12:35 AM, Francois Marier <fran...@mozilla.com> wrote:

> On 01/10/13 16:25, Austin King wrote:
>> I would like to see websites call navigator.id.logout. I'd like lloyd
>> and callahad to publish cagematch highlights, such as explaining why the
>> trade-offs for logout don't add up.

The major highlight for me from the cage match was a point about 3rd party cookies and the communication iframe in general.

So in our basic, external persona offering, we need to work everywhere. Current browser vendor trends toward locking down cookies are positive, having privacy preserving defaults is behavior we want to rally behind and encourage.

But values aside, the behavior of iOS7 effectively neuters our communication iframe. It makes it so that to Just Work Everywhere, we need to really seriously consider the constraint of restricted third party cookies.

Because our iframe being isolated is now more than a 20% case, I think our basic offering must just work in the face of it.

The thing about the goldilocks api (which I prefer to think of as a subset of .watch), is that it says our primary API *never* relies on returning assertions when we're rendered in a 3rd party context (the iframe).

I think this is very sound reasoning. If we release (for example) an SSO feature and it doesn't work for more than 20% of the web, then it will generate more disappointment than joy. If we encourage sites to set short lived cookies and use persona for automatic session extension, and more than 20% of the time users are logging in every couple hours, it will cause grief and complaints - it will cause user sadness (reference - the etherpad persona integration inside mozilla).

Think back (or spend some time with shane) and talk about all of the complexity and time we've spent trying to keep the communication iframe limping along so that our primary API continues to work. It's been major cost, and the result today is many of the features of that API are just broken today. Don't get me wrong, we've mitigated this - our response to the iOS7 release demonstrates creativity and swift action. But we didn't, we can't, fix it - all we can do is gracefully degrade for increasing percentages of our user population.

So while I think there is a little bit of work to go into how we actually execute this change gracefully, the core premise that our primary API really needs to work everywhere is sound.

A final point is I think our core strategy needs to be native everywhere, so we can leverage all of the firefox products to drive forward and prove out (at scale) persona protocols, and hopefully the persona experience. A reduction of ambition (and in turn of necessary complexity in native implementations) is highly compatible with that goal. This is why I push towards us being decisive here. Doing less, and doing it better.

lloyd

(P.S. in the interest of full disclosure, I do believe that there still is an opening here to gracefully *upgrade* and offer incremental advanced features for environments that we control (all the firefoxes), or for advanced and critically important use cases - but I'm on board with starting from the platform of goldilocks).

[Shane Tomlinson]

I'm pulling in quotes from both Sean and Austin and responding to both.

On 01/10/2013 21:27, Sean McArthur wrote:
> Which localStorage? Shame on us if we pollute (nor can we trust) the
> storage of the RP site. To access login.persona.org localStorage, we would
> need to setup an iframe...
>

+1. We don't know what fields of theirs we may be overriding. We can't
trust them to not intentionally overwrite ours.

On 01/10/2013 21:25, Austin King wrote:
>
> I think we should document configure as being required on every page.
>
> * Gives us flexibility in the future
> * "Don't make me think" for developers


> * Probably this API won't have the same overhead as the Watch API did

Shoving any sort of data into the RP's localStorage makes me *extremely*
uncomfortable. Maybe we can use a cookie scoped to login.persona.org
instead. Something that does not pollute the RPs data space.

>
> I would like to see websites call navigator.id.logout. I'd like lloyd
> and callahad to publish cagematch highlights, such as explaining why the
> trade-offs for logout don't add up.
>

> Bikeshedding:
> Sorry... I'd like to see "navigator.id.authenticate" instead of prompt.
> * navigator.id.configure
> * navigator.id.authenticate
> * navigator.id.logout

Thanks for bringing up logout Ozten. Dan, I am trying to understand the
API and how it operates better.

Say we go with the plan that we tell RPs to include include.js and call
.configure on every page load, for the given reason that it helps native
implementations where there may be a signin button in chrome (a feature
we experimented with [1][2] 2 years ago). The user clicks signout on the
RP. On the user's next visit, we believe the user to be signed in. Do we
automatically sign them in?

Yesterday in IRC [3] it sounded like the proposal is that we would not
automatically sign the user in. If that is the case, we would not need
logout. If however, we do sign the user in automatically, we must keep
.logout.


Shane


===================

[1] - https://github.com/shane-tomlinson/browserid_addon
[2] - https://shanetomlinson.com/2011/mozilla-session-api-tutorial/
[3] - http://irclog.gr/#show/irc.mozilla.org/identity/326651

[Lloyd Hilaiel]

On Oct 2, 2013, at 11:06 AM, Lloyd Hilaiel <ll...@mozilla.com> wrote:

> The thing about the goldilocks api (which I prefer to think of as a subset of .watch), is that it says our primary API *never* relies on returning assertions when we're rendered in a 3rd party context (the iframe).

I hit send too quickly. Not never. I guess I'm over simplifying. Post email verification and the redirect flow present challenges. But at least we can attack those in isolation.

Interestingly, both of those cases involve login.persona.org being rendered in a first party context, and immediately redirecting back to the site. If we could figure out a safe way to pass an assertion back to the site during redirect...

lloyd

[Shane Tomlinson]

Sean and I spoke of passing an assertion from the dialog->RP using the
URL hash, since the hash never leaves the browser. He said that when he
brought that idea up before, it quickly got the beat down for security
reasons, mentioning in particular the problems that Facebook had with
OAuth. Is there more information about the problems they faced? What are
the specific concerns with the approach?

Shane

[Jan Wrobel]

OAuth2 implicit grant passes an auth token in a fragment component of
a Location header: http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6749#section-4.2

The RFC does not mention any fundamental problems with this, it only says:
"
Developers should note that some user-agents do not support the
inclusion of a fragment component in the HTTP "Location" response
header field. Such clients will require using other methods for
redirecting the client than a 3xx redirection response -- for
example, returning an HTML page that includes a 'continue' button
with an action linked to the redirection URI.
"
and also:
"
When using the implicit grant type, the access token is transmitted
in the URI fragment, which can expose it to unauthorized parties.
"
but it does not mention how the token can be exposed.

I think one concern is what happens if a malicious site takes a user
to a legitimate site passing a fixed token in the URL. Something like:
<a href="http://example.org/whoa#persona-assertion-for-evil@user">
If Persona accepts such assertion, it is an equivalent of a Login
Cross Site Request Forgery vulnerability.

I don't know if there is a reliable protection against this and if
there are other problems with # approach.

Cheers,
Jan

[Shane Tomlinson]

On 02/10/2013 12:15, Jan Wrobel wrote:

> I think one concern is what happens if a malicious site takes a user
> to a legitimate site passing a fixed token in the URL. Something like:
> <a href="http://example.org/whoa#persona-assertion-for-evil@user">
> If Persona accepts such assertion, it is an equivalent of a Login
> Cross Site Request Forgery vulnerability.
>
> I don't know if there is a reliable protection against this and if
> there are other problems with # approach.
>
> Cheers,
> Jan
>

Thanks Jan, that is very helpful information.

[Sean McArthur]

Yes, the security gaps with Facebook's OAuth were instances of attackers
able to forge app access requests with altered tokens/parameters.

It can be done, but it's more surface area to cover.

On Wed, Oct 2, 2013 at 4:28 AM, Shane Tomlinson <stoml...@mozilla.com>wrote:

> On 02/10/2013 12:15, Jan Wrobel wrote:
>
> I think one concern is what happens if a malicious site takes a user
>> to a legitimate site passing a fixed token in the URL. Something like:

>> <a href="http://example.org/whoa#**persona-assertion-for-evil@**user<http://example.org/whoa#persona-assertion-for-evil@user>

>> ">
>> If Persona accepts such assertion, it is an equivalent of a Login
>> Cross Site Request Forgery vulnerability.
>>
>> I don't know if there is a reliable protection against this and if
>> there are other problems with # approach.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Jan
>>
>>
> Thanks Jan, that is very helpful information.
>

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>

[Jonathan Brown]

Drupal Persona module maintainer here - sorry for the late response to this.

I'm very supportive of the Goldilocks API!

For the case of handling change email / add email would it be possible for
the RP to add a custom variable when initiating sign in through
JavaScript?. Upon successful sign in, this variable would be passed back to
the login function along with the assertion.

A point I raised previously is that browser initiated sign in is impossible
if the information about the site, e.g. site name / logo is passed to
navigator.id.request(). I think this needs to be tags in the page <head>.
Is this something that could be incorporated into goldilocks?

On Thu, Oct 3, 2013 at 12:50 AM, Sean McArthur <smca...@mozilla.com>wrote:

> Yes, the security gaps with Facebook's OAuth were instances of attackers
> able to forge app access requests with altered tokens/parameters.
>
> It can be done, but it's more surface area to cover.
>
>
> On Wed, Oct 2, 2013 at 4:28 AM, Shane Tomlinson <stoml...@mozilla.com
> >wrote:
>
> > On 02/10/2013 12:15, Jan Wrobel wrote:
> >
> > I think one concern is what happens if a malicious site takes a user
> >> to a legitimate site passing a fixed token in the URL. Something like:
> >> <a href="http://example.org/whoa#**persona-assertion-for-evil@**user<
> http://example.org/whoa#persona-assertion-for-evil@user>
> >> ">
> >> If Persona accepts such assertion, it is an equivalent of a Login
> >> Cross Site Request Forgery vulnerability.
> >>
> >> I don't know if there is a reliable protection against this and if
> >> there are other problems with # approach.
> >>
> >> Cheers,
> >> Jan
> >>
> >>
> > Thanks Jan, that is very helpful information.
> >
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[Shane Tomlinson]

On 24/10/2013 22:53, Jonathan Brown wrote:
> Drupal Persona module maintainer here - sorry for the late response to this.
>
> I'm very supportive of the Goldilocks API!
>
> For the case of handling change email / add email would it be possible
> for the RP to add a custom variable when initiating sign in through
> JavaScript?. Upon successful sign in, this variable would be passed back
> to the login function along with the assertion.
>
> A point I raised previously is that browser initiated sign in is
> impossible if the information about the site, e.g. site name / logo is
> passed to navigator.id.request(). I think this needs to be tags in the
> page <head>. Is this something that could be incorporated into goldilocks?
>

Hi Jonathan,
There was also talk of passing those parameters as part of
navigator.id.watch instead of adding new meta tag elements. I'm not sure
which way this went in the end.

My personal belief is that everything related to Persona should be
passed via the JS API, if possible. Adding/changing code in multiple
places and in multiple "languages" (HTML/JS) is a recipe for confusion
for site developers. In addition, passing data via meta tags forces
native BrowserID implementations to parse the HTML (or use the native
parser, but then establish a communication channel with the parser),
adding additional complexity.

Shane

[Jonathan Brown]

Yeah - passing the parameters in navigator.id.watch makes sense.