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Re: OAuth for RIRs - There is already any Idea like that?


From: George Michaelson <ggm () algebras org>
Date: Wed, 24 Mar 2021 12:00:57 +1000

The two proposals for RPKI signed attestatations, RSC and RTA, look
candidates for a role this. The primary question is not "who are you"
which OAuth is about, it is "what resources do you control, which
would inform what we're doing here" -which is what RPKI is about.

it's important to be clear, the RSC/RTA activity can't say who you
are. They don't provide identity. But, they do make a strong, provable
assertion of control over the INR in question.

If you want specifically what OAuth does, you're in a different place.
Its about who you are.

-G

On Tue, Mar 23, 2021 at 10:01 PM Douglas Fischer
<fischerdouglas () gmail com> wrote:

For me, every day it becomes more evident the need to validate information managed by the RIRs / NIRs / LIRs on 
separate information platforms.

A very simple example is PeeringDB itself, which requires confirmation of correlation between the ASN whois contact 
and the account that is registering the organization.

P.S.1: At least for me, this is more evident when it comes to numerical resources, but without going much deeper into 
the analysis, I believe that this is also applicable to name resources.

I was wondering how complex it would be for RIRs / NIRs to implement some mechanism similar to the OAuth of 
NIC-Handler accounts to, through a delimitation protocol, allow accounts between information platforms to be 
correlated, information to be confirmed and maybe even inserted and updated.

Still dreaming a little bit about the possibilities, I imagined that in a federation context, IANA or NRO could 
correlate NIC-Handlers from the same organization in different RIRs.

In addition to the PeeringDB example, other uses (non-exhaustive list) of this solution could be:
 - Linking between Maintainers of IRR bases and owners of resources in RIRs.
 - Linking between accounts on the basis of IXPs, and ASN owners.
 - Authentication and integration of RPKI CA Delegate services.

I believe that we are already at a point where we can go beyond just using email confirmation.

OAuth and similar protocols include benefits such as:
 - Simplified use of cryptographic protections
 - Specific definition of the duration of the authorization.
 - Forced expiration of authorization.
 - Granular definition of which attributes will have read-only or read and write access.

I know that for a person with little experience everything seems possible, and for more hardened people things do not 
seem that simple.
I also know that not everything in this world depends only on technological feasibility. For although there may be 
protocols and techniques to solve a problem, many questions depend on the layer 9 definitions of the OSI model.

P.S.2: To be honest, I don't know if there are already initiatives in this direction from the point of view of making 
this a standard resource. But unless I am mistaken, https://www.denic.de/ already has something similar in place.
--
Douglas Fernando Fischer
Engº de Controle e Automação


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