Yearly Archives: 2007

OpenID 2.0

Most people have probably seen or used OpenID. If you have used it, then it has most likely that it was with the 1.x protocol. Now that OpenID 2.0 is close to release (apparently they really mean it this time …), it is worth looking at the new features it enables. A few that have stood out to me include:

  • proper extension support
  • support for larger requests/responses
  • directed identity
  • attribute exchange extension
  • support for a new naming monopoly

I’ll now discuss each of these in a bit more detail

Extension Support

OpenID 1.1 had one well known extension: the Simple Registration Extension. An OpenID relying party (RP) would send a request with an openid.sreg.required field, and get back user information in openid.sreg.* fields from the OpenID Provider (OP). The RP and OP would just need to know that “openid.sreg” fields means that the simple registration extension is being used.

But what if I want to define my own extension? If my RP sends openid.foo.* fields, how does the OP know that it refers to my extension and not some other extension that happened to pick the same prefix?

OpenID 2.0 solves this problem by borrowing the idea of name space URIs from XML. If I am sending some openid.foo.* fields in an OpenID message, then I also need to send an openid.ns.foo field set to a URI that identifies the extension. This means that a message that sends the same data as openid.bar.* fields should be treated the same provided that openid.ns.bar is set to the extension’s name space URI.

As with XML name spaces, this allows us to piggy back on top of DNS as a way of avoiding conflicts.

Large Requests and Responses

OpenID 1.1 uses HTTP redirects as a way of transferring control between the RP and OP (and vice versa). This means that the upper limit on a message is effectively the same as the smallest upper limit on length of URLs in common web browsers and servers. Internet Explorer seems to have the lowest limit—2,083 characters—so it sets the effective limit on message size.

For simple authentication checks (what OpenID was originally designed for), this is not generally a problem. But once you start to introduce a few extensions, this limit can easily be reached.

OpenID 2.0 allows messages to be sent as an HTTP POST body which effectively removes the upper limit. The recommended way of achieving this is by sending a page to the user’s browser that contains a form that posts to the appropriate endpoint and contains the data as hidden form fields. The form would then get submitted by a JavaScript onload handler.

Directed Identity

For OpenID 1.1, the authentication process goes something like this:

  1. the user enters their identity URL into a form on the RP
  2. the RP performs discovery on that URL to find the user’s OP.
  3. the RP initiates an OpenID authentication request with that OP.

With OpenID 2.0, the discovery process may tell the RP that the URL identifies the OP rather than the user. If this happens, the RP proceeds with the authentication request using the special “http://specs.openid.net/auth/2.0/identifier_select” value as the identity URL. The OP will then fill in the user’s actual identity URL in the subsequent authentication response. As an additional step, the RP is then required to perform discovery on this URL to ensure that the OP is entitled to authenticate it.

There are a number of cases where this feature can be useful:

  1. An OpenID provider can give their users a single URL that will work for everyone. For instance, if AOL sets things up correctly, you’d be able to type “aol.com” into any OpenID 2.0 enabled site to log in with an AIM screen name.
  2. A privacy concious user could configure their own OpenID provider that will hand out different identity URLs to different RPs, similar to how some people use single-purpose email addresses today.
  3. If an RP requires that users use a particular OP, they could use directed identity to begin the authentication request without requiring the user to enter an identity URL.

Attribute Exchange Extension

The OpenID Attribute Exchange extension is like the simple registration extension on steroids. The major differences are:

  • Unlike the simple registration extension, the attribute exchange extension does not have a fixed set of attributes that can be transmitted. Instead it uses URIs to identify the attribute types, making it easy to define new attributes without causing conflicts. Of course an attribute is not particularly useful if no one else supports it, so there is a process set up to standardise common attribute types.
  • As well as receiving attribute values as part of an authentication response, an RP can request that an OP store certain attribute values. This is done as part of an authentication request, so the OP can verify that the user really wants to store the values.
  • The RP can request ongoing updates for the attributes it is interested in. As an example, if you stored your hackergotchi with your OP, changes to the image could be automatically pushed out to all sites you use that want to display that image.

Prop Up A New Naming Monopoly

With OpenID 2.0, a user is supposed to be able to enter an i-name in place of an identity URL in an RP, and be authenticated against the i-broker managing that name. So rather than entering an ugly URL, users can enter an ugly string starting with “=” or “@”.

All it costs to take advantage of this is US$12 per year (or US$55 for an organisation name). They claim that it will be possible to use an i-name in many contexts in the future, but for now it appears to be limited to (1) a subset of OpenID RPs, (2) a web form that people can use to send you emails and (3) an HTTP redirection to your website.

At this point, it seems that i-name support in OpenID is more important to the i-name crowd than the OpenID crowd. That said, the complexity is hidden by most of the existing OpenID libraries, so it’ll most likely get implemented by default on most RPs moving forward.

Conclusion

Overall OpenID 2.0 looks like a worthwhile upgrade, even if some parts like i-names are questionable.

Assuming the attribute exchange extension takes off, it should provide a much richer user experience. Imagine being able to update your shipping address in one place when you move house and having all the online retailers you use receive the updated address immediately. Or changing your email address and having all the bugzilla instances you use pick up the new address instantly (perhaps requiring you to verify the new address first, of course).

The improved extension support should also make it easier for people to experiment with new extensions without accidentally conflicting with each other, which should accelerate development of new features.

Back from Dunedin

Last week I was in sunny Dunedin for a Launchpad/Bazaar integration sprint with Tim and Jonathan. Some of the smaller issues we addressed should make their way to users in the next Launchpad release (these were mainly fixes to confusing error messages on bazaar.launchpad.net). Some of the others will probably only become available a release or two further on (mostly related to improving development workflow for branches hosted on Launchpad).

My previous trip to New Zealand had also been to Dunedin (for last year’s linux.conf.au). Since then they’d replaced all the coins for denominations less than NZ$1. Other than being less familiar to Australians, the smaller coins seem like a good idea. They don’t seem to have taken Australia’s lead in making the $2 coin smaller than the $1 coin though.

Google’s Australian Election Tools

It is probably old news to some, but Google have put up an information page on the upcoming Australian Federal Election.

The most useful tool is the Google Maps overlay that provides information about the different electorates. At the moment it only has information about the sitting members, their margin and links to relevant news articles. Presumably more information will become available once the election actually gets called.

Presumably they are planning on offering similar tools for next year’s US elections and this is a beta. So even if you aren’t interested in Australian politics, it might be worth a peak to see what is provided.

Signed Revisions with Bazaar

One useful feature of Bazaar is the ability to cryptographically sign revisions. I was discussing this with Ryan on IRC, and thought I’d write up some of the details as they might be useful to others.

Anyone who remembers the past security of GNOME and Debian servers should be able to understand the benefits of being able to verify the integrity of a source code repository after such an incident. Rather than requiring all revisions made since the last known safe backup to be examined, much of the verification could be done mechanically.

Turning on Revision Signing

The first thing you’ll need to do is get a PGP key and configure GnuPG to use it. The GnuPG handbook is a good reference on doing this. As the aim is to provide some assurance that the revisions you publish were really made by you, it’d be good to get the key signed by someone.

Once that is done, it is necessary to configure Bazaar to sign new revisions. The easiest way to do this is to edit ~/.bazaar/bazaar.conf to look something like this:

[DEFAULT]
email = My Name <me@example.com>
create_signatures = always

Now when you run “bzr commit“, a signature for the new revision will be stored in the repository. With this configuration change, you will be prompted for your pass phrase when making commits. If you’d prefer not to enter it repeatedly, there are a few options available:

  1. install gpg-agent, and use it to remember your pass phrase in the same way you use ssh-agent.
  2. install the gnome-gpg wrapper, which lets you remember your pass phrase in your Gnome keyring. To use gnome-gpg, you will need to add an additional configuration value: “gpg_signing_command = gnome-gpg“.

Signatures are transferred along with revisions when you push or pull a branch, perform merges, etc.

How Does It Work?

So what does the signature look like, and what does it cover? There is no command for printing out the signatures, but we can access them using bzrlib. As an example, lets look at the signature on the head revision of one of my branches:

>>> from bzrlib.branch import Branch
>>> b = Branch.open('http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~jamesh/storm/reconnect')
>>> b.last_revision()
'james.henstridge@canonical.com-20070920110018-8e88x25tfr8fx3f0'
>>> print b.repository.get_signature_text(b.last_revision())
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

bazaar-ng testament short form 1
revision-id: james.henstridge@canonical.com-20070920110018-8e88x25tfr8fx3f0
sha1: 467b78c3f8bfe76b222e06c71a8f07fc376e0d7b
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQFG8lMHAa+T2ZHPo00RAsqjAJ91urHiIcu4Bim7y1tc5WtR+NjvlACgtmdM
9IC0rtNqZQcZ+GRJOYdnYpA=
=IONs
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

>>>

If we save this signature to a file, we can verify it with a command like “gpg --verify signature.txt” to prove that it was made using my PGP key. Looking at the signed text, we see three lines:

  1. An identifier for the checksum algorithm. This is included to future proof old signatures should the need arise to alter the checksum algorithm at a later date.
  2. The revision ID that the signature applies to. Note that this is the full globally unique identifier rather than the shorter numeric identifiers that are only unique in the context of an individual branch.
  3. The checksum, in SHA1 form.

For the current signing algorithm, the checksum is made over the long form testament for the revision, which can easily be verified:

$ bzr branch http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~jamesh/storm/reconnect
$ cd reconnect
$ bzr testament --long > testament.txt
$ sha1sum testament.txt
467b78c3f8bfe76b222e06c71a8f07fc376e0d7b  testament.txt

Looking at the long form testament, we can see what the signature ultimately covers:

  1. The revision ID
  2. The name of the committer
  3. The date of the commit
  4. The parent revision IDs
  5. The commit message
  6. A list of the files that comprise the source tree for the revision, along with SHA1 sums of their contents
  7. Any revision properties

So if the revision testament matches the revision signature and the revision signature validates, you can be sure that you are looking at the same code as the person who made the signature.

It is worth noting that while the signature makes an assertion about the state of the tree at that revision — the only thing it tells you about the ancestry is the revision IDs of the parents. If you need assurances about those revisions, you will need to check their signatures separately. One of the reasons for this is that you might not know the full history of a branch if it has ghost revisions (as might happen when importing code from certain foreign version control systems).

Signing Past Revisions

If you’ve already been using Bazaar but had not enabled revision signing, it is likely that you’ve got a bunch of unsigned revisions lying around. If that is the case, you can sign the revisions in bulk using the “bzr sign-my-commits” command. It will go through all revisions in the ancestry, and generate signatures for all the commits that match your committer ID.

Verifying Signatures in Bulk

To verify all signatures found in a repository, John Arbash Meinel’s signing plugin can be used, which provides a “bzr verify-sigs” command. It can be installed with the following commands:

$ mkdir -p ~/.bazaar/plugins
$ bzr branch http://bzr.arbash-meinel.com/plugins/signing/ ~/.bazaar/plugins/signing

When the command is run it will verify the integrity of all the signatures, and give a summary of how many revisions each person has signed.

Schema Generation in ORMs

When Storm was released, one of the comments made was that it did not include the ability to generate a database schema from the Python classes used to represent the tables while this feature is available in a number of competing ORMs. The simple reason for this is that we haven’t used schema generation in any of our ORM-using projects.

Furthermore I’d argue that schema generation is not really appropriate for long lived projects where the data stored in the database is important. Imagine developing an application along these lines:

  1. Write the initial version of the application.
  2. Generate a schema from the code.
  3. Deploy one or more instances of the application in production, and accumulate some data.
  4. Do further development on the application, that involves modifications to the schema.
  5. Deploy the new version of the application.

In order to perform step 5, it will be necessary to modify the existing database to match the new schema. These changes might be in a number of forms, including:

  • adding or removing a table
  • adding or removing a column from a table
  • changing the way data is represented in a particular column
  • refactoring one table into two related tables or vice versa
  • adding or removing an index

Assuming that you want to keep the existing data, it isn’t enough to simply represent the new schema in the updated application: we need to know how that new schema relates to the old one in order to migrate the existing data.

For some changes like addition of tables, it is pretty easy to update the schema given knowledge of the new schema. For others it is more difficult, and will often require custom migration logic. So it is likely that you will need to write a custom script to migrate the schema and data.

Now we have two methods of building the database schema for the application:

  1. generate a schema from the new version of the application.
  2. generate a schema from the old version of the application, then run the migration script.

Are you sure that the two methods will result in the same schema? How about if we iterate the process another 10 times or so? As a related question, are you sure that the database environment your tests are running under match the production environment?

The approach we settled on with Launchpad development was to only deal with migration scripts and not generate schemas from the code. The migration scripts are formulated as a sequence of SQL commands to migrate the schema and data as needed. So to set up a new instance, a base schema is loaded then patched up to the current schema. Each patch leaves a record in the database that it has been applied so it is trivial to bring a database up to date, or check that an application is in sync with the database.

When the schema is not generated from the code, it also means that the code can be simpler. As far as Python ORM layer is concerned, does it matter what type of integer a field contains? Does the Python code care what indexes or constraints are defined for the table? By only specifying what is needed to effectively map data to Python objects, we end up with easy to understand code without annotations that probably can’t specify everything we want anyway.