Self-issued Identifier

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Full Title or Meme

This Wiki Page was created to track the use of Self-issued Identifier in the Identity Ecosystem.

Context

  • This wiki is focused on the use case of a Self-issued Identifier in a mobile device. It is recognized that other use cases also exist, but it seems that this use case covers all the issues.
  • With the rise of the W3C program on Decentralized Identifiers, there is a need for the Identity Ecosystem to coordinate with other teams developing this technology.
  • At the 2020-06-16 meeting of the FIRE WG a liaison effort was approved. That effort is tracked here.

History

  • The [OpenID Connect Core 1.0 was issued on 2018-11-08 with section 7 covering self-issued ID. Initial uptake was minimal.
  • The Subject ID (SUB) was redefined for that section as "the base64url encoded representation of the thumbprint of the key in the sub_jwk Claim. This thumbprint value is computed as the SHA-256 hash of the octets of the UTF-8 representation of a JWK constructed containing only the REQUIRED members to represent the key, with the member names sorted into lexicographic order, and with no white space or line breaks."

Problems

  • The current work of the Decentralized Identifiers has proceed with little concern for how it might integrate with existing Identity Ecosystems.
  • Self-issued Identifiers of all types depend on secret values held by the user in portable protected storage, for example a smartphone or WebAuthn key.
  • If the user's hardware device is stolen or disable, the recover of the user's identifier can be a challenge which could turn into a UX nightmare if not handled well.
  • In particular the SIOP program has been developing standards which look a lot like the DIA and other work in the Kantara work groups without any coordination.

References