I've been thinking about delegated authority on websites lately.It would be convenient if I could delegate certain functions to people, for example allowing someone like my accountant to have access to some of my financial records.Some organizations make this easy, allowing me to have multiple accounts.Other services don't offer this, nor do they offer any kind of OAuth type of delegated authorization or capabilities model.I've been thinking about ways around this.One very wacky way would be if Alice could have a a "special browser" that would tie into some service she runs. Bob would log in with his credentials and then behind the scenes the application logs in as Alice.This would be very complicated to implement though.1/#Authentication #Authorization #InfoSec #Passwords #Passwordless #Programming

all 4 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [S] 1 point 1 year ago (3 children)

Another approach would be if Alice could generate multiple Passkeys and hand them out to individuals she trusts, and then retaining the ability to revoke them. Sadly many sites don't yet support Passkeys, and this model still lets someone like Mal revoke Alice's access, so that's not great.

Bitwarden has a feature whereby Alice can share a password with Eve but not let her see it or export it. This could work pretty well, except that if the site requires 2FA from a SMS text message (vs TOTP or a token) or if Eve has the knowhow to intercept the password.

I still think that what we ultimately want is attenuated scopes because then we can track all actions by the delegated party.

I do wonder if this need is niche or if the current solution of "good faith password sharing" works well enough often enough that it's not risen to the level of concern for developers.

2/2

#Authentication #Authorization #InfoSec #Passwords #Passwordless #Programming

  • source
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (2 children)

    @serge@babka.social I’ve seen this solved in different places already. Commercial example is GoDaddy, with ‘log in as’ your customer. I have seen this implemented in Government too, which has a similar approach to the commercial example. They mention “Never share your login details for the Netherlands Tax Administration with anyone. Instead, you can authorise the person filing your tax returns. They will then log in with their own details.” Both approaches implement a TTL. 😄

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] [S] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    @lbnvds@mastodon.social

    Yes, 100% we can solve this if we're developing the application!

    I'm talking about how we solve if it we're on the user end.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment