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DNS reliance exposes OpenID to risk | | 2008/08/14 | | Sun identity technology specialist, Robin Wilton has said that OpenID could be affected by a fundamental issue due to its reliance on the Domain name System (DNS).
The existence of Kaminsky's flaw in the system exposes OpenID - the shared, online identity service which lets computer users create a single login to use on multiple sites - to risk, making it the latest aspect of the internet to show vulnerability.
According to ZDNet, Mr Wilton wrote in a blog: "You may have seen the recent announcements about DNS cache poisoning, and the potential effect of this on all kinds of internet-based applications' security.
"One area in which it can have a particularly significant impact is OpenID."
Mr Wilton explained that, by using OpenID's rival, the Liberty Authentication Mechanism, Sun's authentication systems were not in jeopardy and the use of OpenID was for research purposes only.
He found that an exchange of security information with other parties was not needed to facilitate OpenID's operation.
Instead, it relies on the integrity of DNS to authenticate that identities are approved by the "correct" trust provider.
Should the underlying DNS system become compromised by an attack, it is possible that the authentication could be unreliable making it difficult to tell if a trust provider was supplying a legitimate identitiy. |
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