| OAuth Working Group | J. Bradley, Ed. |
| Internet-Draft | Ping Identity |
| Intended status: Best Current Practice | A. Sanso |
| Expires: August 7, 2016 | Adobe Systems |
| H. Tschofenig | |
| February 04, 2016 |
OAuth 2.0 Security: Closing Open Redirectors in OAuth
draft-ietf-oauth-closing-redirectors-00.txt
This document gives additional security considerations for OAuth, beyond those in the OAuth 2.0 specification and in the OAuth 2.0 Threat Model and Security Considerations.
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This document gives additional security considerations for OAuth, beyond those in the OAuth 2.0 specification [RFC6749] and in the OAuth 2.0 Threat Model and Security Considerations [RFC6819]. In particular focuses its attention on the risk of abuse the Authorization Server (AS) [Terminology] as an open redirector.
It contains the following content:
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119 [RFC2119].
Unless otherwise noted, all the protocol parameter names and values are case sensitive.
The OAuth 2.0 specification [RFC6749] defines the Error Response associated with the Authorization Code Grant flow and the Implicit Grant flow. Both flows use a redirection endpoint where the resource owner's user agent is directed after the resource owner has completed interacting with the authorization server. The redirection endpoint is also used in the error response scenario. As per RFC6749 Section 4.1.2.1 and 4.2.2.1 [RFC6749] if the resource owner denies the access request or if the request fails for reasons other than a missing or invalid redirection URI, the AS redirects the user-agent by sending the following HTTP response:
HTTP/1.1 302 Found Location: https://client.example.com/cb?error=access_denied
As described in [RFC6819] an attacker could utilize a user's trust in an AS to launch a phishing attack. The attack described here though is not mitigated using the countermeasures listed in [RFC6819]. In this scenario the attacker:
The attacker can use a redirect error redirection to intercept redirect based protocol messages via the Referer header and URI fragment. In this scenario the attacker:
https://AUTHORIZATION_SERVER/authorize?response_type=token
&client_id=good-client&scope=VALID_SCOPE
&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2AUTHORIZATION_SERVER%Fauthorize
%3Fresponse_type%3Dcode
%26client_id%3Dattacker-client-id
%26scope%3DINVALID_SCOPE
%26redirect_uri%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fattacker.com
Figure 1
(line breaks for display only)
The legitimate OAuth Authorization response will include an access token in the URI fragment.
Most web browsers will append the fragment to the URI sent in the location header of a 302 response if no fragment is included in the location URI.
If the Authorization request is code instead of token, the same technique is used, but the code is leaked by the browser in the referer header rather than the fragment.
This causes the access token from a successful authorization to be leaked across the redirect to the malicious client. This is due to browser behaviour and not because the AS has included any information in the redirect URI other than the error code.
Protocols other than OAuth may be particularly vulnerable to this if they are only verifying the domain of the redirect. Performing exact redirect URI matching in OAuth will protect the AS, but not other protocols.
It should be noted that a legitimate OAuth client registered with a AS might be compromised and used as a redirect target by an attacker, perhaps without the knowledge of the client site. This increases a the attack surface for a AS.
In order to defend against the attacks described in Section 2.1 and Section 2.2 the AS can either:
When redirecting via 30x a Content Security Policy header SHOULD be added:
Content-Security-Policy: referrer origin;
Figure 2
When redirecting via a form post the following tag SHOULD be included:
<meta name="referrer" content="origin"/>
Figure 3
Only newer browsers support these headders, so users with older browsers will be vulnerable to leaking referer information unless a intermediate redirect is used.s
We would like to thank all the people that partecipated to the discussion, namely Bill Burke, Hans Zandbelt, Justin P. Richer, Phil Hunt, Takahiko Kawasaki, Torsten Lodderstedt, Sergey Beryozkin.
| [RFC2119] | Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997. |
| [RFC6749] | Hardt, D., "The OAuth 2.0 Authorization Framework", RFC 6749, DOI 10.17487/RFC6749, October 2012. |
| [RFC6819] | Lodderstedt, T., McGloin, M. and P. Hunt, "OAuth 2.0 Threat Model and Security Considerations", RFC 6819, DOI 10.17487/RFC6819, January 2013. |
[[ to be removed by the RFC Editor before publication as an RFC ]]
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