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Web Authorization Protocol
charter-ietf-oauth-04-00

The information below is for an older proposed charter
Document Proposed charter Web Authorization Protocol WG (oauth) Snapshot
Title Web Authorization Protocol
Last updated 2016-01-22
State Start Chartering/Rechartering (Internal Steering Group/IAB Review) Rechartering
WG State Active
IESG Responsible AD Deb Cooley
Charter edit AD Kathleen Moriarty
Send notices to (None)

charter-ietf-oauth-04-00

The Web Authorization (OAuth) protocol allows a user to grant a
third-party web site or application access to the user's protected
resources, without necessarily revealing their long-term credentials,
or even their identity. For example, a photo-sharing site that
supports OAuth could allow its users to use a third-party printing web
site to print their private pictures, without allowing the printing
site to gain full control of the user's account and without having the
user share his or her photo-sharing sites' long-term credential with
the printing site.

The OAuth 2.0 protocol suite already includes

  • a procedure for enabling a client to register with an authorization
    server,
  • a protocol for obtaining authorization tokens from an authorization
    server with the resource owner's consent, and
  • protocols for presenting these authorization tokens to protected
    resources for access to a resource.

This protocol suite has been enhanced with functionality for
interworking with legacy identity infrastructure (such as SAML), token
revocation, token exchange, dynamic client registration, token
introspection, a standardized token format with the JSON Web Token, and
specifications that mitigate security attacks, such as Proof Key for
Code Exchange.

The ongoing standardization efforts within the OAuth working group
focus on increasing interoperability of OAuth deployments and to
improve security. More specifically, the working group is defining proof
of possession tokens, developing a discovery mechanism, providing
guidance for the use of OAuth with native apps, re-introducing
the device flow used by devices with limited user interfaces, additional
security enhancements for clients communicating with multiple service
providers, definition of claims used with JSON Web Tokens, techniques to
mitigate open redirector attacks, as well as guidance on encoding state
information.

For feedback and discussion about our specifications please
subscribe to our public mailing list at .

For security related bug reports that relate to our specifications
please contact . If the reported
bug report turns out to be implementation-specific we will attempt
to forward it to the appropriate developers.