Global Token Revocation
draft-parecki-oauth-global-token-revocation-03
| Document | Type | Active Internet-Draft (individual) | |
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| Author | Aaron Parecki | ||
| Last updated | 2024-03-21 | ||
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draft-parecki-oauth-global-token-revocation-03
Web Authorization Protocol A. Parecki
Internet-Draft Okta
Intended status: Standards Track 21 March 2024
Expires: 22 September 2024
Global Token Revocation
draft-parecki-oauth-global-token-revocation-03
Abstract
Global Token Revocation enables parties such as a security incident
management tool or an external Identity Provider to send a request to
an Authorization Server to indicate that it should revoke all of the
user's existing tokens and require that the user re-authenticates
before issuing new tokens.
About This Document
This note is to be removed before publishing as an RFC.
The latest revision of this draft can be found at
https://drafts.aaronpk.com/global-token-revocation/draft-parecki-
oauth-global-token-revocation.html. Status information for this
document may be found at https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-
parecki-oauth-global-token-revocation/.
Discussion of this document takes place on the Web Authorization
Protocol Working Group mailing list (mailto:oauth@ietf.org), which is
archived at https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/browse/oauth/.
Subscribe at https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/oauth/.
Source for this draft and an issue tracker can be found at
https://github.com/aaronpk/global-token-revocation.
Status of This Memo
This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute
working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet-
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This Internet-Draft will expire on 22 September 2024.
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2. Conventions and Definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2.1. Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2.2. Roles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3. Token Revocation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3.1. Revocation Endpoint . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3.2. Revocation Request . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3.3. Revocation Expectations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
3.4. Revocation Response . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
3.4.1. Successful Response . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
3.4.2. Error Response . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
4. Revocation of Access Tokens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
5. Authorization Server Metadata . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
6. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
6.1. Authentication of Revocation Request . . . . . . . . . . 8
6.2. Enumeration of User Accounts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
6.3. Malicious Authorization Server . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
7. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
7.1. OAuth Authorization Server Metadata . . . . . . . . . . . 9
8. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
8.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
8.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Appendix A. Relationship to Related Specifications . . . . . . . 11
A.1. RFC7009: Token Revocation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
A.2. OpenID Connect Front-Channel Logout . . . . . . . . . . . 11
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A.3. OpenID Connect Back-Channel Logout . . . . . . . . . . . 12
A.4. Shared Signals Framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Appendix B. Document History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
1. Introduction
An OAuth Authorization Server issues tokens in response to a user
authorizing a client. A party external to the OAuth Authorization
Server may wish to instruct the Authorization Server to revoke all
tokens belonging to a particular user, and prevent the server from
issuing new tokens until the user re-authenticates.
For example, a security incident management tool may detect anomalous
behaviour on a user's account, or if the user logged in through an
enterprise Identity Provider, the Identity Provider may want to
revoke all of a user's tokens in the event of a security incident or
on the employee's termination.
This specification describes an API endpoint on an Authorization
Server that can accept requests from external parties to revoke all
tokens associated with a given user.
2. Conventions and Definitions
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and
"OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in
BCP 14 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all
capitals, as shown here.
2.1. Terminology
This specification uses the terms "Access Token", "Authorization
Code", "Authorization Endpoint", "Authorization Server" (AS),
"Client", "Client Authentication", "Client Identifier", "Client
Secret", "End-User", "Grant Type", "Protected Resource", "Redirection
URI", "Refresh Token", "Resource Owner", "Resource Server" (RS) and
"Token Endpoint" defined by [RFC6749], and the terms "OpenID
Provider" (OP) and "ID Token" defined by [OpenID].
This specification uses the term "Identity Provider" (IdP) to refer
to the Authorization Server or OpenID Provider that is used for End-
User authentication.
TODO: Replace RFC6749 references with OAuth 2.1
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2.2. Roles
In a typical OAuth deployment, the OAuth client obtains tokens from
the authorization server when a user logs in and authorizes the
client. In many cases, the method by which a user logs in at the
authorization server is through an external identity provider.
For example, a mobile chat application is an OAuth Client, and
obtains tokens from its backend server which stores the chat
messages. The mobile chat backend plays the OAuth roles of "Resource
Server" and "Authorization Server".
In some cases, the user will log in to the Authorization Server using
an external (e.g. enterprise) Identity Provider. In that case, when
a user logs in to the chat application, the backend server may play
the role of an OAuth client (or OpenID or SAML relying party) to the
Identity Provider in a new authorization or authentication flow.
3. Token Revocation
A revocation request is a POST request to the Global Token Revocation
endpoint, which starts the process of revoking all tokens for the
identified subject.
3.1. Revocation Endpoint
The Global Token Revocation endpoint is a URL at the authorization
server which accepts HTTP POST requests with parameters in the HTTP
request message body using the application/json format. The Global
Token Revocation endpoint URL MUST use the https scheme.
If the authorization server supports OAuth Server Metadata
([RFC8414]), the authorization server SHOULD include the URL of their
Global Token Revocation endpoint in their authorization server
metadata document using the global_token_revocation_endpoint
parameter as defined in Section 5.
The authorization server MAY alternatively register the endpoint with
tools that will use it.
3.2. Revocation Request
The request is a POST request with an application/json body
containing a single property subject, the value of which is a
Security Event Token Subject Identifier as defined in "Subject
Identifiers for Security Event Tokens" [RFC9493].
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In practice, this means the value of subject is a JSON object with a
property format, and at least one additional property depending on
the value of format.
The request MUST also be authenticated, the particular authentication
method and means by which the authentication is established is out of
scope of this specification, but may include OAuth 2.0 Bearer Token
[RFC6750] or a JWT [RFC7523].
The following example requests that all tokens for a user identified
by an email address be revoked:
POST /global-token-revocation
Host: example.com
Content-Type: application/json
Authorization: Bearer f5641763544a7b24b08e4f74045
{
"sub_id": {
"format": "email",
"email": "user@example.com"
}
}
If the user identifier at the authorization server is known by the
system making the revocation request, the request can use the "Opaque
Identifer" format to provide the user identifier:
POST /global-token-revocation
Host: example.com
Content-Type: application/json
Authorization: Bearer f5641763544a7b24b08e4f74045
{
"sub_id": {
"format": "opaque",
"id": "e193177dfdc52e3dd03f78c"
}
}
If it is expected that the authorization server knows about the user
identifier at the IdP, the request can use the "Issuer and Subject
Identifier" format:
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POST /global-token-revocation
Host: example.com
Content-Type: application/json
Authorization: Bearer f5641763544a7b24b08e4f74045
{
"sub_id": {
"format": "iss_sub",
"iss": "https://issuer.example.com/",
"sub": "af19c476f1dc4470fa3d0d9a25"
}
}
3.3. Revocation Expectations
Upon receiving a revocation request, authorizing the request, and
validating the identified user, the Authorization Server:
* MUST revoke all active refresh tokens
* SHOULD invalidate all access tokens, although it is recognized
that it might not be technically feasible to invalidate access
tokens (see Section 4 below)
* MUST re-authenticate the user before issuing new access tokens or
refresh tokens
3.4. Revocation Response
This specification indicates success and error conditions by using
HTTP response codes, and does not define the response body format or
content.
3.4.1. Successful Response
To indicate that the request was successful and revocation of the
requested set of tokens has begun, the server returns an HTTP 204
response.
3.4.2. Error Response
The following HTTP response codes can be used to indicate various
error conditions:
* *400 Bad Request*: The request was malformed, e.g. an unrecognized
or unsupported type of subject identifier.
* *401 Unauthorized*: Authentication provided was invalid.
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* *403 Forbidden*: Insufficient authorization, e.g. missing scopes.
* *404 User Not Found*: The user indicated by the subject identifier
was not found.
* *422 Unable to Process Request*: Unable to log out the user.
4. Revocation of Access Tokens
OAuth 2.0 allows deployment flexibility with respect to the style of
access tokens. The access tokens may be self-contained (e.g.
[RFC9068]) so that a resource server needs no further interaction
with an authorization server issuing these tokens to perform an
authorization decision of the client requesting access to a protected
resource. A system design may, however, instead use access tokens
that are handles (also known as "reference tokens") referring to
authorization data stored at the authorization server.
While these are not the only options, they illustrate the
implications for revocation. In the latter case of reference tokens,
the authorization server is able to revoke an access token by
removing it from storage. In the former case, without storing
tokens, it may be impossible to revoke tokens without taking
additional measures. One such measure is to use
[I-D.ietf-oauth-status-list] to maintain a distributed and easily-
compressed list of token revocation statuses.
For this reason, revocation of access tokens is optional in this
specification, since it may pose too significant of a burden for
implementers. It is not required to revoke access tokens to be able
to return a success code to the caller.
5. Authorization Server Metadata
The following authorization server metadata parameters [RFC8414] are
introduced to signal the server's capability and policy with respect
to Global Token Revocation.
"global_token_revocation_endpoint": The URL of the authorization
server's global token revocation endpoint.
"global_token_revocation_endpoint_auth_methods_supported": OPTIONAL.
JSON array containing a list of client authentication methods
supported by this introspection endpoint. The valid client
authentication method values are those registered in the IANA
"OAuth Token Endpoint Authentication Methods" registry
[IANA.oauth-parameters] or those registered in the IANA "OAuth
Access Token Types" registry [IANA.oauth-parameters]. (These
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values are and will remain distinct, due to Section 7.2.) If
omitted, the set of supported authentication methods MUST be
determined by other means.
6. Security Considerations
6.1. Authentication of Revocation Request
While Section 3.2 requires that the revocation request is an
authenticated request, the specifics of the authentication are out of
scope of this specification.
Since the revocation request ultimately has wide-reaching effects (a
user is expected to be logged out of all devices), this presents a
new Denial of Service attack vector. As such, the authentication
used for this request SHOULD be narrowly scoped to avoid granting
unnecessary privileges to the caller.
For example, if using OAuth Bearer Tokens, the token SHOULD be issued
with a single scope that enables it to perform the revocation
request, and no other type of token issued should include this scope.
If the authorization server is multi-tenant (supports multiple
customers) through different identity providers, each identity
provider SHOULD use its own scoped credential that is only authorized
to revoke tokens for users within the same tenant.
6.2. Enumeration of User Accounts
Typically, an API that accepts a user identifier and returns
different statuses depending on whether the user exists would provide
an attack vector allowing enumeration of user accounts. This
specification does require a "User Not Found" response, so would
normally fall under this category. However, requests to the endpoint
defined by this specification are required to be authenticated, so
this is not considered a public endpoint.
If the tool making the request is compromised, and the attacker can
impersonate the requests from this tool (either by coercing the tool
to make the request, or by extracting the credentials), then the
attacker would be able to enumerate user accounts. However, since
the request is not just testing the presence of a user account, but
actually revoking the tokens associated with the user if successful,
this would likely be easily visible in any audit logs as many users'
tokens would be revoked in a short period of time.
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To mitigate some of the concerns of providing such a powerful API
endpoint, the users that a particular client can request revocation
for SHOULD be limited, and the authentication of the request SHOULD
be used to scope the possible user revocation list to only users
authorized to the client as described in Section 6.1.
For example, a multi-tenant identity provider that uses different
signing keys for users associated with different tenants, can also
use the same signing keys to authenticate revocation requests, such
as creating a JWT to use as client authentication as described in
[RFC7523]. This enables the authorization server receiving the
request to only accept revocation requests for users that are
associated with the particular tenant at the identity provider.
6.3. Malicious Authorization Server
From the point of view of an identity provider that supports
integrations with multiple downstream applications, there is an
opportunity for a downstream application to maliciously set up a
Global Token Revocation endpoint to harvest user identifiers and
authentication of the revocation requests.
Similarly as described in Section 6.1 above, each integration SHOULD
be using separate authentication credentials, and each credential
SHOULD be scoped as narrowly as possible, such that a malicious
server that receives this authentication cannot replay it anywhere
else to perform any actions on other systems.
7. IANA Considerations
7.1. OAuth Authorization Server Metadata
IANA has (TBD) registered the following values in the IANA "OAuth
Authorization Server Metadata" registry of [IANA.oauth-parameters]
established by [RFC8414].
*Metadata Name*: global_token_revocation_endpoint
*Metadata Description*: URL of the authorization server's global
token revocation endpoint.
*Change Controller*: IESG
*Specification Document*: Section X of [[ this specification ]]
*Metadata Name*:
global_token_revocation_endpoint_auth_methods_supported
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*Metadata Description*: OPTIONAL. Indicates the list of client
authentication methods supported by this endpoint.
*Change Controller*: IESG
*Specification Document*: Section X of [[ this specification ]]
8. References
8.1. Normative References
[IANA.oauth-parameters]
IANA, "OAuth Parameters",
<http://www.iana.org/assignments/oauth-parameters>.
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2119>.
[RFC6749] Hardt, D., Ed., "The OAuth 2.0 Authorization Framework",
RFC 6749, DOI 10.17487/RFC6749, October 2012,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6749>.
[RFC8174] Leiba, B., "Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in RFC
2119 Key Words", BCP 14, RFC 8174, DOI 10.17487/RFC8174,
May 2017, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8174>.
[RFC8414] Jones, M., Sakimura, N., and J. Bradley, "OAuth 2.0
Authorization Server Metadata", RFC 8414,
DOI 10.17487/RFC8414, June 2018,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8414>.
[RFC9493] Backman, A., Ed., Scurtescu, M., and P. Jain, "Subject
Identifiers for Security Event Tokens", RFC 9493,
DOI 10.17487/RFC9493, December 2023,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9493>.
8.2. Informative References
[I-D.ietf-oauth-status-list]
Looker, T., Bastian, P., and C. Bormann, "Token Status
List", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-ietf-oauth-
status-list-02, 3 March 2024,
<https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-ietf-oauth-
status-list-02>.
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[OpenID] Sakimura, N., Bradley, J., Jones, M., de Medeiros, B., and
C. Mortimore, "OpenID Connect Core 1.0", November 2014,
<https://openid.net/specs/openid-connect-core-1_0.html>.
[RFC6750] Jones, M. and D. Hardt, "The OAuth 2.0 Authorization
Framework: Bearer Token Usage", RFC 6750,
DOI 10.17487/RFC6750, October 2012,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6750>.
[RFC7009] Lodderstedt, T., Ed., Dronia, S., and M. Scurtescu, "OAuth
2.0 Token Revocation", RFC 7009, DOI 10.17487/RFC7009,
August 2013, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7009>.
[RFC7523] Jones, M., Campbell, B., and C. Mortimore, "JSON Web Token
(JWT) Profile for OAuth 2.0 Client Authentication and
Authorization Grants", RFC 7523, DOI 10.17487/RFC7523, May
2015, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7523>.
[RFC9068] Bertocci, V., "JSON Web Token (JWT) Profile for OAuth 2.0
Access Tokens", RFC 9068, DOI 10.17487/RFC9068, October
2021, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9068>.
Appendix A. Relationship to Related Specifications
A.1. RFC7009: Token Revocation
OAuth 2.0 Token Revocation [RFC7009] defines an endpoint for
authorization servers that an OAuth client can use to notify the
authorization server that a previously-obtained access or refresh
token is no longer needed.
The request is made by the OAuth client. The input to the Token
Revocation request is the token itself, as well as the client's own
authentication credentials.
This differs from the Global Token Revocation endpoint which does not
take a token as an input, but instead takes a user identifier as
input. It is not called by OAuth clients, but is instead called by
an external party such as a security monitoring tool or an identity
provider that the user used to authenticate at the authorization
server.
A.2. OpenID Connect Front-Channel Logout
OpenID Connect Front-Channel Logout (https://openid.net/specs/openid-
connect-frontchannel-1_0.html) provides a mechanism for an OpenID
Provider to log users out of Relying Parties by redirecting the user
agent.
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While the logout request is the same direction as this draft
describes, this relies on the redirection of the user agent, so is
only applicable when the user is actively interacting with the
application in a web browser.
The Global Token Revocation request works regardless of whether the
user is actively using the application, and is also applicable to
non-web based applications.
A.3. OpenID Connect Back-Channel Logout
OpenID Connect Back-Channel Logout (https://openid.net/specs/openid-
connect-backchannel-1_0.html) provides a mechanism for an OpenID
Provider to log users out of a Relying Party by making a back-channel
POST request containing the user identifier of the user to log out.
This is the most similar existing logout specification to Global
Token Revocation. However, there are still a few key differences
that make it insufficient for the use cases enabled by Global Token
Revocation.
OpenID Connect Back-Channel Logout requires Relying Parties to clear
state of any sessions for the user, but doesn't mention anything
about access tokens. It also says that refresh tokens issued with
the offline_access scope "SHOULD NOT be revoked". This is a
concretely different outcome than is described by Global Token
Revocation, which requires the revocation of all refresh tokens for
the user regardless of whether the refresh token was issued with the
offline_access scope.
Additionally, OpenID Connect Back-Channel Logout assumes that the
Relying Party implements OpenID Connect, which creates implementation
challenges to use it when the Relying Party actually integrates with
the identity provider using other specifications such as SAML.
Global Token Revocation works regardless of the protocol that the
user uses to authenticate, so works equally well with OpenID Connect
and SAML integrations.
A.4. Shared Signals Framework
The Shared Signals Framework at the OpenID Foundation provides two
specifications that have functionality related to session and token
revocation.
Continuous Access Evaluation Profile (CAEP)
(https://openid.net/specs/openid-caep-specification-1_0.html) defines
several event types that can be sent between cooperating parties. In
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particular, the "Session Revoked" event can be sent from an identity
provider to an authorization server when the user's session at the
identity provider was revoked. The main difference between this and
the Global Token Revocation request is that the CAEP event is a
signal that may or may not be acted upon by the receiver, whereas the
Global Token Revocation request is a command that has a defined list
of expected outcomes.
Risk Incident Sharing and Coordination (RISC)
(https://openid.net/specs/openid-risc-profile-specification-1_0.html)
defines events that have somewhat stronger defined meanings compared
to CAEP. In particular, the "Account Disabled" event has clear
meaning and strongly implies that a receiver should also disable the
specified account. However, RISC also has a mechanism for a user to
opt out of sending events for their account, so it does not provide
the same level of assurance as a Global Token Revocation request.
Lastly, it is more complex to set up a receiver for CAEP and RISC
events compared to a receiver for the Global Token Revocation
request, so if the receiver is only interested in supporting the
revocation use cases, it is much simpler to support the single POST
request described in this draft.
Appendix B. Document History
(( To be removed from the final specification ))
-03
* Renamed property from subject to sub_id for consistency with JWT
claim name defined in RFC9493
* Added reference to draft-ietf-oauth-status-list
* Added additional security considerations for authentication of the
revocation request and malicious authorization servers
-02
* Added security consideration around enumeration of user accounts
* Added an appendix describing the differences between this and
related logout specifications
-01
* Clarified revocation expectations
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* Better definition of endpoint
* Added section defining endpoint in Authorization Server Metadata
-00
* Initial Draft
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank the following people for their
contributions and reviews of this specification: Apoorva Deshpande,
George Fletcher, Karl McGuinness, Mike Jones.
Author's Address
Aaron Parecki
Okta
Email: aaron@parecki.com
URI: https://aaronparecki.com
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