2017/04/27 by Daniel Fett, Fett, Daniel, R. Kuesters +3
Computer Science · Social Sciences · #Access Control and Trust #Advanced Authentication Protocols Security #Cryptography and Security (cs.CR) #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Web Application Security Vulnerabilities
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1704.08539
openalex publication_date 2017/04/27 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Web-based single sign-on (SSO) services such as Google Sign-In and Log In\nwith Paypal are based on the OpenID Connect protocol. This protocol enables\nso-called relying parties to delegate user authentication to so-called identity\nproviders. OpenID Connect is one of the newest and most widely deployed single\nsign-on protocols on the web. Despite its importance, it has not received much\nattention from security researchers so far, and in particular, has not\nundergone any rigorous security analysis.\n In this paper, we carry out the first in-depth security analysis of OpenID\nConnect. To this end, we use a comprehensive generic model of the web to\ndevelop a detailed formal model of OpenID Connect. Based on this model, we then\nprecisely formalize and prove central security properties for OpenID Connect,\nincluding authentication, authorization, and session integrity properties.\n In our modeling of OpenID Connect, we employ security measures in order to\navoid attacks on OpenID Connect that have been discovered previously and new\nattack variants that we document for the first time in this paper. Based on\nthese security measures, we propose security guidelines for implementors of\nOpenID Connect. Our formal analysis demonstrates that these guidelines are in\nfact effective and sufficient.\n