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Why we love Mozilla Persona

blog.zonino.co.uk

11–20 of 164 posts

Re: Why we love Mozilla Persona

#11
post #9

So what happens when my Person account gets compromised? I'll stick to my many accounts / many passwords approach, I think.

Use 2 factor auth to mitigate that? To me that seems safer than having 100s of different accounts with no support for 2 auth.

2FA is a nice add one but not a panacea.

Any account will be compromised - it's only a matter of time. When that happens, it's best (as recent articles in Wired, Ars Technica and others demonstrate) to have a broad account "ecosystem".

Re: Why we love Mozilla Persona

#12

But, this doesn't solve the issue that you're still trusting someone else with your secret (your password). We need to move towards protocols like SRP[0] in general so that no matter where I'm logging in, noöne has my password. [0]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Remote_Password_protocol EDIT: As ubernostrum points out, Persona is solving a different problem than SRP does. However, one of the reasons different i…

You may as well generate onetime junk password, feed it into persona and later rely on password manager to remember it for you.

You should avoid reusing your passwords across sites. BTW Persona helps you with that.

Re: Why we love Mozilla Persona

#13
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Use 2 factor auth to mitigate that? To me that seems safer than having 100s of different accounts with no support for 2 auth.

2FA is a nice add one but not a panacea. Any account will be compromised - it's only a matter of time. When that happens, it's best (as recent articles in Wired, Ars Technica and others demonstrate) to have a broad account "ecosystem".

Hm, interesting. I see your point.

What about Facebook/Google/Twitter Sign In buttons - do you think Persona is an improvement over those?

Re: Why we love Mozilla Persona

#15
post #12

But, this doesn't solve the issue that you're still trusting someone else with your secret (your password). We need to move towards protocols like SRP[0] in general so that no matter where I'm logging in, noöne has my password. [0]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Remote_Password_protocol EDIT: As ubernostrum points out, Persona is solving a different problem than SRP does. However, one of the reasons different i…

You may as well generate onetime junk password, feed it into persona and later rely on password manager to remember it for you. You should avoid reusing your passwords across sites. BTW Persona helps you with that.

But my point is that you're still trusting your email provider with the password, and now if that get's leaked an attacker has access to (arguably/potentially) more sites than they would have before (via password resets).

Re: Why we love Mozilla Persona

#17

But, this doesn't solve the issue that you're still trusting someone else with your secret (your password). We need to move towards protocols like SRP[0] in general so that no matter where I'm logging in, noöne has my password. [0]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Remote_Password_protocol EDIT: As ubernostrum points out, Persona is solving a different problem than SRP does. However, one of the reasons different i…

this doesn't solve the issue that you're still trusting someone else with your secret (your password) If you run your own identity provider, you are only trusting yourself with your secret. Also, nothing about Persona requires password-based authentication -- you can use any mechanism you like to authenticate to your identity provider.

> If you run your own identity provider, you are only trusting yourself with your secret.

Good point.

> Also, nothing about Persona requires password-based authentication -- you can use any mechanism you like to authenticate to your identity provider.

Good point. However, since noöne uses SRP or anything similar, de facto you're still sharing a secret (unless you're running your own provider).

Re: Why we love Mozilla Persona

#18
post #4

We don't know your password. Google doesn't know you're signing in to Zonino... mozilla knows ;)

As someone else pointed out, Mozilla won't have to know once the protocol is more supported. Currently they're acting as a transitionary bridge, not a required element.

Also, iirc, Google doesn't have to know where you're signing in either. I'll have to double check that part.

Re: Why we love Mozilla Persona

#19
post #16

What happens to my account if Persona dies or is temporarily down? Does that mean that I'm locked out?

The online component of Persona only matters in the interim (nothing it provides is necessary to the protocol, it is all about lowering the bar for implementers/providing support for browsers without a built in implementation). In the long term, you have to worry about whatever identity provider you are using.

Re: Why we love Mozilla Persona

#20
post #16

What happens to my account if Persona dies or is temporarily down? Does that mean that I'm locked out?

Nothing depends on Persona. For example, see https://persowna.net/, which I wrote and which you can use with your own domain for authentication. You can also install your own ID provider on your site and not rely on any third party.
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