A "Sign in with fediverse" button?
Just like apps and websites implement "Sign in with Apple" and Google couldn't we build some kind of federated authentication provider?
Then everyone creates an account there and fedi apps can implement an easy way to authenticate users. Even non fedi apps could use it.
I imagine user interaction between different fediverse platforms would be much easier too.
I guess could run an auth instance. Ideally everyone would run their own, keeping your data safe.
Is there something likes this already? Saw some discussion here but not much else socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/…
Single Sign-On for Fediverse
I think having a single sign-on option across application could be the value-add that attracts substantial numbers of new users to the Fediverse.SocialHub
This entry was edited (1 day ago)
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HiddenTower
in reply to tomatol • • •like this
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Saleh
in reply to HiddenTower • • •Yeah, also if the one login gets compromised, oh boy...
Anecdote time. My first e-mail account got hacked. I still had my Steam account attached to it. Now i have a VAC Ban in CS2 because some chinese kid used it for hacking ingame.
tomatol
in reply to Saleh • • •4am
in reply to tomatol • • •So we should make a remote single point of failure, maintained by someone who probably isn’t a security expert or working on it full time?
No, this is unfortunately the opposite of what we should be doing.
EDIT: I should also add that people who make password managers literally focus on only that. They understand what they are making is a huge target and any of them worth their salt have independent audits and spend much of their time on design decisions related to security. Point being: typically the weakest link in a password manager is you. Set a good password, use a YubiKey or some other device, use 2FA, etc.
tomatol
in reply to 4am • • •Anyway I'm not gonna pretend I'm an expert in security! I just think it's a feature worth exploring.
4am
in reply to tomatol • • •If someone runs an auth server, and I use it to identify me, and then it goes away, then I’m out of luck, my account is gone. This is the same problem we have now (with logins being tied to instances), except that it introduces a new place for a failure to occur. Rather than just relying on a lemmy instance, I also need to rely on an auth server to be maintained, safe, and secure.
If I went to another auth server, then it’d give me a different identity and that would not make much sense.
Captain Aggravated
in reply to tomatol • • •It can, but is it likely to? To get my passwords, you'd need my KeePass database itself, which is only stored on computers I own. To unlock my password database, you need my password, which I have not stored digitally anywhere, and you'd need to have the keyfile. Oh which of the hundreds of thousands of files on my system is the keyfile?
So you've gotten my password database open. Critical things like my lynchpin email address and banking accounts just aren't in there. Those I memorize only. All of the "This would be bad if this got compromised" accounts have 2-factor authentication.
Compared to breaking into a retailer or bank's servers and getting hundreds of thousands if not millions of credentials, that's a lot of effort to get one guy's Lemmy account deets.
Saleh
in reply to tomatol • • •z3r0
in reply to HiddenTower • • •tomatol
in reply to z3r0 • • •forrgott
in reply to tomatol • • •tomatol
in reply to forrgott • • •Well right now Pixelfed has a sign in with mastodon button for example. Admittedly, I don't know the details but I don't think anything is stopping me from running my own mastodon instance just to sign up for Pixelfed.
I agree it might be a nightmare to manage tho if everyone has their own instance but that would probably not be the case.
tomatol
in reply to HiddenTower • • •Impronoucabl
in reply to tomatol • • •Yes and no.
Decentralized IDs exist, but will almost never be accepted by any large reputable institution.
Why trust every indie site to be 100% truthful, and definitely not full of malicious haXXors?
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tomatol
in reply to Impronoucabl • • •Just like fediverse works you can federate with the auth providers you want and ban malicious ones.
Lots of lemmy instances chose not to federate with others. I imagine it could work the same way.
Impronoucabl
in reply to tomatol • • •Before an instance does something malicious, how do you know it will be malicious?
Even if everyone there running it, & participating is pure of heart, how can you be assured that haXXors won't simply break in to take advantage of that trust you've given them?
Banning bad instances is a reactive stance that only applies after damage has been done. Can you convince the corporate overlords to take that risk? And it only increases as the fediverse gets more popular, and more instances get trusted.
asudox
in reply to tomatol • • •like this
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tomatol
in reply to asudox • • •schnurrito
in reply to tomatol • • •like this
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gon [he]
in reply to tomatol • • •As others have mentioned in the comments, this might not really work because websites/services would have to trust a bunch of tiny, maybe even single-user instances.
I can see a world where sign-in with Fediverse is possible, but only for a select few instances such as .world, .ml, .ee, and a few other highly-moderated servers.
tomatol
in reply to gon [he] • • •I think you're right. This might be the biggest problem but it doesn't seem impossible to solve.
I believe it's actually possible to sign in with mastodon on Pixelfed. Wouldn't that work for a single user mastodon instance too?
gon [he]
in reply to tomatol • • •You're right. I'm not sure if it works with single-user instances, but I believe it does. This is the sort of thing that is technically possible --- I believe ActivityPods aims to do something about it, too --- but I don't know... I guess federation can be a bit of a safeguard for this, like having a list of flagged instances that don't allow account creation; requiring certain thresholds of account age or activity to be passed; stuff like that. There's also the fact that, being social media, no instance wants bots to run wild, so that could, itself, be a check on that sort of thing, and it might not be economically viable to just host an instance strictly for bot-login purposes, so that is just an inherent barrier to wrongdoing.
Meh, maybe it's more feasible than not.
ActivityPods - Personal data spaces powered with ActivityPub
ActivityPodstomatol
in reply to gon [he] • • •renzhexiangjiao
in reply to tomatol • • •4am
in reply to renzhexiangjiao • • •renzhexiangjiao
in reply to 4am • • •4am
in reply to renzhexiangjiao • • •We can, passkeys are being adopted all over the web. If you specifically mean for Lemmy or fediverse services, it’s probably just a matter of adding support. It isn’t hard, per se, but it is important to get it right.
You can store passkeys in a password manager like BitWarden and they become portable. Then it doesn’t matter if you have a centralized authentication server. You just get logged in with your passkey, supplied by your password manager.
Gladaed
in reply to tomatol • • •But why? Just use a password manager instead of tying your identity to a Lemmy instance which you do not control.
Having SSO is reliant on having a single trusted server which has your password instead of you maintaining it yourself. This is just an unnecessary risk.
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tomatol
in reply to Gladaed • • •I mean a federated authentication server that you can host yourself if you want.
I don't understand what you mean about using a password manager, you can still do that. Also your identity is tied to a lemmy instance right now anyway.
haverholm
in reply to tomatol • • •I think I understand the self hosted identity server part, and authenticating with it on different sites. But what is the federated element you're talking about? What would that instance federate, and with whom?
If we're moving into a single sign-on for several federated accounts, that's cool. People have been asking for that for ages! But the identity provider itself wouldn't (need to) be federated for that to work, right?
tomatol
in reply to haverholm • • •Not sure, will leave the details to smarter people haha. Hope some day it could be implemented because it would be pretty useful if it can be done in a secure way.
haverholm
in reply to tomatol • • •IndieWeb
WordPress.orgGladaed
in reply to tomatol • • •tomatol
in reply to Gladaed • • •I don't think it's something you would use but mainstream users might definitely appreciate the feature.
Ulrich
in reply to tomatol • • •tomatol
in reply to Ulrich • • •It sound like this is just not for you then.
Yep password managers are not user friendly.
Single tap sign in button is.
Is it less secure? Probably. You'd still have the option to login regularly.
After all the fediverse is for social media. It should be easy to use for the masses.
It also means you won't be storing your bank info in a fediverse app so the damage is not that bad if someone hacks you. Instagram and tiktok accounts get hacked all the time btw and it's not the end of the world.
Ulrich
in reply to tomatol • • •It doesn't sound like you've used a password manager
Single tap sign in is available in password managers via passkeys.
It is as secure as the service you're using to sign in. What it's not is private.
Again, no one should be using this and we certainly should not be encouraging anyone to use it.
For many of those people, it is a giant problem.
Ulrich
in reply to tomatol • • •There's no point in using a password manager in your scenario. It's redundant.
It's not, actually. But even if it were I wouldn't create a profile web of accounts that are all linked together by my Lemmy account.
Ulrich
in reply to Gladaed • • •4am
in reply to tomatol • • •Flax
in reply to tomatol • • •IndieAuth
IndieWebCroquette
in reply to tomatol • • •lostmypasswordanew
in reply to tomatol • • •fruitycoder
in reply to lostmypasswordanew • • •gnuplusmatt
in reply to tomatol • • •Nate
in reply to tomatol • •If Nomadic identities get implemented then yes, I've heard there were somepeople working towards it but haven't heard much since.
Still, not sure I'd be to comfortable using a Fediverse server (especially one not hosted by me) for my identity. I've already lost an account to a SQL database dying, and some swaths of the fediverae are rather quick to ban or defederate.
Nostr and AT do it pretty well, though, using a key pair you control to sign into other services using your account. If something were attempted on the Fediverse this would probably be the best way to go about it.
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