HACKER Q&A
📣 anderspitman

Are there any authorization systems that use PKI instead of tokens?


Much of the complexity of OAuth2 (3-legged flow, backchannels, PKCE, etc) stems from the security issues that arise from passing sensitive information around.

I'm imagining a system where for each session the client generates a fresh key pair, then sends its public key along in the initial request to the authorization server.

After login/if the request is approved, future requests are signed by the client. No token needs to be passed back. However, you would need something like a simple endpoint on the client server where the authorization server could verify that the request originated there.

Seems like it would be pretty simple. What am I missing?


  👤 kimburgess Accepted Answer ✓
While not exactly what you've described, you may want to take a look at https://webauthn.guide/ if you're not already familiar.

👤 vkaku
Cert Auth, SPIFFE... Those count?