Few responses inline.

On Mar 22, 2010, at 5:11 AM, Manger, James H wrote:

> 1. CLIENT SECRET
> Client authentication needs to be independent of OAuth.
> The Web Server Flow sends oauth_client_secret to the access token request 
> endpoint along with other oauth_ parameters. This is a poor design.
> 
> Consider, for instance, a service that authenticates clients with TLS client 
> certs. Such clients don't have a shared secret to put in the 
> oauth_client_secret parameter so they cannot perform protocol in this OAuth 2 
> draft.
> Even if client certs are rare, the issue is that there is no reason why 
> client certs should prevent OAuth 2 from working.
> 
> Servers that can authenticate clients are likely to offer them various APIs 
> in addition to the OAuth get-a-token calls. The same client authentication 
> mechanism used for those calls should be reused for the get-a-token calls.
> 
> I suggest dropping the oauth_client_secret, perhaps adding text such as:
> "Servers that require clients to be pre-registered may require this client 
> request to be authenticated."
> 

It would be great to support client certificates as a means to authenticate 
OAuth applications. However, that should be a new flow, as it has different 
security characteristics.

<snip>

> 4. The Username and Password Flow has oauth_client_secret in the example but 
> not in the expected list of parameters.

Mistake. It should not have client secret. This flow also could benefit from 
client certs, if available, but again, that is a new flow definition.

> 5. Just call it TLS (not TLS/SSL).

Many people are familiar with SSL, not TLS, and so this clarifies for those 
readers.

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