At first blush, this feels very reminiscent of tls token binding. Does this 
work address, overcome, or avoid the problems faced by that specification which 
failed to gain traction in industry?

- Justin
________________________________
From: Ramki Krishnan <[email protected]>
Sent: Wednesday, May 20, 2026 12:42 AM
To: [email protected] <[email protected]>
Cc: Ramki Krishnan <[email protected]>; A. Prasad <[email protected]>; diego 
lopez <[email protected]>; Diego Lopez <[email protected]>; 
srini addepalli <[email protected]>
Subject: [OAUTH-WG] New Work: TLS Session-Bound Access Tokens 
(draft-mw-oauth-tls-session-bound-tokens)

Hi all,

We'd like to bring draft-mw-oauth-tls-session-bound-tokens to the WG's 
attention and gauge interest in adoption.


Problem

- Bearer token replay remains a live threat, particularly as autonomous AI 
agents and service mesh architectures chain API calls across multiple hops. In 
these environments, a stolen token can be replayed on a different TLS 
connection. RFC 8705 (cert-bound tokens) binds tokens to the client certificate 
but not the specific session; RFC 9449 (DPoP) provides per-request binding but 
requires a signature on every request, creating overhead that is prohibitive at 
scale and difficult in sidecar deployments where the signing key is isolated 
from the application process.


What the draft does

- We define a mechanism that binds OAuth 2.0 access tokens to a specific TLS 
session using the TLS Exporter/EKM value (RFC 5705 / RFC 8446 §7.5). A signed 
proof JWT — carrying the access token hash (ath) and the EKM value (ekm) — is 
constructed once per (token, connection) pair and reused across all requests on 
that connection. This amortizes the cryptographic cost while preventing 
cross-session replay.

- The mechanism fits naturally alongside RFC 8705 and RFC 9449 and helps 
satisfy the sender-constraining recommendations in RFC 9700.

Links

  *   Draft: 
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-mw-oauth-tls-session-bound-tokens/
  *   Authors: Ramki Krishnan, A Prasad, Diego Lopez, Srinivasa Addepalli


We welcome feedback on the approach.


Thanks,
Ramki (on behalf of the co-authors)

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