logoalt Hacker News

fc417fc802last Thursday at 6:19 AM1 replyview on HN

> This is exactly the same as you'd normally do implicitly by handing a CI/CD system a long-lived API token, except without the long-lived API token.

The other difference is being subjected to a whitelisting approach. That wasn't previously the case.

It's frustrating that seemingly every time better authentication schemes get introduced they come with functionality for client and third party service attestation baked in. All we ever really needed was a standardized way to limit the scope of a given credential coupled with a standardized challenge format to prove possession of a private key.


Replies

woodruffwlast Thursday at 4:20 PM

> The other difference is being subjected to a whitelisting approach. That wasn't previously the case.

You are not being subjected to one. Again: you can always use an API token with PyPI, even on a CI/CD platform that PyPI knows how to do Trusted Publishing against. It's purely optional.

> All we ever really needed was a standardized way to limit the scope of a given credential coupled with a standardized challenge format to prove possession of a private key.

That is what OIDC is. Well, not for a private key, but for a set of claims that constitute a machine identity, which the relying party can then do whatever it wants with.

But standards and interoperability don't mean that any given service will just choose to federate with every other service out there. Federation always has up-front and long-term costs that need to be balanced with actual delivered impact/value; for a single user on their own server, the actual value of OIDC federation versus an API token is nil.

show 1 reply