Password Manager Design Options

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Proxy or App Design options

There are two options:

proxy

The password manager acts as a proxy for the "real" RP --thus the domain in the RST is the domain of the site the browser is pointing at

app

The password manager IS the RP --it has its own domain/identity --thus the domain in the RST is the domain of the password manager.

Tradeoffs

App

• Pro: Security. The selector knows explicitly the identity of the app that it's dealing with, and can explicitly permission this app. This is good because it prevents any old plugin (e.g. a rogue plugin) from being able to request the user's un/pw for any site.
• Pro: Security. This allows the password manager extension to act as an "SSL" RP (as opposed to a non-SSL RP) and thus receive an encrypted token from the selector

Proxy

• Con: Security. (See above).

The Password Manager has decided to use the App approach.

Note: The full path of the login form is required to be managed (as a single site/domain may have N>1 un/pw login forms). Since the path portion is stripped from the RST, it must be passed as a separate parameter (e.g. in a separate (dynamically synthesized) claim type URI) in EITHER of the two above options.