Yahoo Opens Up to OpenID
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Internet giant Yahoo launched its OpenID provider service Thursday, allowing its 248 million registered users to log into dozens of popular websites using the same login and password. Ironically, none of those websites where users can take advantage of their new, easy login management tools are run by Yahoo.
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Dave Dash has posted a quick script to help with an integration of openID into your application - well, really just to read the response back easily.   I'm working on implementing openID for reviewsby.us and for use in symfony apps. One thing I was having trouble with was parsing key value pairs, which is one of the requirements to reading responses. It's a fairly easy task, but [PHP][] offers so many ways to do this.   He notes the spec for how the results are returned and shares his code (based around a regular expression) that goes through the response and separates things out into key/value pairs automatically.
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Paul Jones is rejoicing a bit about the OpenID and Typekey functionality Wez Furlong shared just the other day on his blog.   Wez Furlong gives us good news about implementing the math functions needed to support TypeKey and OpenID more directly within PHP.   Paul also mentions that the Solar framework has also had the Typekey support integrated for a while now (as an adapter) that uses the "big-number math functions" currently available to PHP developers. Wez's solution, however, would just about make those obsolete.
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Yahoo appears close to implementing&#160;OpenID, a Web authentication standard that relieves people of the need to remember multiple passwords to log into different Web sites.Yahoo controls a domain me.yahoo.com, which shows a short message indicating the company will act as an identity provider for OpenID.Code on pages at Flickr.com, owned by Yahoo, could also let a person use their Flickr login and profile for logging into other OpenID-compatible sites. The code can be seen by viewing the source of Flickr photostream pages, and points to&#160;https://open.login.yahooapis.com/openid/op/auth.OpenID, an open-source project, has gained support&#160;from two other major Internet players, Microsoft and Google. However, those companies are not widely providing support on their sites for OpenID yet.But an early implementation of OpenID by Yahoo could provide a spark for broader support, some say.&quot;I expect Yahoo&#39;s implementation to be a major influence in encouraging OpenID 2 adoption,&quot; wrote Simon Willison, a freelance Web consultant and developer who used to work for Flickr. In January last year, Willison launched idproxy.net, a Web site that links Yahoo IDs and OpenIDs.OpenID is referred to as a decentralized system since no one company or entity controls all of the identity information. It gives users more power to determine who they want to share their identity with and avoids the potential security problems of having a massive amount of data locked up in a single database. The system is also free.Web sites acting as an identity provider for OpenID give users a unique URL (Uniform Resource Locator). When a person encounters another Web site supporting OpenID, they can enter that URL along with the password they have registered with the identity provider, which is then verified in order to login at the new site.The person is then allowed to carry their profile or other information into the new Web site, a concept known as single sign-on. It means that people may need fewer passwords but would be able to securely share their data and login on more Web sites.A variety of companies and Web sites are supporting OpenID, such as AOL, LiveJournal, Technorati and mobile operator Orange, which is owned by France T&#233;l&#233;com, according to the OpenID Web site. Hundreds of other Web sites are also using OpenID.Yahoo could not be reached for comment.&#160;
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Yahoo! may be one step closer to challenging Google in searchable web-based e-mail. It has purchased the start-up behind the powerful e-mail application Bloomba.
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UPDATE: Yahoo user names and passwords can soon be used to access Web sites that support the OpenID 2.0 digital identity framework.
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openRiverbed - the PHP5 framework. Plugins, XML based configuration, XML2PDF output generation, template based, multi-language support for application and content, encrypted sessions, test-driven, oo developed... Must have!   New: - system administration GUI - configuration splitting - sitemap module - cookie based session - SEO like - yahoo js-framework integrated - title tag SEO - BUGFIXES
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Wez Furlong, a proponent of the OpenID authentication system, has posted a new tutorial of sorts that details a script for communication between your application and the OpenID servers.   I have a patch (php-openid.diff, for PHP 5, might also apply to PHP 4) for the openssl extension that makes it easier to build OpenID and TypeKey authentication support into your PHP apps. I don't have a canned solution for you to deploy, but I can give you some pointers on how to use these bits. I'm assuming that you know a bit about how OpenID works.    It's broken up into three sections - a look at associating with an OpenID server, performing the actual authentication (including the code for the page they're redirected back to), and an example of using the same functionality to interface with TypeKey.
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In a comment yesterday on Marc Canter's blog, discussing the race to be the default identity system for the Internet.. "I wouldn&#185;t count out Google, they've got a lot of users, and a lot of money. I think they could probably buy Yahoo, but someone else would have to do the math." Ashkan Karbasfrooshan did the math.
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Yahoo user names and passwords will be used to access Web sites that support the OpenID 2.0 digital identity framework, starting January 30.
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Yahoo is moving in a big way to embrace the new OpenID 2.0 specification, which eliminates the need for Web surfers to create separate IDs and logins at each of the Web sites, blogs and profile pages that they may visit during an online session.
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DevShed is starting up a new series this morning with this new tutorial, part one in the creation of a simple blogging system using PHP and MySQL.   In this three-part tutorial we are going to be creating an open blogging system. We are also going to provide scripts that will make it possible to switch to a closed blogging system. This article, which is the first part, will cover the creation of the login scripts for a closed system.   They start with a definition, the difference between an open blogging system and a closed one (if users have to register or not). They start with the creation of the database to store the users in followed by the PHP code for the simple login page. It uses sessions to keep track of which user is logged in. Of course, where there's a log in, there needs to be a log out and they give the simple code for that. Finally, they include a "forgot your password" script to help users when they can't remember the info they'd signed up with.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft Corp. has thrown its weight behind OpenID, an emerging Web authentication standard. The announcement was made Tuesday atÂ the RSA Conference in San Francisco during a joint keynote by Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates and Chief Research and Strategy Officer Craig Mundie that was long on vision and short on specifics. Microsoft pledged to work to integrate OpenID with its CardSpace identity management software, which is now available in conjunction with Windows Vista. "The marriage of CardSpace and OpenID 2.0 is actually a giant step forward," Mundie said. By integrating these two technologies, Microsoft expects to "eliminate the issue of the man-in-the-middle-attack," Mundie said. In these attacks, which are increasingly being used by phishers, a thief steals sensitive information by setting up a fake Web site that passes information back and forth between the victim and the legitimate Web site. OpenID is an emerging open-source standard that simplifies the task of logging on to many different Web sites. Gates and Mundie spent much of their keynote discussing how their company plans to simplify security and make the process of managing digital identities easier. IT professionals could achieve both ends by getting rid of log-in passwords and replacing them with strong, certificate-based authentication techniques like smart cards, Gates said. "Passwords are not only weak. Passwords have a huge problem. If you get more and more of them, the worse it is," he said. "We see smart cards ... [and] certificates in general as the way these things should go. You'll be presenting certificates as opposed to weak passwords," he said. Microsoft hopes to drive the adoption of smart cards, with the launch of its Identity Lifecycle Manager 2007, introduced at RSA. Expected to ship on May 1, this software integrates technology from Microsoft's 2005 acquisition of Alacris with the company's Identity Integration Server. The software will make it easier for users to integrate strong authentication technologies like smart cards into Microsoft networks. Mundie suggested that in order for security to work, technology companies will need to turn their thinking upside down, to a certain extent. "Security was really a blocking thing," Mundie said. "How do you invert this ... so these security mechanisms become a thing that makes it simpler for anyone to be granted permission to get [network] access." Microsoft plans to achieve this by switching the focus using technologies like IPsec (Internet Protocol security) and IPv6 (IP version 6), Mundie said. The company has already been using these technologies for the past two and a half years in an internal access control system that is better about granting employees and contractors access to the data and applications that they need, but keeping them away from the rest of the network, he said. With breaches being reported every week -- often after the loss of a laptop computer -- companies need to think beyond locking down the perimeter of their networks, Mundie added. "The threat model is changing in fundamental ways. We could continue to invest in this fortress mentality of protecting everything, but I don't think that would be sufficient," he said. "Our castle is fairly porous because a lot of our assets leave the castle." Microsoft's broad vision did not impress one attendee. "This was the most content-free presentation I've seen at RSA in years," said Bruce Schneier, chief technology officer with BT Group PLC's Counterpane unit. "My guess is that most people in the room could have given that talk because it's where we all want to go." The keynote, in which Gates and his successor sat side-by-side and, at times, finished each others thoughts, appeared to be a symbolic handing over of power, Schneier said. Gates will be stepping down from his day-to-day duties in July 2008, at which point Mundie will take over Microsoft's research efforts. But Schneier doesn't expect Gates to appear at next year's conference. "The take-away is Craig's coming back next year, but Bill isn't," he said.
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Yahoo linking to different sites on the Web on its home page as part of strategy to open up and re-portalize.
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Yahoo&#39;s email service has begun to use the company&#39;s DomainKeys authentication technology, almost a year after Yahoo first unveiled this antispam project.
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As mentioned by Derick Rethans on his blog today, there's some new versions of several (five) of the components in the next version of the eZ Components framework:   In the just released alpha versions you can find new features, such as better support for OpenID, a Database backend for OpenID authentication, a validating method for e-mail addresses, SMTP authentication support for DIGEST-MD5, CRAM-MD5, NTLM and LOGIN and encoding support for e-mail headers.   He also mentions other goodies like tree structure handling and functionality to support WebDav connections. Check out their roadmap to get a better idea of what's to come.
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Yahoo will be opening up its search advertising system, code named "Panama," to new customers. Previously, only current advertisers were able to access the service, which aims to put the company on par with Google and Microsoft.