A Billion Keys, but Few Locks: The Crisis of Web Single Sign-On

OpenID and InfoCard are two mainstream Web single sign-on (SSO) solutions intended for Internet-scale adoption. While they are technically sound, the business model of these solutions does not provide content-hosting and service providers (CSPs) with sufficient incentives to become relying parties (RPs). In addition, the pressure from users and identity providers (IdPs) is not strong enough to drive CSPs toward adopting Web SSO. As a result, there are currently over one billion OpenID-enabled user accounts provided by major CSPs, but only a few relying parties. In this paper, we discuss the problem of Web SSO adoption for RPs and argue that solutions in this space must offer RPs sufficient business incentives and trustworthy identity services in order to succeed. We suggest future Web SSO development should investigate RPs' business needs, identify IdP business models, and build trust frameworks. Moreover, we propose that Web SSO technology should shift from its current shared-identity paradigm to a true Web single sign-on and sign-out experience in order to function as a platform to motivate RPs' adoption.