Anonymous Web Authentication (AWA)

Anonymous Web Authentication (AWA) is a pioneering, privacy-centric identity protocol designed to enhance modern web security and user experience by eliminating the need for traditional passwords and identity brokers. This open specification leverages the robust architecture of national eID systems and state-of-the-art WebCrypto technologies to establish a reliable framework for proving humanity online without exchanging personal data.

Key Features

• Permanent Proof of Humanity: AWA provides a deterministic identity model that guarantees the same user is recognized across different devices while preserving their anonymity.
• Privacy-Preserving Design: With AWA, sensitive personal information (PII) is never shared, ensuring that users maintain control over their data.
• Decentralized and Secure: The protocol operates without a central identity broker, enhancing privacy and reducing the risk of data breaches.

How It Works

AWA builds upon a permanent, high-entropy seed (denoted as MASTER_SUB), generated and controlled by national eID authorities. This 1024-bit random value is independently provisioned and stored securely, away from personal identifiers, creating a unique PAIRWISE_SUB for each relying party (RP).

Simplified Authentication Workflow

1. Initialization: Relying parties generate ephemeral values to initiate user authentication.
2. User Authentication: The user’s authenticator decrypts MASTER_SUB locally and computes a domain-specific pseudonym, encrypting it with the RP's public key for secure transmission.
3. Verification: The RP verifies the pseudonym, establishing an authentic session through a short-lived, encrypted session cookie.

Security and Privacy Enhancements

• AWA ensures zero exchange of PII, meaning names or emails never leave the user’s device.
• Identity verification occurs through cryptographic means, ensuring determinism (the same user correlates to the same pseudonym) while maintaining unlinkability across different RPs.
• With short-lived crypto keys and self-contained sessions, AWA minimizes exposure to potential security threats, ensuring robust session handling and authorization mechanisms.

Use Cases and Interoperability

The AWA protocol is designed to be compatible with existing systems like OAuth, allowing it to serve as a trust anchor for secure data exchanges among diverse services while keeping user identities private.

Conclusion

Anonymous Web Authentication introduces a fundamentally new approach to online identity and verification, focusing on privacy, efficiency, and user control. It presents an innovative solution to the prevalent challenges in web authentication, paving the way for a more secure and user-friendly internet experience.