Microsoft revisits Passport with InfoCard
Published: 18 May 2005 15:50 BST
But InfoCard's use will not be limited to storing and supplying ID information for making online payments or logging in to Web sites, Microsoft said. In addition, the first version will also support other authentication technologies, such as the x509 certificates used for smart cards, according to Shewchuk.
Insiders expect InfoCard to be part of Longhorn, the next major release of Windows due next year, but Michael Stephenson, a director in Microsoft's Windows Server group, said the company does not yet have concrete delivery plans for the technology.
When it pitched Passport six years ago, Microsoft envisioned thousands of online stores and other services using the system, which would let people sign on using the same username and password used for Microsoft services.
The market largely rejected Passport as the system's security was tested by hackers and scrutinised by privacy watchers who did not like the idea of Microsoft holding user information in its own databases. Potential partners, such as e-commerce sites, also balked at the idea.
Regulators in the US and Europe eventually put restrictions on Microsoft and Passport, which today is used primarily as a login system for Microsoft services.
InfoCard is different than Passport, said Jonathan Penn, an analyst at Forrester Research. "They have learned their lesson. With InfoCard the controls are supposed to be put in the user's hands," he said.
The authentication technology is part of a larger Microsoft identity management plan. Last week at the Digital ID World conference in San Francisco, executives described the company's Identity Metasystem. This architecture is designed to lie on top of the patchwork of identity systems that exist on the Internet, to make it possible for them to talk to one another.
The Identity Metasystem will support all the major identity technologies, Microsoft said. This includes some that have been developed by traditional Microsoft rivals, such as SAML, which includes the Liberty Alliance specifications for identity federation.
Though Microsoft may have tackled, in its new ID management effort, the stumbling block that stymied its Passport push, the new technology could run into a different sort of problem, Penn said.
"Microsoft is not going to be holding your credentials, but they are developing a system upon which the security of your credentials is reliant," Penn said. "InfoCard is going to be one of those services that hackers are going to try to get part of."
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