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by probablypat 1324 days ago
Who determines the standards for Authentication? Is there a main working group?
2 comments

It is somewhat split.

Cryptographic protocols are often defined in IETF/IRTF. You'll see things like Kerberos (authentication and attributes), OAuth (delegated authorization), and privacypass (anonymized authorization).

Many of these also have wire protocols too, such as OAuth describing HTTP API to get access tokens.

W3C has also defined some Web API for these concepts, for instance they have Web Crypto APIs as well as Web Authentication. But these concepts typically have split responsibility, such as Web Crypto being based on algorithms standardized in the IETF JOSE group, or Web Authentication being based on transports standardized under the FIDO Alliance.

So things tend to happen where they will be most successful, which means sometimes going to the place where all the right people are already participating.

The W3C?
Hah, I was not expecting that one.