Microsoft supports OpenID authentication standard

Adam Turner
Wednesday, 07 February 2007 06:58

Your IT - Home IT

After years of pushing its own "Passport" as a de facto standard, Microsoft has thrown its support behind the open source OpenID online authentication service.

Speaking at the RSA Conference in San Francisco, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates and Chief Research and Strategy Officer Craig Mundie pledged to integrate OpenID 2.0 with Microsoft's CardSpace identity management systems developed in conjunction with Windows Vista.

OpenID is an emerging open-source standard that simplifies the task of logging on to many different websites without the need for passwords. Windows CardSpace - formerly InfoCard - is Microsoft's digital identity management service. It is part of Microsoft's .Net 3.0 Framework and integrates with Windows's underlying Communication, Workflow and Presentation Foundation subsystems.

"Passwords are not only weak. Passwords have a huge problem. If you get more and more of them, the worse it is," Gates said during the keynote address.

The news is another nail in the coffin for Microsoft's Windows Live ID authentication service, previously known as .NET Passport, .NET My Services, Microsoft Passport Network and it's original project codename Hailstorm. In 2001, as Passport was integrated into Windows XP, Microsoft's Mundie was quoted as saying the public would fully accept HailStorm and Microsoft as a trusted repository within five to 10 years.

The same year Sun Microsystems formed the Liberty Alliance Project, a group of technology and business industry heavyweights working together to challenge Microsoft's controversial Hailstorm service. As Microsoft's new CardSpace system is token-agnostic, it has the ability to work with Windows Live ID, Liberty Alliance and OpenID.

Embracing OpenID is yet another recent move by Microsoft to combat a global backlash against de facto standards by governments and large corporations which fear a reliance on one vendor and format. Microsoft is also working to make Office 2007 compatible with the open source Open Document Format.