Web Authentication:
An API for accessing Public Key Credentials
Level 3

Editor’s Draft,

More details about this document
This version:
https://w3c.github.io/webauthn/
Latest published version:
https://www.w3.org/TR/webauthn-3/
Previous Versions:
Implementation Report:
https://www.w3.org/2020/12/webauthn-report.html
Feedback:
GitHub
Editors:
(Microsoft)
(Microsoft)
(Yubico)
Former Editors:
(Google)
(Microsoft)
(Google)
(Google)
Jeff Hodges (formerly Google)
J.C. Jones (formerly Mozilla)
(PayPal)
(Microsoft)
(Nok Nok Labs)
Contributors:
John Bradley (Yubico)
Christiaan Brand (Google)
Tim Cappalli (Microsoft)
Adam Langley (Google)
Giridhar Mandyam (Qualcomm)
Matthew Miller (Cisco)
Nina Satragno (Google)
Nick Steele (Gemini)
Jiewen Tan (Apple)
Shane Weeden (IBM)
Mike West (Google)
Jeffrey Yasskin (Google)
Tests:
web-platform-tests webauthn/ (ongoing work)

Abstract

This specification defines an API enabling the creation and use of strong, attested, scoped, public key-based credentials by web applications, for the purpose of strongly authenticating users. Conceptually, one or more public key credentials, each scoped to a given WebAuthn Relying Party, are created by and bound to authenticators as requested by the web application. The user agent mediates access to authenticators and their public key credentials in order to preserve user privacy. Authenticators are responsible for ensuring that no operation is performed without user consent. Authenticators provide cryptographic proof of their properties to Relying Parties via attestation. This specification also describes the functional model for WebAuthn conformant authenticators, including their signature and attestation functionality.

Status of this document

This section describes the status of this document at the time of its publication. A list of current W3C publications and the latest revision of this technical report can be found in the W3C technical reports index at http://www.w3.org/TR/.

This document was published by the Web Authentication Working Group as an Editors' Draft. This document is intended to become a W3C Recommendation. Feedback and comments on this specification are welcome. Please use Github issues. Discussions may also be found in the public-webauthn@w3.org archives.

Publication as an Editors' Draft does not imply endorsement by W3C and its Members. This is a draft document and may be updated, replaced or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to cite this document as other than work in progress.

This document was produced by a group operating under the W3C Patent Policy. W3C maintains a public list of any patent disclosures made in connection with the deliverables of the group; that page also includes instructions for disclosing a patent. An individual who has actual knowledge of a patent which the individual believes contains Essential Claim(s) must disclose the information in accordance with section 6 of the W3C Patent Policy.

This document is governed by the 2 November 2021 W3C Process Document.

1. Introduction

This section is not normative.

This specification defines an API enabling the creation and use of strong, attested, scoped, public key-based credentials by web applications, for the purpose of strongly authenticating users. A public key credential is created and stored by a WebAuthn Authenticator at the behest of a WebAuthn Relying Party, subject to user consent. Subsequently, the public key credential can only be accessed by origins belonging to that Relying Party. This scoping is enforced jointly by conforming User Agents and authenticators. Additionally, privacy across Relying Parties is maintained; Relying Parties are not able to detect any properties, or even the existence, of credentials scoped to other Relying Parties.

Relying Parties employ the Web Authentication API during two distinct, but related, ceremonies involving a user. The first is Registration, where a public key credential is created on an authenticator, and scoped to a Relying Party with the present user’s account (the account might already exist or might be created at this time). The second is Authentication, where the Relying Party is presented with an Authentication Assertion proving the presence and consent of the user who registered the public key credential. Functionally, the Web Authentication API comprises a PublicKeyCredential which extends the Credential Management API [CREDENTIAL-MANAGEMENT-1], and infrastructure which allows those credentials to be used with navigator.credentials.create() and navigator.credentials.get(). The former is used during Registration, and the latter during Authentication.

Broadly, compliant authenticators protect public key credentials, and interact with user agents to implement the Web Authentication API. Implementing compliant authenticators is possible in software executing (a) on a general-purpose computing device, (b) on an on-device Secure Execution Environment, Trusted Platform Module (TPM), or a Secure Element (SE), or (c) off device. Authenticators being implemented on device are called platform authenticators. Authenticators being implemented off device (roaming authenticators) can be accessed over a transport such as Universal Serial Bus (USB), Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), or Near Field Communications (NFC).

1.1. Specification Roadmap

While many W3C specifications are directed primarily to user agent developers and also to web application developers (i.e., "Web authors"), the nature of Web Authentication requires that this specification be correctly used by multiple audiences, as described below.

All audiences ought to begin with § 1.2 Use Cases, § 1.3 Sample API Usage Scenarios, and § 4 Terminology, and should also refer to [WebAuthnAPIGuide] for an overall tutorial. Beyond that, the intended audiences for this document are the following main groups:

Note: Along with the Web Authentication API itself, this specification defines a request-response cryptographic protocol—the WebAuthn/FIDO2 protocol—between a WebAuthn Relying Party server and an authenticator, where the Relying Party's request consists of a challenge and other input data supplied by the Relying Party and sent to the authenticator. The request is conveyed via the combination of HTTPS, the Relying Party web application, the WebAuthn API, and the platform-specific communications channel between the user agent and the authenticator. The authenticator replies with a digitally signed authenticator data message and other output data, which is conveyed back to the Relying Party server via the same path in reverse. Protocol details vary according to whether an authentication or registration operation is invoked by the Relying Party. See also Figure 1 and Figure 2.

It is important for Web Authentication deployments' end-to-end security that the role of each component—the Relying Party server, the client, and the authenticator— as well as § 13 Security Considerations and § 14 Privacy Considerations, are understood by all audiences.

1.2. Use Cases

The below use case scenarios illustrate use of two very different types of authenticators, as well as outline further scenarios. Additional scenarios, including sample code, are given later in § 1.3 Sample API Usage Scenarios.

1.2.1. Registration

1.2.2. Authentication

1.2.3. New Device Registration

This use case scenario illustrates how a Relying Party can leverage a combination of a roaming authenticator (e.g., a USB security key fob) and a platform authenticator (e.g., a built-in fingerprint sensor) such that the user has:

Note: This approach of registering multiple authenticators for an account is also useful in account recovery use cases.

1.2.4. Other Use Cases and Configurations

A variety of additional use cases and configurations are also possible, including (but not limited to):

1.3. Sample API Usage Scenarios

This section is not normative.

In this section, we walk through some events in the lifecycle of a public key credential, along with the corresponding sample code for using this API. Note that this is an example flow and does not limit the scope of how the API can be used.

As was the case in earlier sections, this flow focuses on a use case involving a first-factor roaming authenticator with its own display. One example of such an authenticator would be a smart phone. Other authenticator types are also supported by this API, subject to implementation by the client platform. For instance, this flow also works without modification for the case of an authenticator that is embedded in the client device. The flow also works for the case of an authenticator without its own display (similar to a smart card) subject to specific implementation considerations. Specifically, the client platform needs to display any prompts that would otherwise be shown by the authenticator, and the authenticator needs to allow the client platform to enumerate all the authenticator’s credentials so that the client can have information to show appropriate prompts.

1.3.1. Registration

This is the first-time flow, in which a new credential is created and registered with the server. In this flow, the WebAuthn Relying Party does not have a preference for platform authenticator or roaming authenticators.

  1. The user visits example.com, which serves up a script. At this point, the user may already be logged in using a legacy username and password, or additional authenticator, or other means acceptable to the Relying Party. Or the user may be in the process of creating a new account.

  2. The Relying Party script runs the code snippet below.

  3. The client platform searches for and locates the authenticator.

  4. The client connects to the authenticator, performing any pairing actions if necessary.

  5. The authenticator shows appropriate UI for the user to provide a biometric or other authorization gesture.

  6. The authenticator returns a response to the client, which in turn returns a response to the Relying Party script. If the user declined to select an authenticator or provide authorization, an appropriate error is returned.

  7. If a new credential was created,

    • The Relying Party script sends the newly generated credential public key to the server, along with additional information such as attestation regarding the provenance and characteristics of the authenticator.

    • The server stores the credential public key in its database and associates it with the user as well as with the characteristics of authentication indicated by attestation, also storing a friendly name for later use.

    • The script may store data such as the credential ID in local storage, to improve future UX by narrowing the choice of credential for the user.

The sample code for generating and registering a new key follows:

if (!window.PublicKeyCredential) { /* Client not capable. Handle error. */ }

var publicKey = {
  // The challenge is produced by the server; see the Security Considerations
  challenge: new Uint8Array([21,31,105 /* 29 more random bytes generated by the server */]),

  // Relying Party:
  rp: {
    name: "ACME Corporation"
  },

  // User:
  user: {
    id: Uint8Array.from(window.atob("MIIBkzCCATigAwIBAjCCAZMwggE4oAMCAQIwggGTMII="), c=>c.charCodeAt(0)),
    name: "alex.mueller@example.com",
    displayName: "Alex Müller",
  },

  // This Relying Party will accept either an ES256 or RS256 credential, but
  // prefers an ES256 credential.
  pubKeyCredParams: [
    {
      type: "public-key",
      alg: -7 // "ES256" as registered in the IANA COSE Algorithms registry
    },
    {
      type: "public-key",
      alg: -257 // Value registered by this specification for "RS256"
    }
  ],

  authenticatorSelection: {
    // Try to use UV if possible. This is also the default.
    userVerification: "preferred"
  },

  timeout: 300000,  // 5 minutes
  excludeCredentials: [
    // Don’t re-register any authenticator that has one of these credentials
    {"id": Uint8Array.from(window.atob("ufJWp8YGlibm1Kd9XQBWN1WAw2jy5In2Xhon9HAqcXE="), c=>c.charCodeAt(0)), "type": "public-key"},
    {"id": Uint8Array.from(window.atob("E/e1dhZc++mIsz4f9hb6NifAzJpF1V4mEtRlIPBiWdY="), c=>c.charCodeAt(0)), "type": "public-key"}
  ],

  // Make excludeCredentials check backwards compatible with credentials registered with U2F
  extensions: {"appidExclude": "https://acme.example.com"}
};

// Note: The following call will cause the authenticator to display UI.
navigator.credentials.create({ publicKey })
  .then(function (newCredentialInfo) {
    // Send new credential info to server for verification and registration.
  }).catch(function (err) {
    // No acceptable authenticator or user refused consent. Handle appropriately.
  });

1.3.2. Registration Specifically with User-Verifying Platform Authenticator

This is an example flow for when the WebAuthn Relying Party is specifically interested in creating a public key credential with a user-verifying platform authenticator.

  1. The user visits example.com and clicks on the login button, which redirects the user to login.example.com.

  2. The user enters a username and password to log in. After successful login, the user is redirected back to example.com.

  3. The Relying Party script runs the code snippet below.

    1. The user agent checks if a user-verifying platform authenticator is available. If not, terminate this flow.

    2. The Relying Party asks the user if they want to create a credential with it. If not, terminate this flow.

    3. The user agent and/or operating system shows appropriate UI and guides the user in creating a credential using one of the available platform authenticators.

    4. Upon successful credential creation, the Relying Party script conveys the new credential to the server.

if (!window.PublicKeyCredential) { /* Client not capable of the API. Handle error. */ }

PublicKeyCredential.isUserVerifyingPlatformAuthenticatorAvailable()
    .then(function (uvpaAvailable) {
        // If there is a user-verifying platform authenticator
        if (uvpaAvailable) {
            // Render some RP-specific UI and get a Promise for a Boolean value
            return askIfUserWantsToCreateCredential();
        }
    }).then(function (userSaidYes) {
        // If there is a user-verifying platform authenticator
        // AND the user wants to create a credential
        if (userSaidYes) {
            var publicKeyOptions = { /* Public key credential creation options. */};
            return navigator.credentials.create({ "publicKey": publicKeyOptions });
        }
    }).then(function (newCredentialInfo) {
        if (newCredentialInfo) {
            // Send new credential info to server for verification and registration.
        }
    }).catch(function (err) {
        // Something went wrong. Handle appropriately.
    });

1.3.3. Authentication

This is the flow when a user with an already registered credential visits a website and wants to authenticate using the credential.

  1. The user visits example.com, which serves up a script.

  2. The script asks the client for an Authentication Assertion, providing as much information as possible to narrow the choice of acceptable credentials for the user. This can be obtained from the data that was stored locally after registration, or by other means such as prompting the user for a username.

  3. The Relying Party script runs one of the code snippets below.

  4. The client platform searches for and locates the authenticator.

  5. The client connects to the authenticator, performing any pairing actions if necessary.

  6. The authenticator presents the user with a notification that their attention is needed. On opening the notification, the user is shown a friendly selection menu of acceptable credentials using the account information provided when creating the credentials, along with some information on the origin that is requesting these keys.

  7. The authenticator obtains a biometric or other authorization gesture from the user.

  8. The authenticator returns a response to the client, which in turn returns a response to the Relying Party script. If the user declined to select a credential or provide an authorization, an appropriate error is returned.

  9. If an assertion was successfully generated and returned,

    • The script sends the assertion to the server.

    • The server examines the assertion, extracts the credential ID, looks up the registered credential public key in its database, and verifies the assertion signature. If valid, it looks up the identity associated with the assertion’s credential ID; that identity is now authenticated. If the credential ID is not recognized by the server (e.g., it has been deregistered due to inactivity) then the authentication has failed; each Relying Party will handle this in its own way.

    • The server now does whatever it would otherwise do upon successful authentication -- return a success page, set authentication cookies, etc.

If the Relying Party script does not have any hints available (e.g., from locally stored data) to help it narrow the list of credentials, then the sample code for performing such an authentication might look like this:

if (!window.PublicKeyCredential) { /* Client not capable. Handle error. */ }

// credentialId is generated by the authenticator and is an opaque random byte array
var credentialId = new Uint8Array([183, 148, 245 /* more random bytes previously generated by the authenticator */]);
var options = {
  // The challenge is produced by the server; see the Security Considerations
  challenge: new Uint8Array([4,101,15 /* 29 more random bytes generated by the server */]),
  timeout: 300000,  // 5 minutes
  allowCredentials: [{ type: "public-key", id: credentialId }]
};

navigator.credentials.get({ "publicKey": options })
    .then(function (assertion) {
    // Send assertion to server for verification
}).catch(function (err) {
    // No acceptable credential or user refused consent. Handle appropriately.
});

On the other hand, if the Relying Party script has some hints to help it narrow the list of credentials, then the sample code for performing such an authentication might look like the following. Note that this sample also demonstrates how to use the Credential Properties Extension.

if (!window.PublicKeyCredential) { /* Client not capable. Handle error. */ }

var encoder = new TextEncoder();
var acceptableCredential1 = {
    type: "public-key",
    id: encoder.encode("BA44712732CE")
};
var acceptableCredential2 = {
    type: "public-key",
    id: encoder.encode("BG35122345NF")
};

var options = {
  // The challenge is produced by the server; see the Security Considerations
  challenge: new Uint8Array([8,18,33 /* 29 more random bytes generated by the server */]),
  timeout: 300000,  // 5 minutes
  allowCredentials: [acceptableCredential1, acceptableCredential2],
  extensions: { 'credProps': true }
};

navigator.credentials.get({ "publicKey": options })
    .then(function (assertion) {
    // Send assertion to server for verification
}).catch(function (err) {
    // No acceptable credential or user refused consent. Handle appropriately.
});

1.3.4. Aborting Authentication Operations

The below example shows how a developer may use the AbortSignal parameter to abort a credential registration operation. A similar procedure applies to an authentication operation.

const authAbortController = new AbortController();
const authAbortSignal = authAbortController.signal;

authAbortSignal.onabort = function () {
    // Once the page knows the abort started, inform user it is attempting to abort.
}

var options = {
    // A list of options.
}

navigator.credentials.create({
    publicKey: options,
    signal: authAbortSignal})
    .then(function (attestation) {
        // Register the user.
    }).catch(function (error) {
        if (error == "AbortError") {
            // Inform user the credential hasn’t been created.
            // Let the server know a key hasn’t been created.
        }
    });

// Assume widget shows up whenever authentication occurs.
if (widget == "disappear") {
    authAbortController.abort();
}

1.3.5. Decommissioning

The following are possible situations in which decommissioning a credential might be desired. Note that all of these are handled on the server side and do not need support from the API specified here.

1.4. Platform-Specific Implementation Guidance

This specification defines how to use Web Authentication in the general case. When using Web Authentication in connection with specific platform support (e.g. apps), it is recommended to see platform-specific documentation and guides for additional guidance and limitations.

2. Conformance

This specification defines three conformance classes. Each of these classes is specified so that conforming members of the class are secure against non-conforming or hostile members of the other classes.

2.1. User Agents

A User Agent MUST behave as described by § 5 Web Authentication API in order to be considered conformant. Conforming User Agents MAY implement algorithms given in this specification in any way desired, so long as the end result is indistinguishable from the result that would be obtained by the specification’s algorithms.

A conforming User Agent MUST also be a conforming implementation of the IDL fragments of this specification, as described in the “Web IDL” specification. [WebIDL]

2.1.1. Enumerations as DOMString types

Enumeration types are not referenced by other parts of the Web IDL because that would preclude other values from being used without updating this specification and its implementations. It is important for backwards compatibility that client platforms and Relying Parties handle unknown values. Enumerations for this specification exist here for documentation and as a registry. Where the enumerations are represented elsewhere, they are typed as DOMStrings, for example in transports.

2.2. Authenticators

A WebAuthn Authenticator MUST provide the operations defined by § 6 WebAuthn Authenticator Model, and those operations MUST behave as described there. This is a set of functional and security requirements for an authenticator to be usable by a Conforming User Agent.

As described in § 1.2 Use Cases, an authenticator may be implemented in the operating system underlying the User Agent, or in external hardware, or a combination of both.

2.2.1. Backwards Compatibility with FIDO U2F

Authenticators that only support the § 8.6 FIDO U2F Attestation Statement Format have no mechanism to store a user handle, so the returned userHandle will always be null.

2.3. WebAuthn Relying Parties

A WebAuthn Relying Party MUST behave as described in § 7 WebAuthn Relying Party Operations to obtain all the security benefits offered by this specification. See § 13.4.1 Security Benefits for WebAuthn Relying Parties for further discussion of this.

2.4. All Conformance Classes

All CBOR encoding performed by the members of the above conformance classes MUST be done using the CTAP2 canonical CBOR encoding form. All decoders of the above conformance classes SHOULD reject CBOR that is not validly encoded in the CTAP2 canonical CBOR encoding form and SHOULD reject messages with duplicate map keys.

3. Dependencies

This specification relies on several other underlying specifications, listed below and in Terms defined by reference.

Base64url encoding

The term Base64url Encoding refers to the base64 encoding using the URL- and filename-safe character set defined in Section 5 of [RFC4648], with all trailing '=' characters omitted (as permitted by Section 3.2) and without the inclusion of any line breaks, whitespace, or other additional characters.

CBOR

A number of structures in this specification, including attestation statements and extensions, are encoded using the CTAP2 canonical CBOR encoding form of the Compact Binary Object Representation (CBOR) [RFC8949], as defined in [FIDO-CTAP].

CDDL

This specification describes the syntax of all CBOR-encoded data using the CBOR Data Definition Language (CDDL) [RFC8610].

COSE

CBOR Object Signing and Encryption (COSE) [RFC9052] [RFC9053]. The IANA COSE Algorithms registry [IANA-COSE-ALGS-REG] originally established by [RFC8152] and updated by these specifications is also used.

Credential Management

The API described in this document is an extension of the Credential concept defined in [CREDENTIAL-MANAGEMENT-1].

DOM

DOMException and the DOMException values used in this specification are defined in [DOM4].

ECMAScript

%ArrayBuffer% is defined in [ECMAScript].

HTML

The concepts of browsing context, origin, opaque origin, tuple origin, relevant settings object, same site and is a registrable domain suffix of or is equal to are defined in [HTML].

URL

The concepts of domain, host, port, scheme, valid domain and valid domain string are defined in [URL].

Web IDL

Many of the interface definitions and all of the IDL in this specification depend on [WebIDL]. This updated version of the Web IDL standard adds support for Promises, which are now the preferred mechanism for asynchronous interaction in all new web APIs.

FIDO AppID

The algorithms for determining the FacetID of a calling application and determining if a caller’s FacetID is authorized for an AppID (used only in the AppID extension) are defined by [FIDO-APPID].

The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in [RFC2119].

4. Terminology

Attestation

Generally, attestation is a statement that serves to bear witness, confirm, or authenticate. In the WebAuthn context, attestation is employed to provide verifiable evidence as to the origin of an authenticator and the data it emits. This includes such things as credential IDs, credential key pairs, signature counters, etc.

An attestation statement is provided within an attestation object during a registration ceremony. See also § 6.5 Attestation and Figure 6. Whether or how the client conveys the attestation statement and AAGUID portions of the attestation object to the Relying Party is described by attestation conveyance.

Attestation Certificate

An X.509 Certificate for the attestation key pair used by an authenticator to attest to its manufacture and capabilities. At registration time, the authenticator uses the attestation private key to sign the Relying Party-specific credential public key (and additional data) that it generates and returns via the authenticatorMakeCredential operation. Relying Parties use the attestation public key conveyed in the attestation certificate to verify the attestation signature. Note that in the case of self attestation, the authenticator has no distinct attestation key pair nor attestation certificate, see self attestation for details.

Authentication
Authentication Ceremony

The ceremony where a user, and the user’s client platform (containing or connected to at least one authenticator) work in concert to cryptographically prove to a Relying Party that the user controls the credential private key of a previously-registered public key credential (see Registration). Note that this includes a test of user presence or user verification.

The WebAuthn authentication ceremony is defined in § 7.2 Verifying an Authentication Assertion, and is initiated by the Relying Party invoking a navigator.credentials.get() operation with a publicKey argument. See § 5 Web Authentication API for an introductory overview and § 1.3.3 Authentication for implementation examples.

Authentication Assertion
Assertion

The cryptographically signed AuthenticatorAssertionResponse object returned by an authenticator as the result of an authenticatorGetAssertion operation.

This corresponds to the [CREDENTIAL-MANAGEMENT-1] specification’s single-use credentials.

Authenticator
WebAuthn Authenticator

A cryptographic entity, existing in hardware or software, that can register a user with a given Relying Party and later assert possession of the registered public key credential, and optionally verify the user, when requested by the Relying Party. Authenticators can report information regarding their type and security characteristics via attestation during registration.

A WebAuthn Authenticator could be a roaming authenticator, a dedicated hardware subsystem integrated into the client device, or a software component of the client or client device.

In general, an authenticator is assumed to have only one user. If multiple natural persons share access to an authenticator, they are considered to represent the same user in the context of that authenticator. If an authenticator implementation supports multiple users in separated compartments, then each compartment is considered a separate authenticator with a single user with no access to other users' credentials.

Authorization Gesture

An authorization gesture is a physical interaction performed by a user with an authenticator as part of a ceremony, such as registration or authentication. By making such an authorization gesture, a user provides consent for (i.e., authorizes) a ceremony to proceed. This MAY involve user verification if the employed authenticator is capable, or it MAY involve a simple test of user presence.

Backed Up

Public Key Credential Sources may be backed up in some fashion such that they may become present on an authenticator other than their generating authenticator. Backup can occur via mechanisms including but not limited to peer-to-peer sync, cloud sync, local network sync, and manual import/export. See also § 6.1.3 Credential Backup State.

Backup Eligibility
Backup Eligible

A Public Key Credential Source's generating authenticator determines at creation time whether the public key credential source is allowed to be backed up. Backup eligibility is signaled in authenticator data's flags along with the current backup state. Backup eligibility is a credential property and is permanent for a given public key credential source. A backup eligible public key credential source is referred to as a multi-device credential whereas one that is not backup eligible is referred to as a single-device credential. See also § 6.1.3 Credential Backup State.

Backup State

The current backup state of a multi-device credential as determined by the current managing authenticator. Backup state is signaled in authenticator data's flags and can change over time. See also backup eligibility and § 6.1.3 Credential Backup State.

Biometric Authenticator

Any authenticator that implements biometric recognition.

Biometric Recognition

The automated recognition of individuals based on their biological and behavioral characteristics [ISOBiometricVocabulary].

Bound credential
"Authenticator contains a credential"
"Credential created on an authenticator"

A public key credential source or public key credential is said to be bound to its managing authenticator. This means that only the managing authenticator can generate assertions for the public key credential sources bound to it.

This may also be expressed as "the managing authenticator contains the bound credential", or "the bound credential was created on its managing authenticator". Note, however, that a server-side credential might not be physically stored in persistent memory inside the authenticator, hence "bound to" is the primary term. See § 6.2.2 Credential Storage Modality.

Ceremony

The concept of a ceremony [Ceremony] is an extension of the concept of a network protocol, with human nodes alongside computer nodes and with communication links that include user interface(s), human-to-human communication, and transfers of physical objects that carry data. What is out-of-band to a protocol is in-band to a ceremony. In this specification, Registration and Authentication are ceremonies, and an authorization gesture is often a component of those ceremonies.

Client
WebAuthn Client

Also referred to herein as simply a client. See also Conforming User Agent. A WebAuthn Client is an intermediary entity typically implemented in the user agent (in whole, or in part). Conceptually, it underlies the Web Authentication API and embodies the implementation of the [[Create]](origin, options, sameOriginWithAncestors) and [[DiscoverFromExternalSource]](origin, options, sameOriginWithAncestors) internal methods. It is responsible for both marshalling the inputs for the underlying authenticator operations, and for returning the results of the latter operations to the Web Authentication API's callers.

The WebAuthn Client runs on, and is distinct from, a WebAuthn Client Device.

Client Device
WebAuthn Client Device

The hardware device on which the WebAuthn Client runs, for example a smartphone, a laptop computer or a desktop computer, and the operating system running on that hardware.

The distinctions between a WebAuthn Client device and a client are:

A client device and a client together constitute a client platform.

Client Platform

A client device and a client together make up a client platform. A single hardware device MAY be part of multiple distinct client platforms at different times by running different operating systems and/or clients.

Client-Side

This refers in general to the combination of the user’s client platform, authenticators, and everything gluing it all together.

Client-side discoverable Public Key Credential Source
Client-side discoverable Credential
Discoverable Credential
[DEPRECATED] Resident Credential
[DEPRECATED] Resident Key

Note: Historically, client-side discoverable credentials have been known as resident credentials or resident keys. Due to the phrases ResidentKey and residentKey being widely used in both the WebAuthn API and also in the Authenticator Model (e.g., in dictionary member names, algorithm variable names, and operation parameters) the usage of resident within their names has not been changed for backwards compatibility purposes. Also, the term resident key is defined here as equivalent to a client-side discoverable credential.

A Client-side discoverable Public Key Credential Source, or Discoverable Credential for short, is a public key credential source that is discoverable and usable in authentication ceremonies where the Relying Party does not provide any credential IDs, i.e., the Relying Party invokes navigator.credentials.get() with an empty allowCredentials argument. This means that the Relying Party does not necessarily need to first identify the user.

As a consequence, a discoverable credential capable authenticator can generate an assertion signature for a discoverable credential given only an RP ID, which in turn necessitates that the public key credential source is stored in the authenticator or client platform. This is in contrast to a Server-side Public Key Credential Source, which requires that the authenticator is given both the RP ID and the credential ID but does not require client-side storage of the public key credential source.

See also: client-side credential storage modality and non-discoverable credential.

Note: Client-side discoverable credentials are also usable in authentication ceremonies where credential IDs are given, i.e., when calling navigator.credentials.get() with a non-empty allowCredentials argument.

Conforming User Agent

A user agent implementing, in cooperation with the underlying client device, the Web Authentication API and algorithms given in this specification, and handling communication between authenticators and Relying Parties.

Credential ID

A probabilistically-unique byte sequence identifying a public key credential source and its authentication assertions. At most 1023 bytes long.

Credential IDs are generated by authenticators in two forms:

  1. At least 16 bytes that include at least 100 bits of entropy, or

  2. The public key credential source, without its Credential ID or mutable items, encrypted so only its managing authenticator can decrypt it. This form allows the authenticator to be nearly stateless, by having the Relying Party store any necessary state.

    Note: [FIDO-UAF-AUTHNR-CMDS] includes guidance on encryption techniques under "Security Guidelines".

Relying Parties do not need to distinguish these two Credential ID forms.

Credential Key Pair
Credential Private Key
Credential Public Key
User Public Key
User Credential

A credential key pair is a pair of asymmetric cryptographic keys generated by an authenticator and scoped to a specific WebAuthn Relying Party. It is the central part of a public key credential.

A credential public key is the public key portion of a credential key pair. The credential public key is returned to the Relying Party during a registration ceremony.

A credential private key is the private key portion of a credential key pair. The credential private key is bound to a particular authenticator - its managing authenticator - and is expected to never be exposed to any other party, not even to the owner of the authenticator.

Note that in the case of self attestation, the credential key pair is also used as the attestation key pair, see self attestation for details.

Note: The credential public key is referred to as the user public key in FIDO UAF [UAFProtocol], and in FIDO U2F [FIDO-U2F-Message-Formats] and some parts of this specification that relate to it.

Credential Properties

A credential property is some characteristic property of a public key credential source, such as whether it is a client-side discoverable credential or a server-side credential.

Credential Record

In order to implement the algorithms defined in § 7 WebAuthn Relying Party Operations, the Relying Party MUST store some properties of registered public key credential sources. The credential record struct is an abstraction of these properties stored in a user account. A credential record is created during a registration ceremony and used in subsequent authentication ceremonies. Relying Parties MAY delete credential records as necessary or when requested by users.

The following items are RECOMMENDED in order to implement all steps of § 7.1 Registering a New Credential and § 7.2 Verifying an Authentication Assertion as defined:

type

The type of the public key credential source.

id

The Credential ID of the public key credential source.

publicKey

The credential public key of the public key credential source.

signCount

The latest value of the signature counter in the authenticator data from any ceremony using the public key credential source.

transports

The value returned from getTransports() when the public key credential source was registered.

Note: Modifying or removing items from the value returned from getTransports() could negatively impact user experience, or even prevent use of the corresponding credential.

uvInitialized

A Boolean value indicating whether any credential from this public key credential source has had the UV flag set.

When this is true, the Relying Party MAY consider the UV flag as an authentication factor in authentication ceremonies. For example, a Relying Party might skip a password prompt if uvInitialized is true and the UV flag is set, even when user verification was not required.

When this is false, including an authentication ceremony where it would be updated to true, the UV flag MUST NOT be relied upon as an authentication factor. This is because the first time a public key credential source sets the UV flag to 1, there is not yet any trust relationship established between the Relying Party and the authenticator's user verification. Therefore, updating uvInitialized from false to true SHOULD require authorization by an additional authentication factor equivalent to WebAuthn user verification.

backupEligible

The value of the BE flag when the public key credential source was created.

backupState

The latest value of the BS flag in the authenticator data from any ceremony using the public key credential source.

The following items are OPTIONAL:

attestationObject

The value of the attestationObject attribute when the public key credential source was registered. Storing this enables the Relying Party to reference the credential’s attestation statement at a later time.

attestationClientDataJSON

The value of the clientDataJSON attribute when the public key credential source was registered. Storing this in combination with the above attestationObject item enables the Relying Party to re-verify the attestation signature at a later time.

WebAuthn extensions MAY define additional items needed to process the extension. Relying Parties MAY also include any additional items as needed, and MAY omit any items not needed for their implementation.

The credential descriptor for a credential record is a PublicKeyCredentialDescriptor value with the contents:

type

The type of the credential record.

id

The id of the credential record.

transports

The transports of the credential record.

Hardware-bound Device Key Pair
Device-bound Key
Device Private Key
Device Public Key

A hardware-bound device key pair, also known as a device-bound key, is an authenticator-, Relying Party-, and user credential-specific public key pair created upon a Relying Party's request via the devicePubKey WebAuthn extension. The authenticator that a hardware-bound device key pair is created upon guarantees that the device private key is securely stored in hardware, i.e., it is unextractable. See also § 10.2.2 Device-bound public key extension (devicePubKey).

Note: All guarantees about the operation of an authenticator operation rely on attestation. In particular, Relying Parties MUST NOT rely on the above guarantee of unextractability unless supported by a valid, trusted attestation statement.

Generating Authenticator

The Generating Authenticator is the authenticator involved in the authenticatorMakeCredential operation resulting in the creation of a given public key credential source. The generating authenticator is the same as the managing authenticator for single-device credentials. For multi-device credentials, the generating authenticator may or may not be the same as the current managing authenticator participating in a given authentication operation.

Human Palatability

An identifier that is human-palatable is intended to be rememberable and reproducible by typical human users, in contrast to identifiers that are, for example, randomly generated sequences of bits [EduPersonObjectClassSpec].

Non-Discoverable Credential

This is a credential whose credential ID must be provided in allowCredentials when calling navigator.credentials.get() because it is not client-side discoverable. See also server-side credentials.

Public Key Credential

Generically, a credential is data one entity presents to another in order to authenticate the former to the latter [RFC4949]. The term public key credential refers to one of: a public key credential source, the possibly-attested credential public key corresponding to a public key credential source, or an authentication assertion. Which one is generally determined by context.

Note: This is a willful violation of [RFC4949]. In English, a "credential" is both a) the thing presented to prove a statement and b) intended to be used multiple times. It’s impossible to achieve both criteria securely with a single piece of data in a public key system. [RFC4949] chooses to define a credential as the thing that can be used multiple times (the public key), while this specification gives "credential" the English term’s flexibility. This specification uses more specific terms to identify the data related to an [RFC4949] credential:
"Authentication information" (possibly including a private key)

Public key credential source

"Signed value"

Authentication assertion

[RFC4949] "credential"

Credential public key or attestation object

At registration time, the authenticator creates an asymmetric key pair, and stores its private key portion and information from the Relying Party into a public key credential source. The public key portion is returned to the Relying Party, which then stores it in the active user account. Subsequently, only that Relying Party, as identified by its RP ID, is able to employ the public key credential in authentication ceremonies, via the get() method. The Relying Party uses its stored copy of the credential public key to verify the resultant authentication assertion.

Public Key Credential Source

A credential source ([CREDENTIAL-MANAGEMENT-1]) used by an authenticator to generate authentication assertions. A public key credential source consists of a struct with the following items:

type

whose value is of PublicKeyCredentialType, defaulting to public-key.

id

A Credential ID.

privateKey

The credential private key.

rpId

The Relying Party Identifier, for the Relying Party this public key credential source is scoped to. This is determined by the rp.id parameter of the create() operation.

userHandle

The user handle associated when this public key credential source was created. This item is nullable.

otherUI

OPTIONAL other information used by the authenticator to inform its UI. For example, this might include the user’s displayName. otherUI is a mutable item and SHOULD NOT be bound to the public key credential source in a way that prevents otherUI from being updated.

The authenticatorMakeCredential operation creates a public key credential source bound to a managing authenticator and returns the credential public key associated with its credential private key. The Relying Party can use this credential public key to verify the authentication assertions created by this public key credential source.

Rate Limiting

The process (also known as throttling) by which an authenticator implements controls against brute force attacks by limiting the number of consecutive failed authentication attempts within a given period of time. If the limit is reached, the authenticator should impose a delay that increases exponentially with each successive attempt, or disable the current authentication modality and offer a different authentication factor if available. Rate limiting is often implemented as an aspect of user verification.

Registration
Registration Ceremony

The ceremony where a user, a Relying Party, and the user’s client platform (containing or connected to at least one authenticator) work in concert to create a public key credential and associate it with a user account. Note that this includes employing a test of user presence or user verification. After a successful registration ceremony, the user can be authenticated by an authentication ceremony.

The WebAuthn registration ceremony is defined in § 7.1 Registering a New Credential, and is initiated by the Relying Party invoking a navigator.credentials.create() operation with a publicKey argument. See § 5 Web Authentication API for an introductory overview and § 1.3.1 Registration for implementation examples.

Relying Party
WebAuthn Relying Party

The entity whose web application utilizes the Web Authentication API to register and authenticate users.

A Relying Party implementation typically consists of both some client-side script that invokes the Web Authentication API in the client, and a server-side component that executes the Relying Party operations and other application logic. Communication between the two components MUST use HTTPS or equivalent transport security, but is otherwise beyond the scope of this specification.

Note: While the term Relying Party is also often used in other contexts (e.g., X.509 and OAuth), an entity acting as a Relying Party in one context is not necessarily a Relying Party in other contexts. In this specification, the term WebAuthn Relying Party is often shortened to be just Relying Party, and explicitly refers to a Relying Party in the WebAuthn context. Note that in any concrete instantiation a WebAuthn context may be embedded in a broader overall context, e.g., one based on OAuth.

Relying Party Identifier
RP ID

In the context of the WebAuthn API, a relying party identifier is a valid domain string identifying the WebAuthn Relying Party on whose behalf a given registration or authentication ceremony is being performed. A public key credential can only be used for authentication with the same entity (as identified by RP ID) it was registered with.

By default, the RP ID for a WebAuthn operation is set to the caller’s origin's effective domain. This default MAY be overridden by the caller, as long as the caller-specified RP ID value is a registrable domain suffix of or is equal to the caller’s origin's effective domain. See also § 5.1.3 Create a New Credential - PublicKeyCredential’s [[Create]](origin, options, sameOriginWithAncestors) Method and § 5.1.4 Use an Existing Credential to Make an Assertion - PublicKeyCredential’s [[Get]](options) Method.

Note: An RP ID is based on a host's domain name. It does not itself include a scheme or port, as an origin does. The RP ID of a public key credential determines its scope. I.e., it determines the set of origins on which the public key credential may be exercised, as follows:

For example, given a Relying Party whose origin is https://login.example.com:1337, then the following RP IDs are valid: login.example.com (default) and example.com, but not m.login.example.com and not com.

This is done in order to match the behavior of pervasively deployed ambient credentials (e.g., cookies, [RFC6265]). Please note that this is a greater relaxation of "same-origin" restrictions than what document.domain's setter provides.

These restrictions on origin values apply to WebAuthn Clients.

Other specifications mimicking the WebAuthn API to enable WebAuthn public key credentials on non-Web platforms (e.g. native mobile applications), MAY define different rules for binding a caller to a Relying Party Identifier. Though, the RP ID syntaxes MUST conform to either valid domain strings or URIs [RFC3986] [URL].

Server-side Public Key Credential Source
Server-side Credential
[DEPRECATED] Non-Resident Credential

Note: Historically, server-side credentials have been known as non-resident credentials. For backwards compatibility purposes, the various WebAuthn API and Authenticator Model components with various forms of resident within their names have not been changed.

A Server-side Public Key Credential Source, or Server-side Credential for short, is a public key credential source that is only usable in an authentication ceremony when the Relying Party supplies its credential ID in navigator.credentials.get()'s allowCredentials argument. This means that the Relying Party must manage the credential’s storage and discovery, as well as be able to first identify the user in order to discover the credential IDs to supply in the navigator.credentials.get() call.

Client-side storage of the public key credential source is not required for a server-side credential. This is in contrast to a client-side discoverable credential, which instead does not require the user to first be identified in order to provide the user’s credential IDs to a navigator.credentials.get() call.

See also: server-side credential storage modality and non-discoverable credential.

Test of User Presence

A test of user presence is a simple form of authorization gesture and technical process where a user interacts with an authenticator by (typically) simply touching it (other modalities may also exist), yielding a Boolean result. Note that this does not constitute user verification because a user presence test, by definition, is not capable of biometric recognition, nor does it involve the presentation of a shared secret such as a password or PIN.

User Account

In the context of this specification, a user account denotes the mapping of a set of credentials [CREDENTIAL-MANAGEMENT-1] to a (sub)set of a Relying Party's resources, as maintained and authorized by the Relying Party. The Relying Party maps a given public key credential to a user account by assigning a user account-specific value to the credential’s user handle and storing a credential record for the credential in the user account. This mapping, the set of credentials, and their authorizations, may evolve over time. A given user account might be accessed by one or more natural persons (also known as "users"), and one natural person might have access to one or more user accounts, depending on actions of the user(s) and the Relying Party.

User Consent

User consent means the user agrees with what they are being asked, i.e., it encompasses reading and understanding prompts. An authorization gesture is a ceremony component often employed to indicate user consent.

User Handle

A user handle is an identifier for a user account, specified by the Relying Party as user.id during registration. Discoverable credentials store this identifier and return it as response.userHandle in authentication ceremonies started with an empty allowCredentials argument.

The main use of the user handle is to identify the user account in such authentication ceremonies, but the credential ID could be used instead. The main differences are that the credential ID is chosen by the authenticator and unique for each credential, while the user handle is chosen by the Relying Party and ought to be the same for all credentials registered to the same user account.

Authenticators map pairs of RP ID and user handle to public key credential sources. As a consequence, an authenticator will store at most one discoverable credential per user handle per Relying Party.

A user handle is an opaque byte sequence with a maximum size of 64 bytes, and is not meant to be displayed to the user. It MUST NOT contain personally identifying information, see § 14.6.1 User Handle Contents.

User Present

Upon successful completion of a user presence test, the user is said to be "present".

User Verification

The technical process by which an authenticator locally authorizes the invocation of the authenticatorMakeCredential and authenticatorGetAssertion operations. User verification MAY be instigated through various authorization gesture modalities; for example, through a touch plus pin code, password entry, or biometric recognition (e.g., presenting a fingerprint) [ISOBiometricVocabulary]. The intent is to distinguish individual users. See also § 6.2.3 Authentication Factor Capability.

Note that user verification does not give the Relying Party a concrete identification of the user, but when 2 or more ceremonies with user verification have been done with that credential it expresses that it was the same user that performed all of them. The same user might not always be the same natural person, however, if multiple natural persons share access to the same authenticator.

Note: Distinguishing natural persons depends in significant part upon the client platform's and authenticator's capabilities. For example, some devices are intended to be used by a single individual, yet they may allow multiple natural persons to enroll fingerprints or know the same PIN and thus access the same user account(s) using that device.

Note: Invocation of the authenticatorMakeCredential and authenticatorGetAssertion operations implies use of key material managed by the authenticator.

Also, for security, user verification and use of credential private keys must all occur within the logical security boundary defining the authenticator.

User verification procedures MAY implement rate limiting as a protection against brute force attacks.

User Verified

Upon successful completion of a user verification process, the user is said to be "verified".

5. Web Authentication API

This section normatively specifies the API for creating and using public key credentials. The basic idea is that the credentials belong to the user and are managed by a WebAuthn Authenticator, with which the WebAuthn Relying Party interacts through the client platform. Relying Party scripts can (with the user’s consent) request the browser to create a new credential for future use by the Relying Party. See Figure , below.

Registration Flow

Scripts can also request the user’s permission to perform authentication operations with an existing credential. See Figure , below.

Authentication Flow

All such operations are performed in the authenticator and are mediated by the client platform on the user’s behalf. At no point does the script get access to the credentials themselves; it only gets information about the credentials in the form of objects.

In addition to the above script interface, the authenticator MAY implement (or come with client software that implements) a user interface for management. Such an interface MAY be used, for example, to reset the authenticator to a clean state or to inspect the current state of the authenticator. In other words, such an interface is similar to the user interfaces provided by browsers for managing user state such as history, saved passwords, and cookies. Authenticator management actions such as credential deletion are considered to be the responsibility of such a user interface and are deliberately omitted from the API exposed to scripts.

The security properties of this API are provided by the client and the authenticator working together. The authenticator, which holds and manages credentials, ensures that all operations are scoped to a particular origin, and cannot be replayed against a different origin, by incorporating the origin in its responses. Specifically, as defined in § 6.3 Authenticator Operations, the full origin of the requester is included, and signed over, in the attestation object produced when a new credential is created as well as in all assertions produced by WebAuthn credentials.

Additionally, to maintain user privacy and prevent malicious Relying Parties from probing for the presence of public key credentials belonging to other Relying Parties, each credential is also scoped to a Relying Party Identifier, or RP ID. This RP ID is provided by the client to the authenticator for all operations, and the authenticator ensures that credentials created by a Relying Party can only be used in operations requested by the same RP ID. Separating the origin from the RP ID in this way allows the API to be used in cases where a single Relying Party maintains multiple origins.

The client facilitates these security measures by providing the Relying Party's origin and RP ID to the authenticator for each operation. Since this is an integral part of the WebAuthn security model, user agents only expose this API to callers in secure contexts. For web contexts in particular, this only includes those accessed via a secure transport (e.g., TLS) established without errors.

The Web Authentication API is defined by the union of the Web IDL fragments presented in the following sections. A combined IDL listing is given in the IDL Index.

5.1. PublicKeyCredential Interface

The PublicKeyCredential interface inherits from Credential [CREDENTIAL-MANAGEMENT-1], and contains the attributes that are returned to the caller when a new credential is created, or a new assertion is requested.

[SecureContext, Exposed=Window]
interface PublicKeyCredential : Credential {
    [SameObject] readonly attribute ArrayBuffer              rawId;
    [SameObject] readonly attribute AuthenticatorResponse    response;
    [SameObject] readonly attribute DOMString?               authenticatorAttachment;
    AuthenticationExtensionsClientOutputs getClientExtensionResults();
    static Promise<boolean> isConditionalMediationAvailable();
    PublicKeyCredentialJSON toJSON();
};
id

This attribute is inherited from Credential, though PublicKeyCredential overrides Credential's getter, instead returning the base64url encoding of the data contained in the object’s [[identifier]] internal slot.

rawId

This attribute returns the ArrayBuffer contained in the [[identifier]] internal slot.

response, of type AuthenticatorResponse, readonly

This attribute contains the authenticator's response to the client’s request to either create a public key credential, or generate an authentication assertion. If the PublicKeyCredential is created in response to create(), this attribute’s value will be an AuthenticatorAttestationResponse, otherwise, the PublicKeyCredential was created in response to get(), and this attribute’s value will be an AuthenticatorAssertionResponse.

authenticatorAttachment, of type DOMString, readonly, nullable

This attribute reports the authenticator attachment modality in effect at the time the navigator.credentials.create() or navigator.credentials.get() methods successfully complete. The attribute’s value SHOULD be a member of AuthenticatorAttachment. Relying Parties SHOULD treat unknown values as if the value were null.

Note: If, as the result of a registration or authentication ceremony, authenticatorAttachment's value is "cross-platform" and concurrently isUserVerifyingPlatformAuthenticatorAvailable returns true, then the user employed a roaming authenticator for this ceremony while there is an available platform authenticator. Thus the Relying Party has the opportunity to prompt the user to register the available platform authenticator, which may enable more streamlined user experience flows.

An authenticator’s attachment modality could change over time. For example, a mobile phone might at one time only support platform attachment but later receive updates to support cross-platform attachment as well.

getClientExtensionResults()

This operation returns the value of [[clientExtensionsResults]], which is a map containing extension identifierclient extension output entries produced by the extension’s client extension processing.

isConditionalMediationAvailable()

PublicKeyCredential overrides this method to indicate availability for conditional mediation. WebAuthn Relying Parties SHOULD verify availability before attempting to set options.mediation to conditional.

Upon invocation, a promise is returned that resolves with a value of true if conditional user mediation is available, or false otherwise.

This method has no arguments and returns a promise to a Boolean value.

Note: If this method is not present, conditional user mediation is not available.

toJSON()

This operation returns RegistrationResponseJSON or AuthenticationResponseJSON, which are JSON type representations mirroring PublicKeyCredential, suitable for submission to a Relying Party server as an application/json payload. The client is in charge of serializing values to JSON types as usual, but MUST take additional steps to first encode any ArrayBuffer values to DOMString values using base64url encoding.

The RegistrationResponseJSON.clientExtensionResults or AuthenticationResponseJSON.clientExtensionResults member MUST be set to the output of getClientExtensionResults(), with any ArrayBuffer values encoded to DOMString values using base64url encoding. This MAY include ArrayBuffer values from extensions registered in the IANA "WebAuthn Extension Identifiers" registry [IANA-WebAuthn-Registries] but not defined in § 9 WebAuthn Extensions.

The AuthenticatorAttestationResponseJSON.transports member MUST be set to the output of getTransports().

typedef DOMString Base64URLString;
typedef (RegistrationResponseJSON or AuthenticationResponseJSON) PublicKeyCredentialJSON;

dictionary RegistrationResponseJSON {
    required Base64URLString id;
    required Base64URLString rawId;
    required AuthenticatorAttestationResponseJSON response;
    DOMString authenticatorAttachment;
    required AuthenticationExtensionsClientOutputsJSON clientExtensionResults;
    required DOMString type;
};

dictionary AuthenticatorAttestationResponseJSON {
    required Base64URLString clientDataJSON;
    required Base64URLString attestationObject;
    required sequence<DOMString> transports;
};

dictionary AuthenticationResponseJSON {
    required Base64URLString id;
    required Base64URLString rawId;
    required AuthenticatorAssertionResponseJSON response;
    DOMString authenticatorAttachment;
    required AuthenticationExtensionsClientOutputsJSON clientExtensionResults;
    required DOMString type;
};

dictionary AuthenticatorAssertionResponseJSON {
    required Base64URLString clientDataJSON;
    required Base64URLString authenticatorData;
    required Base64URLString signature;
    Base64URLString userHandle;
};

dictionary AuthenticationExtensionsClientOutputsJSON {
};
[[type]]

The PublicKeyCredential interface object's [[type]] internal slot's value is the string "public-key".

Note: This is reflected via the type attribute getter inherited from Credential.

[[discovery]]

The PublicKeyCredential interface object's [[discovery]] internal slot's value is "remote".

[[identifier]]

This internal slot contains the credential ID, chosen by the authenticator. The credential ID is used to look up credentials for use, and is therefore expected to be globally unique with high probability across all credentials of the same type, across all authenticators.

Note: This API does not constrain the format or length of this identifier, except that it MUST be sufficient for the authenticator to uniquely select a key. For example, an authenticator without on-board storage may create identifiers containing a credential private key wrapped with a symmetric key that is burned into the authenticator.

[[clientExtensionsResults]]

This internal slot contains the results of processing client extensions requested by the Relying Party upon the Relying Party's invocation of either navigator.credentials.create() or navigator.credentials.get().

PublicKeyCredential's interface object inherits Credential's implementation of [[CollectFromCredentialStore]](origin, options, sameOriginWithAncestors), and defines its own implementation of [[Create]](origin, options, sameOriginWithAncestors), [[DiscoverFromExternalSource]](origin, options, sameOriginWithAncestors), and [[Store]](credential, sameOriginWithAncestors).

5.1.1. CredentialCreationOptions Dictionary Extension

To support registration via navigator.credentials.create(), this document extends the CredentialCreationOptions dictionary as follows:

partial dictionary CredentialCreationOptions {
    PublicKeyCredentialCreationOptions      publicKey;
};

5.1.2. CredentialRequestOptions Dictionary Extension

To support obtaining assertions via navigator.credentials.get(), this document extends the CredentialRequestOptions dictionary as follows:

partial dictionary CredentialRequestOptions {
    PublicKeyCredentialRequestOptions      publicKey;
};

5.1.3. Create a New Credential - PublicKeyCredential’s [[Create]](origin, options, sameOriginWithAncestors) Method

PublicKeyCredential's interface object's implementation of the [[Create]](origin, options, sameOriginWithAncestors) internal method [CREDENTIAL-MANAGEMENT-1] allows WebAuthn Relying Party scripts to call navigator.credentials.create() to request the creation of a new public key credential source, bound to an authenticator. This navigator.credentials.create() operation can be aborted by leveraging the AbortController; see DOM § 3.3 Using AbortController and AbortSignal objects in APIs for detailed instructions.

This internal method accepts three arguments:

origin

This argument is the relevant settings object's origin, as determined by the calling create() implementation.

options

This argument is a CredentialCreationOptions object whose options.publicKey member contains a PublicKeyCredentialCreationOptions object specifying the desired attributes of the to-be-created public key credential.

sameOriginWithAncestors

This argument is a Boolean value which is true if and only if the caller’s environment settings object is same-origin with its ancestors. It is false if caller is cross-origin.

Note: Invocation of this internal method indicates that it was allowed by permissions policy, which is evaluated at the [CREDENTIAL-MANAGEMENT-1] level. See § 5.9 Permissions Policy integration.

Note: This algorithm is synchronous: the Promise resolution/rejection is handled by navigator.credentials.create().

Note: All BufferSource objects used in this algorithm must be snapshotted when the algorithm begins, to avoid potential synchronization issues. The algorithm implementations should get a copy of the bytes held by the buffer source and use that copy for relevant portions of the algorithm.

When this method is invoked, the user agent MUST execute the following algorithm:

  1. Assert: options.publicKey is present.

  2. If sameOriginWithAncestors is false:

    1. If the relevant global object, as determined by the calling create() implementation, does not have transient activation:

      1. Throw a "NotAllowedError" DOMException.

    2. Consume user activation of the relevant global object.

    NOTE: The client SHOULD make it clear to the user in the case where the origin that is creating a credential is different from the top-level origin of the relevant global object (i.e., is a different origin than the user can see in the address bar).

  3. Let pkOptions be the value of options.publicKey.

  4. If pkOptions.timeout is present, check if its value lies within a reasonable range as defined by the client and if not, correct it to the closest value lying within that range. Set a timer lifetimeTimer to this adjusted value. If pkOptions.timeout is not present, then set lifetimeTimer to a client-specific default.

    Recommended ranges and defaults for pkOptions.timeout are as follows.

    • Recommended range: 300000 milliseconds to 600000 milliseconds.

    • Recommended default value: 300000 milliseconds (5 minutes).

    Note: The user agent should take cognitive guidelines into considerations regarding timeout for users with special needs.

  5. If the length of pkOptions.user.id is not between 1 and 64 bytes (inclusive) then throw a TypeError.

  6. Let callerOrigin be origin. If callerOrigin is an opaque origin, throw a "NotAllowedError" DOMException.

  7. Let effectiveDomain be the callerOrigin’s effective domain. If effective domain is not a valid domain, then throw a "SecurityError" DOMException.

    Note: An effective domain may resolve to a host, which can be represented in various manners, such as domain, ipv4 address, ipv6 address, opaque host, or empty host. Only the domain format of host is allowed here. This is for simplification and also is in recognition of various issues with using direct IP address identification in concert with PKI-based security.

  8. If pkOptions.rp.id

    is present

    If pkOptions.rp.id is not a registrable domain suffix of and is not equal to effectiveDomain, throw a "SecurityError" DOMException.

    Is not present

    Set pkOptions.rp.id to effectiveDomain.

    Note: pkOptions.rp.id represents the caller’s RP ID. The RP ID defaults to being the caller’s origin's effective domain unless the caller has explicitly set pkOptions.rp.id when calling create().

  9. Let credTypesAndPubKeyAlgs be a new list whose items are pairs of PublicKeyCredentialType and a COSEAlgorithmIdentifier.

  10. If pkOptions.pubKeyCredParams’s size

    is zero

    Append the following pairs of PublicKeyCredentialType and COSEAlgorithmIdentifier values to credTypesAndPubKeyAlgs:

    is non-zero

    For each current of pkOptions.pubKeyCredParams:

    1. If current.type does not contain a PublicKeyCredentialType supported by this implementation, then continue.

    2. Let alg be current.alg.

    3. Append the pair of current.type and alg to credTypesAndPubKeyAlgs.

    If credTypesAndPubKeyAlgs is empty, throw a "NotSupportedError" DOMException.

  11. Let clientExtensions be a new map and let authenticatorExtensions be a new map.

  12. If pkOptions.extensions is present, then for each extensionIdclientExtensionInput of pkOptions.extensions:
    1. If extensionId is not supported by this client platform or is not a registration extension, then continue.

    2. Set clientExtensions[extensionId] to clientExtensionInput.

    3. If extensionId is not an authenticator extension, then continue.

    4. Let authenticatorExtensionInput be the (CBOR) result of running extensionId’s client extension processing algorithm on clientExtensionInput. If the algorithm returned an error, continue.

    5. Set authenticatorExtensions[extensionId] to the base64url encoding of authenticatorExtensionInput.

  13. Let collectedClientData be a new CollectedClientData instance whose fields are:

    type

    The string "webauthn.create".

    challenge

    The base64url encoding of pkOptions.challenge.

    origin

    The serialization of callerOrigin.

    topOrigin

    The serialization of callerOrigin’s top-level origin if the sameOriginWithAncestors argument passed to this internal method is false, else undefined.

    crossOrigin

    The inverse of the value of the sameOriginWithAncestors argument passed to this internal method.

  14. Let clientDataJSON be the JSON-compatible serialization of client data constructed from collectedClientData.

  15. Let clientDataHash be the hash of the serialized client data represented by clientDataJSON.

  16. If options.signal is present and aborted, throw the options.signal’s abort reason.

  17. Let issuedRequests be a new ordered set.

  18. Let authenticators represent a value which at any given instant is a set of client platform-specific handles, where each item identifies an authenticator presently available on this client platform at that instant.

    Note: What qualifies an authenticator as "available" is intentionally unspecified; this is meant to represent how authenticators can be hot-plugged into (e.g., via USB) or discovered (e.g., via NFC or Bluetooth) by the client by various mechanisms, or permanently built into the client.

  19. Start lifetimeTimer.

  20. While lifetimeTimer has not expired, perform the following actions depending upon lifetimeTimer, and the state and response for each authenticator in authenticators:
    If lifetimeTimer expires,

    For each authenticator in issuedRequests invoke the authenticatorCancel operation on authenticator and remove authenticator from issuedRequests.

    If the user exercises a user agent user-interface option to cancel the process,

    For each authenticator in issuedRequests invoke the authenticatorCancel operation on authenticator and remove authenticator from issuedRequests. Throw a "NotAllowedError" DOMException.

    If options.signal is present and aborted,

    For each authenticator in issuedRequests invoke the authenticatorCancel operation on authenticator and remove authenticator from issuedRequests. Then throw the options.signal’s abort reason.

    If an authenticator becomes available on this client device,

    Note: This includes the case where an authenticator was available upon lifetimeTimer initiation.

    1. This authenticator is now the candidate authenticator.

    2. If pkOptions.authenticatorSelection is present:

      1. If pkOptions.authenticatorSelection.authenticatorAttachment is present and its value is not equal to authenticator’s authenticator attachment modality, continue.

      2. If pkOptions.authenticatorSelection.residentKey

        is present and set to required

        If the authenticator is not capable of storing a client-side discoverable public key credential source, continue.

        is present and set to preferred or discouraged

        No effect.

        is not present

        if pkOptions.authenticatorSelection.requireResidentKey is set to true and the authenticator is not capable of storing a client-side discoverable public key credential source, continue.

      3. If pkOptions.authenticatorSelection.userVerification is set to required and the authenticator is not capable of performing user verification, continue.

    3. Let requireResidentKey be the effective resident key requirement for credential creation, a Boolean value, as follows:

      If pkOptions.authenticatorSelection.residentKey

      is present and set to required

      Let requireResidentKey be true.

      is present and set to preferred

      If the authenticator

      is capable of client-side credential storage modality

      Let requireResidentKey be true.

      is not capable of client-side credential storage modality, or if the client cannot determine authenticator capability,

      Let requireResidentKey be false.

      is present and set to discouraged

      Let requireResidentKey be false.

      is not present

      Let requireResidentKey be the value of pkOptions.authenticatorSelection.requireResidentKey.

    4. Let userVerification be the effective user verification requirement for credential creation, a Boolean value, as follows. If pkOptions.authenticatorSelection.userVerification

      is set to required

      Let userVerification be true.

      is set to preferred

      If the authenticator

      is capable of user verification

      Let userVerification be true.

      is not capable of user verification

      Let userVerification be false.

      is set to discouraged

      Let userVerification be false.

    5. Let enterpriseAttestationPossible be a Boolean value, as follows. If pkOptions.attestation

      is set to enterprise

      Let enterpriseAttestationPossible be true if the user agent wishes to support enterprise attestation for pkOptions.rp.id (see Step 8, above). Otherwise false.

      otherwise

      Let enterpriseAttestationPossible be false.

    6. Let attestationFormats be a list of strings, initialized to the value of options.attestationFormats.

    7. If options.attestation

      is set to none

      Set attestationFormats be the single-element list containing the string “none”

    8. Let excludeCredentialDescriptorList be a new list.

    9. For each credential descriptor C in pkOptions.excludeCredentials:

      1. If C.transports is not empty, and authenticator is connected over a transport not mentioned in C.transports, the client MAY continue.

        Note: If the client chooses to continue, this could result in inadvertently registering multiple credentials bound to the same authenticator if the transport hints in C.transports are not accurate. For example, stored transport hints could become inaccurate as a result of software upgrades adding new connectivity options.

      2. Otherwise, Append C to excludeCredentialDescriptorList.

      3. Invoke the authenticatorMakeCredential operation on authenticator with clientDataHash, pkOptions.rp, pkOptions.user, requireResidentKey, userVerification, credTypesAndPubKeyAlgs, excludeCredentialDescriptorList, enterpriseAttestationPossible, attestationFormats, and authenticatorExtensions as parameters.

    10. Append authenticator to issuedRequests.

    If an authenticator ceases to be available on this client device,

    Remove authenticator from issuedRequests.

    If any authenticator returns a status indicating that the user cancelled the operation,
    1. Remove authenticator from issuedRequests.

    2. For each remaining authenticator in issuedRequests invoke the authenticatorCancel operation on authenticator and remove it from issuedRequests.

      Note: Authenticators may return an indication of "the user cancelled the entire operation". How a user agent manifests this state to users is unspecified.

    If any authenticator returns an error status equivalent to "InvalidStateError",
    1. Remove authenticator from issuedRequests.

    2. For each remaining authenticator in issuedRequests invoke the authenticatorCancel operation on authenticator and remove it from issuedRequests.

    3. Throw an "InvalidStateError" DOMException.

    Note: This error status is handled separately because the authenticator returns it only if excludeCredentialDescriptorList identifies a credential bound to the authenticator and the user has consented to the operation. Given this explicit consent, it is acceptable for this case to be distinguishable to the Relying Party.

    If any authenticator returns an error status not equivalent to "InvalidStateError",

    Remove authenticator from issuedRequests.

    Note: This case does not imply user consent for the operation, so details about the error are hidden from the Relying Party in order to prevent leak of potentially identifying information. See § 14.5.1 Registration Ceremony Privacy for details.

    If any authenticator indicates success,
    1. Remove authenticator from issuedRequests. This authenticator is now the selected authenticator.

    2. Let credentialCreationData be a struct whose items are:

      attestationObjectResult

      whose value is the bytes returned from the successful authenticatorMakeCredential operation.

      Note: this value is attObj, as defined in § 6.5.5 Generating an Attestation Object.

      clientDataJSONResult

      whose value is the bytes of clientDataJSON.

      attestationConveyancePreferenceOption

      whose value is the value of pkOptions.attestation.

      clientExtensionResults

      whose value is an AuthenticationExtensionsClientOutputs object containing extension identifierclient extension output entries. The entries are created by running each extension’s client extension processing algorithm to create the client extension outputs, for each client extension in pkOptions.extensions.

    3. Let constructCredentialAlg be an algorithm that takes a global object global, and whose steps are:

      1. If credentialCreationData.attestationConveyancePreferenceOption’s value is

        none

        Replace potentially uniquely identifying information with non-identifying versions of the same:

        1. If the AAGUID in the attested credential data is 16 zero bytes, credentialCreationData.attestationObjectResult.fmt is "packed", and "x5c" is absent from credentialCreationData.attestationObjectResult, then self attestation is being used and no further action is needed.

        2. Otherwise

          1. Replace the AAGUID in the attested credential data with 16 zero bytes.

          2. Set the value of credentialCreationData.attestationObjectResult.fmt to "none", and set the value of credentialCreationData.attestationObjectResult.attStmt to be an empty CBOR map. (See § 8.7 None Attestation Statement Format and § 6.5.5 Generating an Attestation Object).

        indirect

        The client MAY replace the AAGUID and attestation statement with a more privacy-friendly and/or more easily verifiable version of the same data (for example, by employing an Anonymization CA).

        direct or enterprise

        Convey the authenticator's AAGUID and attestation statement, unaltered, to the Relying Party.

      2. Let attestationObject be a new ArrayBuffer, created using global’s %ArrayBuffer%, containing the bytes of credentialCreationData.attestationObjectResult’s value.

      3. Let id be attestationObject.authData.attestedCredentialData.credentialId.

      4. Let pubKeyCred be a new PublicKeyCredential object associated with global whose fields are:

        [[identifier]]

        id

        authenticatorAttachment

        The AuthenticatorAttachment value matching the current authenticator attachment modality of authenticator.

        response

        A new AuthenticatorAttestationResponse object associated with global whose fields are:

        clientDataJSON

        A new ArrayBuffer, created using global’s %ArrayBuffer%, containing the bytes of credentialCreationData.clientDataJSONResult.

        attestationObject

        attestationObject

        [[transports]]

        A sequence of zero or more unique DOMStrings, in lexicographical order, that the authenticator is believed to support. The values SHOULD be members of AuthenticatorTransport, but client platforms MUST ignore unknown values.

        If a user agent does not wish to divulge this information it MAY substitute an arbitrary sequence designed to preserve privacy. This sequence MUST still be valid, i.e. lexicographically sorted and free of duplicates. For example, it may use the empty sequence. Either way, in this case the user agent takes the risk that Relying Party behavior may be suboptimal.

        If the user agent does not have any transport information, it SHOULD set this field to the empty sequence.

        Note: How user agents discover transports supported by a given authenticator is outside the scope of this specification, but may include information from an attestation certificate (for example [FIDO-Transports-Ext]), metadata communicated in an authenticator protocol such as CTAP2, or special-case knowledge about a platform authenticator.

        [[clientExtensionsResults]]

        A new ArrayBuffer, created using global’s %ArrayBuffer%, containing the bytes of credentialCreationData.clientExtensionResults.

      5. Return pubKeyCred.

    4. For each remaining authenticator in issuedRequests invoke the authenticatorCancel operation on authenticator and remove it from issuedRequests.

    5. Return constructCredentialAlg and terminate this algorithm.

  21. Throw a "NotAllowedError" DOMException. In order to prevent information leak that could identify the user without consent, this step MUST NOT be executed before lifetimeTimer has expired. See § 14.5.1 Registration Ceremony Privacy for details.

During the above process, the user agent SHOULD show some UI to the user to guide them in the process of selecting and authorizing an authenticator.

5.1.4. Use an Existing Credential to Make an Assertion - PublicKeyCredential’s [[Get]](options) Method

WebAuthn Relying Parties call navigator.credentials.get({publicKey:..., ...}) to discover and use an existing public key credential, with the user’s consent. Relying Party script optionally specifies some criteria to indicate what public key credential sources are acceptable to it. The client platform locates public key credential sources matching the specified criteria, and guides the user to pick one that the script will be allowed to use. The user may choose to decline the entire interaction even if a public key credential source is present, for example to maintain privacy. If the user picks a public key credential source, the user agent then uses § 6.3.3 The authenticatorGetAssertion Operation to sign a Relying Party-provided challenge and other collected data into an authentication assertion, which is used as a credential.

The navigator.credentials.get() implementation [CREDENTIAL-MANAGEMENT-1] calls PublicKeyCredential.[[CollectFromCredentialStore]]() to collect any credentials that should be available without user mediation (roughly, this specification’s authorization gesture), and if it does not find exactly one of those, it then calls PublicKeyCredential.[[DiscoverFromExternalSource]]() to have the user select a public key credential source.

Since this specification requires an authorization gesture to create any assertions, the PublicKeyCredential.[[CollectFromCredentialStore]](origin, options, sameOriginWithAncestors) internal method inherits the default behavior of Credential.[[CollectFromCredentialStore]](), of returning an empty set.

In general, the user agent SHOULD show some UI to the user to guide them in selecting and authorizing an authenticator with which to complete the operation. By setting options.mediation to conditional, Relying Parties can indicate that a prominent modal UI should not be shown unless credentials are discovered. Relying Party script SHOULD first check that isConditionalMediationAvailable() returns true in order to avoid the possibility of causing a user-visible error to be returned if the user agent does not support conditional user mediation.

This navigator.credentials.get() operation can be aborted by leveraging the AbortController; see DOM § 3.3 Using AbortController and AbortSignal objects in APIs for detailed instructions.

5.1.4.1. PublicKeyCredential’s [[DiscoverFromExternalSource]](origin, options, sameOriginWithAncestors) Method

This internal method accepts three arguments:

origin

This argument is the relevant settings object's origin, as determined by the calling get() implementation, i.e., CredentialsContainer's Request a Credential abstract operation.

options

This argument is a CredentialRequestOptions object whose options.publicKey member contains a PublicKeyCredentialRequestOptions object specifying the desired attributes of the public key credential to discover.

sameOriginWithAncestors

This argument is a Boolean value which is true if and only if the caller’s environment settings object is same-origin with its ancestors. It is false if caller is cross-origin.

Note: Invocation of this internal method indicates that it was allowed by permissions policy, which is evaluated at the [CREDENTIAL-MANAGEMENT-1] level. See § 5.9 Permissions Policy integration.

Note: This algorithm is synchronous: the Promise resolution/rejection is handled by navigator.credentials.get().

Note: All BufferSource objects used in this algorithm must be snapshotted when the algorithm begins, to avoid potential synchronization issues. The algorithm implementations should get a copy of the bytes held by the buffer source and use that copy for relevant portions of the algorithm.

When this method is invoked, the user agent MUST execute the following algorithm:

  1. Assert: options.publicKey is present.

  2. Let pkOptions be the value of options.publicKey.

  3. If options.mediation is present with the value conditional:

    1. Let credentialIdFilter be the value of pkOptions.allowCredentials.

    2. Set pkOptions.allowCredentials to empty.

      Note: This prevents non-discoverable credentials from being used during conditional requests.

    3. Set a timer lifetimeTimer to a value of infinity.

      Note: lifetimeTimer is set to a value of infinity so that the user has the entire lifetime of the Document to interact with any input form control tagged with a "webauthn" autofill detail token. For example, upon the user clicking in such an input field, the user agent can render a list of discovered credentials for the user to select from, and perhaps also give the user the option to "try another way".

  4. Else:

    1. Let credentialIdFilter be an empty list.

    2. If pkOptions.timeout is present, check if its value lies within a reasonable range as defined by the client and if not, correct it to the closest value lying within that range. Set a timer lifetimeTimer to this adjusted value. If pkOptions.timeout is not present, then set lifetimeTimer to a client-specific default.

      Recommended ranges and defaults for pkOptions.timeout are as follows.

      • Recommended range: 300000 milliseconds to 600000 milliseconds.

      • Recommended default value: 300000 milliseconds (5 minutes).

      Note: The user agent should take cognitive guidelines into considerations regarding timeout for users with special needs.

  5. Let callerOrigin be origin. If callerOrigin is an opaque origin, throw a "NotAllowedError" DOMException.

  6. Let effectiveDomain be the callerOrigin’s effective domain. If effective domain is not a valid domain, then throw a "SecurityError" DOMException.

    Note: An effective domain may resolve to a host, which can be represented in various manners, such as domain, ipv4 address, ipv6 address, opaque host, or empty host. Only the domain format of host is allowed here. This is for simplification and also is in recognition of various issues with using direct IP address identification in concert with PKI-based security.

  7. If pkOptions.rpId is not present, then set rpId to effectiveDomain.

    Otherwise:

    1. If pkOptions.rpId is not a registrable domain suffix of and is not equal to effectiveDomain, throw a "SecurityError" DOMException.

    2. Set rpId to pkOptions.rpId.

      Note: rpId represents the caller’s RP ID. The RP ID defaults to being the caller’s origin's effective domain unless the caller has explicitly set pkOptions.rpId when calling get().

  8. Let clientExtensions be a new map and let authenticatorExtensions be a new map.

  9. If pkOptions.extensions is present, then for each extensionIdclientExtensionInput of pkOptions.extensions:

    1. If extensionId is not supported by this client platform or is not an authentication extension, then continue.

    2. Set clientExtensions[extensionId] to clientExtensionInput.

    3. If extensionId is not an authenticator extension, then continue.

    4. Let authenticatorExtensionInput be the (CBOR) result of running extensionId’s client extension processing algorithm on clientExtensionInput. If the algorithm returned an error, continue.

    5. Set authenticatorExtensions[extensionId] to the base64url encoding of authenticatorExtensionInput.

  10. Let collectedClientData be a new CollectedClientData instance whose fields are:

    type

    The string "webauthn.get".

    challenge

    The base64url encoding of pkOptions.challenge

    origin

    The serialization of callerOrigin.

    crossOrigin

    The inverse of the value of the sameOriginWithAncestors argument passed to this internal method.

  11. Let clientDataJSON be the JSON-compatible serialization of client data constructed from collectedClientData.

  12. Let clientDataHash be the hash of the serialized client data represented by clientDataJSON.

  13. If options.signal is present and aborted, throw the options.signal’s abort reason.

  14. Let issuedRequests be a new ordered set.

  15. Let savedCredentialIds be a new map.

  16. Let authenticators represent a value which at any given instant is a set of client platform-specific handles, where each item identifies an authenticator presently available on this client platform at that instant.

    Note: What qualifies an authenticator as "available" is intentionally unspecified; this is meant to represent how authenticators can be hot-plugged into (e.g., via USB) or discovered (e.g., via NFC or Bluetooth) by the client by various mechanisms, or permanently built into the client.

  17. Let silentlyDiscoveredCredentials be a new map whose entries are of the form: DiscoverableCredentialMetadataauthenticator.

  18. Start lifetimeTimer.

  19. While lifetimeTimer has not expired, perform the following actions depending upon lifetimeTimer, and the state and response for each authenticator in authenticators:

    If lifetimeTimer expires,

    For each authenticator in issuedRequests invoke the authenticatorCancel operation on authenticator and remove authenticator from issuedRequests.

    If the user exercises a user agent user-interface option to cancel the process,

    For each authenticator in issuedRequests invoke the authenticatorCancel operation on authenticator and remove authenticator from issuedRequests. Throw a "NotAllowedError" DOMException.

    If options.signal is present and aborted,

    For each authenticator in issuedRequests invoke the authenticatorCancel operation on authenticator and remove authenticator from issuedRequests. Then throw the options.signal’s abort reason.

    If options.mediation is conditional and the user interacts with an input or textarea form control with an autocomplete attribute whose value contains a "webauthn" autofill detail token,
    1. If silentlyDiscoveredCredentials is not empty:

      1. Prompt the user to optionally select a DiscoverableCredentialMetadata (credentialMetadata) from silentlyDiscoveredCredentials.

        Note: The prompt shown SHOULD include values from credentialMetadata’s otherUI such as name and displayName.

      2. If the user selects a credentialMetadata,

        1. Let publicKeyOptions be a temporary copy of pkOptions.

        2. Let authenticator be the value of silentlyDiscoveredCredentials[credentialMetadata].

        3. Set publicKeyOptions.allowCredentials to be a list containing a single PublicKeyCredentialDescriptor item whose id's value is set to credentialMetadata’s id's value and whoseid value is set to credentialMetadata’s type.

        4. Execute the issuing a credential request to an authenticator algorithm with authenticator, savedCredentialIds, publicKeyOptions, rpId, clientDataHash, and authenticatorExtensions.

          If this returns false, continue.

        5. Append authenticator to issuedRequests.

    If options.mediation is not conditional, issuedRequests is empty, pkOptions.allowCredentials is not empty, and no authenticator will become available for any public key credentials therein,

    Indicate to the user that no eligible credential could be found. When the user acknowledges the dialog, throw a "NotAllowedError" DOMException.

    Note: One way a client platform can determine that no authenticator will become available is by examining the transports members of the present PublicKeyCredentialDescriptor items of pkOptions.allowCredentials, if any. For example, if all PublicKeyCredentialDescriptor items list only internal, but all platform authenticators have been tried, then there is no possibility of satisfying the request. Alternatively, all PublicKeyCredentialDescriptor items may list transports that the client platform does not support.

    If an authenticator becomes available on this client device,

    Note: This includes the case where an authenticator was available upon lifetimeTimer initiation.

    1. If options.mediation is conditional and the authenticator supports the silentCredentialDiscovery operation:

      1. Let collectedDiscoveredCredentialMetadata be the result of invoking the silentCredentialDiscovery operation on authenticator with rpId as parameter.

      2. For each credentialMetadata of collectedDiscoveredCredentialMetadata:

        1. If credentialIdFilter is empty or credentialIdFilter contains an item whose id's value is set to credentialMetadata’s id, set silentlyDiscoveredCredentials[credentialMetadata] to authenticator.

          Note: A request will be issued to this authenticator upon user selection of a credential via interaction with a particular UI context (see here for details).

    2. Else:

      1. Execute the issuing a credential request to an authenticator algorithm with authenticator, savedCredentialIds, pkOptions, rpId, clientDataHash, and authenticatorExtensions.

        If this returns false, continue.

        Note: This branch is taken if options.mediation is conditional and the authenticator does not support the silentCredentialDiscovery operation to allow use of such authenticators during a conditional user mediation request.

      2. Append authenticator to issuedRequests.

    If an authenticator ceases to be available on this client device,

    Remove authenticator from issuedRequests.

    If any authenticator returns a status indicating that the user cancelled the operation,
    1. Remove authenticator from issuedRequests.

    2. For each remaining authenticator in issuedRequests invoke the authenticatorCancel operation on authenticator and remove it from issuedRequests.

      Note: Authenticators may return an indication of "the user cancelled the entire operation". How a user agent manifests this state to users is unspecified.

    If any authenticator returns an error status,

    Remove authenticator from issuedRequests.

    If any authenticator indicates success,
    1. Remove authenticator from issuedRequests.

    2. Let assertionCreationData be a struct whose items are:

      credentialIdResult

      If savedCredentialIds[authenticator] exists, set the value of credentialIdResult to be the bytes of savedCredentialIds[authenticator]. Otherwise, set the value of credentialIdResult to be the bytes of the credential ID returned from the successful authenticatorGetAssertion operation, as defined in § 6.3.3 The authenticatorGetAssertion Operation.

      clientDataJSONResult

      whose value is the bytes of clientDataJSON.

      authenticatorDataResult

      whose value is the bytes of the authenticator data returned by the authenticator.

      signatureResult

      whose value is the bytes of the signature value returned by the authenticator.

      userHandleResult

      If the authenticator returned a user handle, set the value of userHandleResult to be the bytes of the returned user handle. Otherwise, set the value of userHandleResult to null.

      assertionAttestation

      If the authenticator returned an attestation, set the value of assertionAttestation to be the bytes of the attestation statement. Otherwise set it to null.

      clientExtensionResults

      whose value is an AuthenticationExtensionsClientOutputs object containing extension identifierclient extension output entries. The entries are created by running each extension’s client extension processing algorithm to create the client extension outputs, for each client extension in pkOptions.extensions.

    3. If credentialIdFilter is not empty and credentialIdFilter does not contain an item whose id's value is set to the value of credentialIdResult, continue.

    4. Let constructAssertionAlg be an algorithm that takes a global object global, and whose steps are:

      1. Let pubKeyCred be a new PublicKeyCredential object associated with global whose fields are:

        [[identifier]]

        A new ArrayBuffer, created using global’s %ArrayBuffer%, containing the bytes of assertionCreationData.credentialIdResult.

        authenticatorAttachment

        The AuthenticatorAttachment value matching the current authenticator attachment modality of authenticator.

        response

        A new AuthenticatorAssertionResponse object associated with global whose fields are:

        clientDataJSON

        A new ArrayBuffer, created using global’s %ArrayBuffer%, containing the bytes of assertionCreationData.clientDataJSONResult.

        authenticatorData

        A new ArrayBuffer, created using global’s %ArrayBuffer%, containing the bytes of assertionCreationData.authenticatorDataResult.

        signature

        A new ArrayBuffer, created using global’s %ArrayBuffer%, containing the bytes of assertionCreationData.signatureResult.

        userHandle

        If assertionCreationData.userHandleResult is null, set this field to null. Otherwise, set this field to a new ArrayBuffer, created using global’s %ArrayBuffer%, containing the bytes of assertionCreationData.userHandleResult.

        attestationObject

        If assertionCreationData.assertionAttestation is null, set this field to null. Otherwise, set this field to a new ArrayBuffer, created using global’s %ArrayBuffer%, containing the bytes of assertionCreationData.assertionAttestation.

        [[clientExtensionsResults]]

        A new ArrayBuffer, created using global’s %ArrayBuffer%, containing the bytes of assertionCreationData.clientExtensionResults.

      2. Return pubKeyCred.

    5. For each remaining authenticator in issuedRequests invoke the authenticatorCancel operation on authenticator and remove it from issuedRequests.

    6. Return constructAssertionAlg and terminate this algorithm.

  20. Throw a "NotAllowedError" DOMException. In order to prevent information leak that could identify the user without consent, this step MUST NOT be executed before lifetimeTimer has expired. See § 14.5.2 Authentication Ceremony Privacy for details.

5.1.4.2. Issuing a Credential Request to an Authenticator

This sub-algorithm of [[DiscoverFromExternalSource]]() encompasses the specific UI context-independent steps necessary for requesting a credential from a given authenticator, using given PublicKeyCredentialRequestOptions. It is called by [[DiscoverFromExternalSource]]() from various points depending on which user mediation the present authentication ceremony is subject to (e.g.: conditional mediation).

This algorithm accepts the following arguments:

authenticator

A client platform-specific handle identifying an authenticator presently available on this client platform.

savedCredentialIds

A map containing authenticatorcredential ID. This argument will be modified in this algorithm.

pkOptions

This argument is a PublicKeyCredentialRequestOptions object specifying the desired attributes of the public key credential to discover.

rpId

The request RP ID.

clientDataHash

The hash of the serialized client data represented by clientDataJSON.

authenticatorExtensions

A map containing extension identifiers to the base64url encoding of the client extension processing output for authenticator extensions.

This algorithm returns false if the client determines that the authenticator is not capable of handling the request, or true if the request was issued successfully.

The steps for issuing a credential request to an authenticator are as follows:

  1. If pkOptions.userVerification is set to required and the authenticator is not capable of performing user verification, return false.

  2. Let userVerification be the effective user verification requirement for assertion, a Boolean value, as follows. If pkOptions.userVerification

    is set to required

    Let userVerification be true.

    is set to preferred

    If the authenticator

    is capable of user verification

    Let userVerification be true.

    is not capable of user verification

    Let userVerification be false.

    is set to discouraged

    Let userVerification be false.

  3. Let enterpriseAttestationPossible be a Boolean value, as follows. If options.attestation

    is set to enterprise

    Let enterpriseAttestationPossible be true if the user agent wishes to support enterprise attestation for rpId (see Step 7 of § 5.1.4.1 PublicKeyCredential’s [[DiscoverFromExternalSource]](origin, options, sameOriginWithAncestors) Method). Otherwise false.

    otherwise

    Let enterpriseAttestationPossible be false.

  4. Let attestationFormats be a list of strings, initialized to the value of options.attestationFormats.

  5. If options.attestation

    is set to none

    Set attestationFormats be the single-element list containing the string “none”

  6. If pkOptions.allowCredentials

    is not empty
    1. Let allowCredentialDescriptorList be a new list.

    2. Execute a client platform-specific procedure to determine which, if any, public key credentials described by pkOptions.allowCredentials are bound to this authenticator, by matching with rpId, pkOptions.allowCredentials.id, and pkOptions.allowCredentials.type. Set allowCredentialDescriptorList to this filtered list.

    3. If allowCredentialDescriptorList is empty, return false.

    4. Let distinctTransports be a new ordered set.

    5. If allowCredentialDescriptorList has exactly one value, set savedCredentialIds[authenticator] to allowCredentialDescriptorList[0].id’s value (see here in § 6.3.3 The authenticatorGetAssertion Operation for more information).

    6. For each credential descriptor C in allowCredentialDescriptorList, append each value, if any, of C.transports to distinctTransports.

      Note: This will aggregate only distinct values of transports (for this authenticator) in distinctTransports due to the properties of ordered sets.

    7. If distinctTransports

      is not empty

      The client selects one transport value from distinctTransports, possibly incorporating local configuration knowledge of the appropriate transport to use with authenticator in making its selection.

      Then, using transport, invoke the authenticatorGetAssertion operation on authenticator, with rpId, clientDataHash, allowCredentialDescriptorList, userVerification, enterpriseAttestationPossible, attestationFormats, and authenticatorExtensions as parameters.

      is empty

      Using local configuration knowledge of the appropriate transport to use with authenticator, invoke the authenticatorGetAssertion operation on authenticator with rpId, clientDataHash, allowCredentialDescriptorList, userVerification, enterpriseAttestationPossible, attestationFormats, and authenticatorExtensions as parameters.

    is empty

    Using local configuration knowledge of the appropriate transport to use with authenticator, invoke the authenticatorGetAssertion operation on authenticator with rpId, clientDataHash, userVerification, enterpriseAttestationPossible, attestationFormats, and authenticatorExtensions as parameters.

    Note: In this case, the Relying Party did not supply a list of acceptable credential descriptors. Thus, the authenticator is being asked to exercise any credential it may possess that is scoped to the Relying Party, as identified by rpId.

  7. Return true.

5.1.5. Store an Existing Credential - PublicKeyCredential’s [[Store]](credential, sameOriginWithAncestors) Method

The [[Store]](credential, sameOriginWithAncestors) method is not supported for Web Authentication’s PublicKeyCredential type, so it always throws an error.

Note: This algorithm is synchronous; the Promise resolution/rejection is handled by navigator.credentials.store().

This internal method accepts two arguments:

credential

This argument is a PublicKeyCredential object.

sameOriginWithAncestors

This argument is a Boolean value which is true if and only if the caller’s environment settings object is same-origin with its ancestors.

When this method is invoked, the user agent MUST execute the following algorithm:

  1. Throw a "NotSupportedError" DOMException.

5.1.6. Preventing Silent Access to an Existing Credential - PublicKeyCredential’s [[preventSilentAccess]](credential, sameOriginWithAncestors) Method

Calling the [[preventSilentAccess]](credential, sameOriginWithAncestors) method will have no effect on authenticators that require an authorization gesture, but setting that flag may potentially exclude authenticators that can operate without user intervention.

This internal method accepts no arguments.

5.1.7. Availability of User-Verifying Platform Authenticator - PublicKeyCredential’s isUserVerifyingPlatformAuthenticatorAvailable() Method

WebAuthn Relying Parties use this method to determine whether they can create a new credential using a user-verifying platform authenticator. Upon invocation, the client employs a client platform-specific procedure to discover available user-verifying platform authenticators. If any are discovered, the promise is resolved with the value of true. Otherwise, the promise is resolved with the value of false. Based on the result, the Relying Party can take further actions to guide the user to create a credential.

This method has no arguments and returns a Boolean value.

partial interface PublicKeyCredential {
    static Promise<boolean> isUserVerifyingPlatformAuthenticatorAvailable();
};

Note: Invoking this method from a browsing context where the Web Authentication API is "disabled" according to the allowed to use algorithm—i.e., by a permissions policy—will result in the promise being rejected with a DOMException whose name is "NotAllowedError". See also § 5.9 Permissions Policy integration.

5.1.8. Deserialize Registration ceremony options - PublicKeyCredential’s parseCreationOptionsFromJSON() Method

WebAuthn Relying Parties use this method to convert JSON type representations of options for navigator.credentials.create() into PublicKeyCredentialCreationOptions.

Upon invocation, the client MUST convert the options argument into a new, identically-structured PublicKeyCredentialCreationOptions object, using base64url encoding to decode any DOMString attributes in PublicKeyCredentialCreationOptionsJSON that correspond to buffer source type attributes in PublicKeyCredentialCreationOptions. This conversion MUST also apply to any client extension inputs processed by the client.

AuthenticationExtensionsClientInputsJSON MAY include extensions registered in the IANA "WebAuthn Extension Identifiers" registry [IANA-WebAuthn-Registries] but not defined in § 9 WebAuthn Extensions.

If the client encounters any issues parsing any of the JSON type representations then it MUST throw an "EncodingError" DOMException with a description of the incompatible value and terminate the operation.

partial interface PublicKeyCredential {
    static PublicKeyCredentialCreationOptions parseCreationOptionsFromJSON(PublicKeyCredentialCreationOptionsJSON options);
};

dictionary PublicKeyCredentialCreationOptionsJSON {
    required PublicKeyCredentialRpEntity                    rp;
    required PublicKeyCredentialUserEntityJSON              user;
    required Base64URLString                                challenge;
    required sequence<PublicKeyCredentialParameters>        pubKeyCredParams;
    unsigned long                                           timeout;
    sequence<PublicKeyCredentialDescriptorJSON>             excludeCredentials = [];
    AuthenticatorSelectionCriteria                          authenticatorSelection;
    DOMString                                               attestation = "none";
    AuthenticationExtensionsClientInputsJSON                extensions;
};

dictionary PublicKeyCredentialUserEntityJSON {
    required Base64URLString        id;
    required DOMString              name;
    required DOMString              displayName;
};

dictionary PublicKeyCredentialDescriptorJSON {
    required Base64URLString        id;
    required DOMString              type;
    sequence<DOMString>             transports;
};

dictionary AuthenticationExtensionsClientInputsJSON {
};

5.1.9. Deserialize Authentication ceremony options - PublicKeyCredential’s parseRequestOptionsFromJSON() Methods

WebAuthn Relying Parties use this method to convert JSON type representations of options for navigator.credentials.get() into PublicKeyCredentialRequestOptions.

Upon invocation, the client MUST convert the options argument into a new, identically-structured PublicKeyCredentialRequestOptions object, using base64url encoding to decode any DOMString attributes in PublicKeyCredentialRequestOptionsJSON that correspond to buffer source type attributes in PublicKeyCredentialRequestOptions. This conversion MUST also apply to any client extension inputs processed by the client.

AuthenticationExtensionsClientInputsJSON MAY include extensions registered in the IANA "WebAuthn Extension Identifiers" registry [IANA-WebAuthn-Registries] but not defined in § 9 WebAuthn Extensions.

If the client encounters any issues parsing any of the JSON type representations then it MUST throw an "EncodingError" DOMException with a description of the incompatible value and terminate the operation.

partial interface PublicKeyCredential {
    static PublicKeyCredentialRequestOptions parseRequestOptionsFromJSON(PublicKeyCredentialRequestOptionsJSON options);
};

dictionary PublicKeyCredentialRequestOptionsJSON {
    required Base64URLString                                challenge;
    unsigned long                                           timeout;
    DOMString                                               rpId;
    sequence<PublicKeyCredentialDescriptorJSON>             allowCredentials = [];
    DOMString                                               userVerification = "preferred";
    AuthenticationExtensionsClientInputsJSON                extensions;
};

5.2. Authenticator Responses (interface AuthenticatorResponse)

Authenticators respond to Relying Party requests by returning an object derived from the AuthenticatorResponse interface:

[SecureContext, Exposed=Window]
interface AuthenticatorResponse {
    [SameObject] readonly attribute ArrayBuffer      clientDataJSON;
};
clientDataJSON, of type ArrayBuffer, readonly

This attribute contains a JSON-compatible serialization of the client data, the hash of which is passed to the authenticator by the client in its call to either create() or get() (i.e., the client data itself is not sent to the authenticator).

5.2.1. Information About Public Key Credential (interface AuthenticatorAttestationResponse)

The AuthenticatorAttestationResponse interface represents the authenticator's response to a client’s request for the creation of a new public key credential. It contains information about the new credential that can be used to identify it for later use, and metadata that can be used by the WebAuthn Relying Party to assess the characteristics of the credential during registration.

[SecureContext, Exposed=Window]
interface AuthenticatorAttestationResponse : AuthenticatorResponse {
    [SameObject] readonly attribute ArrayBuffer      attestationObject;
    sequence<DOMString>                              getTransports();
    ArrayBuffer                                      getAuthenticatorData();
    ArrayBuffer?                                     getPublicKey();
    COSEAlgorithmIdentifier                          getPublicKeyAlgorithm();
};
clientDataJSON

This attribute, inherited from AuthenticatorResponse, contains the JSON-compatible serialization of client data (see § 6.5 Attestation) passed to the authenticator by the client in order to generate this credential. The exact JSON serialization MUST be preserved, as the hash of the serialized client data has been computed over it.

attestationObject, of type ArrayBuffer, readonly

This attribute contains an attestation object, which is opaque to, and cryptographically protected against tampering by, the client. The attestation object contains both authenticator data and an attestation statement. The former contains the AAGUID, a unique credential ID, and the credential public key. The contents of the attestation statement are determined by the attestation statement format used by the authenticator. It also contains any additional information that the Relying Party's server requires to validate the attestation statement, as well as to decode and validate the authenticator data along with the JSON-compatible serialization of client data. For more details, see § 6.5 Attestation, § 6.5.5 Generating an Attestation Object, and Figure 6.

getTransports()

This operation returns the value of [[transports]].

getAuthenticatorData()

This operation returns the authenticator data contained within attestationObject. See § 5.2.1.1 Easily accessing credential data.

getPublicKey()

This operation returns the DER SubjectPublicKeyInfo of the new credential, or null if this is not available. See § 5.2.1.1 Easily accessing credential data.

getPublicKeyAlgorithm()

This operation returns the COSEAlgorithmIdentifier of the new credential. See § 5.2.1.1 Easily accessing credential data.

[[transports]]

This internal slot contains a sequence of zero or more unique DOMStrings in lexicographical order. These values are the transports that the authenticator is believed to support, or an empty sequence if the information is unavailable. The values SHOULD be members of AuthenticatorTransport but Relying Parties SHOULD accept and store unknown values.

5.2.1.1. Easily accessing credential data

Every user of the [[Create]](origin, options, sameOriginWithAncestors) method will need to parse and store the returned credential public key in order to verify future authentication assertions. However, the credential public key is in COSE format [RFC9052], inside the credentialPublicKey member of the attestedCredentialData, inside the authenticator data, inside the attestation object conveyed by AuthenticatorAttestationResponse.attestationObject. Relying Parties wishing to use attestation are obliged to do the work of parsing the attestationObject and obtaining the credential public key because that public key copy is the one the authenticator signed. However, many valid WebAuthn use cases do not require attestation. For those uses, user agents can do the work of parsing, expose the authenticator data directly, and translate the credential public key into a more convenient format.

The getPublicKey() operation thus returns the credential public key as a SubjectPublicKeyInfo. This ArrayBuffer can, for example, be passed to Java’s java.security.spec.X509EncodedKeySpec, .NET’s System.Security.Cryptography.ECDsa.ImportSubjectPublicKeyInfo, or Go’s crypto/x509.ParsePKIXPublicKey.

Use of getPublicKey() does impose some limitations: by using pubKeyCredParams, a Relying Party can negotiate with the authenticator to use public key algorithms that the user agent may not understand. However, if the Relying Party does so, the user agent will not be able to translate the resulting credential public key into SubjectPublicKeyInfo format and the return value of getPublicKey() will be null.

User agents MUST be able to return a non-null value for getPublicKey() when the credential public key has a COSEAlgorithmIdentifier value of:

A SubjectPublicKeyInfo does not include information about the signing algorithm (for example, which hash function to use) that is included in the COSE public key. To provide this, getPublicKeyAlgorithm() returns the COSEAlgorithmIdentifier for the credential public key.

To remove the need to parse CBOR at all in many cases, getAuthenticatorData() returns the authenticator data from attestationObject. The authenticator data contains other fields that are encoded in a binary format. However, helper functions are not provided to access them because Relying Parties already need to extract those fields when getting an assertion. In contrast to credential creation, where signature verification is optional, Relying Parties should always be verifying signatures from an assertion and thus must extract fields from the signed authenticator data. The same functions used there will also serve during credential creation.

Note: getPublicKey() and getAuthenticatorData() were only added in level two of this spec. Relying Parties SHOULD use feature detection before using these functions by testing the value of 'getPublicKey' in AuthenticatorAttestationResponse.prototype. Relying Parties that require this function to exist may not interoperate with older user-agents.

5.2.2. Web Authentication Assertion (interface AuthenticatorAssertionResponse)

The AuthenticatorAssertionResponse interface represents an authenticator's response to a client’s request for generation of a new authentication assertion given the WebAuthn Relying Party's challenge and OPTIONAL list of credentials it is aware of. This response contains a cryptographic signature proving possession of the credential private key, and optionally evidence of user consent to a specific transaction.

[SecureContext, Exposed=Window]
interface AuthenticatorAssertionResponse : AuthenticatorResponse {
    [SameObject] readonly attribute ArrayBuffer      authenticatorData;
    [SameObject] readonly attribute ArrayBuffer      signature;
    [SameObject] readonly attribute ArrayBuffer?     userHandle;
    [SameObject] readonly attribute ArrayBuffer?     attestationObject;
};
clientDataJSON

This attribute, inherited from AuthenticatorResponse, contains the JSON-compatible serialization of client data (see § 5.8.1 Client Data Used in WebAuthn Signatures (dictionary CollectedClientData)) passed to the authenticator by the client in order to generate this assertion. The exact JSON serialization MUST be preserved, as the hash of the serialized client data has been computed over it.

authenticatorData, of type ArrayBuffer, readonly

This attribute contains the authenticator data returned by the authenticator. See § 6.1 Authenticator Data.

signature, of type ArrayBuffer, readonly

This attribute contains the raw signature returned from the authenticator. See § 6.3.3 The authenticatorGetAssertion Operation.

userHandle, of type ArrayBuffer, readonly, nullable

This attribute contains the user handle returned from the authenticator, or null if the authenticator did not return a user handle. See § 6.3.3 The authenticatorGetAssertion Operation.

attestationObject, of type ArrayBuffer, readonly, nullable

This OPTIONAL attribute contains an attestation object, if the authenticator supports attestation in assertions. The attestation object, if present, includes an attestation statement. Unlike the attestationObject in an AuthenticatorAttestationResponse, it does not contain an authData key because the authenticator data is provided directly in an AuthenticatorAssertionResponse structure. For more details on attestation, see § 6.5 Attestation, § 6.5.1 Attestation in assertions, § 6.5.5 Generating an Attestation Object, and Figure 6.

5.3. Parameters for Credential Generation (dictionary PublicKeyCredentialParameters)

dictionary PublicKeyCredentialParameters {
    required DOMString                    type;
    required COSEAlgorithmIdentifier      alg;
};
This dictionary is used to supply additional parameters when creating a new credential.
type, of type DOMString

This member specifies the type of credential to be created. The value SHOULD be a member of PublicKeyCredentialType but client platforms MUST ignore unknown values, ignoring any PublicKeyCredentialParameters with an unknown type.

alg, of type COSEAlgorithmIdentifier

This member specifies the cryptographic signature algorithm with which the newly generated credential will be used, and thus also the type of asymmetric key pair to be generated, e.g., RSA or Elliptic Curve.

Note: we use "alg" as the latter member name, rather than spelling-out "algorithm", because it will be serialized into a message to the authenticator, which may be sent over a low-bandwidth link.

5.4. Options for Credential Creation (dictionary PublicKeyCredentialCreationOptions)

dictionary PublicKeyCredentialCreationOptions {
    required PublicKeyCredentialRpEntity         rp;
    required PublicKeyCredentialUserEntity       user;

    required BufferSource                             challenge;
    required sequence<PublicKeyCredentialParameters>  pubKeyCredParams;

    unsigned long                                timeout;
    sequence<PublicKeyCredentialDescriptor>      excludeCredentials = [];
    AuthenticatorSelectionCriteria               authenticatorSelection;
    DOMString                                    attestation = "none";
    sequence<DOMString>                          attestationFormats = [];
    AuthenticationExtensionsClientInputs         extensions;
};
rp, of type PublicKeyCredentialRpEntity

This member contains a name and an identifier for the Relying Party responsible for the request.

Its value’s name member is REQUIRED. See § 5.4.1 Public Key Entity Description (dictionary PublicKeyCredentialEntity) for further details.

Its value’s id member specifies the RP ID the credential should be scoped to. If omitted, its value will be the CredentialsContainer object’s relevant settings object's origin's effective domain. See § 5.4.2 Relying Party Parameters for Credential Generation (dictionary PublicKeyCredentialRpEntity) for further details.

user, of type PublicKeyCredentialUserEntity

This member contains names and an identifier for the user account performing the registration.

Its value’s name, displayName and id members are REQUIRED. id can be returned as the userHandle in some future authentication ceremonies, and is used to overwrite existing discoverable credentials that have the same rp.id and user.id on the same authenticator. name and displayName MAY be used by the authenticator and client in future authentication ceremonies to help the user select a credential, but are not returned to the Relying Party as a result of future authentication ceremonies

For further details, see § 5.4.1 Public Key Entity Description (dictionary PublicKeyCredentialEntity) and § 5.4.3 User Account Parameters for Credential Generation (dictionary PublicKeyCredentialUserEntity).

challenge, of type BufferSource

This member specifies a challenge that the authenticator signs, along with other data, when producing an attestation object for the newly created credential. See the § 13.4.3 Cryptographic Challenges security consideration.

pubKeyCredParams, of type sequence<PublicKeyCredentialParameters>

This member lists the key types and signature algorithms the Relying Party supports, ordered from most preferred to least preferred. The client and authenticator make a best-effort to create a credential of the most preferred type possible. If none of the listed types can be created, the create() operation fails.

Relying Parties that wish to support a wide range of authenticators SHOULD include at least the following COSEAlgorithmIdentifier values:

  • -8 (Ed25519)

  • -7 (ES256)

  • -257 (RS256)

Additional signature algorithms can be included as needed.

timeout, of type unsigned long

This OPTIONAL member specifies a time, in milliseconds, that the Relying Party is willing to wait for the call to complete. This is treated as a hint, and MAY be overridden by the client.

excludeCredentials, of type sequence<PublicKeyCredentialDescriptor>, defaulting to []

The Relying Party SHOULD use this OPTIONAL member to list any existing credentials mapped to this user account (as identified by user.id). This ensures that the new credential is not created on an authenticator that already contains a credential mapped to this user account. If it would be, the client is requested to instead guide the user to use a different authenticator, or return an error if that fails.

authenticatorSelection, of type AuthenticatorSelectionCriteria

The Relying Party MAY use this OPTIONAL member to specify capabilities and settings that the authenticator MUST or SHOULD satisfy to participate in the create() operation. See § 5.4.4 Authenticator Selection Criteria (dictionary AuthenticatorSelectionCriteria).

attestation, of type DOMString, defaulting to "none"

The Relying Party MAY use this OPTIONAL member to specify a preference regarding attestation conveyance. Its value SHOULD be a member of AttestationConveyancePreference. Client platforms MUST ignore unknown values, treating an unknown value as if the member does not exist.

The default value is none.

attestationFormats, of type sequence<DOMString>, defaulting to []

The Relying Party MAY use this OPTIONAL member to specify a preference regarding the attestation statement format used by the authenticator. Values SHOULD be taken from the IANA "WebAuthn Attestation Statement Format Identifiers" registry [IANA-WebAuthn-Registries] established by [RFC8809]. Values are ordered from most preferable to least preferable. This parameter is advisory and the authenticator MAY use an attestation statement not enumerated in this parameter.

The default value is the empty list, which indicates no preference.

extensions, of type AuthenticationExtensionsClientInputs

The Relying Party MAY use this OPTIONAL member to provide client extension inputs requesting additional processing by the client and authenticator. For example, the Relying Party may request that the client returns additional information about the credential that was created.

The extensions framework is defined in § 9 WebAuthn Extensions. Some extensions are defined in § 10 Defined Extensions; consult the IANA "WebAuthn Extension Identifiers" registry [IANA-WebAuthn-Registries] established by [RFC8809] for an up-to-date list of registered WebAuthn Extensions.

5.4.1. Public Key Entity Description (dictionary PublicKeyCredentialEntity)

The PublicKeyCredentialEntity dictionary describes a user account, or a WebAuthn Relying Party, which a public key credential is associated with or scoped to, respectively.

dictionary PublicKeyCredentialEntity {
    required DOMString    name;
};
name, of type DOMString

A human-palatable name for the entity. Its function depends on what the PublicKeyCredentialEntity represents:

When clients, client platforms, or authenticators display a name's value, they should always use UI elements to provide a clear boundary around the displayed value, and not allow overflow into other elements [css-overflow-3].

Authenticators MAY truncate a name member’s value so that it fits within 64 bytes, if the authenticator stores the value. See § 6.4.1 String Truncation about truncation and other considerations.

5.4.2. Relying Party Parameters for Credential Generation (dictionary PublicKeyCredentialRpEntity)

The PublicKeyCredentialRpEntity dictionary is used to supply additional Relying Party attributes when creating a new credential.

dictionary PublicKeyCredentialRpEntity : PublicKeyCredentialEntity {
    DOMString      id;
};
id, of type DOMString

A unique identifier for the Relying Party entity, which sets the RP ID.

5.4.3. User Account Parameters for Credential Generation (dictionary PublicKeyCredentialUserEntity)

The PublicKeyCredentialUserEntity dictionary is used to supply additional user account attributes when creating a new credential.

dictionary PublicKeyCredentialUserEntity : PublicKeyCredentialEntity {
    required BufferSource   id;
    required DOMString      displayName;
};
id, of type BufferSource

The user handle of the user account. A user handle is an opaque byte sequence with a maximum size of 64 bytes, and is not meant to be displayed to the user.

To ensure secure operation, authentication and authorization decisions MUST be made on the basis of this id member, not the displayName nor name members. See Section 6.1 of [RFC8266].

The user handle MUST NOT contain personally identifying information about the user, such as a username or e-mail address; see § 14.6.1 User Handle Contents for details. The user handle MUST NOT be empty.

Note: the user handle ought not be a constant value across different user accounts, even for non-discoverable credentials, because some authenticators always create discoverable credentials. Thus a constant user handle would prevent a user from using such an authenticator with more than one user account at the Relying Party.

displayName, of type DOMString

A human-palatable name for the user account, intended only for display. For example, "Alex Müller" or "田中倫". The Relying Party SHOULD let the user choose this, and SHOULD NOT restrict the choice more than necessary.

When clients, client platforms, or authenticators display a displayName's value, they should always use UI elements to provide a clear boundary around the displayed value, and not allow overflow into other elements [css-overflow-3].

Authenticators MUST accept and store a 64-byte minimum length for a displayName member’s value. Authenticators MAY truncate a displayName member’s value so that it fits within 64 bytes. See § 6.4.1 String Truncation about truncation and other considerations.

5.4.4. Authenticator Selection Criteria (dictionary AuthenticatorSelectionCriteria)

WebAuthn Relying Parties may use the AuthenticatorSelectionCriteria dictionary to specify their requirements regarding authenticator attributes.

dictionary AuthenticatorSelectionCriteria {
    DOMString                    authenticatorAttachment;
    DOMString                    residentKey;
    boolean                      requireResidentKey = false;
    DOMString                    userVerification = "preferred";
};
authenticatorAttachment, of type DOMString

If this member is present, eligible authenticators are filtered to be only those authenticators attached with the specified authenticator attachment modality (see also § 6.2.1 Authenticator Attachment Modality). If this member is absent, then any attachment modality is acceptable. The value SHOULD be a member of AuthenticatorAttachment but client platforms MUST ignore unknown values, treating an unknown value as if the member does not exist.

See also the authenticatorAttachment member of PublicKeyCredential, which can tell what authenticator attachment modality was used in a successful create() or get() operation.

residentKey, of type DOMString

Specifies the extent to which the Relying Party desires to create a client-side discoverable credential. For historical reasons the naming retains the deprecated “resident” terminology. The value SHOULD be a member of ResidentKeyRequirement but client platforms MUST ignore unknown values, treating an unknown value as if the member does not exist. If no value is given then the effective value is required if requireResidentKey is true or discouraged if it is false or absent.

See ResidentKeyRequirement for the description of residentKey's values and semantics.

requireResidentKey, of type boolean, defaulting to false

This member is retained for backwards compatibility with WebAuthn Level 1 and, for historical reasons, its naming retains the deprecated “resident” terminology for discoverable credentials. Relying Parties SHOULD set it to true if, and only if, residentKey is set to required.

userVerification, of type DOMString, defaulting to "preferred"

This member specifies the Relying Party's requirements regarding user verification for the create() operation. The value SHOULD be a member of UserVerificationRequirement but client platforms MUST ignore unknown values, treating an unknown value as if the member does not exist.

See UserVerificationRequirement for the description of userVerification's values and semantics.

5.4.5. Authenticator Attachment Enumeration (enum AuthenticatorAttachment)

This enumeration’s values describe authenticators' attachment modalities. Relying Parties use this to express a preferred authenticator attachment modality when calling navigator.credentials.create() to create a credential, and clients use this to report the authenticator attachment modality used to complete a registration or authentication ceremony.

enum AuthenticatorAttachment {
    "platform",
    "cross-platform"
};

Note: The AuthenticatorAttachment enumeration is deliberately not referenced, see § 2.1.1 Enumerations as DOMString types.

platform

This value indicates platform attachment.

cross-platform

This value indicates cross-platform attachment.

Note: An authenticator attachment modality selection option is available only in the [[Create]](origin, options, sameOriginWithAncestors) operation. The Relying Party may use it to, for example, ensure the user has a roaming credential for authenticating on another client device; or to specifically register a platform credential for easier reauthentication using a particular client device. The [[DiscoverFromExternalSource]](origin, options, sameOriginWithAncestors) operation has no authenticator attachment modality selection option, so the Relying Party SHOULD accept any of the user’s registered credentials. The client and user will then use whichever is available and convenient at the time.

5.4.6. Resident Key Requirement Enumeration (enum ResidentKeyRequirement)

enum ResidentKeyRequirement {
    "discouraged",
    "preferred",
    "required"
};

Note: The ResidentKeyRequirement enumeration is deliberately not referenced, see § 2.1.1 Enumerations as DOMString types.

This enumeration’s values describe the Relying Party's requirements for client-side discoverable credentials (formerly known as resident credentials or resident keys):

discouraged

The Relying Party prefers creating a server-side credential, but will accept a client-side discoverable credential. The client and authenticator SHOULD create a server-side credential if possible.

Note: A Relying Party cannot require that a created credential is a server-side credential and the Credential Properties Extension may not return a value for the rk property. Because of this, it may be the case that it does not know if a credential is a server-side credential or not and thus does not know whether creating a second credential with the same user handle will evict the first.

preferred

The Relying Party strongly prefers creating a client-side discoverable credential, but will accept a server-side credential. The client and authenticator SHOULD create a discoverable credential if possible. For example, the client SHOULD guide the user through setting up user verification if needed to create a discoverable credential. This takes precedence over the setting of userVerification.

required

The Relying Party requires a client-side discoverable credential. The client MUST return an error if a client-side discoverable credential cannot be created.

Note: The Relying Party can seek information on whether or not the authenticator created a client-side discoverable credential using the resident key credential property of the Credential Properties Extension. This is useful when values of discouraged or preferred are used for options.authenticatorSelection.residentKey, because in those cases it is possible for an authenticator to create either a client-side discoverable credential or a server-side credential.

5.4.7. Attestation Conveyance Preference Enumeration (enum AttestationConveyancePreference)

WebAuthn Relying Parties may use AttestationConveyancePreference to specify their preference regarding attestation conveyance during credential generation.

enum AttestationConveyancePreference {
    "none",
    "indirect",
    "direct",
    "enterprise"
};

Note: The AttestationConveyancePreference enumeration is deliberately not referenced, see § 2.1.1 Enumerations as DOMString types.

none

The Relying Party is not interested in authenticator attestation. For example, in order to potentially avoid having to obtain user consent to relay identifying information to the Relying Party, or to save a roundtrip to an Attestation CA or Anonymization CA. If the authenticator generates an attestation statement that is not a self attestation, the client will replace it with a None attestation statement.

This is the default, and unknown values fall back to the behavior of this value.

indirect

The Relying Party wants to receive a verifiable attestation statement, but allows the client to decide how to obtain such an attestation statement. The client MAY replace an authenticator-generated attestation statement with one generated by an Anonymization CA, in order to protect the user’s privacy, or to assist Relying Parties with attestation verification in a heterogeneous ecosystem.

Note: There is no guarantee that the Relying Party will obtain a verifiable attestation statement in this case. For example, in the case that the authenticator employs self attestation and the client passes the attestation statement through unmodified.

direct

The Relying Party wants to receive the attestation statement as generated by the authenticator.

enterprise

The Relying Party wants to receive an attestation statement that may include uniquely identifying information. This is intended for controlled deployments within an enterprise where the organization wishes to tie registrations to specific authenticators. User agents MUST NOT provide such an attestation unless the user agent or authenticator configuration permits it for the requested RP ID.

If permitted, the user agent SHOULD signal to the authenticator (at invocation time) that enterprise attestation is requested, and convey the resulting AAGUID and attestation statement, unaltered, to the Relying Party.

5.5. Options for Assertion Generation (dictionary PublicKeyCredentialRequestOptions)

The PublicKeyCredentialRequestOptions dictionary supplies get() with the data it needs to generate an assertion. Its challenge member MUST be present, while its other members are OPTIONAL.

dictionary PublicKeyCredentialRequestOptions {
    required BufferSource                challenge;
    unsigned long                        timeout;
    USVString                            rpId;
    sequence<PublicKeyCredentialDescriptor> allowCredentials = [];
    DOMString                            userVerification = "preferred";
    DOMString                            attestation = "none";
    sequence<DOMString>                  attestationFormats = [];
    AuthenticationExtensionsClientInputs extensions;
};
challenge, of type BufferSource

This member specifies a challenge that the authenticator signs, along with other data, when producing an authentication assertion. See the § 13.4.3 Cryptographic Challenges security consideration.

timeout, of type unsigned long

This OPTIONAL member specifies a time, in milliseconds, that the Relying Party is willing to wait for the call to complete. The value is treated as a hint, and MAY be overridden by the client.

rpId, of type USVString

This OPTIONAL member specifies the RP ID claimed by the Relying Party. The client MUST verify that the Relying Party's origin matches the scope of this RP ID. The authenticator MUST verify that this RP ID exactly equals the rpId of the credential to be used for the authentication ceremony.

If not specified, its value will be the CredentialsContainer object’s relevant settings object's origin's effective domain.

allowCredentials, of type sequence<PublicKeyCredentialDescriptor>, defaulting to []

This OPTIONAL member is used by the client to find authenticators eligible for this authentication ceremony. It can be used in two ways:

If not empty, the client MUST return an error if none of the listed credentials can be used.

The list is ordered in descending order of preference: the first item in the list is the most preferred credential, and the last is the least preferred.

userVerification, of type DOMString, defaulting to "preferred"

This OPTIONAL member specifies the Relying Party's requirements regarding user verification for the get() operation. The value SHOULD be a member of UserVerificationRequirement but client platforms MUST ignore unknown values, treating an unknown value as if the member does not exist. Eligible authenticators are filtered to only those capable of satisfying this requirement.

See UserVerificationRequirement for the description of userVerification's values and semantics.

attestation, of type DOMString, defaulting to "none"

The Relying Party MAY use this OPTIONAL member to specify a preference regarding attestation conveyance. Its value SHOULD be a member of AttestationConveyancePreference. Client platforms MUST ignore unknown values, treating an unknown value as if the member does not exist.

The default value is none.

attestationFormats, of type sequence<DOMString>, defaulting to []

The Relying Party MAY use this OPTIONAL member to specify a preference regarding the attestation statement format used by the authenticator. Values SHOULD be taken from the IANA "WebAuthn Attestation Statement Format Identifiers" registry [IANA-WebAuthn-Registries] established by [RFC8809]. Values are ordered from most preferable to least preferable. This parameter is advisory and the authenticator MAY use an attestation statement not enumerated in this parameter.

The default value is the empty list, which indicates no preference.

extensions, of type AuthenticationExtensionsClientInputs

The Relying Party MAY use this OPTIONAL member to provide client extension inputs requesting additional processing by the client and authenticator.

The extensions framework is defined in § 9 WebAuthn Extensions. Some extensions are defined in § 10 Defined Extensions; consult the IANA "WebAuthn Extension Identifiers" registry [IANA-WebAuthn-Registries] established by [RFC8809] for an up-to-date list of registered WebAuthn Extensions.

5.6. Abort Operations with AbortSignal

Developers are encouraged to leverage the AbortController to manage the [[Create]](origin, options, sameOriginWithAncestors) and [[DiscoverFromExternalSource]](origin, options, sameOriginWithAncestors) operations. See DOM § 3.3 Using AbortController and AbortSignal objects in APIs section for detailed instructions.

Note: DOM § 3.3 Using AbortController and AbortSignal objects in APIs section specifies that web platform APIs integrating with the AbortController must reject the promise immediately once the AbortSignal is aborted. Given the complex inheritance and parallelization structure of the [[Create]](origin, options, sameOriginWithAncestors) and [[DiscoverFromExternalSource]](origin, options, sameOriginWithAncestors) methods, the algorithms for the two APIs fulfills this requirement by checking the aborted property in three places. In the case of [[Create]](origin, options, sameOriginWithAncestors), the aborted property is checked first in Credential Management 1 § 2.5.4 Create a Credential immediately before calling [[Create]](origin, options, sameOriginWithAncestors), then in § 5.1.3 Create a New Credential - PublicKeyCredential’s [[Create]](origin, options, sameOriginWithAncestors) Method right before authenticator sessions start, and finally during authenticator sessions. The same goes for [[DiscoverFromExternalSource]](origin, options, sameOriginWithAncestors).

The visibility and focus state of the Window object determines whether the [[Create]](origin, options, sameOriginWithAncestors) and [[DiscoverFromExternalSource]](origin, options, sameOriginWithAncestors) operations should continue. When the Window object associated with the Document loses focus, [[Create]](origin, options, sameOriginWithAncestors) and [[DiscoverFromExternalSource]](origin, options, sameOriginWithAncestors) operations SHOULD be aborted.

The WHATWG HTML WG is discussing whether to provide a hook when a browsing context gains or loses focuses. If a hook is provided, the above paragraph will be updated to include the hook. See WHATWG HTML WG Issue #2711 for more details.

5.7. WebAuthn Extensions Inputs and Outputs

The subsections below define the data types used for conveying WebAuthn extension inputs and outputs.

Note: Authenticator extension outputs are conveyed as a part of authenticator data (see Table 1).

Note: The types defined below — AuthenticationExtensionsClientInputs and AuthenticationExtensionsClientOutputs — are applicable to both registration extensions and authentication extensions. The "Authentication..." portion of their names should be regarded as meaning "WebAuthentication..."

5.7.1. Authentication Extensions Client Inputs (dictionary AuthenticationExtensionsClientInputs)

dictionary AuthenticationExtensionsClientInputs {
};

This is a dictionary containing the client extension input values for zero or more WebAuthn Extensions.

5.7.2. Authentication Extensions Client Outputs (dictionary AuthenticationExtensionsClientOutputs)

dictionary AuthenticationExtensionsClientOutputs {
};

This is a dictionary containing the client extension output values for zero or more WebAuthn Extensions.

5.7.3. Authentication Extensions Authenticator Inputs (CDDL type AuthenticationExtensionsAuthenticatorInputs)

AuthenticationExtensionsAuthenticatorInputs = {
  * $$extensionInput .within ( tstr => any )
}

The CDDL type AuthenticationExtensionsAuthenticatorInputs defines a CBOR map containing the authenticator extension input values for zero or more WebAuthn Extensions. Extensions can add members as described in § 9.3 Extending Request Parameters.

This type is not exposed to the Relying Party, but is used by the client and authenticator.

5.7.4. Authentication Extensions Authenticator Outputs (CDDL type AuthenticationExtensionsAuthenticatorOutputs)

AuthenticationExtensionsAuthenticatorOutputs = {
  * $$extensionOutput .within ( tstr => any )
}

The CDDL type AuthenticationExtensionsAuthenticatorOutputs defines a CBOR map containing the authenticator extension output values for zero or more WebAuthn Extensions. Extensions can add members as described in § 9.3 Extending Request Parameters.

5.8. Supporting Data Structures

The public key credential type uses certain data structures that are specified in supporting specifications. These are as follows.

5.8.1. Client Data Used in WebAuthn Signatures (dictionary CollectedClientData)

The client data represents the contextual bindings of both the WebAuthn Relying Party and the client. It is a key-value mapping whose keys are strings. Values can be any type that has a valid encoding in JSON. Its structure is defined by the following Web IDL.

Note: The CollectedClientData may be extended in the future. Therefore it’s critical when parsing to be tolerant of unknown keys and of any reordering of the keys. See also § 5.8.1.2 Limited Verification Algorithm.

dictionary CollectedClientData {
    required DOMString           type;
    required DOMString           challenge;
    required DOMString           origin;
    DOMString                    topOrigin;
    boolean                      crossOrigin;
};

dictionary TokenBinding {
    required DOMString status;
    DOMString id;
};

enum TokenBindingStatus { "present", "supported" };
type, of type DOMString

This member contains the string "webauthn.create" when creating new credentials, and "webauthn.get" when getting an assertion from an existing credential. The purpose of this member is to prevent certain types of signature confusion attacks (where an attacker substitutes one legitimate signature for another).

challenge, of type DOMString

This member contains the base64url encoding of the challenge provided by the Relying Party. See the § 13.4.3 Cryptographic Challenges security consideration.

origin, of type DOMString

This member contains the fully qualified origin of the requester, as provided to the authenticator by the client, in the syntax defined by [RFC6454].

topOrigin, of type DOMString

This OPTIONAL member contains the fully qualified top-level origin of the requester, in the syntax defined by [RFC6454]. It is set only if the call was made from context that is not same-origin with its ancestors, i.e. if crossOrigin is true.

crossOrigin, of type boolean

This OPTIONAL member contains the inverse of the sameOriginWithAncestors argument value that was passed into the internal method.

[RESERVED] tokenBinding

This OPTIONAL member contains information about the state of the Token Binding protocol [TokenBinding] used when communicating with the Relying Party. Its absence indicates that the client doesn’t support token binding

Note: While Token Binding was present in Level 1 and Level 2 of WebAuthn, its use is not expected in Level 3. The tokenBinding field is reserved so that it will not be reused for a different purpose.

status, of type DOMString

This member SHOULD be a member of TokenBindingStatus but client platforms MUST ignore unknown values, treating an unknown value as if the tokenBinding member does not exist. When known, this member is one of the following:

supported

Indicates the client supports token binding, but it was not negotiated when communicating with the Relying Party.

present

Indicates token binding was used when communicating with the Relying Party. In this case, the id member MUST be present.

Note: The TokenBindingStatus enumeration is deliberately not referenced, see § 2.1.1 Enumerations as DOMString types.

id, of type DOMString

This member MUST be present if status is present, and MUST be a base64url encoding of the Token Binding ID that was used when communicating with the Relying Party.

Note: Obtaining a Token Binding ID is a client platform-specific operation.

The CollectedClientData structure is used by the client to compute the following quantities:

JSON-compatible serialization of client data

This is the result of performing the JSON-compatible serialization algorithm on the CollectedClientData dictionary.

Hash of the serialized client data

This is the hash (computed using SHA-256) of the JSON-compatible serialization of client data, as constructed by the client.

5.8.1.1. Serialization

The serialization of the CollectedClientData is a subset of the algorithm for JSON-serializing to bytes. I.e. it produces a valid JSON encoding of the CollectedClientData but also provides additional structure that may be exploited by verifiers to avoid integrating a full JSON parser. While verifiers are recommended to perform standard JSON parsing, they may use the more limited algorithm below in contexts where a full JSON parser is too large. This verification algorithm requires only base64url encoding, appending of bytestrings (which could be implemented by writing into a fixed template), and simple conditional checks (assuming that inputs are known not to need escaping).

The serialization algorithm works by appending successive byte strings to an, initially empty, partial result until the complete result is obtained.

  1. Let result be an empty byte string.

  2. Append 0x7b2274797065223a ({"type":) to result.

  3. Append CCDToString(type) to result.

  4. Append 0x2c226368616c6c656e6765223a (,"challenge":) to result.

  5. Append CCDToString(challenge) to result.

  6. Append 0x2c226f726967696e223a (,"origin":) to result.

  7. Append CCDToString(origin) to result.

  8. Append 0x2c2263726f73734f726967696e223a (,"crossOrigin":) to result.

  9. If crossOrigin is not present, or is false:

    1. Append 0x66616c7365 (false) to result.

  10. Otherwise:

    1. Append 0x74727565 (true) to result.

  11. If topOrigin is present:

    1. Append 0x2c22746f704f726967696e223a (,"topOrigin":) to result.

    2. Append CCDToString(topOrigin) to result.

  12. Create a temporary copy of the CollectedClientData and remove the fields type, challenge, origin, crossOrigin (if present), and topOrigin (if present).

  13. If no fields remain in the temporary copy then:

    1. Append 0x7d (}) to result.

  14. Otherwise:

    1. Invoke serialize JSON to bytes on the temporary copy to produce a byte string remainder.

    2. Append 0x2c (,) to result.

    3. Remove the leading byte from remainder.

    4. Append remainder to result.

  15. The result of the serialization is the value of result.

The function CCDToString is used in the above algorithm and is defined as:

  1. Let encoded be an empty byte string.

  2. Append 0x22 (") to encoded.

  3. Invoke ToString on the given object to convert to a string.

  4. For each code point in the resulting string, if the code point:

    is in the set {U+0020, U+0021, U+0023–U+005B, U+005D–U+10FFFF}

    Append the UTF-8 encoding of that code point to encoded.

    is U+0022

    Append 0x5c22 (\") to encoded.

    is U+005C

    Append 0x5c5c (\\) to encoded.

    otherwise

    Append 0x5c75 (\u) to encoded, followed by four, lower-case hex digits that, when interpreted as a base-16 number, represent that code point.

  5. Append 0x22 (") to encoded.

  6. The result of this function is the value of encoded.

5.8.1.2. Limited Verification Algorithm

Verifiers may use the following algorithm to verify an encoded CollectedClientData if they cannot support a full JSON parser:

  1. The inputs to the algorithm are:

    1. A bytestring, clientDataJSON, that contains clientDataJSON — the serialized CollectedClientData that is to be verified.

    2. A string, type, that contains the expected type.

    3. A byte string, challenge, that contains the challenge byte string that was given in the PublicKeyCredentialRequestOptions or PublicKeyCredentialCreationOptions.

    4. A string, origin, that contains the expected origin that issued the request to the user agent.

    5. A boolean, crossOrigin, that is true if, and only if, the request should have been performed within a cross-origin iframe.

  2. Let expected be an empty byte string.

  3. Append 0x7b2274797065223a ({"type":) to expected.

  4. Append CCDToString(type) to expected.

  5. Append 0x2c226368616c6c656e6765223a (,"challenge":) to expected.

  6. Perform base64url encoding on challenge to produce a string, challengeBase64.

  7. Append CCDToString(challengeBase64) to expected.

  8. Append 0x2c226f726967696e223a (,"origin":) to expected.

  9. Append CCDToString(origin) to expected.

  10. Append 0x2c2263726f73734f726967696e223a (,"crossOrigin":) to expected.

  11. If crossOrigin is true:

    1. Append 0x74727565 (true) to expected.

  12. Otherwise, i.e. crossOrigin is false:

    1. Append 0x66616c7365 (false) to expected.

  13. If expected is not a prefix of clientDataJSON then the verification has failed.

  14. If clientDataJSON is not at least one byte longer than expected then the verification has failed.

  15. If the byte of clientDataJSON at the offset equal to the length of expected:

    is 0x7d

    The verification is successful.

    is 0x2c

    The verification is successful.

    otherwise

    The verification has failed.

5.8.1.3. Future development

In order to remain compatible with the limited verification algorithm, future versions of this specification must not remove any of the fields type, challenge, origin, crossOrigin, or topOrigin from CollectedClientData. They also must not change the serialization algorithm to change the order in which those fields are serialized, or insert new fields between them.

If additional fields are added to CollectedClientData then verifiers that employ the limited verification algorithm will not be able to consider them until the two algorithms above are updated to include them. Once such an update occurs then the added fields inherit the same limitations as described in the previous paragraph. Such an algorithm update would have to accomodate serializations produced by previous versions. I.e. the verification algorithm would have to handle the fact that a sixth key–value pair may not appear sixth (or at all) if generated by a user agent working from a previous version.

5.8.2. Credential Type Enumeration (enum PublicKeyCredentialType)

enum PublicKeyCredentialType {
    "public-key"
};

Note: The PublicKeyCredentialType enumeration is deliberately not referenced, see § 2.1.1 Enumerations as DOMString types.

This enumeration defines the valid credential types. It is an extension point; values can be added to it in the future, as more credential types are defined. The values of this enumeration are used for versioning the Authentication Assertion and attestation structures according to the type of the authenticator.

Currently one credential type is defined, namely "public-key".

5.8.3. Credential Descriptor (dictionary PublicKeyCredentialDescriptor)

dictionary PublicKeyCredentialDescriptor {
    required DOMString                    type;
    required BufferSource                 id;
    sequence<DOMString>                   transports;
};

This dictionary identifies a specific public key credential. It is used in create() to prevent creating duplicate credentials on the same authenticator, and in get() to determine if and how the credential can currently be reached by the client. It mirrors some fields of the PublicKeyCredential object returned by create() and get().

type, of type DOMString

This member contains the type of the public key credential the caller is referring to. The value SHOULD be a member of PublicKeyCredentialType but client platforms MUST ignore any PublicKeyCredentialDescriptor with an unknown type.

This mirrors the type field of PublicKeyCredential.

id, of type BufferSource

This member contains the credential ID of the public key credential the caller is referring to.

This mirrors the rawId field of PublicKeyCredential.

transports, of type sequence<DOMString>

This OPTIONAL member contains a hint as to how the client might communicate with the managing authenticator of the public key credential the caller is referring to. The values SHOULD be members of AuthenticatorTransport but client platforms MUST ignore unknown values.

This mirrors the response.getTransports() method of a PublicKeyCredential structure created by a create() operation. When registering a new credential, the Relying Party SHOULD store the value returned from getTransports(). When creating a PublicKeyCredentialDescriptor for that credential, the Relying Party SHOULD retrieve that stored value and set it as the value of the transports member.

5.8.4. Authenticator Transport Enumeration (enum AuthenticatorTransport)

enum AuthenticatorTransport {
    "usb",
    "nfc",
    "ble",
    "smart-card",
    "hybrid",
    "internal"
};

Note: The AuthenticatorTransport enumeration is deliberately not referenced, see § 2.1.1 Enumerations as DOMString types.

Authenticators may implement various transports for communicating with clients. This enumeration defines hints as to how clients might communicate with a particular authenticator in order to obtain an assertion for a specific credential. Note that these hints represent the WebAuthn Relying Party's best belief as to how an authenticator may be reached. A Relying Party will typically learn of the supported transports for a public key credential via getTransports().
usb

Indicates the respective authenticator can be contacted over removable USB.

nfc

Indicates the respective authenticator can be contacted over Near Field Communication (NFC).

ble

Indicates the respective authenticator can be contacted over Bluetooth Smart (Bluetooth Low Energy / BLE).

smart-card

Indicates the respective authenticator can be contacted over ISO/IEC 7816 smart card with contacts.

hybrid

Indicates the respective authenticator can be contacted using a combination of (often separate) data-transport and proximity mechanisms. This supports, for example, authentication on a desktop computer using a smartphone.

internal

Indicates the respective authenticator is contacted using a client device-specific transport, i.e., it is a platform authenticator. These authenticators are not removable from the client device.

5.8.5. Cryptographic Algorithm Identifier (typedef COSEAlgorithmIdentifier)

typedef long COSEAlgorithmIdentifier;
A COSEAlgorithmIdentifier's value is a number identifying a cryptographic algorithm. The algorithm identifiers SHOULD be values registered in the IANA COSE Algorithms registry [IANA-COSE-ALGS-REG], for instance, -7 for "ES256" and -257 for "RS256".

The COSE algorithms registry leaves degrees of freedom to be specified by other parameters in a COSE key. In order to promote interoperability, this specification makes the following additional guarantees of credential public keys:

  1. Keys with algorithm ES256 (-7) MUST specify P-256 (1) as the crv parameter and MUST NOT use the compressed point form.

  2. Keys with algorithm ES384 (-35) MUST specify P-384 (2) as the crv parameter and MUST NOT use the compressed point form.

  3. Keys with algorithm ES512 (-36) MUST specify P-521 (3) as the crv parameter and MUST NOT use the compressed point form.

  4. Keys with algorithm EdDSA (-8) MUST specify Ed25519 (6) as the crv parameter. (These always use a compressed form in COSE.)

These restrictions align with the recommendation in Section 2.1 of [RFC9053].

Note: There are many checks neccessary to correctly implement signature verification using these algorithms. One of these is that, when processing uncompressed elliptic-curve points, implementations should check that the point is actually on the curve. This check is highlighted because it’s judged to be at particular risk of falling through the gap between a cryptographic library and other code.

5.8.6. User Verification Requirement Enumeration (enum UserVerificationRequirement)

enum UserVerificationRequirement {
    "required",
    "preferred",
    "discouraged"
};

A WebAuthn Relying Party may require user verification for some of its operations but not for others, and may use this type to express its needs.

Note: The UserVerificationRequirement enumeration is deliberately not referenced, see § 2.1.1 Enumerations as DOMString types.

required

The Relying Party requires user verification for the operation and will fail the overall ceremony if the response does not have the UV flag set. The client MUST return an error if user verification cannot be performed.

preferred

The Relying Party prefers user verification for the operation if possible, but will not fail the operation if the response does not have the UV flag set.

discouraged

The Relying Party does not want user verification employed during the operation (e.g., in the interest of minimizing disruption to the user interaction flow).

5.9. Permissions Policy integration

This specification defines two policy-controlled features identified by the feature-identifier tokens "publickey-credentials-create" and "publickey-credentials-get". Their default allowlists are both 'self'. [Permissions-Policy]

A Document's permissions policy determines whether any content in that document is allowed to successfully invoke the Web Authentication API, i.e., via navigator.credentials.create({publicKey:..., ...}) or navigator.credentials.get({publicKey:..., ...}) If disabled in any document, no content in the document will be allowed to use the foregoing methods: attempting to do so will return an error.

Note: Algorithms specified in [CREDENTIAL-MANAGEMENT-1] perform the actual permissions policy evaluation. This is because such policy evaluation needs to occur when there is access to the current settings object. The [[Create]](origin, options, sameOriginWithAncestors) and [[DiscoverFromExternalSource]](origin, options, sameOriginWithAncestors) internal methods does not have such access since they are invoked in parallel by CredentialsContainer's Create a Credential and Request a Credential abstract operations [CREDENTIAL-MANAGEMENT-1].

5.10. Using Web Authentication within iframe elements

The Web Authentication API is disabled by default in cross-origin iframes. To override this default policy and indicate that a cross-origin iframe is allowed to invoke the Web Authentication API's [[DiscoverFromExternalSource]](origin, options, sameOriginWithAncestors) method, specify the allow attribute on the iframe element and include the publickey-credentials-get feature-identifier token in the allow attribute’s value.

Relying Parties utilizing the WebAuthn API in an embedded context should review § 13.4.2 Visibility Considerations for Embedded Usage regarding UI redressing and its possible mitigations.

6. WebAuthn Authenticator Model

The Web Authentication API implies a specific abstract functional model for a WebAuthn Authenticator. This section describes that authenticator model.

Client platforms MAY implement and expose this abstract model in any way desired. However, the behavior of the client’s Web Authentication API implementation, when operating on the authenticators supported by that client platform, MUST be indistinguishable from the behavior specified in § 5 Web Authentication API.

Note: [FIDO-CTAP] is an example of a concrete instantiation of this model, but it is one in which there are differences in the data it returns and those expected by the WebAuthn API's algorithms. The CTAP2 response messages are CBOR maps constructed using integer keys rather than the string keys defined in this specification for the same objects. The client is expected to perform any needed transformations on such data. The [FIDO-CTAP] specification details the mapping between CTAP2 integer keys and WebAuthn string keys, in section §6.2. Responses.

For authenticators, this model defines the logical operations that they MUST support, and the data formats that they expose to the client and the WebAuthn Relying Party. However, it does not define the details of how authenticators communicate with the client device, unless they are necessary for interoperability with Relying Parties. For instance, this abstract model does not define protocols for connecting authenticators to clients over transports such as USB or NFC. Similarly, this abstract model does not define specific error codes or methods of returning them; however, it does define error behavior in terms of the needs of the client. Therefore, specific error codes are mentioned as a means of showing which error conditions MUST be distinguishable (or not) from each other in order to enable a compliant and secure client implementation.

Relying Parties may influence authenticator selection, if they deem necessary, by stipulating various authenticator characteristics when creating credentials and/or when generating assertions, through use of credential creation options or assertion generation options, respectively. The algorithms underlying the WebAuthn API marshal these options and pass them to the applicable authenticator operations defined below.

In this abstract model, the authenticator provides key management and cryptographic signatures. It can be embedded in the WebAuthn client or housed in a separate device entirely. The authenticator itself can contain a cryptographic module which operates at a higher security level than the rest of the authenticator. This is particularly important for authenticators that are embedded in the WebAuthn client, as in those cases this cryptographic module (which may, for example, be a TPM) could be considered more trustworthy than the rest of the authenticator.

Each authenticator stores a credentials map, a map from (rpId, userHandle) to public key credential source.

Additionally, each authenticator has an AAGUID, which is a 128-bit identifier indicating the type (e.g. make and model) of the authenticator. The AAGUID MUST be chosen by the manufacturer to be identical across all substantially identical authenticators made by that manufacturer, and different (with high probability) from the AAGUIDs of all other types of authenticators. The AAGUID for a given type of authenticator SHOULD be randomly generated to ensure this. The Relying Party MAY use the AAGUID to infer certain properties of the authenticator, such as certification level and strength of key protection, using information from other sources.

The primary function of the authenticator is to provide WebAuthn signatures, which are bound to various contextual data. These data are observed and added at different levels of the stack as a signature request passes from the server to the authenticator. In verifying a signature, the server checks these bindings against expected values. These contextual bindings are divided in two: Those added by the Relying Party or the client, referred to as client data; and those added by the authenticator, referred to as the authenticator data. The authenticator signs over the client data, but is otherwise not interested in its contents. To save bandwidth and processing requirements on the authenticator, the client hashes the client data and sends only the result to the authenticator. The authenticator signs over the combination of the hash of the serialized client data, and its own authenticator data.

The goals of this design can be summarized as follows.

Authenticators produce cryptographic signatures for two distinct purposes:

  1. An attestation signature is produced when a new public key credential is created via an authenticatorMakeCredential operation. An attestation signature provides cryptographic proof of certain properties of the authenticator and the credential. For instance, an attestation signature asserts the authenticator type (as denoted by its AAGUID) and the credential public key. The attestation signature is signed by an attestation private key, which is chosen depending on the type of attestation desired. For more details on attestation, see § 6.5 Attestation.

  2. An assertion signature is produced when the authenticatorGetAssertion method is invoked. It represents an assertion by the authenticator that the user has consented to a specific transaction, such as logging in, or completing a purchase. Thus, an assertion signature asserts that the authenticator possessing a particular credential private key has established, to the best of its ability, that the user requesting this transaction is the same user who consented to creating that particular public key credential. It also asserts additional information, termed client data, that may be useful to the caller, such as the means by which user consent was provided, and the prompt shown to the user by the authenticator. The assertion signature format is illustrated in Figure 4, below.

The term WebAuthn signature refers to both attestation signatures and assertion signatures. The formats of these signatures, as well as the procedures for generating them, are specified below.

6.1. Authenticator Data

The authenticator data structure encodes contextual bindings made by the authenticator. These bindings are controlled by the authenticator itself, and derive their trust from the WebAuthn Relying Party's assessment of the security properties of the authenticator. In one extreme case, the authenticator may be embedded in the client, and its bindings may be no more trustworthy than the client data. At the other extreme, the authenticator may be a discrete entity with high-security hardware and software, connected to the client over a secure channel. In both cases, the Relying Party receives the authenticator data in the same format, and uses its knowledge of the authenticator to make trust decisions.

The authenticator data has a compact but extensible encoding. This is desired since authenticators can be devices with limited capabilities and low power requirements, with much simpler software stacks than the client platform.

The authenticator data structure is a byte array of 37 bytes or more, laid out as shown in Table .

Name Length (in bytes) Description
rpIdHash 32 SHA-256 hash of the RP ID the credential is scoped to.
flags 1 Flags (bit 0 is the least significant bit):
signCount 4 Signature counter, 32-bit unsigned big-endian integer.
attestedCredentialData variable (if present) attested credential data (if present). See § 6.5.2 Attested Credential Data for details. Its length depends on the length of the credential ID and credential public key being attested.
extensions variable (if present) Extension-defined authenticator data. This is a CBOR [RFC8949] map with extension identifiers as keys, and authenticator extension outputs as values. See § 9 WebAuthn Extensions for details.
Authenticator data layout. The names in the Name column are only for reference within this document, and are not present in the actual representation of the authenticator data.

The RP ID is originally received from the client when the credential is created, and again when an assertion is generated. However, it differs from other client data in some important ways. First, unlike the client data, the RP ID of a credential does not change between operations but instead remains the same for the lifetime of that credential. Secondly, it is validated by the authenticator during the authenticatorGetAssertion operation, by verifying that the RP ID that the requested credential is scoped to exactly matches the RP ID supplied by the client.

Authenticators perform the following steps to generate an authenticator data structure:

Figure shows a visual representation of the authenticator data structure.

Authenticator data layout.
Note: authenticator data describes its own length: If the AT and ED flags are not set, it is always 37 bytes long. The attested credential data (which is only present if the AT flag is set) describes its own length. If the ED flag is set, then the total length is 37 bytes plus the length of the attested credential data (if the AT flag is set), plus the length of the extensions output (a CBOR map) that follows.

Determining attested credential data's length, which is variable, involves determining credentialPublicKey’s beginning location given the preceding credentialId’s length, and then determining the credentialPublicKey’s length (see also Section 7 of [RFC9052]).

6.1.1. Signature Counter Considerations

Authenticators SHOULD implement a signature counter feature. These counters are conceptually stored for each credential by the authenticator, or globally for the authenticator as a whole. The initial value of a credential’s signature counter is specified in the signCount value of the authenticator data returned by authenticatorMakeCredential. The signature counter is incremented for each successful authenticatorGetAssertion operation by some positive value, and subsequent values are returned to the WebAuthn Relying Party within the authenticator data again. The signature counter's purpose is to aid Relying Parties in detecting cloned authenticators. Clone detection is more important for authenticators with limited protection measures.

Authenticators that do not implement a signature counter leave the signCount in the authenticator data constant at zero.

A Relying Party stores the signature counter of the most recent authenticatorGetAssertion operation. (Or the counter from the authenticatorMakeCredential operation if no authenticatorGetAssertion has ever been performed on a credential.) In subsequent authenticatorGetAssertion operations, the Relying Party compares the stored signature counter value with the new signCount value returned in the assertion’s authenticator data. If either is non-zero, and the new signCount value is less than or equal to the stored value, a cloned authenticator may exist, or the authenticator may be malfunctioning.

Detecting a signature counter mismatch does not indicate whether the current operation was performed by a cloned authenticator or the original authenticator. Relying Parties should address this situation appropriately relative to their individual situations, i.e., their risk tolerance.

Authenticators:

6.1.2. FIDO U2F Signature Format Compatibility

The format for assertion signatures, which sign over the concatenation of an authenticator data structure and the hash of the serialized client data, are compatible with the FIDO U2F authentication signature format (see Section 5.4 of [FIDO-U2F-Message-Formats]).

This is because the first 37 bytes of the signed data in a FIDO U2F authentication response message constitute a valid authenticator data structure, and the remaining 32 bytes are the hash of the serialized client data. In this authenticator data structure, the rpIdHash is the FIDO U2F application parameter, all flags except UP are always zero, and the attestedCredentialData and extensions are never present. FIDO U2F authentication signatures can therefore be verified by the same procedure as other assertion signatures generated by the authenticatorGetAssertion operation.

6.1.3. Credential Backup State

Credential backup eligibility and current backup state is conveyed by the BE and BS flags in the authenticator data, as defined in Table .

The value of the BE flag is set during authenticatorMakeCredential operation and MUST NOT change.

The value of the BS flag may change over time based on the current state of the public key credential source. Table below defines valid combinations and their meaning.

BE BS Description
0 0 The credential is a single-device credential.
0 1 This combination is not allowed.
1 0 The credential is a multi-device credential and is not currently backed up.
1 1 The credential is a multi-device credential and is currently backed up.
BE and BS flag combinations

It is RECOMMENDED that Relying Parties store the most recent value of these flags with the user account for future evaluation.

The following is a non-exhaustive list of how Relying Parties might use these flags:

6.2. Authenticator Taxonomy

Many use cases are dependent on the capabilities of the authenticator used. This section defines some terminology for those capabilities, their most important combinations, and which use cases those combinations enable.

For example:

The above examples illustrate the primary authenticator type characteristics:

These characteristics are independent and may in theory be combined in any way, but Table lists and names some authenticator types of particular interest.

Authenticator Type Authenticator Attachment Modality Credential Storage Modality Authentication Factor Capability
Second-factor platform authenticator platform Either Single-factor capable
User-verifying platform authenticator platform Either Multi-factor capable
Second-factor roaming authenticator cross-platform Server-side storage Single-factor capable
First-factor roaming authenticator cross-platform Client-side storage Multi-factor capable
Definitions of names for some authenticator types.

A second-factor platform authenticator is convenient to use for re-authentication on the same client device, and can be used to add an extra layer of security both when initiating a new session and when resuming an existing session. A second-factor roaming authenticator is more likely to be used to authenticate on a particular client device for the first time, or on a client device shared between multiple users.

User-verifying platform authenticators and first-factor roaming authenticators enable passwordless multi-factor authentication. In addition to the proof of possession of the credential private key, these authenticators support user verification as a second authentication factor, typically a PIN or biometric recognition. The authenticator can thus act as two kinds of authentication factor, which enables multi-factor authentication while eliminating the need to share a password with the Relying Party.

The four combinations not named in Table have less distinguished use cases:

The following subsections define the aspects authenticator attachment modality, credential storage modality and authentication factor capability in more depth.

6.2.1. Authenticator Attachment Modality

Clients can communicate with authenticators using a variety of mechanisms. For example, a client MAY use a client device-specific API to communicate with an authenticator which is physically bound to a client device. On the other hand, a client can use a variety of standardized cross-platform transport protocols such as Bluetooth (see § 5.8.4 Authenticator Transport Enumeration (enum AuthenticatorTransport)) to discover and communicate with cross-platform attached authenticators. We refer to authenticators that are part of the client device as platform authenticators, while those that are reachable via cross-platform transport protocols are referred to as roaming authenticators.

Some platform authenticators could possibly also act as roaming authenticators depending on context. For example, a platform authenticator integrated into a mobile device could make itself available as a roaming authenticator via Bluetooth. In this case clients running on the mobile device would recognise the authenticator as a platform authenticator, while clients running on a different client device and communicating with the same authenticator via Bluetooth would recognize it as a roaming authenticator.

The primary use case for platform authenticators is to register a particular client device as a "trusted device", so the client device itself acts as a something you have authentication factor for future authentication. This gives the user the convenience benefit of not needing a roaming authenticator for future authentication ceremonies, e.g., the user will not have to dig around in their pocket for their key fob or phone.

Use cases for roaming authenticators include: authenticating on a new client device for the first time, on rarely used client devices, client devices shared between multiple users, or client devices that do not include a platform authenticator; and when policy or preference dictates that the authenticator be kept separate from the client devices it is used with. A roaming authenticator can also be used to hold backup credentials in case another authenticator is lost.

6.2.2. Credential Storage Modality

An authenticator can store a public key credential source in one of two ways:

  1. In persistent storage embedded in the authenticator, client or client device, e.g., in a secure element. This is a technical requirement for a client-side discoverable public key credential source.

  2. By encrypting (i.e., wrapping) the credential private key such that only this authenticator can decrypt (i.e., unwrap) it and letting the resulting ciphertext be the credential ID for the public key credential source. The credential ID is stored by the Relying Party and returned to the authenticator via the allowCredentials option of get(), which allows the authenticator to decrypt and use the credential private key.

    This enables the authenticator to have unlimited storage capacity for credential private keys, since the encrypted credential private keys are stored by the Relying Party instead of by the authenticator - but it means that a credential stored in this way must be retrieved from the Relying Party before the authenticator can use it.

Which of these storage strategies an authenticator supports defines the authenticator's credential storage modality as follows:

Note that a discoverable credential capable authenticator MAY support both storage strategies. In this case, the authenticator MAY at its discretion use different storage strategies for different credentials, though subject to the residentKey or requireResidentKey options of create().

6.2.3. Authentication Factor Capability

There are three broad classes of authentication factors that can be used to prove an identity during an authentication ceremony: something you have, something you know and something you are. Examples include a physical key, a password, and a fingerprint, respectively.

All WebAuthn Authenticators belong to the something you have class, but an authenticator that supports user verification can also act as one or two additional kinds of authentication factor. For example, if the authenticator can verify a PIN, the PIN is something you know, and a biometric authenticator can verify something you are. Therefore, an authenticator that supports user verification is multi-factor capable. Conversely, an authenticator that is not multi-factor capable is single-factor capable. Note that a single multi-factor capable authenticator could support several modes of user verification, meaning it could act as all three kinds of authentication factor.

Although user verification is performed locally on the authenticator and not by the Relying Party, the authenticator indicates if user verification was performed by setting the UV flag in the signed response returned to the Relying Party. The Relying Party can therefore use the UV flag to verify that additional authentication factors were used in a registration or authentication ceremony. The authenticity of the UV flag can in turn be assessed by inspecting the authenticator's attestation statement.

6.3. Authenticator Operations

A WebAuthn Client MUST connect to an authenticator in order to invoke any of the operations of that authenticator. This connection defines an authenticator session. An authenticator must maintain isolation between sessions. It may do this by only allowing one session to exist at any particular time, or by providing more complicated session management.

The following operations can be invoked by the client in an authenticator session.

6.3.1. Lookup Credential Source by Credential ID Algorithm

The result of looking up a credential id credentialId in an authenticator authenticator is the result of the following algorithm:

  1. If authenticator can decrypt credentialId into a public key credential source credSource:

    1. Set credSource.id to credentialId.

    2. Return credSource.

  2. For each public key credential source credSource of authenticator’s credentials map:

    1. If credSource.id is credentialId, return credSource.

  3. Return null.

6.3.2. The authenticatorMakeCredential Operation

It takes the following input parameters:

hash

The hash of the serialized client data, provided by the client.

rpEntity

The Relying Party's PublicKeyCredentialRpEntity.

userEntity

The user account’s PublicKeyCredentialUserEntity, containing the user handle given by the Relying Party.

requireResidentKey

The effective resident key requirement for credential creation, a Boolean value determined by the client.

requireUserPresence

The constant Boolean value true. It is included here as a pseudo-parameter to simplify applying this abstract authenticator model to implementations that may wish to make a test of user presence optional although WebAuthn does not.

requireUserVerification

The effective user verification requirement for credential creation, a Boolean value determined by the client.

credTypesAndPubKeyAlgs

A sequence of pairs of PublicKeyCredentialType and public key algorithms (COSEAlgorithmIdentifier) requested by the Relying Party. This sequence is ordered from most preferred to least preferred. The authenticator makes a best-effort to create the most preferred credential that it can.

excludeCredentialDescriptorList

An OPTIONAL list of PublicKeyCredentialDescriptor objects provided by the Relying Party with the intention that, if any of these are known to the authenticator, it SHOULD NOT create a new credential. excludeCredentialDescriptorList contains a list of known credentials.

enterpriseAttestationPossible

A Boolean value that indicates that individually-identifying attestation MAY be returned by the authenticator.

attestationFormats

A sequence of strings that expresses the Relying Party's preference for attestation statement formats, from most to least preferable. If the authenticator returns attestation, then it makes a best-effort attempt to use the most preferable format that it supports.

extensions

A CBOR map from extension identifiers to their authenticator extension inputs, created by the client based on the extensions requested by the Relying Party, if any.

Note: Before performing this operation, all other operations in progress in the authenticator session MUST be aborted by running the authenticatorCancel operation.

When this operation is invoked, the authenticator MUST perform the following procedure:

  1. Check if all the supplied parameters are syntactically well-formed and of the correct length. If not, return an error code equivalent to "UnknownError" and terminate the operation.

  2. Check if at least one of the specified combinations of PublicKeyCredentialType and cryptographic parameters in credTypesAndPubKeyAlgs is supported. If not, return an error code equivalent to "NotSupportedError" and terminate the operation.

  3. For each descriptor of excludeCredentialDescriptorList:

    1. If looking up descriptor.id in this authenticator returns non-null, and the returned item's RP ID and type match rpEntity.id and excludeCredentialDescriptorList.type respectively, then collect an authorization gesture confirming user consent for creating a new credential. The authorization gesture MUST include a test of user presence. If the user

      confirms consent to create a new credential

      return an error code equivalent to "InvalidStateError" and terminate the operation.

      does not consent to create a new credential

      return an error code equivalent to "NotAllowedError" and terminate the operation.

      Note: The purpose of this authorization gesture is not to proceed with creating a credential, but for privacy reasons to authorize disclosure of the fact that descriptor.id is bound to this authenticator. If the user consents, the client and Relying Party can detect this and guide the user to use a different authenticator. If the user does not consent, the authenticator does not reveal that descriptor.id is bound to it, and responds as if the user simply declined consent to create a credential.

  4. If requireResidentKey is true and the authenticator cannot store a client-side discoverable public key credential source, return an error code equivalent to "ConstraintError" and terminate the operation.

  5. If requireUserVerification is true and the authenticator cannot perform user verification, return an error code equivalent to "ConstraintError" and terminate the operation.

  6. Once the authorization gesture has been completed and user consent has been obtained, generate a new credential object:

    1. Let (publicKey, privateKey) be a new pair of cryptographic keys using the combination of PublicKeyCredentialType and cryptographic parameters represented by the first item in credTypesAndPubKeyAlgs that is supported by this authenticator.

    2. Let userHandle be userEntity.id.

    3. Let credentialSource be a new public key credential source with the fields:

      type

      public-key.

      privateKey

      privateKey

      rpId

      rpEntity.id

      userHandle

      userHandle

      otherUI

      Any other information the authenticator chooses to include.

    4. If requireResidentKey is true or the authenticator chooses to create a client-side discoverable public key credential source:

      1. Let credentialId be a new credential id.

      2. Set credentialSource.id to credentialId.

      3. Let credentials be this authenticator’s credentials map.

      4. Set credentials[(rpEntity.id, userHandle)] to credentialSource.

    5. Otherwise:

      1. Let credentialId be the result of serializing and encrypting credentialSource so that only this authenticator can decrypt it.

  7. If any error occurred while creating the new credential object, return an error code equivalent to "UnknownError" and terminate the operation.

  8. Let processedExtensions be the result of authenticator extension processing for each supported extension identifierauthenticator extension input in extensions.

  9. If the authenticator:

    is a U2F device

    let the signature counter value for the new credential be zero. (U2F devices may support signature counters but do not return a counter when making a credential. See [FIDO-U2F-Message-Formats].)

    supports a global signature counter

    Use the global signature counter's actual value when generating authenticator data.

    supports a per credential signature counter

    allocate the counter, associate it with the new credential, and initialize the counter value as zero.

    does not support a signature counter

    let the signature counter value for the new credential be constant at zero.

  10. Let attestedCredentialData be the attested credential data byte array including the credentialId and publicKey.

  11. Let attestationFormat be the first supported attestation statement format identifier from attestationFormats, taking into account enterpriseAttestationPossible. If attestationFormats contains no supported value, then let attestationFormat be the attestation statement format identifier most preferred by this authenticator.

  12. Let authenticatorData be the byte array specified in § 6.1 Authenticator Data, including attestedCredentialData as the attestedCredentialData and processedExtensions, if any, as the extensions.

  13. Create an attestation object for the new credential using the procedure specified in § 6.5.5 Generating an Attestation Object, the attestation statement format attestationFormat, and the values authenticatorData and hash, as well as taking into account the value of enterpriseAttestationPossible. For more details on attestation, see § 6.5 Attestation.

On successful completion of this operation, the authenticator returns the attestation object to the client.

6.3.3. The authenticatorGetAssertion Operation

It takes the following input parameters:

rpId

The caller’s RP ID, as determined by the user agent and the client.

hash

The hash of the serialized client data, provided by the client.

allowCredentialDescriptorList

An OPTIONAL list of PublicKeyCredentialDescriptors describing credentials acceptable to the Relying Party (possibly filtered by the client), if any.

requireUserPresence

The constant Boolean value true. It is included here as a pseudo-parameter to simplify applying this abstract authenticator model to implementations that may wish to make a test of user presence optional although WebAuthn does not.

requireUserVerification

The effective user verification requirement for assertion, a Boolean value provided by the client.

enterpriseAttestationPossible

A Boolean value that indicates that individually-identifying attestation MAY be returned by the authenticator.

attestationFormats

A sequence of strings that expresses the Relying Party's preference for attestation statement formats, from most to least preferable. If the authenticator returns attestation, then it makes a best-effort attempt to use the most preferable format that it supports.

extensions

A CBOR map from extension identifiers to their authenticator extension inputs, created by the client based on the extensions requested by the Relying Party, if any.

Note: Before performing this operation, all other operations in progress in the authenticator session MUST be aborted by running the authenticatorCancel operation.

When this method is invoked, the authenticator MUST perform the following procedure:

  1. Check if all the supplied parameters are syntactically well-formed and of the correct length. If not, return an error code equivalent to "UnknownError" and terminate the operation.

  2. Let credentialOptions be a new empty set of public key credential sources.

  3. If allowCredentialDescriptorList was supplied, then for each descriptor of allowCredentialDescriptorList:

    1. Let credSource be the result of looking up descriptor.id in this authenticator.

    2. If credSource is not null, append it to credentialOptions.

  4. Otherwise (allowCredentialDescriptorList was not supplied), for each keycredSource of this authenticator’s credentials map, append credSource to credentialOptions.

  5. Remove any items from credentialOptions whose rpId is not equal to rpId.

  6. If credentialOptions is now empty, return an error code equivalent to "NotAllowedError" and terminate the operation.

  7. Prompt the user to select a public key credential source selectedCredential from credentialOptions. Collect an authorization gesture confirming user consent for using selectedCredential. The prompt for the authorization gesture may be shown by the authenticator if it has its own output capability, or by the user agent otherwise.

    If requireUserVerification is true, the authorization gesture MUST include user verification.

    If requireUserPresence is true, the authorization gesture MUST include a test of user presence.

    If the user does not consent, return an error code equivalent to "NotAllowedError" and terminate the operation.

  8. Let processedExtensions be the result of authenticator extension processing for each supported extension identifierauthenticator extension input in extensions.

  9. Increment the credential associated signature counter or the global signature counter value, depending on which approach is implemented by the authenticator, by some positive value. If the authenticator does not implement a signature counter, let the signature counter value remain constant at zero.

  10. If attestationFormats:

    is not empty

    let attestationFormat be the first supported attestation statement format from attestationFormats, taking into account enterpriseAttestationPossible. If none are supported, fallthrough to:

    is empty

    let attestationFormat be the attestation statement format most preferred by this authenticator. If it does not support attestation during assertion then let this be none.

  11. Let authenticatorData be the byte array specified in § 6.1 Authenticator Data including processedExtensions, if any, as the extensions and excluding attestedCredentialData. This authenticatorData MUST include attested credential data if, and only if, attestationFormat is not none.

  12. Let signature be the assertion signature of the concatenation authenticatorData || hash using the privateKey of selectedCredential as shown in Figure , below. A simple, undelimited concatenation is safe to use here because the authenticator data describes its own length. The hash of the serialized client data (which potentially has a variable length) is always the last element.

    Generating an assertion signature.
  13. The attestationFormat is not none then create an attestation object for the new credential using the procedure specified in § 6.5.5 Generating an Attestation Object, the attestation statement format attestationFormat, and the values authenticatorData and hash, as well as taking into account the value of enterpriseAttestationPossible. For more details on attestation, see § 6.5 Attestation.

  14. If any error occurred then return an error code equivalent to "UnknownError" and terminate the operation.

  15. Return to the user agent:
    • selectedCredential.id, if either a list of credentials (i.e., allowCredentialDescriptorList) of length 2 or greater was supplied by the client, or no such list was supplied.

      Note: If, within allowCredentialDescriptorList, the client supplied exactly one credential and it was successfully employed, then its credential ID is not returned since the client already knows it. This saves transmitting these bytes over what may be a constrained connection in what is likely a common case.

    • authenticatorData

    • signature

    • The attestation object, if an attestation object was created for this assertion.

    • selectedCredential.userHandle

      Note: the returned userHandle value may be null, see: userHandleResult.

If the authenticator cannot find any credential corresponding to the specified Relying Party that matches the specified criteria, it terminates the operation and returns an error.

6.3.4. The authenticatorCancel Operation

This operation takes no input parameters and returns no result.

When this operation is invoked by the client in an authenticator session, it has the effect of terminating any authenticatorMakeCredential or authenticatorGetAssertion operation currently in progress in that authenticator session. The authenticator stops prompting for, or accepting, any user input related to authorizing the canceled operation. The client ignores any further responses from the authenticator for the canceled operation.

This operation is ignored if it is invoked in an authenticator session which does not have an authenticatorMakeCredential or authenticatorGetAssertion operation currently in progress.

6.3.5. The silentCredentialDiscovery operation

This is an OPTIONAL operation authenticators MAY support to enable conditional user mediation.

It takes the following input parameter:

rpId

The caller’s RP ID, as determined by the client.

When this operation is invoked, the authenticator MUST perform the following procedure:

  1. Let collectedDiscoverableCredentialMetadata be a new list whose items are DiscoverableCredentialMetadata structs with the following items:

    type

    A PublicKeyCredentialType.

    id

    A Credential ID.

    rpId

    A Relying Party Identifier.

    userHandle

    A user handle.

    otherUI

    Other information used by the authenticator to inform its UI.

  2. For each public key credential source credSource of authenticator’s credentials map:

    1. If credSource is not a client-side discoverable credential, continue.

    2. If credSource.rpId is not rpId, continue.

    3. Let discoveredCredentialMetadata be a new DiscoverableCredentialMetadata struct whose items are copies of credSource’s type, id, rpId, userHandle and otherUI.

    4. Append discoveredCredentialMetadata to collectedDiscoverableCredentialMetadata.

  3. Return collectedDiscoverableCredentialMetadata.

6.4. String Handling

Authenticators may be required to store arbitrary strings chosen by a Relying Party, for example the name and displayName in a PublicKeyCredentialUserEntity. This section discusses some practical consequences of handling arbitrary strings that may be presented to humans.

6.4.1. String Truncation

Each arbitrary string in the API will have some accommodation for the potentially limited resources available to an authenticator. If string value truncation is the chosen accommodation then authenticators MAY truncate in order to make the string fit within a length equal or greater than the specified minimum supported length. Such truncation SHOULD also respect UTF-8 sequence boundaries or grapheme cluster boundaries [UAX29]. This defines the maximum truncation permitted and authenticators MUST NOT truncate further.

For example, in figure the string is 65 bytes long. If truncating to 64 bytes then the final 0x88 byte must be removed purely because of space reasons. Since that leaves a partial UTF-8 sequence the remainder of that sequence may also be removed. Since that leaves a partial grapheme cluster an authenticator may remove the remainder of that cluster.

The end of a UTF-8 encoded string showing the positions of different truncation boundaries.

Conforming User Agents are responsible for ensuring that the authenticator behavior observed by Relying Parties conforms to this specification with respect to string handling. For example, if an authenticator is known to behave incorrectly when asked to store large strings, the user agent SHOULD perform the truncation for it in order to maintain the model from the point of view of the Relying Party. User-agents that do this SHOULD truncate at grapheme cluster boundaries.

Truncation based on UTF-8 sequences alone may cause a grapheme cluster to be truncated. This could make the grapheme cluster render as a different glyph, potentially changing the meaning of the string, instead of removing the glyph entirely.

In addition to that, truncating on byte boundaries alone causes a known issue that user agents should be aware of: if the authenticator is using [FIDO-CTAP] then future messages from the authenticator may contain invalid CBOR since the value is typed as a CBOR string and thus is required to be valid UTF-8. User agents are tasked with handling this to avoid burdening authenticators with understanding character encodings and Unicode character properties. Thus, when dealing with authenticators, user agents SHOULD:

  1. Ensure that any strings sent to authenticators are validly encoded.

  2. Handle the case where strings have been truncated resulting in an invalid encoding. For example, any partial code point at the end may be dropped or replaced with U+FFFD.

6.4.2. Language and Direction Encoding

In order to be correctly displayed in context, the language and base direction of a string may be required. Strings in this API may have to be written to fixed-function authenticators and then later read back and displayed on a different platform. Thus language and direction metadata is encoded in the string itself to ensure that it is transported atomically.

To encode language and direction metadata in a string that is documented as permitting it, suffix its code points with two sequences of code points:

The first encodes a language tag with the code point U+E0001 followed by the ASCII values of the language tag each shifted up by U+E0000. For example, the language tag “en-US” becomes the code points U+E0001, U+E0065, U+E006E, U+E002D, U+E0055, U+E0053.

The second consists of a single code point which is either U+200E (“LEFT-TO-RIGHT MARK”), U+200F (“RIGHT-TO-LEFT MARK”), or U+E007F (“CANCEL TAG”). The first two can be used to indicate directionality but SHOULD only be used when neccessary to produce the correct result. (E.g. an RTL string that starts with LTR-strong characters.) The value U+E007F is a direction-agnostic indication of the end of the language tag.

So the string “حبیب الرحمان” could have two different DOMString values, depending on whether the language was encoded or not. (Since the direction is unambiguous a directionality marker is not needed in this example.)

Consumers of strings that may have language and direction encoded should be aware that truncation could truncate a language tag into a different, but still valid, language. The final directionality marker or CANCEL TAG code point provide an unambigous indication of truncation.

6.5. Attestation

Authenticators SHOULD also provide some form of attestation, if possible. If an authenticator does, the basic requirement is that the authenticator can produce, for each credential public key, an attestation statement verifiable by the WebAuthn Relying Party. Typically, this attestation statement contains a signature by an attestation private key over the attested credential public key and a challenge, as well as a certificate or similar data providing provenance information for the attestation public key, enabling the Relying Party to make a trust decision. However, if an attestation key pair is not available, then the authenticator MAY either perform self attestation of the credential public key with the corresponding credential private key, or otherwise perform no attestation.

All this information is returned by authenticators any time a new public key credential is generated, and optionally when exercised, in the overall form of an attestation object. The relationship of the attestation object with authenticator data (containing attested credential data) and the attestation statement is illustrated in figure , below.

If an authenticator employs self attestation or no attestation, then no provenance information is provided for the Relying Party to base a trust decision on. In these cases, the authenticator provides no guarantees about its operation to the Relying Party.

Attestation object layout illustrating the included authenticator data from a create() operation (containing attested credential data) and the attestation statement.
This figure illustrates only the packed attestation statement format. Several additional attestation statement formats are defined in § 8 Defined Attestation Statement Formats.

An important component of the attestation object is the attestation statement. This is a specific type of signed data object, containing statements about a public key credential itself and the authenticator that created it. It contains an attestation signature created using the key of the attesting authority (except for the case of self attestation, when it is created using the credential private key). In order to correctly interpret an attestation statement, a Relying Party needs to understand these two aspects of attestation:

  1. The attestation statement format is the manner in which the signature is represented and the various contextual bindings are incorporated into the attestation statement by the authenticator. In other words, this defines the syntax of the statement. Various existing components and OS platforms (such as TPMs and the Android OS) have previously defined attestation statement formats. This specification supports a variety of such formats in an extensible way, as defined in § 6.5.3 Attestation Statement Formats. The formats themselves are identified by strings, as described in § 8.1 Attestation Statement Format Identifiers.

  2. The attestation type defines the semantics of attestation statements and their underlying trust models. Specifically, it defines how a Relying Party establishes trust in a particular attestation statement, after verifying that it is cryptographically valid. This specification supports a number of attestation types, as described in § 6.5.4 Attestation Types.

In general, there is no simple mapping between attestation statement formats and attestation types. For example, the "packed" attestation statement format defined in § 8.2 Packed Attestation Statement Format can be used in conjunction with all attestation types, while other formats and types have more limited applicability.

The privacy, security and operational characteristics of attestation depend on:

The attestation type and attestation statement format is chosen by the authenticator; Relying Parties can only signal their preferences by setting the attestation and attestationFormats parameters, or those with the same names in PublicKeyCredentialRequestOptions.

It is expected that most authenticators will support a small number of attestation types and attestation statement formats, while Relying Parties will decide what attestation types are acceptable to them by policy. Relying Parties will also need to understand the characteristics of the authenticators that they trust, based on information they have about these authenticators. For example, the FIDO Metadata Service [FIDOMetadataService] provides one way to access such information.

6.5.1. Attestation in assertions

Attestation is most commonly provided during credential creation. However, if supported by the authenticator and requested by the Relying Party using the attestation parameter, attestation MAY be provided in assertions.

Attestations in assertions could be helpful in at least the following situations:

  1. For multi-device credentials, the generating authenticator may have returned a meaningfully different attestation than the authenticator currently exercising the credential. Thus returning an attestation for each use of the credential allows the Relying Party to observe these changes.

  2. If the attestation statement format involves a 3rd-party attesting to the state of the authenticator, then returning an attestation with each use of the credential allows for the continued good health of the authenticator to be attested.

Attestation objects provided in an AuthenticatorAttestationResponse structure (i.e. as the result of a create() operation) contain at least the three keys shown in the previous figure: fmt, attStmt, and authData. The authData key is not included when an attestation object is provided in an AuthenticatorAssertionResponse (i.e. as the result of a get() operation). That is because the authenticator data is provided directly in the authenticatorData member of the AuthenticatorAssertionResponse. Otherwise, processing of the attestation object is identical.

6.5.2. Attested Credential Data

Attested credential data is a variable-length byte array added to the authenticator data when generating an attestation object for a credential. Its format is shown in Table .

Name Length (in bytes) Description
aaguid 16 The AAGUID of the authenticator.
credentialIdLength 2 Byte length L of credentialId, 16-bit unsigned big-endian integer. Value MUST be ≤ 1023.
credentialId L Credential ID
credentialPublicKey variable The credential public key encoded in COSE_Key format, as defined in Section 7 of [RFC9052], using the CTAP2 canonical CBOR encoding form. The COSE_Key-encoded credential public key MUST contain the "alg" parameter and MUST NOT contain any other OPTIONAL parameters. The "alg" parameter MUST contain a COSEAlgorithmIdentifier value. The encoded credential public key MUST also contain any additional REQUIRED parameters stipulated by the relevant key type specification, i.e., REQUIRED for the key type "kty" and algorithm "alg" (see Section 2 of [RFC9053]).
Attested credential data layout. The names in the Name column are only for reference within this document, and are not present in the actual representation of the attested credential data.

Attested credential data is always present in any authenticator data that results from a create() operation. It MUST be present in an authenticator data resulting from a get() operation if, and only if, the attestationObject attribute is present in the assertion result.

6.5.2.1. Examples of credentialPublicKey Values Encoded in COSE_Key Format

This section provides examples of COSE_Key-encoded Elliptic Curve and RSA public keys for the ES256, PS256, and RS256 signature algorithms. These examples adhere to the rules defined above for the credentialPublicKey value, and are presented in CDDL [RFC8610] for clarity.

Section 7 of [RFC9052] defines the general framework for all COSE_Key-encoded keys. Specific key types for specific algorithms are defined in [RFC9053] as well as in other specifications, as noted below.

Below is an example of a COSE_Key-encoded Elliptic Curve public key in EC2 format (see Section 7.1 of [RFC9053]), on the P-256 curve, to be used with the ES256 signature algorithm (ECDSA w/ SHA-256, see Section 2.1 of [RFC9053]):

{
  1:   2,  ; kty: EC2 key type
  3:  -7,  ; alg: ES256 signature algorithm
 -1:   1,  ; crv: P-256 curve
 -2:   x,  ; x-coordinate as byte string 32 bytes in length
           ; e.g., in hex: 65eda5a12577c2bae829437fe338701a10aaa375e1bb5b5de108de439c08551d
 -3:   y   ; y-coordinate as byte string 32 bytes in length
           ; e.g., in hex: 1e52ed75701163f7f9e40ddf9f341b3dc9ba860af7e0ca7ca7e9eecd0084d19c
}

Below is the above Elliptic Curve public key encoded in the CTAP2 canonical CBOR encoding form, whitespace and line breaks are included here for clarity and to match the CDDL [RFC8610] presentation above:

A5
   01  02

   03  26

   20  01

   21  58 20   65eda5a12577c2bae829437fe338701a10aaa375e1bb5b5de108de439c08551d

   22  58 20   1e52ed75701163f7f9e40ddf9f341b3dc9ba860af7e0ca7ca7e9eecd0084d19c

Below is an example of a COSE_Key-encoded 2048-bit RSA public key (see [RFC8230] Section 4, to be used with the PS256 signature algorithm (RSASSA-PSS with SHA-256, see Section 2 of [RFC8230]:

{
  1:   3,  ; kty: RSA key type
  3: -37,  ; alg: PS256
 -1:   n,  ; n:   RSA modulus n byte string 256 bytes in length
           ;      e.g., in hex (middle bytes elided for brevity): DB5F651550...6DC6548ACC3
 -2:   e   ; e:   RSA public exponent e byte string 3 bytes in length
           ;      e.g., in hex: 010001
}

Below is an example of the same COSE_Key-encoded RSA public key as above, to be used with the RS256 signature algorithm (RSASSA-PKCS1-v1_5 with SHA-256):

{
  1:   3,  ; kty: RSA key type
  3:-257,  ; alg: RS256
 -1:   n,  ; n:   RSA modulus n byte string 256 bytes in length
           ;      e.g., in hex (middle bytes elided for brevity): DB5F651550...6DC6548ACC3
 -2:   e   ; e:   RSA public exponent e byte string 3 bytes in length
           ;      e.g., in hex: 010001
}

6.5.3. Attestation Statement Formats

As described above, an attestation statement format is a data format which represents a cryptographic signature by an authenticator over a set of contextual bindings. Each attestation statement format MUST be defined using the following template:

The initial list of specified attestation statement formats is in § 8 Defined Attestation Statement Formats.

6.5.4. Attestation Types

WebAuthn supports several attestation types, defining the semantics of attestation statements and their underlying trust models:

Note: This specification does not define any data structures explicitly expressing the attestation types employed by authenticators. Relying Parties engaging in attestation statement verification — i.e., when calling navigator.credentials.create() they select an attestation conveyance other than none and verify the received attestation statement — will determine the employed attestation type as a part of verification. See the "Verification procedure" subsections of § 8 Defined Attestation Statement Formats. See also § 14.4.1 Attestation Privacy. For all attestation types defined in this section other than Self and None, Relying Party verification is followed by matching the trust path to an acceptable root certificate per step 23 of § 7.1 Registering a New Credential. Differentiating these attestation types becomes useful primarily as a means for determining if the attestation is acceptable under Relying Party policy.

Basic Attestation (Basic)

In the case of basic attestation [UAFProtocol], the authenticator’s attestation key pair is specific to an authenticator "model", i.e., a "batch" of authenticators. Thus, authenticators of the same, or similar, model often share the same attestation key pair. See § 14.4.1 Attestation Privacy for further information.

Basic attestation is also referred to as batch attestation.

Self Attestation (Self)

In the case of self attestation, also known as surrogate basic attestation [UAFProtocol], the Authenticator does not have any specific attestation key pair. Instead it uses the credential private key to create the attestation signature. Authenticators without meaningful protection measures for an attestation private key typically use this attestation type.

Attestation CA (AttCA)

In this case, an authenticator is based on a Trusted Platform Module (TPM) and holds an authenticator-specific "endorsement key" (EK). This key is used to securely communicate with a trusted third party, the Attestation CA [TCG-CMCProfile-AIKCertEnroll] (formerly known as a "Privacy CA"). The authenticator can generate multiple attestation identity key pairs (AIK) and requests an Attestation CA to issue an AIK certificate for each. Using this approach, such an authenticator can limit the exposure of the EK (which is a global correlation handle) to Attestation CA(s). AIKs can be requested for each authenticator-generated public key credential individually, and conveyed to Relying Parties as attestation certificates.

Note: This concept typically leads to multiple attestation certificates. The attestation certificate requested most recently is called "active".

Anonymization CA (AnonCA)

In this case, the authenticator uses an Anonymization CA which dynamically generates per-credential attestation certificates such that the attestation statements presented to Relying Parties do not provide uniquely identifiable information, e.g., that might be used for tracking purposes.

Note: Attestation statements conveying attestations of type AttCA or AnonCA use the same data structure as those of type Basic, so the three attestation types are, in general, distinguishable only with externally provided knowledge regarding the contents of the attestation certificates conveyed in the attestation statement.

No attestation statement (None)

In this case, no attestation information is available. See also § 8.7 None Attestation Statement Format.

6.5.5. Generating an Attestation Object

To generate an attestation object (see: Figure 6) given:

attestationFormat

An attestation statement format.

authData

A byte array containing authenticator data.

hash

The hash of the serialized client data.

the authenticator MUST:

  1. Let attStmt be the result of running attestationFormat’s signing procedure given authData and hash.

  2. Let fmt be attestationFormat’s attestation statement format identifier

  3. Return the attestation object as a CBOR map with the following syntax, filled in with variables initialized by this algorithm:

    attObj = {
                authData: bytes,
                $$attStmtType
             }
    
    attStmtTemplate = (
                          fmt: text,
                          attStmt: { * tstr => any } ; Map is filled in by each concrete attStmtType
                      )
    
    ; Every attestation statement format must have the above fields
    attStmtTemplate .within $$attStmtType
    

6.5.6. Signature Formats for Packed Attestation, FIDO U2F Attestation, and Assertion Signatures

It is RECOMMENDED that any new attestation formats defined not use ASN.1 encodings, but instead represent signatures as equivalent fixed-length byte arrays without internal structure, using the same representations as used by COSE signatures as defined in [RFC9053] and [RFC8230].

The below signature format definitions satisfy this requirement and serve as examples for deriving the same for other signature algorithms not explicitly mentioned here:

7. WebAuthn Relying Party Operations

A registration or authentication ceremony begins with the WebAuthn Relying Party creating a PublicKeyCredentialCreationOptions or PublicKeyCredentialRequestOptions object, respectively, which encodes the parameters for the ceremony. The Relying Party SHOULD take care to not leak sensitive information during this stage; see § 14.6.2 Username Enumeration for details.

Upon successful execution of create() or get(), the Relying Party's script receives a PublicKeyCredential containing an AuthenticatorAttestationResponse or AuthenticatorAssertionResponse structure, respectively, from the client. It must then deliver the contents of this structure to the Relying Party server, using methods outside the scope of this specification. This section describes the operations that the Relying Party must perform upon receipt of these structures.

7.1. Registering a New Credential

In order to perform a registration ceremony, the Relying Party MUST proceed as follows:

  1. Let options be a new PublicKeyCredentialCreationOptions structure configured to the Relying Party's needs for the ceremony.

  2. Call navigator.credentials.create() and pass options as the publicKey option. Let credential be the result of the successfully resolved promise. If the promise is rejected, abort the ceremony with a user-visible error, or otherwise guide the user experience as might be determinable from the context available in the rejected promise. For example if the promise is rejected with an error code equivalent to "InvalidStateError", the user might be instructed to use a different authenticator. For information on different error contexts and the circumstances leading to them, see § 6.3.2 The authenticatorMakeCredential Operation.

  3. Let response be credential.response. If response is not an instance of AuthenticatorAttestationResponse, abort the ceremony with a user-visible error.

  4. Let clientExtensionResults be the result of calling credential.getClientExtensionResults().

  5. Let JSONtext be the result of running UTF-8 decode on the value of response.clientDataJSON.

    Note: Using any implementation of UTF-8 decode is acceptable as long as it yields the same result as that yielded by the UTF-8 decode algorithm. In particular, any leading byte order mark (BOM) MUST be stripped.

  6. Let C, the client data claimed as collected during the credential creation, be the result of running an implementation-specific JSON parser on JSONtext.

    Note: C may be any implementation-specific data structure representation, as long as C’s components are referenceable, as required by this algorithm.

  7. Verify that the value of C.type is webauthn.create.

  8. Verify that the value of C.challenge equals the base64url encoding of options.challenge.

  9. Verify that the value of C.origin matches the Relying Party's origin.

  10. If C.topOrigin is present:

    1. Verify that the Relying Party expects that this credential would have been created within an iframe that is not same-origin with its ancestors.

    2. Verify that the value of C.topOrigin matches the origin of a page that the Relying Party expects to be sub-framed within.

  11. Let hash be the result of computing a hash over response.clientDataJSON using SHA-256.

  12. Perform CBOR decoding on the attestationObject field of the AuthenticatorAttestationResponse structure to obtain the attestation statement format fmt, the authenticator data authData, and the attestation statement attStmt.

  13. Verify that the rpIdHash in authData is the SHA-256 hash of the RP ID expected by the Relying Party.

  14. Verify that the UP bit of the flags in authData is set.

  15. If the Relying Party requires user verification for this registration, verify that the UV bit of the flags in authData is set.

  16. If the Relying Party uses the credential’s backup eligibility to inform its user experience flows and/or policies, evaluate the BE bit of the flags in authData.

  17. If the Relying Party uses the credential’s backup state to inform its user experience flows and/or policies, evaluate the BS bit of the flags in authData.

  18. Verify that the "alg" parameter in the credential public key in authData matches the alg attribute of one of the items in options.pubKeyCredParams.

  19. Verify that the values of the client extension outputs in clientExtensionResults and the authenticator extension outputs in the extensions in authData are as expected, considering the client extension input values that were given in options.extensions and any specific policy of the Relying Party regarding unsolicited extensions, i.e., those that were not specified as part of options.extensions. In the general case, the meaning of "are as expected" is specific to the Relying Party and which extensions are in use.

    Note: Client platforms MAY enact local policy that sets additional authenticator extensions or client extensions and thus cause values to appear in the authenticator extension outputs or client extension outputs that were not originally specified as part of options.extensions. Relying Parties MUST be prepared to handle such situations, whether it be to ignore the unsolicited extensions or reject the attestation. The Relying Party can make this decision based on local policy and the extensions in use.

    Note: Since all extensions are OPTIONAL for both the client and the authenticator, the Relying Party MUST also be prepared to handle cases where none or not all of the requested extensions were acted upon.

    Note: The devicePubKey extension has explicit verification procedures, see § 10.2.2.3.1 Registration (create()).

  20. Determine the attestation statement format by performing a USASCII case-sensitive match on fmt against the set of supported WebAuthn Attestation Statement Format Identifier values. An up-to-date list of registered WebAuthn Attestation Statement Format Identifier values is maintained in the IANA "WebAuthn Attestation Statement Format Identifiers" registry [IANA-WebAuthn-Registries] established by [RFC8809].

  21. Verify that attStmt is a correct attestation statement, conveying a valid attestation signature, by using the attestation statement format fmt’s verification procedure given attStmt, authData and hash.

    Note: Each attestation statement format specifies its own verification procedure. See § 8 Defined Attestation Statement Formats for the initially-defined formats, and [IANA-WebAuthn-Registries] for the up-to-date list.

  22. If validation is successful, obtain a list of acceptable trust anchors (i.e. attestation root certificates) for that attestation type and attestation statement format fmt, from a trusted source or from policy. For example, the FIDO Metadata Service [FIDOMetadataService] provides one way to obtain such information, using the aaguid in the attestedCredentialData in authData.
  23. Assess the attestation trustworthiness using the outputs of the verification procedure in step 21, as follows:
  24. Verify that the credentialId is ≤ 1023 bytes. Credential IDs larger than this many bytes SHOULD cause the RP to fail this registration ceremony.

  25. Verify that the credentialId is not yet registered for any user. If the credentialId is already known then the Relying Party SHOULD fail this registration ceremony.

    NOTE: The rationale for Relying Parties rejecting duplicate credential IDs is as follows: credential IDs contain sufficient entropy that accidental duplication is very unlikely. However, attestation types other than self attestation do not include a self-signature to explicitly prove possession of the credential private key at registration time. Thus an attacker who has managed to obtain a user’s credential ID and credential public key for a site (this could be potentially accomplished in various ways), could attempt to register a victim’s credential as their own at that site. If the Relying Party accepts this new registration and replaces the victim’s existing credential registration, and the credentials are discoverable, then the victim could be forced to sign into the attacker’s account at their next attempt. Data saved to the site by the victim in that state would then be available to the attacker.

  26. If the attestation statement attStmt verified successfully and is found to be trustworthy, then create and store a new credential record in the user account that was denoted in options.user, with the following contents:
    type

    credential.type.

    id

    credential.id or credential.rawId, whichever format is preferred by the Relying Party.

    publicKey

    The credential public key in authData.

    signCount

    authData.signCount.

    uvInitialized

    The value of the UV flag in authData.

    transports

    The value returned from response.getTransports().

    backupEligible

    The value of the BE flag in authData.

    backupState

    The value of the BS flag in authData.

    The new credential record MAY also include the following OPTIONAL contents:

    attestationObject

    response.attestationObject.

    attestationClientDataJSON

    response.clientDataJSON.

  27. If the attestation statement attStmt successfully verified but is not trustworthy per step 23 above, the Relying Party SHOULD fail the registration ceremony.

    NOTE: However, if permitted by policy, the Relying Party MAY register the credential ID and credential public key but treat the credential as one with self attestation (see § 6.5.4 Attestation Types). If doing so, the Relying Party is asserting there is no cryptographic proof that the public key credential has been generated by a particular authenticator model. See [FIDOSecRef] and [UAFProtocol] for a more detailed discussion.

Verification of attestation objects requires that the Relying Party has a trusted method of determining acceptable trust anchors in step 22 above. Also, if certificates are being used, the Relying Party MUST have access to certificate status information for the intermediate CA certificates. The Relying Party MUST also be able to build the attestation certificate chain if the client did not provide this chain in the attestation information.

7.2. Verifying an Authentication Assertion

In order to perform an authentication ceremony, the Relying Party MUST proceed as follows:

  1. Let options be a new PublicKeyCredentialRequestOptions structure configured to the Relying Party's needs for the ceremony.

  2. Call navigator.credentials.get() and pass options as the publicKey option. Let credential be the result of the successfully resolved promise. If the promise is rejected, abort the ceremony with a user-visible error, or otherwise guide the user experience as might be determinable from the context available in the rejected promise. For information on different error contexts and the circumstances leading to them, see § 6.3.3 The authenticatorGetAssertion Operation.

  3. Let response be credential.response. If response is not an instance of AuthenticatorAssertionResponse, abort the ceremony with a user-visible error.

  4. Let clientExtensionResults be the result of calling credential.getClientExtensionResults().

  5. If options.allowCredentials is not empty, verify that credential.id identifies one of the public key credentials listed in options.allowCredentials.

  6. Identify the user being authenticated and let credentialRecord be the credential record for the credential:

    If the user was identified before the authentication ceremony was initiated, e.g., via a username or cookie,

    verify that the identified user account contains a credential record whose id equals credential.rawId. Let credentialRecord be that credential record. If response.userHandle is present, verify that it equals the user handle of the user account.

    If the user was not identified before the authentication ceremony was initiated,

    verify that response.userHandle is present. Verify that the user account identified by response.userHandle contains a credential record whose id equals credential.rawId. Let credentialRecord be that credential record.

  7. Let cData, authData and sig denote the value of response’s clientDataJSON, authenticatorData, and signature respectively.

  8. Let JSONtext be the result of running UTF-8 decode on the value of cData.

    Note: Using any implementation of UTF-8 decode is acceptable as long as it yields the same result as that yielded by the UTF-8 decode algorithm. In particular, any leading byte order mark (BOM) MUST be stripped.

  9. Let C, the client data claimed as used for the signature, be the result of running an implementation-specific JSON parser on JSONtext.

    Note: C may be any implementation-specific data structure representation, as long as C’s components are referenceable, as required by this algorithm.

  10. Verify that the value of C.type is the string webauthn.get.

  11. Verify that the value of C.challenge equals the base64url encoding of options.challenge.

  12. Verify that the value of C.origin matches the Relying Party's origin.
  13. If C.topOrigin is present:

    1. Verify that the Relying Party expects this credential to be used within an iframe that is not same-origin with its ancestors.

    2. Verify that the value of C.topOrigin matches the origin of a page that the Relying Party expects to be sub-framed within.

  14. Verify that the rpIdHash in authData is the SHA-256 hash of the RP ID expected by the Relying Party.

    Note: If using the appid extension, this step needs some special logic. See § 10.1.1 FIDO AppID Extension (appid) for details.

  15. Verify that the UP bit of the flags in authData is set.

  16. Determine whether user verification is required for this assertion. User verification SHOULD be required if, and only if, options.userVerification is set to required.

    If user verification was determined to be required, verify that the UV bit of the flags in authData is set. Otherwise, ignore the value of the UV flag.

  17. If the credential backup state is used as part of Relying Party business logic or policy, let currentBe and currentBs be the values of the BE and BS bits, respectively, of the flags in authData. Compare currentBe and currentBs with credentialRecord.backupEligible and credentialRecord.backupState and apply Relying Party policy, if any.

    Note: See § 6.1.3 Credential Backup State for examples of how a Relying Party might process the BS flag values.

  18. Verify that the values of the client extension outputs in clientExtensionResults and the authenticator extension outputs in the extensions in authData are as expected, considering the client extension input values that were given in options.extensions and any specific policy of the Relying Party regarding unsolicited extensions, i.e., those that were not specified as part of options.extensions. In the general case, the meaning of "are as expected" is specific to the Relying Party and which extensions are in use.

    Note: Client platforms MAY enact local policy that sets additional authenticator extensions or client extensions and thus cause values to appear in the authenticator extension outputs or client extension outputs that were not originally specified as part of options.extensions. Relying Parties MUST be prepared to handle such situations, whether it be to ignore the unsolicited extensions or reject the assertion. The Relying Party can make this decision based on local policy and the extensions in use.

    Note: Since all extensions are OPTIONAL for both the client and the authenticator, the Relying Party MUST also be prepared to handle cases where none or not all of the requested extensions were acted upon.

    Note: The devicePubKey extension has explicit verification procedures, see § 10.2.2.3.2 Authentication (get()).

  19. Let hash be the result of computing a hash over the cData using SHA-256.

  20. Using credentialRecord.publicKey, verify that sig is a valid signature over the binary concatenation of authData and hash.

    Note: This verification step is compatible with signatures generated by FIDO U2F authenticators. See § 6.1.2 FIDO U2F Signature Format Compatibility.

  21. If authData.signCount is nonzero or credentialRecord.signCount is nonzero, then run the following sub-step:

  22. If response.attestationObject is present and the Relying Party wishes to verify the attestation then perform CBOR decoding on attestationObject to obtain the attestation statement format fmt, and the attestation statement attStmt.

    1. Verify that the AT bit in the flags field of authData is set, indicating that attested credential data is included.

    2. Verify that the credentialPublicKey and credentialId fields of the attested credential data in authData match credentialRecord.publicKey and credentialRecord.id, respectively.

    3. Determine the attestation statement format by performing a USASCII case-sensitive match on fmt against the set of supported WebAuthn Attestation Statement Format Identifier values. An up-to-date list of registered WebAuthn Attestation Statement Format Identifier values is maintained in the IANA "WebAuthn Attestation Statement Format Identifiers" registry [IANA-WebAuthn-Registries] established by [RFC8809].

    4. Verify that attStmt is a correct attestation statement, conveying a valid attestation signature, by using the attestation statement format fmt’s verification procedure given attStmt, authData and hash.

      Note: Each attestation statement format specifies its own verification procedure. See § 8 Defined Attestation Statement Formats for the initially-defined formats, and [IANA-WebAuthn-Registries] for the up-to-date list.

    5. If validation is successful, obtain a list of acceptable trust anchors (i.e. attestation root certificates) for that attestation type and attestation statement format fmt, from a trusted source or from policy. The aaguid in the attested credential data can be used to guide this lookup.

  23. Update credentialRecord with new state values:
    1. Update credentialRecord.signCount to the value of authData.signCount.

    2. Update credentialRecord.backupState to the value of currentBs.

    3. If credentialRecord.uvInitialized is false, update it to the value of the UV bit in the flags in authData. This change SHOULD require authorization by an additional authentication factor equivalent to WebAuthn user verification; if not authorized, skip this step.

    4. OPTIONALLY, if response.attestationObject is present, update credentialRecord.attestationObject to the value of response.attestationObject and update credentialRecord.attestationClientDataJSON to the value of response.clientDataJSON.

    If the Relying Party performs additional security checks beyond these WebAuthn authentication ceremony steps, the above state updates SHOULD be deferred to after those additional checks are completed successfully.

  24. If all the above steps are successful, continue with the authentication ceremony as appropriate. Otherwise, fail the authentication ceremony.

8. Defined Attestation Statement Formats

WebAuthn supports pluggable attestation statement formats. This section defines an initial set of such formats.

8.1. Attestation Statement Format Identifiers

Attestation statement formats are identified by a string, called an attestation statement format identifier, chosen by the author of the attestation statement format.

Attestation statement format identifiers SHOULD be registered in the IANA "WebAuthn Attestation Statement Format Identifiers" registry [IANA-WebAuthn-Registries] established by [RFC8809]. All registered attestation statement format identifiers are unique amongst themselves as a matter of course.

Unregistered attestation statement format identifiers SHOULD use lowercase reverse domain-name naming, using a domain name registered by the developer, in order to assure uniqueness of the identifier. All attestation statement format identifiers MUST be a maximum of 32 octets in length and MUST consist only of printable USASCII characters, excluding backslash and doublequote, i.e., VCHAR as defined in [RFC5234] but without %x22 and %x5c.

Note: This means attestation statement format identifiers based on domain names MUST incorporate only LDH Labels [RFC5890].

Implementations MUST match WebAuthn attestation statement format identifiers in a case-sensitive fashion.

Attestation statement formats that may exist in multiple versions SHOULD include a version in their identifier. In effect, different versions are thus treated as different formats, e.g., packed2 as a new version of the § 8.2 Packed Attestation Statement Format.

The following sections present a set of currently-defined and registered attestation statement formats and their identifiers. The up-to-date list of registered attestation statement format identifiers is maintained in the IANA "WebAuthn Attestation Statement Format Identifiers" registry [IANA-WebAuthn-Registries] established by [RFC8809].

8.2. Packed Attestation Statement Format

This is a WebAuthn optimized attestation statement format. It uses a very compact but still extensible encoding method. It is implementable by authenticators with limited resources (e.g., secure elements).

Attestation statement format identifier

packed

Attestation types supported

Basic, Self, AttCA

Syntax

The syntax of a Packed Attestation statement is defined by the following CDDL:

$$attStmtType //= (
                      fmt: "packed",
                      attStmt: packedStmtFormat
                  )

packedStmtFormat = {
                       alg: COSEAlgorithmIdentifier,
                       sig: bytes,
                       x5c: [ attestnCert: bytes, * (caCert: bytes) ]
                   } //
                   {
                       alg: COSEAlgorithmIdentifier
                       sig: bytes,
                   }

The semantics of the fields are as follows:

alg

A COSEAlgorithmIdentifier containing the identifier of the algorithm used to generate the attestation signature.

sig

A byte string containing the attestation signature.

x5c

The elements of this array contain attestnCert and its certificate chain (if any), each encoded in X.509 format. The attestation certificate attestnCert MUST be the first element in the array.

attestnCert

The attestation certificate, encoded in X.509 format.

Signing procedure

The signing procedure for this attestation statement format is similar to the procedure for generating assertion signatures.

  1. Let authenticatorData denote the authenticator data for the attestation, and let clientDataHash denote the hash of the serialized client data.

  2. If Basic or AttCA attestation is in use, the authenticator produces the sig by concatenating authenticatorData and clientDataHash, and signing the result using an attestation private key selected through an authenticator-specific mechanism. It sets x5c to attestnCert followed by the related certificate chain (if any). It sets alg to the algorithm of the attestation private key.

  3. If self attestation is in use, the authenticator produces sig by concatenating authenticatorData and clientDataHash, and signing the result using the credential private key. It sets alg to the algorithm of the credential private key and omits the other fields.

Verification procedure

Given the verification procedure inputs attStmt, authenticatorData and clientDataHash, the verification procedure is as follows:

  1. Verify that attStmt is valid CBOR conforming to the syntax defined above and perform CBOR decoding on it to extract the contained fields.

  2. If x5c is present:

    • Verify that sig is a valid signature over the concatenation of authenticatorData and clientDataHash using the attestation public key in attestnCert with the algorithm specified in alg.

    • Verify that attestnCert meets the requirements in § 8.2.1 Packed Attestation Statement Certificate Requirements.

    • If attestnCert contains an extension with OID 1.3.6.1.4.1.45724.1.1.4 (id-fido-gen-ce-aaguid) verify that the value of this extension matches the aaguid in authenticatorData.

    • Optionally, inspect x5c and consult externally provided knowledge to determine whether attStmt conveys a Basic or AttCA attestation.

    • If successful, return implementation-specific values representing attestation type Basic, AttCA or uncertainty, and attestation trust path x5c.

  3. If x5c is not present, self attestation is in use.

    • Validate that alg matches the algorithm of the credentialPublicKey in authenticatorData.

    • Verify that sig is a valid signature over the concatenation of authenticatorData and clientDataHash using the credential public key with alg.

    • If successful, return implementation-specific values representing attestation type Self and an empty attestation trust path.

8.2.1. Packed Attestation Statement Certificate Requirements

The attestation certificate MUST have the following fields/extensions:

8.3. TPM Attestation Statement Format

This attestation statement format is generally used by authenticators that use a Trusted Platform Module as their cryptographic engine.

Attestation statement format identifier

tpm

Attestation types supported

AttCA

Syntax

The syntax of a TPM Attestation statement is as follows:

$$attStmtType // = (
                       fmt: "tpm",
                       attStmt: tpmStmtFormat
                   )

tpmStmtFormat = {
                    ver: "2.0",
                    (
                        alg: COSEAlgorithmIdentifier,
                        x5c: [ aikCert: bytes, * (caCert: bytes) ]
                    )
                    sig: bytes,
                    certInfo: bytes,
                    pubArea: bytes
                }

The semantics of the above fields are as follows:

ver

The version of the TPM specification to which the signature conforms.

alg

A COSEAlgorithmIdentifier containing the identifier of the algorithm used to generate the attestation signature.

x5c

aikCert followed by its certificate chain, in X.509 encoding.

aikCert

The AIK certificate used for the attestation, in X.509 encoding.

sig

The attestation signature, in the form of a TPMT_SIGNATURE structure as specified in [TPMv2-Part2] section 11.3.4.

certInfo

The TPMS_ATTEST structure over which the above signature was computed, as specified in [TPMv2-Part2] section 10.12.8.

pubArea

The TPMT_PUBLIC structure (see [TPMv2-Part2] section 12.2.4) used by the TPM to represent the credential public key.

Signing procedure

Let authenticatorData denote the authenticator data for the attestation, and let clientDataHash denote the hash of the serialized client data.

Concatenate authenticatorData and clientDataHash to form attToBeSigned.

Generate a signature using the procedure specified in [TPMv2-Part3] Section 18.2, using the attestation private key and setting the extraData parameter to the digest of attToBeSigned using the hash algorithm corresponding to the "alg" signature algorithm. (For the "RS256" algorithm, this would be a SHA-256 digest.)

Set the pubArea field to the public area of the credential public key, the certInfo field to the output parameter of the same name, and the sig field to the signature obtained from the above procedure.

Verification procedure

Given the verification procedure inputs attStmt, authenticatorData and clientDataHash, the verification procedure is as follows:

Verify that attStmt is valid CBOR conforming to the syntax defined above and perform CBOR decoding on it to extract the contained fields.

Verify that the public key specified by the parameters and unique fields of pubArea is identical to the credentialPublicKey in the attestedCredentialData in authenticatorData.

Concatenate authenticatorData and clientDataHash to form attToBeSigned.

Validate that certInfo is valid:

  • Verify that magic is set to TPM_GENERATED_VALUE.

  • Verify that type is set to TPM_ST_ATTEST_CERTIFY.

  • Verify that extraData is set to the hash of attToBeSigned using the hash algorithm employed in "alg".

  • Verify that attested contains a TPMS_CERTIFY_INFO structure as specified in [TPMv2-Part2] section 10.12.3, whose name field contains a valid Name for pubArea, as computed using the algorithm in the nameAlg field of pubArea using the procedure specified in [TPMv2-Part1] section 16.

  • Verify that x5c is present.

  • Note that the remaining fields in the "Standard Attestation Structure" [TPMv2-Part1] section 31.2, i.e., qualifiedSigner, clockInfo and firmwareVersion are ignored. These fields MAY be used as an input to risk engines.

  • Verify the sig is a valid signature over certInfo using the attestation public key in aikCert with the algorithm specified in alg.

  • Verify that aikCert meets the requirements in § 8.3.1 TPM Attestation Statement Certificate Requirements.

  • If aikCert contains an extension with OID 1.3.6.1.4.1.45724.1.1.4 (id-fido-gen-ce-aaguid) verify that the value of this extension matches the aaguid in authenticatorData.

  • If successful, return implementation-specific values representing attestation type AttCA and attestation trust path x5c.

8.3.1. TPM Attestation Statement Certificate Requirements

TPM attestation certificate MUST have the following fields/extensions:

8.4. Android Key Attestation Statement Format

When the authenticator in question is a platform authenticator on the Android "N" or later platform, the attestation statement is based on the Android key attestation. In these cases, the attestation statement is produced by a component running in a secure operating environment, but the authenticator data for the attestation is produced outside this environment. The WebAuthn Relying Party is expected to check that the authenticator data claimed to have been used for the attestation is consistent with the fields of the attestation certificate’s extension data.

Attestation statement format identifier

android-key

Attestation types supported

Basic

Syntax

An Android key attestation statement consists simply of the Android attestation statement, which is a series of DER encoded X.509 certificates. See the Android developer documentation. Its syntax is defined as follows:

$$attStmtType //= (
                      fmt: "android-key",
                      attStmt: androidStmtFormat
                  )

androidStmtFormat = {
                      alg: COSEAlgorithmIdentifier,
                      sig: bytes,
                      x5c: [ credCert: bytes, * (caCert: bytes) ]
                    }

Signing procedure

Let authenticatorData denote the authenticator data for the attestation, and let clientDataHash denote the hash of the serialized client data.

Request an Android Key Attestation by calling keyStore.getCertificateChain(myKeyUUID) providing clientDataHash as the challenge value (e.g., by using setAttestationChallenge). Set x5c to the returned value.

The authenticator produces sig by concatenating authenticatorData and clientDataHash, and signing the result using the credential private key. It sets alg to the algorithm of the signature format.

Verification procedure

Given the verification procedure inputs attStmt, authenticatorData and clientDataHash, the verification procedure is as follows:

  • Verify that attStmt is valid CBOR conforming to the syntax defined above and perform CBOR decoding on it to extract the contained fields.

  • Verify that sig is a valid signature over the concatenation of authenticatorData and clientDataHash using the public key in the first certificate in x5c with the algorithm specified in alg.

  • Verify that the public key in the first certificate in x5c matches the credentialPublicKey in the attestedCredentialData in authenticatorData.

  • Verify that the attestationChallenge field in the attestation certificate extension data is identical to clientDataHash.

  • Verify the following using the appropriate authorization list from the attestation certificate extension data:

    • The AuthorizationList.allApplications field is not present on either authorization list (softwareEnforced nor teeEnforced), since PublicKeyCredential MUST be scoped to the RP ID.

    • For the following, use only the teeEnforced authorization list if the RP wants to accept only keys from a trusted execution environment, otherwise use the union of teeEnforced and softwareEnforced.

      • The value in the AuthorizationList.origin field is equal to KM_ORIGIN_GENERATED.

      • The value in the AuthorizationList.purpose field is equal to KM_PURPOSE_SIGN.

  • If successful, return implementation-specific values representing attestation type Basic and attestation trust path x5c.

8.4.1. Android Key Attestation Statement Certificate Requirements

Android Key Attestation attestation certificate's android key attestation certificate extension data is identified by the OID 1.3.6.1.4.1.11129.2.1.17, and its schema is defined in the Android developer documentation.

8.5. Android SafetyNet Attestation Statement Format

When the authenticator is a platform authenticator on certain Android platforms, the attestation statement may be based on the SafetyNet API. In this case the authenticator data is completely controlled by the caller of the SafetyNet API (typically an application running on the Android platform) and the attestation statement provides some statements about the health of the platform and the identity of the calling application (see SafetyNet Documentation for more details).

Attestation statement format identifier

android-safetynet

Attestation types supported

Basic

Syntax

The syntax of an Android Attestation statement is defined as follows:

$$attStmtType //= (
                      fmt: "android-safetynet",
                      attStmt: safetynetStmtFormat
                  )

safetynetStmtFormat = {
                          ver: text,
                          response: bytes
                      }

The semantics of the above fields are as follows:

ver

The version number of Google Play Services responsible for providing the SafetyNet API.

response

The UTF-8 encoded result of the getJwsResult() call of the SafetyNet API. This value is a JWS [RFC7515] object (see SafetyNet online documentation) in Compact Serialization.

Signing procedure

Let authenticatorData denote the authenticator data for the attestation, and let clientDataHash denote the hash of the serialized client data.

Concatenate authenticatorData and clientDataHash, perform SHA-256 hash of the concatenated string, and let the result of the hash form attToBeSigned.

Request a SafetyNet attestation, providing attToBeSigned as the nonce value. Set response to the result, and ver to the version of Google Play Services running in the authenticator.

Verification procedure

Given the verification procedure inputs attStmt, authenticatorData and clientDataHash, the verification procedure is as follows:

  • Verify that attStmt is valid CBOR conforming to the syntax defined above and perform CBOR decoding on it to extract the contained fields.

  • Verify that response is a valid SafetyNet response of version ver by following the steps indicated by the SafetyNet online documentation. As of this writing, there is only one format of the SafetyNet response and ver is reserved for future use.

  • Verify that the nonce attribute in the payload of response is identical to the Base64 encoding of the SHA-256 hash of the concatenation of authenticatorData and clientDataHash.

  • Verify that the SafetyNet response actually came from the SafetyNet service by following the steps in the SafetyNet online documentation.

  • If successful, return implementation-specific values representing attestation type Basic and attestation trust path x5c.

8.6. FIDO U2F Attestation Statement Format

This attestation statement format is used with FIDO U2F authenticators using the formats defined in [FIDO-U2F-Message-Formats].

Attestation statement format identifier

fido-u2f

Attestation types supported

Basic, AttCA

Syntax

The syntax of a FIDO U2F attestation statement is defined as follows:

$$attStmtType //= (
                      fmt: "fido-u2f",
                      attStmt: u2fStmtFormat
                  )

u2fStmtFormat = {
                    x5c: [ attestnCert: bytes ],
                    sig: bytes
                }

The semantics of the above fields are as follows:

x5c

A single element array containing the attestation certificate in X.509 format.

sig

The attestation signature. The signature was calculated over the (raw) U2F registration response message [FIDO-U2F-Message-Formats] received by the client from the authenticator.

Signing procedure

If the credential public key of the attested credential is not of algorithm -7 ("ES256"), stop and return an error. Otherwise, let authenticatorData denote the authenticator data for the attestation, and let clientDataHash denote the hash of the serialized client data. (Since SHA-256 is used to hash the serialized client data, clientDataHash will be 32 bytes long.)

Generate a Registration Response Message as specified in [FIDO-U2F-Message-Formats] Section 4.3, with the application parameter set to the SHA-256 hash of the RP ID that the given credential is scoped to, the challenge parameter set to clientDataHash, and the key handle parameter set to the credential ID of the given credential. Set the raw signature part of this Registration Response Message (i.e., without the user public key, key handle, and attestation certificates) as sig and set the attestation certificates of the attestation public key as x5c.

Verification procedure

Given the verification procedure inputs attStmt, authenticatorData and clientDataHash, the verification procedure is as follows:

  1. Verify that attStmt is valid CBOR conforming to the syntax defined above and perform CBOR decoding on it to extract the contained fields.

  2. Check that x5c has exactly one element and let attCert be that element. Let certificate public key be the public key conveyed by attCert. If certificate public key is not an Elliptic Curve (EC) public key over the P-256 curve, terminate this algorithm and return an appropriate error.

  3. Extract the claimed rpIdHash from authenticatorData, and the claimed credentialId and credentialPublicKey from authenticatorData.attestedCredentialData.

  4. Convert the COSE_KEY formatted credentialPublicKey (see Section 7 of [RFC9052]) to Raw ANSI X9.62 public key format (see ALG_KEY_ECC_X962_RAW in Section 3.6.2 Public Key Representation Formats of [FIDO-Registry]).

    • Let x be the value corresponding to the "-2" key (representing x coordinate) in credentialPublicKey, and confirm its size to be of 32 bytes. If size differs or "-2" key is not found, terminate this algorithm and return an appropriate error.

    • Let y be the value corresponding to the "-3" key (representing y coordinate) in credentialPublicKey, and confirm its size to be of 32 bytes. If size differs or "-3" key is not found, terminate this algorithm and return an appropriate error.

    • Let publicKeyU2F be the concatenation 0x04 || x || y.

      Note: This signifies uncompressed ECC key format.

  5. Let verificationData be the concatenation of (0x00 || rpIdHash || clientDataHash || credentialId || publicKeyU2F) (see Section 4.3 of [FIDO-U2F-Message-Formats]).

  6. Verify the sig using verificationData and the certificate public key per section 4.1.4 of [SEC1] with SHA-256 as the hash function used in step two.

  7. Optionally, inspect x5c and consult externally provided knowledge to determine whether attStmt conveys a Basic or AttCA attestation.

  8. If successful, return implementation-specific values representing attestation type Basic, AttCA or uncertainty, and attestation trust path x5c.

8.7. None Attestation Statement Format

The none attestation statement format is used to replace any authenticator-provided attestation statement when a WebAuthn Relying Party indicates it does not wish to receive attestation information, see § 5.4.7 Attestation Conveyance Preference Enumeration (enum AttestationConveyancePreference).

The authenticator MAY also directly generate attestation statements of this format if the authenticator does not support attestation.

Attestation statement format identifier

none

Attestation types supported

None

Syntax

The syntax of a none attestation statement is defined as follows:

$$attStmtType //= (
                      fmt: "none",
                      attStmt: emptyMap
                  )

emptyMap = {}
Signing procedure

Return the fixed attestation statement defined above.

Verification procedure

Return implementation-specific values representing attestation type None and an empty attestation trust path.

8.8. Apple Anonymous Attestation Statement Format

This attestation statement format is exclusively used by Apple for certain types of Apple devices that support WebAuthn.

Attestation statement format identifier

apple

Attestation types supported

Anonymization CA

Syntax

The syntax of an Apple attestation statement is defined as follows:

$$attStmtType //= (
                      fmt: "apple",
                      attStmt: appleStmtFormat
                  )

appleStmtFormat = {
                      x5c: [ credCert: bytes, * (caCert: bytes) ]
                  }

The semantics of the above fields are as follows:

x5c

credCert followed by its certificate chain, each encoded in X.509 format.

credCert

The credential public key certificate used for attestation, encoded in X.509 format.

Signing procedure
  1. Let authenticatorData denote the authenticator data for the attestation, and let clientDataHash denote the hash of the serialized client data.

  2. Concatenate authenticatorData and clientDataHash to form nonceToHash.

  3. Perform SHA-256 hash of nonceToHash to produce nonce.

  4. Let Apple anonymous attestation CA generate an X.509 certificate for the credential public key and include the nonce as a certificate extension with OID 1.2.840.113635.100.8.2. credCert denotes this certificate. The credCert thus serves as a proof of the attestation, and the included nonce proves the attestation is live. In addition to that, the nonce also protects the integrity of the authenticatorData and client data.

  5. Set x5c to credCert followed by its certificate chain.

Verification procedure

Given the verification procedure inputs attStmt, authenticatorData and clientDataHash, the verification procedure is as follows:

  1. Verify that attStmt is valid CBOR conforming to the syntax defined above and perform CBOR decoding on it to extract the contained fields.

  2. Concatenate authenticatorData and clientDataHash to form nonceToHash.

  3. Perform SHA-256 hash of nonceToHash to produce nonce.

  4. Verify that nonce equals the value of the extension with OID 1.2.840.113635.100.8.2 in credCert.

  5. Verify that the credential public key equals the Subject Public Key of credCert.

  6. If successful, return implementation-specific values representing attestation type Anonymization CA and attestation trust path x5c.

9. WebAuthn Extensions

The mechanism for generating public key credentials, as well as requesting and generating Authentication assertions, as defined in § 5 Web Authentication API, can be extended to suit particular use cases. Each case is addressed by defining a registration extension and/or an authentication extension.

Every extension is a client extension, meaning that the extension involves communication with and processing by the client. Client extensions define the following steps and data:

When creating a public key credential or requesting an authentication assertion, a WebAuthn Relying Party can request the use of a set of extensions. These extensions will be invoked during the requested operation if they are supported by the client and/or the WebAuthn Authenticator. The Relying Party sends the client extension input for each extension in the get() call (for authentication extensions) or create() call (for registration extensions) to the client. The client performs client extension processing for each extension that the client platform supports, and augments the client data as specified by each extension, by including the extension identifier and client extension output values.

An extension can also be an authenticator extension, meaning that the extension involves communication with and processing by the authenticator. Authenticator extensions define the following steps and data:

For authenticator extensions, as part of the client extension processing, the client also creates the CBOR authenticator extension input value for each extension (often based on the corresponding client extension input value), and passes them to the authenticator in the create() call (for registration extensions) or the get() call (for authentication extensions). These authenticator extension input values are represented in CBOR and passed as name-value pairs, with the extension identifier as the name, and the corresponding authenticator extension input as the value. The authenticator, in turn, performs additional processing for the extensions that it supports, and returns the CBOR authenticator extension output for each as specified by the extension. Since authenticator extension output is returned as part of the signed authenticator data, authenticator extensions MAY also specify an unsigned extension output, e.g. for cases where an output itself depends on authenticator data. Part of the client extension processing for authenticator extensions is to use the authenticator extension output and unsigned extension output as an input to creating the client extension output.

All WebAuthn Extensions are OPTIONAL for both clients and authenticators. Thus, any extensions requested by a Relying Party MAY be ignored by the client browser or OS and not passed to the authenticator at all, or they MAY be ignored by the authenticator. Ignoring an extension is never considered a failure in WebAuthn API processing, so when Relying Parties include extensions with any API calls, they MUST be prepared to handle cases where some or all of those extensions are ignored.

All WebAuthn Extensions MUST be defined in such a way that lack of support for them by the client or authenticator does not endanger the user’s security or privacy. For instance, if an extension requires client processing, it could be defined in a manner that ensures that a naïve pass-through that simply transcodes client extension inputs from JSON to CBOR will produce a semantically invalid authenticator extension input value, resulting in the extension being ignored by the authenticator. Since all extensions are OPTIONAL, this will not cause a functional failure in the API operation.

The IANA "WebAuthn Extension Identifiers" registry [IANA-WebAuthn-Registries] established by [RFC8809] can be consulted for an up-to-date list of registered WebAuthn Extensions.

9.1. Extension Identifiers

Extensions are identified by a string, called an extension identifier, chosen by the extension author.

Extension identifiers SHOULD be registered in the IANA "WebAuthn Extension Identifiers" registry [IANA-WebAuthn-Registries] established by [RFC8809]. All registered extension identifiers are unique amongst themselves as a matter of course.

Unregistered extension identifiers SHOULD aim to be globally unique, e.g., by including the defining entity such as myCompany_extension.

All extension identifiers MUST be a maximum of 32 octets in length and MUST consist only of printable USASCII characters, excluding backslash and doublequote, i.e., VCHAR as defined in [RFC5234] but without %x22 and %x5c. Implementations MUST match WebAuthn extension identifiers in a case-sensitive fashion.

Extensions that may exist in multiple versions should take care to include a version in their identifier. In effect, different versions are thus treated as different extensions, e.g., myCompany_extension_01

§ 10 Defined Extensions defines an additional set of extensions and their identifiers. See the IANA "WebAuthn Extension Identifiers" registry [IANA-WebAuthn-Registries] established by [RFC8809] for an up-to-date list of registered WebAuthn Extension Identifiers.

9.2. Defining Extensions

A definition of an extension MUST specify an extension identifier, a client extension input argument to be sent via the get() or create() call, the client extension processing rules, and a client extension output value. If the extension communicates with the authenticator (meaning it is an authenticator extension), it MUST also specify the CBOR authenticator extension input argument sent via the authenticatorGetAssertion or authenticatorMakeCredential call, the authenticator extension processing rules, and the CBOR authenticator extension output value. Extensions MAY specify unsigned extension outputs.

Any client extension that is processed by the client MUST return a client extension output value so that the WebAuthn Relying Party knows that the extension was honored by the client. Similarly, any extension that requires authenticator processing MUST return an authenticator extension output to let the Relying Party know that the extension was honored by the authenticator. If an extension does not otherwise require any result values, it SHOULD be defined as returning a JSON Boolean client extension output result, set to true to signify that the extension was understood and processed. Likewise, any authenticator extension that does not otherwise require any result values MUST return a value and SHOULD return a CBOR Boolean authenticator extension output result, set to true to signify that the extension was understood and processed.

9.3. Extending Request Parameters

An extension defines one or two request arguments. The client extension input, which is a value that can be encoded in JSON, is passed from the WebAuthn Relying Party to the client in the get() or create() call, while the CBOR authenticator extension input is passed from the client to the authenticator for authenticator extensions during the processing of these calls.

A Relying Party simultaneously requests the use of an extension and sets its client extension input by including an entry in the extensions option to the create() or get() call. The entry key is the extension identifier and the value is the client extension input.

Note: Other documents have specified extensions where the extension input does not always use the extension identifier as the entry key. New extensions SHOULD follow the above convention.

var assertionPromise = navigator.credentials.get({
    publicKey: {
        // Other members omitted for brevity
        extensions: {
            // An "entry key" identifying the "webauthnExample_foobar" extension,
            // whose value is a map with two input parameters:
            "webauthnExample_foobar": {
              foo: 42,
              bar: "barfoo"
            }
        }
    }
});

Extension definitions MUST specify the valid values for their client extension input. Clients SHOULD ignore extensions with an invalid client extension input. If an extension does not require any parameters from the Relying Party, it SHOULD be defined as taking a Boolean client argument, set to true to signify that the extension is requested by the Relying Party.

Extensions that only affect client processing need not specify authenticator extension input. Extensions that have authenticator processing MUST specify the method of computing the authenticator extension input from the client extension input, and MUST define extensions for the CDDL types AuthenticationExtensionsAuthenticatorInputs and AuthenticationExtensionsAuthenticatorOutputs by defining an additional choice for the $$extensionInput and $$extensionOutput group sockets using the extension identifier as the entry key. Extensions that do not require input parameters, and are thus defined as taking a Boolean client extension input value set to true, SHOULD define the authenticator extension input also as the constant Boolean value true (CBOR major type 7, value 21).

The following example defines that an extension with identifier webauthnExample_foobar takes an unsigned integer as authenticator extension input, and returns an array of at least one byte string as authenticator extension output:

$$extensionInput //= (
  webauthnExample_foobar: uint
)
$$extensionOutput //= (
  webauthnExample_foobar: [+ bytes]
)

Note: Extensions should aim to define authenticator arguments that are as small as possible. Some authenticators communicate over low-bandwidth links such as Bluetooth Low-Energy or NFC.

9.4. Client Extension Processing

Extensions MAY define additional processing requirements on the client during the creation of credentials or the generation of an assertion. The client extension input for the extension is used as an input to this client processing. For each supported client extension, the client adds an entry to the clientExtensions map with the extension identifier as the key, and the extension’s client extension input as the value.

Likewise, the client extension outputs are represented as a dictionary in the result of getClientExtensionResults() with extension identifiers as keys, and the client extension output value of each extension as the value. Like the client extension input, the client extension output is a value that can be encoded in JSON. There MUST NOT be any values returned for ignored extensions.

Extensions that require authenticator processing MUST define the process by which the client extension input can be used to determine the CBOR authenticator extension input and the process by which the CBOR authenticator extension output, and the unsigned extension output if used, can be used to determine the client extension output.

9.5. Authenticator Extension Processing

The CBOR authenticator extension input value of each processed authenticator extension is included in the extensions parameter of the authenticatorMakeCredential and authenticatorGetAssertion operations. The extensions parameter is a CBOR map where each key is an extension identifier and the corresponding value is the authenticator extension input for that extension.

Likewise, the extension output is represented in the extensions part of the authenticator data. The extensions part of the authenticator data is a CBOR map where each key is an extension identifier and the corresponding value is the authenticator extension output for that extension.

Unsigned extension outputs are represented independently from authenticator data and returned by authenticators as a separate map, keyed with the same extension identifier. This map only contains entries for authenticator extensions that make use of unsigned outputs.

Note: In