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Ruben Verborgh

Inter-Pod Credential Exchange Protocol via Linked Data Notifications

Jonas Steinbach, Gertjan De Mulder, Ben De Meester, Beatriz Esteves, and Ruben Verborgh

Solid is a set of specifications to describe a decentral Web protocol that enables Personal Data Spaces, empowering individuals to keep control of their personal data, stored in decentralized personal online data stores called Pods. Here, Verifiable Credentials (VC) are a type of data of particular interest, as they allow for cryptographically secure and verifiable digital credentials, which can be used for access and identity management, and also tie into different European Data strategy use cases. However, although the use of VCs within Solid is increasingly receiving attention, there exists no VC exchange protocol within Solid. More specifically, current applications need to rely on implicit agreements for both the transfer destination (i.e. the Web location where the VC should be sent to), and the data format of the messages exchanged. This forces stakeholders to invent their own credential transfer mechanisms, thereby hampering interoperability and adoption. In this paper, we present a VC exchange protocol between Solid Pods with explicit target destination and message format. We propose a working and interoperable protocol using DIDComm for structured messaging primitives in the form of JSON-headers and LDN inboxes as target destinations. LDN inboxes are interoperable with Solid and can be advertised via WebIDs, however, their setup and management of LDN inboxes is difficult, and reliance on WebIDs for inbox discovery might prevent interoperability between systems with different identifiers.

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Published in 2024 in Proceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on Semantics in Dataspaces.

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Cite this article easily using its BibTeX entry: 

@inproceedings{steinbach_sds_2024,
  author = {Steinbach, Jonas and De Mulder, Gertjan and De Meester, Ben and Esteves, Beatriz and Verborgh, Ruben},
  title = {Inter-Pod Credential Exchange Protocol via {Linked Data Notifications}},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on Semantics in Dataspaces},
  editor = {Theissen-Lipp, Johannes and Colpaert, Pieter and Sowe, Sulayman K. and Curry, Edward and Decker, Stefan},
  year = 2024,
  month = may,
  series = {CEUR Workshop Proceedings},
  volume = 3705,
  issn = {1613-0073},
  publisher = {CEUR},
  url = {https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3705/short04.pdf},
}

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ACM
Jonas Steinbach, Gertjan De Mulder, Ben De Meester, Beatriz Esteves, and Ruben Verborgh. 2024. Inter-Pod Credential Exchange Protocol via Linked Data Notifications. In Proceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on Semantics in Dataspaces (CEUR Workshop Proceedings), CEUR.
APA
Steinbach, J., De Mulder, G., De Meester, B., Esteves, B., & Verborgh, R. (2024). Inter-Pod Credential Exchange Protocol via Linked Data Notifications. In J. Theissen-Lipp, P. Colpaert, S. K. Sowe, E. Curry, & S. Decker (Eds.), Proceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on Semantics in Dataspaces (Vol. 3705). CEUR.
IEEE
J. Steinbach, G. De Mulder, B. De Meester, B. Esteves, and R. Verborgh, “Inter-Pod Credential Exchange Protocol via Linked Data Notifications,” in Proceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on Semantics in Dataspaces, 2024, vol. 3705.
LNCS
Steinbach, J., De Mulder, G., De Meester, B., Esteves, B., Verborgh, R.: Inter-Pod Credential Exchange Protocol via Linked Data Notifications. In: Theissen-Lipp, J., Colpaert, P., Sowe, S.K., Curry, E., and Decker, S. (eds.) Proceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on Semantics in Dataspaces. CEUR (2024).
MLA
Steinbach, Jonas, et al. “Inter-Pod Credential Exchange Protocol via Linked Data Notifications.” Proceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on Semantics in Dataspaces, edited by Johannes Theissen-Lipp et al., vol. 3705, CEUR, 2024.