Windows CardSpace - Wikipedia

Windows CardSpace - Wikipedia
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Discontinued identity selector app by Microsoft
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July 2011
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Windows CardSpace
The Windows CardSpace user interface, showing card creation template example
Developer
Microsoft
Operating system
Microsoft Windows
Successor
U-Prove
Service name
Windows CardSpace (
idsvc
Type
Identity management system
Windows CardSpace
codenamed
InfoCard
) is a discontinued
identity selector
app by
Microsoft
. It stores references to
digital identities
of the users, presenting them as visual
information cards
. CardSpace provides a consistent
UI
designed to help people to easily and securely use these identities in applications and web sites where they are accepted. Resistance to
phishing
attacks and adherence to
Kim Cameron
's "
7 Laws of Identity
were goals in its design.
CardSpace is a built-in component of
Windows 7
and
Windows Vista
, and has been made available for
Windows XP
and
Windows Server 2003
as part of the
.NET Framework
3.x package.
Overview
edit
When an
information card
-enabled application or website wishes to obtain information about the
user
, it requests a particular set of claims. The CardSpace UI then appears, switching the display to the CardSpace service, which displays the user's stored identities as visual cards. The user selects a card to use, and the CardSpace software contacts the issuer of the identity to obtain a
digitally signed
XML
token that contains the requested information. CardSpace also allows users to create
personal
(also known as
self-issued
) information cards, which can contain one or more of 14 fields of identity information such as full name and address. Other transactions may require a
managed
information card; these are issued by a third-party
identity provider
that makes the claims on the person's behalf, such as a bank, employer, or a government agency.
Windows CardSpace is built on top of the
Web services protocol stack
, an open set of XML-based protocols, including
WS-Security
WS-Trust
WS-MetadataExchange
and
WS-SecurityPolicy
. This means that any technology or platform that supports these protocols can integrate with CardSpace. To accept information cards, a
web developer
needs to declare an
HTML