Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

Hailstorm was always just a very early version of what today we see in OAuth/OpenID Connect.

The one that we should be truly sad didn't connect with enterprises/consumers was Vista-era CardSpace (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_CardSpace). That was an early play at what today we are finally seeing in FIDO / Webauthn standards, with a rather good UX to go with it (using the visual metaphor of plastic cards/credit cards for PKI identities).

Albeit with the usual problems that that version of Microsoft only supported Internet Explorer on Windows Vista+. The standards behind it (PKI and SAML) should have been interoperable enough that other implementations would have been possible, but the Microsoft of that era wouldn't have been the one to build it. Had they supported XP, and had they supported Firefox/Chrome maybe more people would have heard about CardSpace at all.

ETA: Wikipedia points out it did ship for XP at least with the giant .NET Framework 3.0 upgrade that almost no one actually installed on XP. I had forgot that.




Sorry I mixed that up. I meant CardSpace, thought it was codenamed Hailstorm. Hailstorm being the protocol being used by CardSpace




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: