Mission Lifecycle Signals for OAuth 2.0

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Table of Contents

1. Introduction

The issuance profile [I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-mission] gates derivation on Mission state and bounds outstanding self-contained tokens by their lifetime. The Mission Status and Lifecycle profile [I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-mission-status] adds surfaces for observing and changing state, and names an event_driven revocation-enforcement class for deployments that need Mission state changes to reach Resource Servers promptly, without each Resource Server polling. That profile defines the class but not the channel.¶

This document defines the channel. When a Mission Issuer commits a Mission lifecycle transition (a revocation, expiry, suspension, completion, or the approval event that activates a Mission), it emits a Mission lifecycle Security Event Token (Section 4) over a profile of the OpenID Shared Signals Framework [OIDC-SSF]: pushed to a consumer's receiver [RFC8935] or made available for the consumer to poll [RFC8936], as a Security Event Token (SET) [RFC8417]. A consumer that receives a non-active transition stops honoring the Mission (Section 6), realizing the event_driven class (Section 7).¶

This document is OPTIONAL. It defines no new Mission semantics: the Mission, its lifecycle states, and the mission claim are defined in [I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-mission], and the lifecycle states this event reports are those of [I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-mission-status]. A deployment that does not stand up an event stream uses the polling surfaces of the Status profile instead and is unaffected by this document.¶

2. Conventions and Terminology

The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in BCP 14 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all capitals, as shown here.¶

This document uses the terms defined in the issuance profile [I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-mission] and the Status profile [I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-mission-status], in particular Mission, Mission Issuer (Authorization Server, the Mission origin), mission_id, and the Mission lifecycle states. It additionally uses Security Event Token (SET) [RFC8417] and the Shared Signals Framework (SSF) [OIDC-SSF] transmitter, receiver, and stream terminology.¶

A consumer here is an SSF receiver that relies on Mission state -- typically a Resource Server, or an Authorization Server acting on a Mission it did not issue.¶

All JSON shown in this document is non-normative and illustrative; the member definitions in the surrounding text are authoritative. JWT and SET examples are shown as decoded JSON; on the wire the JWS Compact Serialization [RFC7515] applies.¶

3. Mission Lifecycle Event Stream

This section is OPTIONAL. A Mission Issuer that does not emit lifecycle events, and a consumer that does not receive them, are unaffected; they rely on token lifetime and the polling surfaces of [I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-mission-status].¶

A Mission Issuer that emits lifecycle events publishes a Shared Signals Framework [OIDC-SSF] stream and advertises it in Authorization Server metadata (Section 8) as mission_event_stream_endpoint. The endpoint and its configuration follow [OIDC-SSF]; this document profiles only the event carried, its protection, and the consumer's duty on receipt. The stream MUST be served over TLS.¶

The Mission Issuer advertises the delivery modes it supports in mission_event_delivery_modes_supported (Section 8):¶

• ssf_push: the Mission Issuer pushes SETs [RFC8417] to a consumer's registered receiver endpoint using push-based delivery [RFC8935].¶

• ssf_poll: the Mission Issuer makes SETs available for the consumer to poll using poll-based delivery [RFC8936].¶

A Mission Issuer that emits events MUST support at least one mode. A consumer's stream configuration declares the mode it uses; the Mission Issuer MUST respect it and MUST NOT silently fall back to a less-timely mode.¶

4. The mission.lifecycle-change Event

A Mission Issuer emits a mission.lifecycle-change event, aligned with the Continuous Access Evaluation Profile [OIDC-CAEP], when it commits any Mission lifecycle transition or the approval event that activates a Mission. The event type URI, registered in Section 12, is:¶

https://schemas.karlmcguinness.com/secevent/mission/lifecycle-change¶

The event is carried as the event-type-keyed value of the events claim of a SET [RFC8417], alongside the SET's own iss, aud, iat, and jti. Its claims are:¶

• mission (string, required): the canonical mission_id ([I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-mission]).¶

• mission_origin (string, required): the Mission Issuer (origin) issuer URL.¶

• state (string, required): the new lifecycle state, one of active, revoked, expired, suspended, or completed. This enum is the lifecycle state space of [I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-mission-status]; an event consumer treats every value other than active as non-deriving.¶

• prior_state (string, conditional): the state immediately before the transition, drawn from the same enum. REQUIRED on a transition emission; absent only on the approval-event emission, where there is no prior state.¶

• version (integer, required): the new Mission record version, as reported by Mission Status ([I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-mission-status]), letting a consumer order events and detect gaps.¶

• committed_at (string, required): an RFC 3339 [RFC3339] date-time at which the Mission Issuer committed the transition.¶

• tenant (string, optional): the Mission's deployment tenant. This profile defines no tenant model and does not use it; it is present so the event type is shared, unchanged, with multi-tenant and cross-substrate deployments that do.¶

• reason (string, optional): a human-readable reason, for audit.¶

Example SET (decoded), for a revocation:¶

{
  "iss": "https://as.example.com",
  "aud": "https://erp.example.com",
  "iat": 1797843200,
  "jti": "set_9Kp2vN7sR1tY8mZ3qX5b",
  "events": {
    "https://schemas.karlmcguinness.com/secevent/mission/lifecycle-change": {
      "mission": "msn_8RfX2Lqv9TqMv4z7sA2bN1k0YpEdHc9-",
      "mission_origin": "https://as.example.com",
      "prior_state": "active",
      "state": "revoked",
      "version": 2,
      "committed_at": "2026-11-02T09:06:40Z",
      "reason": "Quarterly reconcile completed early"
    }
  }
}

5. SET Protection

Each SET [RFC8417] is a JWS Compact Serialization [RFC7515] signed with a Mission Issuer key resolvable in the issuer's jwks_uri, with a typ of secevent+jwt and a kid identifying the signing key. A consumer MUST verify the signature against the Mission Issuer's published keys and MUST refuse a SET whose iss does not match the Mission Issuer it registered with.¶

The SET aud MUST be the receiving consumer's registered audience identifier; a consumer MUST refuse a SET whose aud is not its own. A consumer MUST treat jti as a one-time identifier within the SET's freshness window and reject a replayed jti.¶

6. Consumer Behavior on Receipt

On receiving and verifying (Section 5) a mission.lifecycle-change event, a consumer MUST:¶

• Stop honoring the affected Mission for any new consequential use when state is anything other than active: refuse to act on, and refuse to derive further authority from, tokens bound to that Mission ([I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-mission]), to the extent of the consumer's enforcement role.¶

• Apply the transition idempotently: a repeated or out-of-order event carrying a version not greater than the last applied for that mission MUST NOT regress the consumer's view of the state.¶

• Acknowledge the event per the SSF delivery mode in use.¶

A consumer MUST NOT treat the event as authority to change Mission state at the Mission Issuer; the Mission Issuer is authoritative ([I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-mission-status]). A consumer that believes the reported state is wrong re-checks through Mission Status rather than inventing a state.¶

A consumer SHOULD treat a missed or delayed event as a freshness failure: if it has not received expected events within the Mission Issuer's advertised mission_max_stale_seconds ([I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-mission-status]), it SHOULD fall back to polling Mission Status rather than continue on possibly stale state.¶

7. Realizing the event_driven Enforcement Class

A deployment that advertises the event_driven revocation-enforcement class of [I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-mission-status] realizes it with this document: the Mission Issuer emits mission.lifecycle-change events (Section 4) over the stream (Section 3), and consumers in event_driven mode subscribe and apply Section 6. A deployment that advertises event_driven therefore MUST also advertise mission_event_stream_endpoint and at least one delivery mode (Section 8).¶

This document neither requires nor presumes the event_driven class; a Mission Issuer MAY emit lifecycle events for audit or operational purposes independent of any consumer's enforcement posture.¶

8. Authorization Server Metadata

A Mission Issuer that emits lifecycle events advertises the following in its Authorization Server metadata [RFC8414], in addition to the issuance-profile and Status-profile members it already publishes:¶

mission_event_stream_endpoint:

OPTIONAL. A string containing a URL. The Shared Signals Framework [OIDC-SSF] stream endpoint for Mission lifecycle events (Section 3). Present when the Mission Issuer emits events.¶

mission_event_delivery_modes_supported:

OPTIONAL. An array of strings. The delivery modes the stream supports, each one of ssf_push, ssf_poll (Section 3).¶

9. Security Considerations

The security considerations of the issuance profile [I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-mission] and the Status profile [I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-mission-status] apply. This section covers threats specific to event propagation.¶

10. Privacy Considerations

A mission.lifecycle-change event discloses a Mission's identifier, state transitions, and timing to its receivers. A Mission Issuer MUST deliver events only to consumers authorized for the Mission and MUST scope each SET to a single consumer audience (Section 5), so a consumer never learns of Missions it is not party to. Event streams and their delivery logs record mission_id and consumer identity over time; deployments MUST treat them as Mission information-disclosure surfaces with the privacy posture of [I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-mission-status].¶

11. Conformance

This document is OPTIONAL. An implementation that claims it:¶

• as a Mission Issuer, emits a signed mission.lifecycle-change SET (Section 4, Section 5) on every committed Mission lifecycle transition, supports at least one delivery mode (Section 3), and advertises mission_event_stream_endpoint and mission_event_delivery_modes_supported (Section 8);¶

• as a consumer, verifies and applies received events per Section 5 and Section 6.¶

An implementation that supports neither role is still a conforming issuance profile [I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-mission].¶

12. IANA Considerations

13. References

Acknowledgments

The author thanks the implementers and reviewers of the Mission-Bound Authorization work, and the OpenID Shared Signals and CAEP communities, for the foundations this profile builds on.¶

Author's Address