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ShibHandle

The Shibboleth V1 software has reached its End of Life and is no longer supported. This documentation is available for historical purposes only.

ShibHandle

Owned by Scott Cantor
Last updated: Dec 22, 2006Version comment

A Shibboleth handle (ShibHandle) is a proprietary NameIdentifierFormat introduced by Shibboleth 1.x:

<saml:Subject
  xmlns:saml="urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:1.0:assertion">
  <saml:NameIdentifier 
	 Format="urn:mace:shibboleth:1.0:nameIdentifier"
	 NameQualifier="https://idp.example.org/shibboleth">
	 3f7b3dcf-1674-4ecd-92c8-1544f346baf8
  </saml:NameIdentifier>
</saml:Subject>

Being an opaque identifier, a ShibHandle addresses privacy concerns lacking in SAML 1.1.

There are two implementations of the Shibboleth handle: SharedMemoryShibHandle and CryptoShibHandle. The SharedMemoryShibHandle implementation maintains state at the IdentityProvider, whereas the CryptoShibHandle does not.