Dick Hardt is an identity-protocol designer and founder of Hellō. He edited the OAuth 2.0 authorization framework and now develops AAuth, a protocol for agents with their own cryptographic identities.[1][2][3][5]
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X Career
Delegated access for the web
OAuth 2.0 lets a service grant an application limited access to resources without giving that application the user’s password. Hardt is the editor of RFC6749, which defines authorization roles, flows and tokens. The framework became a basis for delegated web access. His public standards work also includes OAuth 2.1, OpenID extensions and mechanisms for email verification.[1][2]
Identity entrepreneurship
Hardt describes himself as founder and CEO of Hellō, with earlier founding roles at ActiveState, Sxip and Bubbler and previous work at Amazon and Microsoft. His current GitHub account concentrates on identity standards rather than a single application. The combination of product and protocol work makes his agent-auth proposals part of a longer effort to simplify delegated identity and access.[1]
Contributions
AAuth addresses agents that discover services and act across trust domains. Its design gives each agent a cryptographic identity and signs requests, rather than treating possession of a copied bearer token as sufficient authority. It separates the agent, the person represented by the agent, resources and authorization services. The repository includes protocol drafts, implementation links and an interoperability-demo profile. It remains evolving standards work.[3]
Ideas
Hardt uses a repeated payment to show why a permitted call may still be wrong. Authorization must account for purpose and prior actions.[4]
Tools, writing & talks
Tools
Start here
AAuth
github.comProtocol drafts and implementation resources for signed agent requests, person representation and resource authorization.
Read the repository’s high-level roles and access modes before individual drafts. A basic understanding of HTTP requests and OAuth makes the cryptographic and delegation details easier to follow.
Author and protocol designer[3]
Writing, research & talks
A panel on missions, runtime access decisions and accountable agent actions.
Panelist[4]Original source- OAuth 2.0 Authorization Frameworkrfc-editor.org
The standard framework for granting applications limited access to protected resources.
RFC editor[2] - AAuth: Moving Beyond OAuthinsecureagents.com
An interview on how authorization assumptions change when software agents act for people.
Interview guest[5]