Re: [apps-discuss] HTTP MAC Authentication Scheme

[Adam Barth <[e-mail]>]

On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 5:15 PM, Mark Nottingham <[e-mail]> wrote:
> On 02/06/2011, at 1:00 AM, Eran Hammer-Lahav wrote:
>> This was suggested before, but are there really attack vectors for this?
>
> If not having a current, working attack to demonstrate is a valid way to shrug off a security concern, that's great; it'll be a useful approach to many of the discussions I have. :)
>
>
>> The problem is that content-type is a pretty flexible header, which means normalization of the header will be required (case, parameter order, white space, etc.).
>
> The media type is the important part, and it's much more constrained.
>
>
>> I would argue that if you are using MAC with body hash and an attacker changing the media type can cause harm, you should use additional methods to secure the content-type (such as making the body self-describing).
>
> That seems like a step backwards, considering all of the work that Adam has put into limiting the use of sniffing.

Yeah, I tried to twist Eran's arm into including the media type in the
body hash too.  It's probably more important for responses than
requests, however.

Adam