Re: Web Keys and HTTP Signatures

[Manu Sporny <[e-mail]>]

On 04/17/2013 08:00 PM, Martin Thomson wrote:
> Yeah, that's a pretty bad.  Switching two date-formatted headers 
> might be a simple thing to gain advantage on.  (Last-Modified and 
> Date, might work to poison a cache with old content if the cache 
> isn't rigorous about checking Date).  It seems like a simple fix 
> would be to include the list of headers under the signature as the 
> first item.

Carsten, James, Martin - good catch, thanks. We had assumed that the
implementation included the headers names as well as the values in the
data being digitally signed. As Dave Lehn pointed out, this is a work in
progress, but we wanted to get something out as sooner than later.

The attack is only possible if a message is passed over a non-secure
channel, right? That is, the spec is clear about passing all messages
over HTTPS. Granted, that's not an excuse for the approach taken and it
should be fixed, but the attack is only possible if messages are sent
over an insecure channel, correct?

-- manu

-- 
Manu Sporny (skype: msporny, twitter: manusporny, G+: +Manu Sporny)
Founder/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
blog: Meritora - Web payments commercial launch
http://blog.meritora.com/launch/