#443: p1: whitespace in request-target

[Mark Nottingham <[e-mail]>]

Tracking this as:
  http://trac.tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/443


On 18/04/2013, at 10:49 AM, Mark Nottingham <[e-mail]> wrote:

> p1 3.1.1 says:
> 
>> Unfortunately, some user agents fail to properly encode hypertext references that have embedded whitespace, sending the characters directly instead of properly encoding or excluding the disallowed characters. Recipients of an invalid request-line SHOULD respond with either a 400 (Bad Request) error or a 301 (Moved Permanently) redirect with the request-target properly encoded. Recipients SHOULD NOT attempt to autocorrect and then process the request without a redirect, since the invalid request-line might be deliberately crafted to bypass security filters along the request chain.
> 
>  http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-httpbis-p1-messaging-22#section-3.1.1
> 
> I note that the practice of correcting this is fairly widespread; e.g., in Squid, the default is to strip the whitespace, and IIRC has been for some time:
> 
>  http://www.squid-cache.org/Doc/config/uri_whitespace/
> 
> I think that the Squid documentation needs to be corrected, because the text in RFC2396 (and later in 3986) is about URIs in contexts like books, e-mail and so forth, not protocol elements:
> 
>  http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3986#appendix-C
> 
> My question is why this is a SHOULD / SHOULD NOT. We say that SHOULD-level requirements affect conformance unless there's a documented exception here:
> 
>  http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-httpbis-p1-messaging-22#section-2.5
> 
> ... but these requirements don't mention any exceptions. Is the security risk here high enough to justify a MUST / MUST NOT? If not, they probably need to be downgraded to ought (or an exception needs to be highlighted).
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> 
> --
> Mark Nottingham   http://www.mnot.net/
> 
> 
> 
> 

--
Mark Nottingham   http://www.mnot.net/