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Re: [jose] Proposed resolution of header criticality issue

"Manger, James H" <James.H.Manger@team.telstra.com> Tue, 12 March 2013 06:08 UTC

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From: "Manger, James H" <James.H.Manger@team.telstra.com>
To: Dick Hardt <dick.hardt@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 12 Mar 2013 17:08:36 +1100
Thread-Topic: [jose] Proposed resolution of header criticality issue
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Subject: Re: [jose] Proposed resolution of header criticality issue
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> Why must "zip" be understood? Is there a security issue here or just
> degraded performance? In my current implementations, "zip" does not
> help me enough to bother with the added complexity and I have not
> implemented support.
> 
> -- Dick

You don't want to try to interpret compressed data as plain text. That could be a security problem. A tricky person might be able to create, say, a valid JSON value X that compresses to Y that is also valid JSON. If you ignore "zip" you get JOSE-verified Y; if you process "zip" you get JOSE-verified X.

You might not have to implement "zip" (that is a separate MTI discussion), but your recipient code at least needs to notice when "zip" is present and throw an error (instead of misinterpreting the compressed content).

--
James Manger

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