Re: [websec] Strict-Transport-Security syntax redux

[Adam Barth <[e-mail]>]

On Sat, Oct 29, 2011 at 1:07 AM, Julian Reschke <[e-mail]> wrote:
> On 2011-10-29 05:08, Adam Barth wrote:
>>
>> ...
>>>
>>> Except for RFC6265, which in the algorithm for parsing "Max-Age=", it
>>> algorithmically provides for ignoring a value that doesn't match the
>>> effective value ABNF of..
>>>
>>>  ["-"]*DIGIT
>>>
>>> ..which would catch the max-age="1" case, but doesn't seem to explicitly
>>> address..
>>>
>>>  max-age=
>>
>> That's handled by some more general processing rules in the spec.  The
>> net result is that it's ignored.
>>
>>> But in any case, perhaps (additional) browser implementor folk could
>>> chime
>>> in here -- do we really need to address such detail-level issues (both of
>>> the examples above and below) in the syntax/grammar we specify in specs
>>> such
>>> as these? Or is the new ABNF proposed in the original message in this
>>> thread
>>> sufficient?
>>
>> Generally, we prefer to be instructed exactly how to behave for every
>> possible input (even illegal ones).  There's a long history of
>> quoted-string not being implemented correctly by browsers.  I spec
>> this as just splitting the string on ; and then processing each
>> substring separately, ignoring bogus/future ones.  I know Julian has a
>> dream that all HTTP headers will be parsed the same, but quoted-string
>> is sufficiently ill-defined w.r.t. error handling that I prefer to
>> avoid it.
>> ...
>
> - when discussing generic parsing, we need to distinguish between legacy
> cases like cookies, and new headers, where we can do better
>
> - standardizing handling of broken headers is one thing (and in general I
> prefer not to), but that doesn't mean that when defining a new header field
> we shouldn't minimize the things a sender can get wrong; if we know that
> some recipients will accept both token and quoted-string anyway, then it
> seems like a good thing to simply allow them both, reducing the number of
> special-cases in parsing
>
> - not sure what you mean by "ill-defined w.r.t. error handling"; it's
> defined just like most other syntax elements in HTTP -- is there something
> *specific* to quoted-string you have in mind?

Most of HTTP is ill-defined w.r.t. error handling.  We muddle through
with reverse engineering.

Adam