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Re: [websec] #21: sniffing of text/html shouldn't override polyglot label of application/xhtml+xml

Larry Masinter <masinter@adobe.com> Mon, 24 October 2011 16:48 UTC

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From: Larry Masinter <masinter@adobe.com>
To: Philip Gladstone <pgladsto@cisco.com>, "websec@ietf.org" <websec@ietf.org>
Date: Mon, 24 Oct 2011 09:48:35 -0700
Thread-Topic: [websec] #21: sniffing of text/html shouldn't override polyglot label of application/xhtml+xml
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Subject: Re: [websec] #21: sniffing of text/html shouldn't override polyglot label of application/xhtml+xml
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I don't understand, Philip. A central case of this document involves taking documents that look like text/html but are labeled as text/plain and "sniffing" them to be text/html after all.

It's claimed that this is necessary, part of most browsers today, regular practice, etc.

Are you opposed to specifying sniffing from text/plain to text/html? In any case? 

Larry


-----Original Message-----
From: websec-bounces@ietf.org [mailto:websec-bounces@ietf.org] On Behalf Of Philip Gladstone
Sent: Monday, October 24, 2011 9:24 AM
To: websec@ietf.org
Subject: Re: [websec] #21: sniffing of text/html shouldn't override polyglot label of application/xhtml+xml



On 10/23/2011 7:52 PM, websec issue tracker wrote:
>
>   (One still might want to sniff text/html when the type is labeled
>   text/plain, for example, but not for other polyglot cases.)
This would be a disaster. For security reasons, a web server needs to know when a document will be "executed" rather than "displayed". 
Currently, using text/plain will display any document literally. Causing a document that looks like html to be executed will open lots of web sites to XSS.

Philip
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