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

[Julian Reschke <[e-mail]>]

On 2011-10-29 10:10, Adam Barth wrote:
> 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.
> ...

It's not ill-defined, but undefined (by design) - see 
<http://trac.tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/186>.

What I was trying to understand whether there's something special with 
respect to quoted-string?

Best regards, Julian