Re: security impact of dropping charset default

On Jan 23, 2008, at 9:17 AM, Julian Reschke wrote:
> David Morris wrote:
>> It seems to me that if there is a known security exposure for  
>> applications
>> built on HTTP, then the httpbis document should at the minimum  
>> note the
>> issue and provide a reference to the details. Seems like appropriate
>> content for the security section.
>
> My understanding was that that security risk is not specific to  
> content transported over HTTP at all -- so I'd rather not talk  
> about it in *this* document.

Because the only known way to avoid the security holes in existing
browsers that sniff UTF-7 is to add a charset parameter even when
the exact charset is not known to the server.  That is specific to
HTTP and is a known problem due to browser's ignoring the existing
requirements of HTTP that this thread intends to remove.

....Roy

Received on Wednesday, 23 January 2008 18:35:02 UTC