Re: chunking and trailers

On Mon, 20 Jul 1998, Richard Gray wrote:

> If my proxy, while processing a chunked response, exceeds the amount of data I
> am willing to buffer, does anything break by me throwing away the contents of
> the trailer?  I think, from previous discussion, that the answer should be
> "no", but I am concerned about the effects of discarding "Authentication-Info"
> and "Content-MD5".

I believe you violate the protocol if you delete header values which
aren't explictly described as removed by a proxy. Whether the value is
provided in the headers or the trailer. You have the option removing
chunking and promoting the trailer values to the 'real' header.
In a normal situation, the trailers should be relatively small so if
your proxy can't tolerate the additional data, then it suggests to me
that some form of denial of service attack is underway and the proxy
should just discard the whole response.

Dave Morris

Received on Tuesday, 21 July 1998 17:47:07 UTC