RE: [apps-discuss] content inspection in absence of media type, was: APPSDIR review of draft-ietf-httpbis-p2-semantics-24

I'd like to point out that the topic of consistent content inspection was discussed in the websec working group via:
http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-websec-mime-sniff-03
which was abandoned in the IETF and taken up by WHATWG in 
http://mimesniff.spec.whatwg.org/.
The "bugs" filed in IETF tracker:
http://trac.tools.ietf.org/wg/websec/trac/query?component=mime-sniff
and discussed at IETF 82 Taipei
http://tools.ietf.org/agenda/82/slides/websec-2.pdf

were subsequently reproduced in the WHATWG tracker

https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=19746

Ideally, the "magic number" entry in the Media Type registry would be retargeted to give instructions and prioritization for content recognition, especially in cases (such as ftp: and file: access) where there is no channel for content-type transmission.  

Fixing content-type sniffing goes beyond http and should be addressed directly. 

Larry
--
http://larry.masinter.net

Received on Monday, 4 November 2013 16:10:58 UTC