Protocol Action: 'Security Considerations for Optimistic Protocol Transitions in HTTP/1.1' to Proposed Standard (draft-ietf-httpbis-optimistic-upgrade-06.txt)

The IESG has approved the following document:
- 'Security Considerations for Optimistic Protocol Transitions in
   HTTP/1.1'
  (draft-ietf-httpbis-optimistic-upgrade-06.txt) as Proposed Standard

This document is the product of the HTTP Working Group.

The IESG contact persons are Gorry Fairhurst and Mike Bishop.

A URL of this Internet-Draft is:
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-httpbis-optimistic-upgrade/




Technical Summary

   In HTTP/1.1, the client can request a change to a new protocol on the
   existing connection.  This document discusses the security
   considerations that apply to data sent by the client before this
   request is confirmed, and updates RFC 9112 and RFC 9298 to avoid
   related security issues.

Working Group Summary

   The working group discussed the document at several meetings and had a few
   thorough reviews. The main point of tension is that one of the recommended
   mitigations has the potential to significantly impact performance in some
   scenarios; the best-performing mitigation, of course, is to move to modern
   HTTP versions.

Document Quality

   This is not an implementable protocol in itself, but expanded Security
   Considerations based on learnings from using HTTP in the real world. The
   recommended mitigations are based on what many implementations already do.

Personnel

   The Document Shepherd for this document is Tommy Pauly. The Responsible
   Area Director is Mike Bishop.

Received on Thursday, 18 September 2025 20:32:01 UTC