Re: [EME] Mitigating the impact of HTTPS on content providers

As I understand the proposal, the response of fetches would be opaque to JS. In the case of adaptive delivery protocols like DASH and HLS, JavaScript needs to be able to parse responses to fetches of the manifest file. Can [1] be extended to address this?

Bob

From: David Dorwin <ddorwin@google.com<mailto:ddorwin@google.com>>
Date: Tuesday, March 3, 2015 at 5:53 PM
To: "<public-html-media@w3. org>" <public-html-media@w3.org<mailto:public-html-media@w3.org>>
Cc: Mark Watson <watsonm@netflix.com<mailto:watsonm@netflix.com>>, "Jerry Smith (WINDOWS)" <jdsmith@microsoft.com<mailto:jdsmith@microsoft.com>>, Henri Sivonen <hsivonen@hsivonen.fi<mailto:hsivonen@hsivonen.fi>>
Subject: Re: [EME] Mitigating the impact of HTTPS on content providers
Resent-From: "<public-html-media@w3. org>" <public-html-media@w3.org<mailto:public-html-media@w3.org>>
Resent-Date: Tuesday, March 3, 2015 at 5:54 PM

There is a proposal for a solution [1] to enable MSE buffers to be treated as Optionally-blockable Content in Mixed Content scenarios in the same way as standard src= sources. It would solve the general inconsistency between these two types of sources of media data and removes one hurdle for MSE-using sites to switch their pages, cookies, etc. to HTTPS. It also addresses the short term impact to MSE-using content providers of requiring secure origins to use the EME APIs [3].

For EME, the proposal has the same effect as idea #2 below but is much more natural and does not requires any EME-specific changes. Note that it involves Fetch instead of XHR

Feedback on the proposal has been minimal, mainly related to the details of cookies, whether it weakens web platform security, and whether it would address the EME issue. I expect that details will be worked out as the proposal is formalized. If you have comments on the proposal, please reply to the cross-posted proposal thread [1].

Since the blocking of HTTP requests for MSE was the main objection to requiring secure origins for EME [3], I believe this gives us a path forward on resolving that bug. This unblocks the completion of the “powerful features” (formerly secure origin) algorithm step [4], but we will need to decide how to document the relationship to the availability of the Fetch and MSE functionality along with a maximum date for HTTP support. That date would be similar to the flag day previously discussed but would hopefully not impact user agents that implement the proposal [1], allowing sites to switch to HTTPS sooner.

[1] https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html-media/2015Feb/0038.html
[2] http://www.w3.org/TR/mixed-content/#category-optionally-blockable
[3] https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=26332
[4] https://w3c.github.io/encrypted-media/#requestMediaKeySystemAccess


On Fri, Oct 24, 2014 at 9:53 AM, David Dorwin <ddorwin@google.com<mailto:ddorwin@google.com>> wrote:
The main objection to requiring secure origins for some or all key systems seems to be the impact this would have on content providers using MSE - mixed content restrictions would require them to also serve the encrypted media streams from a secure origin. While there is still some debate as to the actual impact, I'd like to start a brainstorm and discussion of ideas on how we might reduce the (immediate) impact on content providers while enabling user agents to require secure origins (in a reasonable timeframe).

Here are some ideas to start the brainstorming. (I don't necessarily support any of them at this point.)

  1.  Define a flag day by which HTTPS must be supported/required.
     *   See http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2014Oct/0100.html.
     *   There might be some sort of timeline / phased-in transition.
        *   For example, ramping up the amount of HTTPS traffic.
  2.  Temporarily allow Mixed Content XHRs to be provided to MSE when EME is in use.
     *   Non-secure XHR responses passed to MSE would temporarily be considered Optionally-blockable Content like normal video.src content.
     *   Given a choice, securing EME is probably more important than preventing use of mixed content with MSE. (The alternative seems to be that none of the bytes are secure.)
     *   We would need to consider the security implications.
     *   This exception would be eventually be phased out as in #1.
     *   I'm not sure how practical this would be for implementions.
  3.  Establish an informal flag day, such as an agreement among major browser vendors and/or content providers.
     *   The goal would be to prevent content providers from segmenting the platform by refusing to support user agents that choose to require HTTPS. (See the second to last paragraph in http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2014Oct/0096.html.)

David