Re: [whatwg/fetch] CORS: arbitrary blocking of accept header based on length (#862)

> The rationale is that the more attacker controlled bytes there are the easier it is to determine things about the resource

@annevk But is that really so?
At first, I intuitively agreed, because "more space" seems equal to "more space to do bad things". But after further reflection, I'm not so sure.

It begs several questions:
1. **Is space indeed an enabler for bad things?** (As opposed to, let's say, bad escaping, which might also lead to trouble with smaller payloads.)
2. If it is, **how does the mitigation mechanism address protect against large headers?**

It seems at the moment the rationale is broken. The current reasoning seems to be:
- A large header section is dangerous.
- So let's require the server to allow specific headers.
  - Server's intended result: the client can send a specific header.
  - Actual result: the client can send an arbitrarily large header section.

So the protection mechanism "sure, I allow header X" does not seem to protect against large headers at all, which I read above is what it is supposed to do (and I doubt that necessity). Why not an "allowed header length" then?

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Received on Tuesday, 29 January 2019 12:23:19 UTC