Re: [whatwg] AppCache Content-Type Security Considerations

On Tue, 13 May 2014, Michal Zalewski wrote:
> 
> We probably can't support a well-defined algorithm for detecting 
> documents that have distinctive signatures while safely supporting 
> formats that don't have them (because there is always a possibility that 
> the non-structured format with user-controlled data could be used to 
> forge a signature).

Right. You'd have to check the Content-Type header first.


On Tue, 13 May 2014, Michal Zalewski wrote:
> 
> In general, in the past, in pretty much every single instance where 
> browsers tried to second-guess Content-Type or Content-Disposition 
> headers - be it through sketchy proprietary content-sniffing heuristics 
> or through well-defined algorithms - this ended up creating tons of 
> hard-to-fix security problems and introduced new burdens for web 
> developers. It looks elegant, but it's almost always a huge liability.

I disagree. Much of the Web actually relies on this today, and for the 
most part it works. For example, when you do:

   <img src="foo" ...>

...the Content-Type is ignored except for SVG.


> I think that most or all browsers are moving pretty firmly in the other 
> direction, enforcing C-T checking even in situations that historically 
> were off-limits (<script>, <style>, <object>, etc), based on strong 
> evidence of previous mishaps; to the extent that the spec diverges from 
> this, I suspect that it will be only a source of confusion and 
> incompatibility.

Actually as far as I can tell we're converging on a hybrid model, more or 
less the one specified here:

   http://mimesniff.spec.whatwg.org/

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'

Received on Tuesday, 13 May 2014 17:52:58 UTC