Re: ACTION-640: clarification to interaction model?

Joe Steele wrote:
> The 4.1 proposed text is fine.
>
> I can see your point on the change to the first two paragraphs, but I still think something more is needed to narrow the scope. The text in 5.3 refers to "all content" and "all other resources". It does not acknowledge that some content might not be coming through an HTTP transaction. That is the root of the problem. We need to remove that "all" qualifier and replace it with something more narrow. Any suggestions as to what? Providing some explanatory text elsewhere doesn't seem to solve the problem.
>    

The change that you suggest here has an interesting side effect: If, for 
example, a resource that's part of a web page is retrieved through FTP 
(or some future insecure network protocol), then that resource's 
security wouldn't matter for the determination of mixed content.  In the 
text as currently written, one could argue that the behavior is 
undefined -- which is entirely fine for the purposes of this specification.

That's why I'm extremely reluctant to do the tighter scoping in the way 
in which you suggest it.


> Joe
>
> On Apr 9, 2010, at 5:34 AM, Thomas Roessler wrote:
>
>    
>> Joe Steele wrote:
>>      
>>> I would propose this change to paragraph 1 in section 5.3:
>>> If a given Web page consists of a single resource only, then all
>>> content *<change>retrieved through an HTTP transaction</change>* that
>>> the user interacts with has security properties derived from the HTTP
>>> transaction used to retrieve the content.
>>> And similar changes to the two following definitions:
>>>
>>> [Definition: A Web page is called *TLS-secured* if the top-level
>>> resource and all other resources that can affect or control the page's
>>> content and presentation *<change>and are retrieved through an HTTP
>>> transaction</change>  *have been retrieved through strongly TLS
>>> protected HTTP transactions.
>>>
>>>        
>> Looking at these two definitions, the changes seem tautological,
>> therefore -1.
>>
>> However, I'd suggest we say this in 4.1, after the fourth paragraph: "In
>> interactive Web applications, the presentation to the user might also
>> depend on state that is local to the client - be it local storage of
>> structured data, or be it recent interactions with the Web page. The
>> security properties of those data will depend on the security properties
>> of the client computer itself, and are out of scope for this specification."
>>
>> Thoughts?
>>
>>      
>>> [Definition: A Web page is called *mixed content* if the top-level
>>> resource was retrieved through a strongly TLS protected HTTP
>>> transaction, but some dependent resources were *<change>retrieved
>>> through a weakly protected or unprotected HTTP transaction</change>*]
>>>
>>>        
>> +1
>>
>>      
>
>
>
>    

Received on Friday, 9 April 2010 22:54:26 UTC