Re: WebFonts WG discussions

On 7 May 2010, at 17:08, Tab Atkins Jr. wrote:

> On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 6:59 AM, Levantovsky, Vladimir
> <Vladimir.Levantovsky@monotypeimaging.com> wrote:
>> Sorry for a delayed response. The reason I proposed to consider adding
>> checksum is because the WOFF file contains extended and private metadata
>> fields that are currently can be easily discarded – one can simply cut them,
>> zero-out related offset/length values in the WOFF header and modify the WOFF
>> length. I realize that adding checksum isn’t going to be a strong protection
>> against willful modifications, the same could be done with the checksum
>> present, but it would require a bit of an effort (to write the code to
>> recalculate the checksum).
> 
> I believe that, by the time people are reaching into the file to cut
> out tables and modify several values, recalculating a checksum is
> trivial.  The operations and abilities required to do so are basically
> the same.

I'd agree with this; it would just be an additional piece of busy-work for every WOFF-creating tool (and for every WOFF-using UA, if validation is a requirement), without adding any significant value.

Jonathan

Received on Friday, 7 May 2010 16:23:28 UTC