- From: =JeffH <Jeff.Hodges@KingsMountain.com>
- Date: Thu, 03 Mar 2011 14:11:21 -0800
- To: IETF HTTP State WG <http-state@ietf.org>, Internet Architecture Board <iab@iab.org>, www-tag@w3.org
- CC: httpstate chair <httpstate-chairs@tools.ietf.org>, Adam Barth <ietf@adambarth.com>, Peter Saint-Andre <stpeter@stpeter.im>, Bil Corry <bil@corry.biz>
Mea culpa :( I relied on my obviously faulty memory this morning in my haste rather than going back (only 2+ yrs ;) and reviewing mailing list archives, and so didn't recall that Bil was instrumental in the creation of this effort. Many thanks to Bil for instigating this effort. Here's something he wrote wrt the history of this recent edition of the http-state working group.. "A bit of history on this effort, it was well known within the IETF community that the supposed "official" cookie specification (RFC2965) was out-of-sync with how browsers were actually using cookies -- the browser vendors never implemented RFC2965 (except Opera). Anyone wanting to consume or send cookie headers had to reverse engineer how the browsers were actually doing it as there wasn't (until now) a specification an implementer could use for reference. This lead to a variety of divergence on edge-cases for cookies within the implementations. In late 2008, Jim Manico and I connected to create a specification for HTTPOnly -- we saw the security issues arising from how the browser vendors were implementing HTTPOnly in varying ways[1] due to a lack of a specification and formed an ad-hoc working group to tackle the issue[2]. When I approached the IETF about forming a charter for an official working group, I was told that I was <quote> "wasting my time" because cookies itself did not have a proper specification, so it didn't make sense to work on a spec for HTTPOnly. Soon after, we pursued reopening the IETF httpstate Working Group to tackle the entire cookie spec, not just HTTPOnly. Eventually Adam Barth would become editor and Jeff Hodges our chair. This cleans up a well-known mess and gives us a good starting point from which to improve httpstate and add improved security features. And no, it's not lost on me that HTTPOnly still has considerable divergence on behavior. Perhaps now I can finally form my HTTPOnly working group. (Bil Corry)" HTH, =JeffH
Received on Thursday, 3 March 2011 22:18:30 UTC