Re: Origin vs Authority; use of HTTPS (draft-nottingham-site-meta-01)

On Mon, Feb 23, 2009 at 9:57 AM, Adam Barth <w3c@adambarth.com> wrote:

> On Mon, Feb 23, 2009 at 9:44 AM, Breno de Medeiros <breno@google.com>
> wrote:
> > On Mon, Feb 23, 2009 at 9:32 AM, Adam Barth <w3c@adambarth.com> wrote:
> >> Security is often a "death of a thousand paper cuts" that eventually add
> up to
> >> you being owned.
> >
> > I don't understand this reasoning.
> >
> > 1. The host-meta spec allows delegation to other domains/hosts
> >
> > 2. Secure app does not allow redirection to other domains/hosts
> >
> > 3. Secure app does not use host-meta and instead secure-meta, as apposed
> to,
> > say, using host-meta and not following redirects to other sites?
>
> What's the point of standardizing host-meta if every application will
> require different processing rules to suit its own needs?
> Applications will interoperate better by simply ignoring host-meta and
> inventing their own metadata repository.


Every application _will_ need to use different processing rules, because,
well, they are interested in different things.


>
>
> > For secure app to be secure re:no-redirect-rule it must in any way
> perform
> > the check that the redirection is to another realm, surely?
>
> To be secure, a user agent should not follow redirects to obtain
> host-meta, regardless of where those redirects lead.


What is the attack model here? I assume is the following: The attacker
compromises the server to serve a re-direct when there should be a file
served (or a 404). Well, the attacker can't upload a host-meta with what it
wants in it? Why?


>
>
> > There is enormous value in allowing redirects for host-meta. Applications
> > with higher levels of security should implement their own security
> policies.
>
> If you follow your current trajectory and continue to compromise away
> security, applications that require security will implement their own
> version of host-meta that is designed to be secure from the ground up
> instead of trying to track down and patch all the gotchas in
> host-meta.  Sadly, this will defeat the goal of having a central
> metadata repository.


Perhaps that argument would be more convincing when you provide an example
of an attack made possibly by introduction of a redirect that would not be
possible by, say, adding a line to the host-meta file.


>
>
> Adam
>



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--Breno

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