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Re: content inspection in absence of media type, was: [apps-discuss] APPSDIR review of draft-ietf-httpbis-p2-semantics-24

2013-10-29 08:50:43
Hi Julian,
At 09:06 28-10-2013, Julian Reschke wrote:
On 2013-10-28 09:07, S Moonesamy wrote:
(which expired ~2 years ago)

I guess that the working group gave up. Please note that I did not suggest adding a reference.

Could you clarify what exactly the issue is?

RFC 2616 said (<http://greenbytes.de/tech/webdav/rfc2616.html#rfc.section.7.2.1.p.4>):

Any HTTP/1.1 message containing an entity-body SHOULD include a Content-Type header field defining the media type of that body. If and only if the media type is not given by a Content-Type field, the recipient MAY attempt to guess the media type via inspection of its content and/or the name extension(s) of the URI used to identify the resource. If the media type remains unknown, the recipient SHOULD treat it as type "application/octet-stream".

...which isn't that different.

The 'If the media type remains unknown, the recipient SHOULD treat it as type "application/octet-stream' from RFC 2616 is not in draft-ietf-httpbis-p2-semantics-24.

The issue is the "or examine the data to determine its type". I'll comment about the text (Section 3.1.1.5) again. The server has to generate a Content-Type header field unless the media type is unknown. There is then a RFC 2119 "may" which is applicable when the (previous) RFC 2119 "should" cannot be applied. My reading of the "may" is that the usage is not entirely correct. I am not raising that as an issue. The issue is whether there is a security problem and whether there is adequate discussion of it (e.g. it is discussed in a Security Considerations section).

Regards,
S. Moonesamy
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