HTTP Working Group M. Nottingham
Internet-Draft E. Nygren
Intended status: Standards Track Akamai
Expires: August 17, 2017 February 13, 2017
The ORIGIN HTTP/2 Frame
draft-ietf-httpbis-origin-frame-02
Abstract
This document specifies the ORIGIN frame for HTTP/2, to indicate what
origins are available on a given connection.
Note to Readers
Discussion of this draft takes place on the HTTP working group
mailing list (ietf-http-wg@w3.org), which is archived at
https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/ietf-http-wg/ .
Working Group information can be found at http://httpwg.github.io/ ;
source code and issues list for this draft can be found at
https://github.com/httpwg/http-extensions/labels/origin-frame .
Status of This Memo
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provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
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This Internet-Draft will expire on August 17, 2017.
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document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.1. Notational Conventions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2. The ORIGIN HTTP/2 Frame . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2.1. Syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2.2. Processing ORIGIN Frames . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2.3. The Origin Set . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.4. Authority, Push and Coalescing with ORIGIN . . . . . . . 5
3. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
4. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
5. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
5.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
5.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Appendix A. Non-Normative Processing Algorithm . . . . . . . . . 7
Appendix B. Operational Considerations for Servers . . . . . . . 8
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1. Introduction
HTTP/2 [RFC7540] allows clients to coalesce different origins
[RFC6454] onto the same connection when certain conditions are met.
However, in certain cases, a connection is is not usable for a
coalesced origin, so the 421 (Misdirected Request) status code
([RFC7540], Section 9.1.2) was defined.
Using a status code in this manner allows clients to recover from
misdirected requests, but at the penalty of adding latency. To
address that, this specification defines a new HTTP/2 frame type,
"ORIGIN", to allow servers to indicate what origins a connection is
usable for.
Additionally, experience has shown that HTTP/2's requirement to
establish server authority using both DNS and the server's
certificate is onerous. This specification relaxes the requirement
to check DNS when the ORIGIN frame is in use. Doing so has
additional benefits, such as removing the latency associated with
some DNS lookups, and improving DNS privacy.
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1.1. Notational Conventions
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
document are to be interpreted as described in [RFC2119].
2. The ORIGIN HTTP/2 Frame
The ORIGIN HTTP/2 frame ([RFC7540], Section 4) allows a server to
indicate what origin(s) [RFC6454] the server would like the client to
consider as members of the Origin Set (Section 2.3) for the
connection it occurs within.
2.1. Syntax
The ORIGIN frame type is 0xb (decimal 11).
+-------------------------------+-------------------------------+
| Origin-Len (16) | ASCII-Origin? (*) ...
+-------------------------------+-------------------------------+
The ORIGIN frame's payload contains the following fields, sets of
which may be repeated within the frame to indicate multiple origins:
Origin-Len: An unsigned, 16-bit integer indicating the length, in
octets, of the ASCII-Origin field.
Origin: An optional sequence of characters containing the ASCII
serialization of an origin ([RFC6454], Section 6.2) that the
sender believes this connection is or could be authoritative for.
The ORIGIN frame does not define any flags. However, future updates
to this specification MAY define flags. See Section 2.2.
2.2. Processing ORIGIN Frames
The ORIGIN frame is a non-critical extension to HTTP/2. Endpoints
that do not support this frame can safely ignore it upon receipt.
When received by an implementing client, it is used to initialise and
manipulate the Origin Set (see Section 2.3), thereby changing how the
client establishes authority for origin servers (see Section 2.4).
The origin frame MUST be sent on stream 0; an ORIGIN frame on any
other stream is invalid and MUST be ignored.
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Likewise, the ORIGIN frame is only valid on connections with the "h2"
protocol identifier, or when specifically nominated by the protocol's
definition; it MUST be ignored when received on a connection with the
"h2c" protocol identifier.
This specification does not define any flags for the ORIGIN frame,
but future updates might use them to change its semantics. The first
four flags (0x1, 0x2, 0x4 and 0x8) are reserved for backwards-
incompatible changes, and therefore when any of them are set, the
ORIGIN frame containing them MUST be ignored by clients conforming to
this specification. The remaining flags are reserved for backwards-
compatible changes, and do not affect processing by clients
conformant to this specification.
The ORIGIN frame describes a property of the connection, and
therefore is processed hop-by-hop. An intermediary MUST NOT forward
ORIGIN frames. Clients configured to use a proxy MUST ignore any
ORIGIN frames received from it.
Each ASCII-Origin field in the frame's payload MUST be parsed as an
ASCII serialisation of an origin ([RFC6454], Section 6.2). If
parsing fails, the field MUST be ignored.
See Appendix A for an illustrative algorithm for processing ORIGIN
frames.
2.3. The Origin Set
The set of origins (as per [RFC6454]) that a given connection might
be used for is known in this specification as the Origin Set.
By default, a connections's Origin Set is uninitialised. When an
ORIGIN frame is first received and successfully processed by a
client, the connection's Origin Set is defined to contain a single
origin, composed from:
o Scheme: "https"
o Host: the value sent in Server Name Indication ([RFC6066]
Section 3), converted to lower case
o Port: the remote port of the connection (i.e., the server's port)
The contents of that ORIGIN frame (and subsequent ones) allows the
server to incrementally add new origins to the Origin Set, as
described in Section 2.2.
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The Origin Set is also affected by the 421 (Misdirected Request)
response status code, defined in [RFC7540] Section 9.1.2. Upon
receipt of a response with this status code, implementing clients
MUST create the ASCII serialisation of the corresponding request's
origin (as per [RFC6454], Section 6.2) and remove it from the
connection's Origin Set, if present.
2.4. Authority, Push and Coalescing with ORIGIN
[RFC7540], Section 10.1 uses both DNS and the presented TLS
certificate to establish the origin server(s) that a connection is
authoritative for, just as HTTP/1.1 does in [RFC7230]. Furthermore,
[RFC7540] Section 9.1.1 explicitly allows a connection to be used for
more than one origin server, if it is authoritative. This affects
what requests can be sent on the connection, both in HEADERS frame by
the client and as PUSH_PROMISE frames from the server.
Once an Origin Set has been initialised for a connection, clients
that implement this specification change these behaviors in the
following ways:
o Clients MUST NOT consult DNS to establish the connection's
authority for new requests. The TLS certificate MUST stil be used
to do so, as described in [RFC7540] Section 9.1.1.
o Clients sending a new request SHOULD use an existing connection if
the request's origin is in that connection's Origin Set, unless
there are operational reasons for creating a new connection.
o Clients MUST use the Origin Set to determine whether a received
PUSH_PROMISE is authoritative, as described in [RFC7540],
Section 8.2.2.
Note that clients are still required to perform checks on the
certificate presented by the server for each origin that a connection
is used for; see [RFC7540] Section 9.1.1 for more information. This
includes verifying that the host matches a "dNSName" value from the
certificate "subjectAltName" field (using the wildcard rules defined
in [RFC2818]; see also [RFC5280] Section 4.2.1.6).
Because ORIGIN can change the set of origins a connection is used for
over time, it is possible that a client might have more than one
viable connection to an origin open at any time. When this occurs,
clients SHOULD not emit new requests on any connection whose Origin
Set is a subset of another connection's Origin Set, and SHOULD close
it once all outstanding requests are satisfied.
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3. IANA Considerations
This specification adds an entry to the "HTTP/2 Frame Type" registry.
o Frame Type: ORIGIN
o Code: 0xb
o Specification: [this document]
4. Security Considerations
Clients that blindly trust the ORIGIN frame's contents will be
vulnerable to a large number of attacks. See Section 2.4 for
mitigations.
Relaxing the requirement to consult DNS when determining authority
for an origin means that an attacker who possesses a valid
certificate no longer needs to be on-path to redirect traffic to
them; instead of modifying DNS, they need only convince the user to
visit another Web site, in order to coalesce connections to the
target onto their existing connection.
5. References
5.1. Normative References
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2119>.
[RFC2818] Rescorla, E., "HTTP Over TLS", RFC 2818,
DOI 10.17487/RFC2818, May 2000,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2818>.
[RFC5280] Cooper, D., Santesson, S., Farrell, S., Boeyen, S.,
Housley, R., and W. Polk, "Internet X.509 Public Key
Infrastructure Certificate and Certificate Revocation List
(CRL) Profile", RFC 5280, DOI 10.17487/RFC5280, May 2008,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5280>.
[RFC6066] Eastlake 3rd, D., "Transport Layer Security (TLS)
Extensions: Extension Definitions", RFC 6066,
DOI 10.17487/RFC6066, January 2011,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6066>.
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[RFC6454] Barth, A., "The Web Origin Concept", RFC 6454,
DOI 10.17487/RFC6454, December 2011,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6454>.
[RFC7540] Belshe, M., Peon, R., and M. Thomson, Ed., "Hypertext
Transfer Protocol Version 2 (HTTP/2)", RFC 7540,
DOI 10.17487/RFC7540, May 2015,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7540>.
5.2. Informative References
[RFC5988] Nottingham, M., "Web Linking", RFC 5988,
DOI 10.17487/RFC5988, October 2010,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5988>.
[RFC7230] Fielding, R., Ed. and J. Reschke, Ed., "Hypertext Transfer
Protocol (HTTP/1.1): Message Syntax and Routing",
RFC 7230, DOI 10.17487/RFC7230, June 2014,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7230>.
[RFC7838] Nottingham, M., McManus, P., and J. Reschke, "HTTP
Alternative Services", RFC 7838, DOI 10.17487/RFC7838,
April 2016, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7838>.
Appendix A. Non-Normative Processing Algorithm
The following algorithm illustrates how a client could handle
received ORIGIN frames:
1. If the client is configured to use a proxy for the connection,
ignore the frame and stop processing.
2. If the connection is not identified with the "h2" protocol
identifier or another protocol that has explicitly opted into
this specification, ignore the frame and stop processing.
3. If the frame occurs upon any stream except stream 0, ignore the
frame and stop processing.
4. If any of the flags 0x1, 0x2, 0x4 or 0x8 are set, ignore the
frame and stop processing.
5. If no previous ORIGIN frame on the connection has reached this
step, initialise the Origin Set as per Section 2.3.
6. For each Origin field "origin_raw" in the frame payload:
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1. Parse "origin_raw" as an ASCII serialization of an origin
([RFC6454], Section 6.2) and let the result be
"parsed_origin". If parsing fails, skip to the next
"origin_raw".
2. Add "parsed_origin" to the Origin Set.
Appendix B. Operational Considerations for Servers
The ORIGIN frame allows a server to indicate for which origins a
given connection ought be used.
For example, it can be used to inform the client that the connection
is to only be used for the SNI-based origin, by sending an empty
ORIGIN frame. Or, a larger number of origins can be indicated by
including a payload.
Generally, this information is most useful to send before sending any
part of a response that might initiate a new connection; for example,
"Link" headers [RFC5988] in a response HEADERS, or links in the
response body.
Therefore, the ORIGIN frame ought be sent as soon as possible on a
connection, ideally before any HEADERS or PUSH_PROMISE frames.
However, if it's desirable to associate a large number of origins
with a connection, doing so might introduce end-user perceived
latency, due to their size. As a result, it might be necessary to
select a "core" set of origins to send initially, expanding the set
of origins the connection is used for with subsequent ORIGIN frames
later (e.g., when the connection is idle).
Senders should note that, as per [RFC6454] Section 4, the values in
an ORIGIN header need to be case-normalised before serialisation.
Finally, servers that allow alternative services [RFC7838] will need
to explicitly advertise those origins when sending ORIGIN, because
the default contents of the Origin Set (as per Section 2.3) do not
contain any Alternative Services, even if they have been used
previously on the connection.
Authors' Addresses
Mark Nottingham
Akamai
Email: mnot@mnot.net
URI: https://www.mnot.net/
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Erik Nygren
Akamai
Email: nygren@akamai.com
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