HTTP                                                        M. West, Ed.
Internet-Draft                                               Google, Inc
Obsoletes: 6265 (if approved)                           J. Wilander, Ed.
Intended status: Standards Track                              Apple, Inc
Expires: July 23, 2020                                  January 20, 2020


                Cookies: HTTP State Management Mechanism
                    draft-ietf-httpbis-rfc6265bis-04

Abstract

   This document defines the HTTP Cookie and Set-Cookie header fields.
   These header fields can be used by HTTP servers to store state
   (called cookies) at HTTP user agents, letting the servers maintain a
   stateful session over the mostly stateless HTTP protocol.  Although
   cookies have many historical infelicities that degrade their security
   and privacy, the Cookie and Set-Cookie header fields are widely used
   on the Internet.  This document obsoletes RFC 6265.

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/ [1].

   Working Group information can be found at http://httpwg.github.io/
   [2]; source code and issues list for this draft can be found at
   https://github.com/httpwg/http-extensions/labels/6265bis [3].

Status of This Memo

   This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
   provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.

   Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
   Task Force (IETF).  Note that other groups may also distribute
   working documents as Internet-Drafts.  The list of current Internet-
   Drafts is at https://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.

   Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
   and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
   time.  It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
   material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."

   This Internet-Draft will expire on July 23, 2020.





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Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2020 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
   document authors.  All rights reserved.

   This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
   Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
   (https://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
   publication of this document.  Please review these documents
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   include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
   the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
   described in the Simplified BSD License.

   This document may contain material from IETF Documents or IETF
   Contributions published or made publicly available before November
   10, 2008.  The person(s) controlling the copyright in some of this
   material may not have granted the IETF Trust the right to allow
   modifications of such material outside the IETF Standards Process.
   Without obtaining an adequate license from the person(s) controlling
   the copyright in such materials, this document may not be modified
   outside the IETF Standards Process, and derivative works of it may
   not be created outside the IETF Standards Process, except to format
   it for publication as an RFC or to translate it into languages other
   than English.

Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
   2.  Conventions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
     2.1.  Conformance Criteria  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
     2.2.  Syntax Notation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
     2.3.  Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
   3.  Overview  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
     3.1.  Examples  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
   4.  Server Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
     4.1.  Set-Cookie  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
       4.1.1.  Syntax  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
       4.1.2.  Semantics (Non-Normative) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  11
       4.1.3.  Cookie Name Prefixes  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  14
     4.2.  Cookie  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  16
       4.2.1.  Syntax  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  16
       4.2.2.  Semantics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  16
   5.  User Agent Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  16
     5.1.  Subcomponent Algorithms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  17
       5.1.1.  Dates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  17
       5.1.2.  Canonicalized Host Names  . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  19



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       5.1.3.  Domain Matching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  19
       5.1.4.  Paths and Path-Match  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  19
     5.2.  "Same-site" and "cross-site" Requests . . . . . . . . . .  20
       5.2.1.  Document-based requests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  21
       5.2.2.  Worker-based requests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  22
     5.3.  The Set-Cookie Header . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  23
       5.3.1.  The Expires Attribute . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  25
       5.3.2.  The Max-Age Attribute . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  26
       5.3.3.  The Domain Attribute  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  26
       5.3.4.  The Path Attribute  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  27
       5.3.5.  The Secure Attribute  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  27
       5.3.6.  The HttpOnly Attribute  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  27
       5.3.7.  The SameSite Attribute  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  27
     5.4.  Storage Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  28
     5.5.  The Cookie Header . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  34
   6.  Implementation Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  36
     6.1.  Limits  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  36
     6.2.  Application Programming Interfaces  . . . . . . . . . . .  36
     6.3.  IDNA Dependency and Migration . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  36
   7.  Privacy Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  37
     7.1.  Third-Party Cookies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  37
     7.2.  User Controls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  38
     7.3.  Expiration Dates  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  38
   8.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  38
     8.1.  Overview  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  38
     8.2.  Ambient Authority . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  39
     8.3.  Clear Text  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  39
     8.4.  Session Identifiers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  40
     8.5.  Weak Confidentiality  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  41
     8.6.  Weak Integrity  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  41
     8.7.  Reliance on DNS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  42
     8.8.  SameSite Cookies  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  42
       8.8.1.  Defense in depth  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  42
       8.8.2.  Top-level Navigations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  43
       8.8.3.  Mashups and Widgets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  43
       8.8.4.  Server-controlled . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  44
   9.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  44
     9.1.  Cookie  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  44
     9.2.  Set-Cookie  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  44
   10. References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  45
     10.1.  Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  45
     10.2.  Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  46
     10.3.  URIs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  48
   Appendix A.  Changes  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  49
     A.1.  draft-ietf-httpbis-rfc6265bis-00  . . . . . . . . . . . .  49
     A.2.  draft-ietf-httpbis-rfc6265bis-01  . . . . . . . . . . . .  49
     A.3.  draft-ietf-httpbis-rfc6265bis-02  . . . . . . . . . . . .  49
     A.4.  draft-ietf-httpbis-rfc6265bis-03  . . . . . . . . . . . .  50



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     A.5.  draft-ietf-httpbis-rfc6265bis-04  . . . . . . . . . . . .  50
   Acknowledgements  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  51
   Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  51

1.  Introduction

   This document defines the HTTP Cookie and Set-Cookie header fields.
   Using the Set-Cookie header field, an HTTP server can pass name/value
   pairs and associated metadata (called cookies) to a user agent.  When
   the user agent makes subsequent requests to the server, the user
   agent uses the metadata and other information to determine whether to
   return the name/value pairs in the Cookie header.

   Although simple on their surface, cookies have a number of
   complexities.  For example, the server indicates a scope for each
   cookie when sending it to the user agent.  The scope indicates the
   maximum amount of time in which the user agent should return the
   cookie, the servers to which the user agent should return the cookie,
   and the URI schemes for which the cookie is applicable.

   For historical reasons, cookies contain a number of security and
   privacy infelicities.  For example, a server can indicate that a
   given cookie is intended for "secure" connections, but the Secure
   attribute does not provide integrity in the presence of an active
   network attacker.  Similarly, cookies for a given host are shared
   across all the ports on that host, even though the usual "same-origin
   policy" used by web browsers isolates content retrieved via different
   ports.

   There are two audiences for this specification: developers of cookie-
   generating servers and developers of cookie-consuming user agents.

   To maximize interoperability with user agents, servers SHOULD limit
   themselves to the well-behaved profile defined in Section 4 when
   generating cookies.

   User agents MUST implement the more liberal processing rules defined
   in Section 5, in order to maximize interoperability with existing
   servers that do not conform to the well-behaved profile defined in
   Section 4.

   This document specifies the syntax and semantics of these headers as
   they are actually used on the Internet.  In particular, this document
   does not create new syntax or semantics beyond those in use today.
   The recommendations for cookie generation provided in Section 4
   represent a preferred subset of current server behavior, and even the
   more liberal cookie processing algorithm provided in Section 5 does
   not recommend all of the syntactic and semantic variations in use



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   today.  Where some existing software differs from the recommended
   protocol in significant ways, the document contains a note explaining
   the difference.

   This document obsoletes [RFC6265].

2.  Conventions

2.1.  Conformance Criteria

   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].

   Requirements phrased in the imperative as part of algorithms (such as
   "strip any leading space characters" or "return false and abort these
   steps") are to be interpreted with the meaning of the key word
   ("MUST", "SHOULD", "MAY", etc.) used in introducing the algorithm.

   Conformance requirements phrased as algorithms or specific steps can
   be implemented in any manner, so long as the end result is
   equivalent.  In particular, the algorithms defined in this
   specification are intended to be easy to understand and are not
   intended to be performant.

2.2.  Syntax Notation

   This specification uses the Augmented Backus-Naur Form (ABNF)
   notation of [RFC5234].

   The following core rules are included by reference, as defined in
   [RFC5234], Appendix B.1: ALPHA (letters), CR (carriage return), CRLF
   (CR LF), CTLs (controls), DIGIT (decimal 0-9), DQUOTE (double quote),
   HEXDIG (hexadecimal 0-9/A-F/a-f), LF (line feed), NUL (null octet),
   OCTET (any 8-bit sequence of data except NUL), SP (space), HTAB
   (horizontal tab), CHAR (any [USASCII] character), VCHAR (any visible
   [USASCII] character), and WSP (whitespace).

   The OWS (optional whitespace) rule is used where zero or more linear
   whitespace characters MAY appear:

   OWS            = *( [ obs-fold ] WSP )
                    ; "optional" whitespace
   obs-fold       = CRLF

   OWS SHOULD either not be produced or be produced as a single SP
   character.




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2.3.  Terminology

   The terms "user agent", "client", "server", "proxy", and "origin
   server" have the same meaning as in the HTTP/1.1 specification
   ([RFC7230], Section 2).

   The request-host is the name of the host, as known by the user agent,
   to which the user agent is sending an HTTP request or from which it
   is receiving an HTTP response (i.e., the name of the host to which it
   sent the corresponding HTTP request).

   The term request-uri refers to "request-target" as defined in
   Section 5.3 of [RFC7230].

   Two sequences of octets are said to case-insensitively match each
   other if and only if they are equivalent under the i;ascii-casemap
   collation defined in [RFC4790].

   The term string means a sequence of non-NUL octets.

   The terms "active document", "ancestor browsing context", "browsing
   context", "dedicated worker", "Document", "WorkerGlobalScope",
   "sandboxed origin browsing context flag", "parent browsing context",
   "shared worker", "the worker's Documents", "nested browsing context",
   and "top-level browsing context" are defined in [HTML].

   "Service Workers" are defined in the Service Workers specification
   [SERVICE-WORKERS].

   The term "origin", the mechanism of deriving an origin from a URI,
   and the "the same" matching algorithm for origins are defined in
   [RFC6454].

   "Safe" HTTP methods include "GET", "HEAD", "OPTIONS", and "TRACE", as
   defined in Section 4.2.1 of [RFC7231].

   The term "public suffix" is defined in a note in Section 5.3 of
   [RFC6265] as "a domain that is controlled by a public registry", and
   are also known as "effective top-level domains" (eTLDs).  For
   example, "site.example"'s public suffix is "com".  User agents SHOULD
   use an up-to-date public suffix list, such as the one maintained by
   Mozilla at [PSL].

   An origin's "registered domain" is the origin's host's public suffix
   plus the label to its left.  That is, for "https://www.site.example",
   the public suffix is "example", and the registered domain is
   "site.example".  This concept is defined more rigorously in [PSL],
   and is also known as "effective top-level domain plus one" (eTLD+1).



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   The term "request", as well as a request's "client", "current url",
   "method", and "target browsing context", are defined in [FETCH].

3.  Overview

   This section outlines a way for an origin server to send state
   information to a user agent and for the user agent to return the
   state information to the origin server.

   To store state, the origin server includes a Set-Cookie header in an
   HTTP response.  In subsequent requests, the user agent returns a
   Cookie request header to the origin server.  The Cookie header
   contains cookies the user agent received in previous Set-Cookie
   headers.  The origin server is free to ignore the Cookie header or
   use its contents for an application-defined purpose.

   Origin servers MAY send a Set-Cookie response header with any
   response.  User agents MAY ignore Set-Cookie headers contained in
   responses with 100-level status codes but MUST process Set-Cookie
   headers contained in other responses (including responses with 400-
   and 500-level status codes).  An origin server can include multiple
   Set-Cookie header fields in a single response.  The presence of a
   Cookie or a Set-Cookie header field does not preclude HTTP caches
   from storing and reusing a response.

   Origin servers SHOULD NOT fold multiple Set-Cookie header fields into
   a single header field.  The usual mechanism for folding HTTP headers
   fields (i.e., as defined in Section 3.2.2 of [RFC7230]) might change
   the semantics of the Set-Cookie header field because the %x2C (",")
   character is used by Set-Cookie in a way that conflicts with such
   folding.

3.1.  Examples

   Using the Set-Cookie header, a server can send the user agent a short
   string in an HTTP response that the user agent will return in future
   HTTP requests that are within the scope of the cookie.  For example,
   the server can send the user agent a "session identifier" named SID
   with the value 31d4d96e407aad42.  The user agent then returns the
   session identifier in subsequent requests.

   == Server -> User Agent ==

   Set-Cookie: SID=31d4d96e407aad42

   == User Agent -> Server ==

   Cookie: SID=31d4d96e407aad42



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   The server can alter the default scope of the cookie using the Path
   and Domain attributes.  For example, the server can instruct the user
   agent to return the cookie to every path and every subdomain of
   site.example.

   == Server -> User Agent ==

   Set-Cookie: SID=31d4d96e407aad42; Path=/; Domain=site.example

   == User Agent -> Server ==

   Cookie: SID=31d4d96e407aad42

   As shown in the next example, the server can store multiple cookies
   at the user agent.  For example, the server can store a session
   identifier as well as the user's preferred language by returning two
   Set-Cookie header fields.  Notice that the server uses the Secure and
   HttpOnly attributes to provide additional security protections for
   the more sensitive session identifier (see Section 4.1.2).

   == Server -> User Agent ==

   Set-Cookie: SID=31d4d96e407aad42; Path=/; Secure; HttpOnly
   Set-Cookie: lang=en-US; Path=/; Domain=site.example

   == User Agent -> Server ==

   Cookie: SID=31d4d96e407aad42; lang=en-US

   Notice that the Cookie header above contains two cookies, one named
   SID and one named lang.  If the server wishes the user agent to
   persist the cookie over multiple "sessions" (e.g., user agent
   restarts), the server can specify an expiration date in the Expires
   attribute.  Note that the user agent might delete the cookie before
   the expiration date if the user agent's cookie store exceeds its
   quota or if the user manually deletes the server's cookie.

   == Server -> User Agent ==

   Set-Cookie: lang=en-US; Expires=Wed, 09 Jun 2021 10:18:14 GMT

   == User Agent -> Server ==

   Cookie: SID=31d4d96e407aad42; lang=en-US

   Finally, to remove a cookie, the server returns a Set-Cookie header
   with an expiration date in the past.  The server will be successful
   in removing the cookie only if the Path and the Domain attribute in



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   the Set-Cookie header match the values used when the cookie was
   created.

   == Server -> User Agent ==

   Set-Cookie: lang=; Expires=Sun, 06 Nov 1994 08:49:37 GMT

   == User Agent -> Server ==

   Cookie: SID=31d4d96e407aad42

4.  Server Requirements

   This section describes the syntax and semantics of a well-behaved
   profile of the Cookie and Set-Cookie headers.

4.1.  Set-Cookie

   The Set-Cookie HTTP response header is used to send cookies from the
   server to the user agent.

4.1.1.  Syntax

   Informally, the Set-Cookie response header contains the header name
   "Set-Cookie" followed by a ":" and a cookie.  Each cookie begins with
   a name-value-pair, followed by zero or more attribute-value pairs.
   Servers SHOULD NOT send Set-Cookie headers that fail to conform to
   the following grammar:























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   set-cookie-header = "Set-Cookie:" SP set-cookie-string
   set-cookie-string = cookie-pair *( ";" SP cookie-av )
   cookie-pair       = cookie-name "=" cookie-value
   cookie-name       = token
   cookie-value      = *cookie-octet / ( DQUOTE *cookie-octet DQUOTE )
   cookie-octet      = %x21 / %x23-2B / %x2D-3A / %x3C-5B / %x5D-7E
                         ; US-ASCII characters excluding CTLs,
                         ; whitespace DQUOTE, comma, semicolon,
                         ; and backslash
   token             = <token, defined in [RFC7230], Section 3.2.6>

   cookie-av         = expires-av / max-age-av / domain-av /
                       path-av / secure-av / httponly-av /
                       samesite-av / extension-av
   expires-av        = "Expires=" sane-cookie-date
   sane-cookie-date  =
       <IMF-fixdate, defined in [RFC7231], Section 7.1.1.1>
   max-age-av        = "Max-Age=" non-zero-digit *DIGIT
                         ; In practice, both expires-av and max-age-av
                         ; are limited to dates representable by the
                         ; user agent.
   non-zero-digit    = %x31-39
                         ; digits 1 through 9
   domain-av         = "Domain=" domain-value
   domain-value      = <subdomain>
                         ; defined in [RFC1034], Section 3.5, as
                         ; enhanced by [RFC1123], Section 2.1
   path-av           = "Path=" path-value
   path-value        = *av-octet
   secure-av         = "Secure"
   httponly-av       = "HttpOnly"
   samesite-av       = "SameSite=" samesite-value
   samesite-value    = "Strict" / "Lax" / "None"
   extension-av      = *av-octet
   av-octet          = %x20-3A / %x3C-7E
                         ; any CHAR except CTLs or ";"

   Note that some of the grammatical terms above reference documents
   that use different grammatical notations than this document (which
   uses ABNF from [RFC5234]).

   The semantics of the cookie-value are not defined by this document.

   To maximize compatibility with user agents, servers that wish to
   store arbitrary data in a cookie-value SHOULD encode that data, for
   example, using Base64 [RFC4648].





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   Per the grammar above, the cookie-value MAY be wrapped in DQUOTE
   characters.  Note that in this case, the initial and trailing DQUOTE
   characters are not stripped.  They are part of the cookie-value, and
   will be included in Cookie headers sent to the server.

   The portions of the set-cookie-string produced by the cookie-av term
   are known as attributes.  To maximize compatibility with user agents,
   servers SHOULD NOT produce two attributes with the same name in the
   same set-cookie-string.  (See Section 5.4 for how user agents handle
   this case.)

   Servers SHOULD NOT include more than one Set-Cookie header field in
   the same response with the same cookie-name.  (See Section 5.3 for
   how user agents handle this case.)

   If a server sends multiple responses containing Set-Cookie headers
   concurrently to the user agent (e.g., when communicating with the
   user agent over multiple sockets), these responses create a "race
   condition" that can lead to unpredictable behavior.

   NOTE: Some existing user agents differ in their interpretation of
   two-digit years.  To avoid compatibility issues, servers SHOULD use
   the rfc1123-date format, which requires a four-digit year.

   NOTE: Some user agents store and process dates in cookies as 32-bit
   UNIX time_t values.  Implementation bugs in the libraries supporting
   time_t processing on some systems might cause such user agents to
   process dates after the year 2038 incorrectly.

4.1.2.  Semantics (Non-Normative)

   This section describes simplified semantics of the Set-Cookie header.
   These semantics are detailed enough to be useful for understanding
   the most common uses of cookies by servers.  The full semantics are
   described in Section 5.

   When the user agent receives a Set-Cookie header, the user agent
   stores the cookie together with its attributes.  Subsequently, when
   the user agent makes an HTTP request, the user agent includes the
   applicable, non-expired cookies in the Cookie header.

   If the user agent receives a new cookie with the same cookie-name,
   domain-value, and path-value as a cookie that it has already stored,
   the existing cookie is evicted and replaced with the new cookie.
   Notice that servers can delete cookies by sending the user agent a
   new cookie with an Expires attribute with a value in the past.





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   Unless the cookie's attributes indicate otherwise, the cookie is
   returned only to the origin server (and not, for example, to any
   subdomains), and it expires at the end of the current session (as
   defined by the user agent).  User agents ignore unrecognized cookie
   attributes (but not the entire cookie).

4.1.2.1.  The Expires Attribute

   The Expires attribute indicates the maximum lifetime of the cookie,
   represented as the date and time at which the cookie expires.  The
   user agent is not required to retain the cookie until the specified
   date has passed.  In fact, user agents often evict cookies due to
   memory pressure or privacy concerns.

4.1.2.2.  The Max-Age Attribute

   The Max-Age attribute indicates the maximum lifetime of the cookie,
   represented as the number of seconds until the cookie expires.  The
   user agent is not required to retain the cookie for the specified
   duration.  In fact, user agents often evict cookies due to memory
   pressure or privacy concerns.

   NOTE: Some existing user agents do not support the Max-Age attribute.
   User agents that do not support the Max-Age attribute ignore the
   attribute.

   If a cookie has both the Max-Age and the Expires attribute, the Max-
   Age attribute has precedence and controls the expiration date of the
   cookie.  If a cookie has neither the Max-Age nor the Expires
   attribute, the user agent will retain the cookie until "the current
   session is over" (as defined by the user agent).

4.1.2.3.  The Domain Attribute

   The Domain attribute specifies those hosts to which the cookie will
   be sent.  For example, if the value of the Domain attribute is
   "site.example", the user agent will include the cookie in the Cookie
   header when making HTTP requests to site.example, www.site.example,
   and www.corp.site.example.  (Note that a leading %x2E ("."), if
   present, is ignored even though that character is not permitted, but
   a trailing %x2E ("."), if present, will cause the user agent to
   ignore the attribute.)  If the server omits the Domain attribute, the
   user agent will return the cookie only to the origin server.

   WARNING: Some existing user agents treat an absent Domain attribute
   as if the Domain attribute were present and contained the current
   host name.  For example, if site.example returns a Set-Cookie header




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   without a Domain attribute, these user agents will erroneously send
   the cookie to www.site.example as well.

   The user agent will reject cookies unless the Domain attribute
   specifies a scope for the cookie that would include the origin
   server.  For example, the user agent will accept a cookie with a
   Domain attribute of "site.example" or of "foo.site.example" from
   foo.site.example, but the user agent will not accept a cookie with a
   Domain attribute of "bar.site.example" or of "baz.foo.site.example".

   NOTE: For security reasons, many user agents are configured to reject
   Domain attributes that correspond to "public suffixes".  For example,
   some user agents will reject Domain attributes of "com" or "co.uk".
   (See Section 5.4 for more information.)

4.1.2.4.  The Path Attribute

   The scope of each cookie is limited to a set of paths, controlled by
   the Path attribute.  If the server omits the Path attribute, the user
   agent will use the "directory" of the request-uri's path component as
   the default value.  (See Section 5.1.4 for more details.)

   The user agent will include the cookie in an HTTP request only if the
   path portion of the request-uri matches (or is a subdirectory of) the
   cookie's Path attribute, where the %x2F ("/") character is
   interpreted as a directory separator.

   Although seemingly useful for isolating cookies between different
   paths within a given host, the Path attribute cannot be relied upon
   for security (see Section 8).

4.1.2.5.  The Secure Attribute

   The Secure attribute limits the scope of the cookie to "secure"
   channels (where "secure" is defined by the user agent).  When a
   cookie has the Secure attribute, the user agent will include the
   cookie in an HTTP request only if the request is transmitted over a
   secure channel (typically HTTP over Transport Layer Security (TLS)
   [RFC2818]).

   Although seemingly useful for protecting cookies from active network
   attackers, the Secure attribute protects only the cookie's
   confidentiality.  An active network attacker can overwrite Secure
   cookies from an insecure channel, disrupting their integrity (see
   Section 8.6 for more details).






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4.1.2.6.  The HttpOnly Attribute

   The HttpOnly attribute limits the scope of the cookie to HTTP
   requests.  In particular, the attribute instructs the user agent to
   omit the cookie when providing access to cookies via "non-HTTP" APIs
   (such as a web browser API that exposes cookies to scripts).

   Note that the HttpOnly attribute is independent of the Secure
   attribute: a cookie can have both the HttpOnly and the Secure
   attribute.

4.1.2.7.  The SameSite Attribute

   The "SameSite" attribute limits the scope of the cookie such that it
   will only be attached to requests if those requests are same-site, as
   defined by the algorithm in Section 5.2.  For example, requests for
   "https://site.example/sekrit-image" will attach same-site cookies if
   and only if initiated from a context whose "site for cookies" is
   "site.example".

   If the "SameSite" attribute's value is "Strict", the cookie will only
   be sent along with "same-site" requests.  If the value is "Lax", the
   cookie will be sent with same-site requests, and with "cross-site"
   top-level navigations, as described in Section 5.3.7.1.  If the value
   is "None", the cookie will be sent with same-site and cross-site
   requests.  If the "SameSite" attribute's value is something other
   than these three known keywords, the attribute's value will be
   treated as "None".

   The "SameSite" attribute affects cookie creation as well as delivery.
   Cookies which assert "SameSite=Lax" or "SameSite=Strict" cannot be
   set in responses to cross-site subresource requests, or cross-site
   nested navigations.  They can be set along with any top-level
   navigation, cross-site or otherwise.

4.1.3.  Cookie Name Prefixes

   Section 8.5 and Section 8.6 of this document spell out some of the
   drawbacks of cookies' historical implementation.  In particular, it
   is impossible for a server to have confidence that a given cookie was
   set with a particular set of attributes.  In order to provide such
   confidence in a backwards-compatible way, two common sets of
   requirements can be inferred from the first few characters of the
   cookie's name.

   The normative requirements for the prefixes described below are
   detailed in the storage model algorithm defined in Section 5.4.




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4.1.3.1.  The "__Secure-" Prefix

   If a cookie's name begins with a case-sensitive match for the string
   "__Secure-", then the cookie will have been set with a "Secure"
   attribute.

   For example, the following "Set-Cookie" header would be rejected by a
   conformant user agent, as it does not have a "Secure" attribute.

   Set-Cookie: __Secure-SID=12345; Domain=site.example

   Whereas the following "Set-Cookie" header would be accepted:

   Set-Cookie: __Secure-SID=12345; Domain=site.example; Secure

4.1.3.2.  The "__Host-" Prefix

   If a cookie's name begins with a case-sensitive match for the string
   "__Host-", then the cookie will have been set with a "Secure"
   attribute, a "Path" attribute with a value of "/", and no "Domain"
   attribute.

   This combination yields a cookie that hews as closely as a cookie can
   to treating the origin as a security boundary.  The lack of a
   "Domain" attribute ensures that the cookie's "host-only-flag" is
   true, locking the cookie to a particular host, rather than allowing
   it to span subdomains.  Setting the "Path" to "/" means that the
   cookie is effective for the entire host, and won't be overridden for
   specific paths.  The "Secure" attribute ensures that the cookie is
   unaltered by non-secure origins, and won't span protocols.

   Ports are the only piece of the origin model that "__Host-" cookies
   continue to ignore.

   For example, the following cookies would always be rejected:

   Set-Cookie: __Host-SID=12345
   Set-Cookie: __Host-SID=12345; Secure
   Set-Cookie: __Host-SID=12345; Domain=site.example
   Set-Cookie: __Host-SID=12345; Domain=site.example; Path=/
   Set-Cookie: __Host-SID=12345; Secure; Domain=site.example; Path=/

   While the would be accepted if set from a secure origin (e.g.
   "https://site.example/"), and rejected otherwise:

   Set-Cookie: __Host-SID=12345; Secure; Path=/





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4.2.  Cookie

4.2.1.  Syntax

   The user agent sends stored cookies to the origin server in the
   Cookie header.  If the server conforms to the requirements in
   Section 4.1 (and the user agent conforms to the requirements in
   Section 5), the user agent will send a Cookie header that conforms to
   the following grammar:

   cookie-header = "Cookie:" OWS cookie-string OWS
   cookie-string = cookie-pair *( ";" SP cookie-pair )

4.2.2.  Semantics

   Each cookie-pair represents a cookie stored by the user agent.  The
   cookie-pair contains the cookie-name and cookie-value the user agent
   received in the Set-Cookie header.

   Notice that the cookie attributes are not returned.  In particular,
   the server cannot determine from the Cookie header alone when a
   cookie will expire, for which hosts the cookie is valid, for which
   paths the cookie is valid, or whether the cookie was set with the
   Secure or HttpOnly attributes.

   The semantics of individual cookies in the Cookie header are not
   defined by this document.  Servers are expected to imbue these
   cookies with application-specific semantics.

   Although cookies are serialized linearly in the Cookie header,
   servers SHOULD NOT rely upon the serialization order.  In particular,
   if the Cookie header contains two cookies with the same name (e.g.,
   that were set with different Path or Domain attributes), servers
   SHOULD NOT rely upon the order in which these cookies appear in the
   header.

5.  User Agent Requirements

   This section specifies the Cookie and Set-Cookie headers in
   sufficient detail that a user agent implementing these requirements
   precisely can interoperate with existing servers (even those that do
   not conform to the well-behaved profile described in Section 4).

   A user agent could enforce more restrictions than those specified
   herein (e.g., for the sake of improved security); however,
   experiments have shown that such strictness reduces the likelihood
   that a user agent will be able to interoperate with existing servers.




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5.1.  Subcomponent Algorithms

   This section defines some algorithms used by user agents to process
   specific subcomponents of the Cookie and Set-Cookie headers.

5.1.1.  Dates

   The user agent MUST use an algorithm equivalent to the following
   algorithm to parse a cookie-date.  Note that the various boolean
   flags defined as a part of the algorithm (i.e., found-time, found-
   day-of-month, found-month, found-year) are initially "not set".

   1.  Using the grammar below, divide the cookie-date into date-tokens.



   cookie-date     = *delimiter date-token-list *delimiter
   date-token-list = date-token *( 1*delimiter date-token )
   date-token      = 1*non-delimiter

   delimiter       = %x09 / %x20-2F / %x3B-40 / %x5B-60 / %x7B-7E
   non-delimiter   = %x00-08 / %x0A-1F / DIGIT / ":" / ALPHA / %x7F-FF
   non-digit       = %x00-2F / %x3A-FF

   day-of-month    = 1*2DIGIT [ non-digit *OCTET ]
   month           = ( "jan" / "feb" / "mar" / "apr" /
                       "may" / "jun" / "jul" / "aug" /
                       "sep" / "oct" / "nov" / "dec" ) *OCTET
   year            = 2*4DIGIT [ non-digit *OCTET ]
   time            = hms-time [ non-digit *OCTET ]
   hms-time        = time-field ":" time-field ":" time-field
   time-field      = 1*2DIGIT

   2.  Process each date-token sequentially in the order the date-tokens
       appear in the cookie-date:

       1.  If the found-time flag is not set and the token matches the
           time production, set the found-time flag and set the hour-
           value, minute-value, and second-value to the numbers denoted
           by the digits in the date-token, respectively.  Skip the
           remaining sub-steps and continue to the next date-token.

       2.  If the found-day-of-month flag is not set and the date-token
           matches the day-of-month production, set the found-day-of-
           month flag and set the day-of-month-value to the number
           denoted by the date-token.  Skip the remaining sub-steps and
           continue to the next date-token.




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       3.  If the found-month flag is not set and the date-token matches
           the month production, set the found-month flag and set the
           month-value to the month denoted by the date-token.  Skip the
           remaining sub-steps and continue to the next date-token.

       4.  If the found-year flag is not set and the date-token matches
           the year production, set the found-year flag and set the
           year-value to the number denoted by the date-token.  Skip the
           remaining sub-steps and continue to the next date-token.

   3.  If the year-value is greater than or equal to 70 and less than or
       equal to 99, increment the year-value by 1900.

   4.  If the year-value is greater than or equal to 0 and less than or
       equal to 69, increment the year-value by 2000.

       1.  NOTE: Some existing user agents interpret two-digit years
           differently.

   5.  Abort these steps and fail to parse the cookie-date if:

       *  at least one of the found-day-of-month, found-month, found-
          year, or found-time flags is not set,

       *  the day-of-month-value is less than 1 or greater than 31,

       *  the year-value is less than 1601,

       *  the hour-value is greater than 23,

       *  the minute-value is greater than 59, or

       *  the second-value is greater than 59.

       (Note that leap seconds cannot be represented in this syntax.)

   6.  Let the parsed-cookie-date be the date whose day-of-month, month,
       year, hour, minute, and second (in UTC) are the day-of-month-
       value, the month-value, the year-value, the hour-value, the
       minute-value, and the second-value, respectively.  If no such
       date exists, abort these steps and fail to parse the cookie-date.

   7.  Return the parsed-cookie-date as the result of this algorithm.








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5.1.2.  Canonicalized Host Names

   A canonicalized host name is the string generated by the following
   algorithm:

   1.  Convert the host name to a sequence of individual domain name
       labels.

   2.  Convert each label that is not a Non-Reserved LDH (NR-LDH) label,
       to an A-label (see Section 2.3.2.1 of [RFC5890] for the former
       and latter), or to a "punycode label" (a label resulting from the
       "ToASCII" conversion in Section 4 of [RFC3490]), as appropriate
       (see Section 6.3 of this specification).

   3.  Concatenate the resulting labels, separated by a %x2E (".")
       character.

5.1.3.  Domain Matching

   A string domain-matches a given domain string if at least one of the
   following conditions hold:

   o  The domain string and the string are identical.  (Note that both
      the domain string and the string will have been canonicalized to
      lower case at this point.)

   o  All of the following conditions hold:

      *  The domain string is a suffix of the string.

      *  The last character of the string that is not included in the
         domain string is a %x2E (".") character.

      *  The string is a host name (i.e., not an IP address).

5.1.4.  Paths and Path-Match

   The user agent MUST use an algorithm equivalent to the following
   algorithm to compute the default-path of a cookie:

   1.  Let uri-path be the path portion of the request-uri if such a
       portion exists (and empty otherwise).  For example, if the
       request-uri contains just a path (and optional query string),
       then the uri-path is that path (without the %x3F ("?") character
       or query string), and if the request-uri contains a full
       absoluteURI, the uri-path is the path component of that URI.





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   2.  If the uri-path is empty or if the first character of the uri-
       path is not a %x2F ("/") character, output %x2F ("/") and skip
       the remaining steps.

   3.  If the uri-path contains no more than one %x2F ("/") character,
       output %x2F ("/") and skip the remaining step.

   4.  Output the characters of the uri-path from the first character up
       to, but not including, the right-most %x2F ("/").

   A request-path path-matches a given cookie-path if at least one of
   the following conditions holds:

   o  The cookie-path and the request-path are identical.

      Note that this differs from the rules in [RFC3986] for equivalence
      of the path component, and hence two equivalent paths can have
      different cookies.

   o  The cookie-path is a prefix of the request-path, and the last
      character of the cookie-path is %x2F ("/").

   o  The cookie-path is a prefix of the request-path, and the first
      character of the request-path that is not included in the cookie-
      path is a %x2F ("/") character.

5.2.  "Same-site" and "cross-site" Requests

   A request is "same-site" if its target's URI's origin's registered
   domain is an exact match for the request's client's "site for
   cookies", or if the request has no client.  The request is otherwise
   "cross-site".

   For a given request ("request"), the following algorithm returns
   "same-site" or "cross-site":

   1.  If "request"'s client is "null", return "same-site".

       Note that this is the case for navigation triggered by the user
       directly (e.g. by typing directly into a user agent's address
       bar).

   2.  Let "site" be "request"'s client's "site for cookies" (as defined
       in the following sections).

   3.  Let "target" be the registered domain of "request"'s current url.

   4.  If "site" is an exact match for "target", return "same-site".



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   5.  Return "cross-site".

   The request's client's "site for cookies" is calculated depending
   upon its client's type, as described in the following subsections:

5.2.1.  Document-based requests

   The URI displayed in a user agent's address bar is the only security
   context directly exposed to users, and therefore the only signal
   users can reasonably rely upon to determine whether or not they trust
   a particular website.  The registered domain of that URI's origin
   represents the context in which a user most likely believes
   themselves to be interacting.  We'll label this domain the "top-level
   site".

   For a document displayed in a top-level browsing context, we can stop
   here: the document's "site for cookies" is the top-level site.

   For documents which are displayed in nested browsing contexts, we
   need to audit the origins of each of a document's ancestor browsing
   contexts' active documents in order to account for the "multiple-
   nested scenarios" described in Section 4 of [RFC7034].  A document's
   "site for cookies" is the top-level site if and only if the document
   and each of its ancestor documents' origins have the same registered
   domain as the top-level site.  Otherwise its "site for cookies" is
   the empty string.

   Given a Document ("document"), the following algorithm returns its
   "site for cookies" (either a registered domain, or the empty string):

   1.  Let "top-document" be the active document in "document"'s
       browsing context's top-level browsing context.

   2.  Let "top-origin" be the origin of "top-document"'s URI if "top-
       document"'s sandboxed origin browsing context flag is set, and
       "top-document"'s origin otherwise.

   3.  Let "documents" be a list containing "document" and each of
       "document"'s ancestor browsing contexts' active documents.

   4.  For each "item" in "documents":

       1.  Let "origin" be the origin of "item"'s URI if "item"'s
           sandboxed origin browsing context flag is set, and "item"'s
           origin otherwise.






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       2.  If "origin"'s host's registered domain is not an exact match
           for "top-origin"'s host's registered domain, return the empty
           string.

   5.  Return "top-origin"'s host's registered domain.

5.2.2.  Worker-based requests

   Worker-driven requests aren't as clear-cut as document-driven
   requests, as there isn't a clear link between a top-level browsing
   context and a worker.  This is especially true for Service Workers
   [SERVICE-WORKERS], which may execute code in the background, without
   any document visible at all.

   Note: The descriptions below assume that workers must be same-origin
   with the documents that instantiate them.  If this invariant changes,
   we'll need to take the worker's script's URI into account when
   determining their status.

5.2.2.1.  Dedicated and Shared Workers

   Dedicated workers are simple, as each dedicated worker is bound to
   one and only one document.  Requests generated from a dedicated
   worker (via "importScripts", "XMLHttpRequest", "fetch()", etc) define
   their "site for cookies" as that document's "site for cookies".

   Shared workers may be bound to multiple documents at once.  As it is
   quite possible for those documents to have distinct "site for cookie"
   values, the worker's "site for cookies" will be the empty string in
   cases where the values diverge, and the shared value in cases where
   the values agree.

   Given a WorkerGlobalScope ("worker"), the following algorithm returns
   its "site for cookies" (either a registered domain, or the empty
   string):

   1.  Let "site" be "worker"'s origin's host's registered domain.

   2.  For each "document" in "worker"'s Documents:

       1.  Let "document-site" be "document"'s "site for cookies" (as
           defined in Section 5.2.1).

       2.  If "document-site" is not an exact match for "site", return
           the empty string.

   3.  Return "site".




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5.2.2.2.  Service Workers

   Service Workers are more complicated, as they act as a completely
   separate execution context with only tangential relationship to the
   Document which registered them.

   Requests which simply pass through a Service Worker will be handled
   as described above: the request's client will be the Document or
   Worker which initiated the request, and its "site for cookies" will
   be those defined in Section 5.2.1 and Section 5.2.2.1

   Requests which are initiated by the Service Worker itself (via a
   direct call to "fetch()", for instance), on the other hand, will have
   a client which is a ServiceWorkerGlobalScope.  Its "site for cookies"
   will be the registered domain of the Service Worker's URI.

   Given a ServiceWorkerGlobalScope ("worker"), the following algorithm
   returns its "site for cookies" (either a registered domain, or the
   empty string):

   1.  Return "worker"'s origin's host's registered domain.

5.3.  The Set-Cookie Header

   When a user agent receives a Set-Cookie header field in an HTTP
   response, the user agent MAY ignore the Set-Cookie header field in
   its entirety.  For example, the user agent might wish to block
   responses to "third-party" requests from setting cookies (see
   Section 7.1).

   If the user agent does not ignore the Set-Cookie header field in its
   entirety, the user agent MUST parse the field-value of the Set-Cookie
   header field as a set-cookie-string (defined below).

   NOTE: The algorithm below is more permissive than the grammar in
   Section 4.1.  For example, the algorithm strips leading and trailing
   whitespace from the cookie name and value (but maintains internal
   whitespace), whereas the grammar in Section 4.1 forbids whitespace in
   these positions.  User agents use this algorithm so as to
   interoperate with servers that do not follow the recommendations in
   Section 4.

   A user agent MUST use an algorithm equivalent to the following
   algorithm to parse a set-cookie-string:

   1.  If the set-cookie-string contains a %x3B (";") character:





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       1.  The name-value-pair string consists of the characters up to,
           but not including, the first %x3B (";"), and the unparsed-
           attributes consist of the remainder of the set-cookie-string
           (including the %x3B (";") in question).

       Otherwise:

       1.  The name-value-pair string consists of all the characters
           contained in the set-cookie-string, and the unparsed-
           attributes is the empty string.

   2.  If the name-value-pair string lacks a %x3D ("=") character, then
       the name string is empty, and the value string is the value of
       name-value-pair.

       Otherwise, the name string consists of the characters up to, but
       not including, the first %x3D ("=") character, and the (possibly
       empty) value string consists of the characters after the first
       %x3D ("=") character.

   3.  Remove any leading or trailing WSP characters from the name
       string and the value string.

   4.  If both the name string and the value string are empty, ignore
       the set-cookie-string entirely.

   5.  The cookie-name is the name string, and the cookie-value is the
       value string.

   The user agent MUST use an algorithm equivalent to the following
   algorithm to parse the unparsed-attributes:

   1.  If the unparsed-attributes string is empty, skip the rest of
       these steps.

   2.  Discard the first character of the unparsed-attributes (which
       will be a %x3B (";") character).

   3.  If the remaining unparsed-attributes contains a %x3B (";")
       character:

       1.  Consume the characters of the unparsed-attributes up to, but
           not including, the first %x3B (";") character.

       Otherwise:

       1.  Consume the remainder of the unparsed-attributes.




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       Let the cookie-av string be the characters consumed in this step.

   4.  If the cookie-av string contains a %x3D ("=") character:

       1.  The (possibly empty) attribute-name string consists of the
           characters up to, but not including, the first %x3D ("=")
           character, and the (possibly empty) attribute-value string
           consists of the characters after the first %x3D ("=")
           character.

       Otherwise:

       1.  The attribute-name string consists of the entire cookie-av
           string, and the attribute-value string is empty.

   5.  Remove any leading or trailing WSP characters from the attribute-
       name string and the attribute-value string.

   6.  Process the attribute-name and attribute-value according to the
       requirements in the following subsections.  (Notice that
       attributes with unrecognized attribute-names are ignored.)

   7.  Return to Step 1 of this algorithm.

   When the user agent finishes parsing the set-cookie-string, the user
   agent is said to "receive a cookie" from the request-uri with name
   cookie-name, value cookie-value, and attributes cookie-attribute-
   list.  (See Section 5.4 for additional requirements triggered by
   receiving a cookie.)

5.3.1.  The Expires Attribute

   If the attribute-name case-insensitively matches the string
   "Expires", the user agent MUST process the cookie-av as follows.

   1.  Let the expiry-time be the result of parsing the attribute-value
       as cookie-date (see Section 5.1.1).

   2.  If the attribute-value failed to parse as a cookie date, ignore
       the cookie-av.

   3.  If the expiry-time is later than the last date the user agent can
       represent, the user agent MAY replace the expiry-time with the
       last representable date.

   4.  If the expiry-time is earlier than the earliest date the user
       agent can represent, the user agent MAY replace the expiry-time
       with the earliest representable date.



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   5.  Append an attribute to the cookie-attribute-list with an
       attribute-name of Expires and an attribute-value of expiry-time.

5.3.2.  The Max-Age Attribute

   If the attribute-name case-insensitively matches the string "Max-
   Age", the user agent MUST process the cookie-av as follows.

   1.  If the first character of the attribute-value is not a DIGIT or a
       "-" character, ignore the cookie-av.

   2.  If the remainder of attribute-value contains a non-DIGIT
       character, ignore the cookie-av.

   3.  Let delta-seconds be the attribute-value converted to an integer.

   4.  If delta-seconds is less than or equal to zero (0), let expiry-
       time be the earliest representable date and time.  Otherwise, let
       the expiry-time be the current date and time plus delta-seconds
       seconds.

   5.  Append an attribute to the cookie-attribute-list with an
       attribute-name of Max-Age and an attribute-value of expiry-time.

5.3.3.  The Domain Attribute

   If the attribute-name case-insensitively matches the string "Domain",
   the user agent MUST process the cookie-av as follows.

   1.  If the attribute-value is empty, the behavior is undefined.
       However, the user agent SHOULD ignore the cookie-av entirely.

   2.  If the first character of the attribute-value string is %x2E
       ("."):

       1.  Let cookie-domain be the attribute-value without the leading
           %x2E (".") character.

       Otherwise:

       1.  Let cookie-domain be the entire attribute-value.

   3.  Convert the cookie-domain to lower case.

   4.  Append an attribute to the cookie-attribute-list with an
       attribute-name of Domain and an attribute-value of cookie-domain.





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5.3.4.  The Path Attribute

   If the attribute-name case-insensitively matches the string "Path",
   the user agent MUST process the cookie-av as follows.

   1.  If the attribute-value is empty or if the first character of the
       attribute-value is not %x2F ("/"):

       1.  Let cookie-path be the default-path.

       Otherwise:

       1.  Let cookie-path be the attribute-value.

   2.  Append an attribute to the cookie-attribute-list with an
       attribute-name of Path and an attribute-value of cookie-path.

5.3.5.  The Secure Attribute

   If the attribute-name case-insensitively matches the string "Secure",
   the user agent MUST append an attribute to the cookie-attribute-list
   with an attribute-name of Secure and an empty attribute-value.

5.3.6.  The HttpOnly Attribute

   If the attribute-name case-insensitively matches the string
   "HttpOnly", the user agent MUST append an attribute to the cookie-
   attribute-list with an attribute-name of HttpOnly and an empty
   attribute-value.

5.3.7.  The SameSite Attribute

   If the attribute-name case-insensitively matches the string
   "SameSite", the user agent MUST process the cookie-av as follows:

   1.  Let "enforcement" be "None".

   2.  If cookie-av's attribute-value is a case-insensitive match for
       "Strict", set "enforcement" to "Strict".

   3.  If cookie-av's attribute-value is a case-insensitive match for
       "Lax", set "enforcement" to "Lax".

   4.  Append an attribute to the cookie-attribute-list with an
       attribute-name of "SameSite" and an attribute-value of
       "enforcement".





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   Note: This algorithm maps the "None" value, as well as any unknown
   value, to the "None" behavior, which is helpful for backwards
   compatibility when introducing new variants.

5.3.7.1.  "Strict" and "Lax" enforcement

   Same-site cookies in "Strict" enforcement mode will not be sent along
   with top-level navigations which are triggered from a cross-site
   document context.  As discussed in Section 8.8.2, this might or might
   not be compatible with existing session management systems.  In the
   interests of providing a drop-in mechanism that mitigates the risk of
   CSRF attacks, developers may set the "SameSite" attribute in a "Lax"
   enforcement mode that carves out an exception which sends same-site
   cookies along with cross-site requests if and only if they are top-
   level navigations which use a "safe" (in the [RFC7231] sense) HTTP
   method.

   Lax enforcement provides reasonable defense in depth against CSRF
   attacks that rely on unsafe HTTP methods (like "POST"), but does not
   offer a robust defense against CSRF as a general category of attack:

   1.  Attackers can still pop up new windows or trigger top-level
       navigations in order to create a "same-site" request (as
       described in section 2.1), which is only a speedbump along the
       road to exploitation.

   2.  Features like "<link rel='prerender'>" [prerendering] can be
       exploited to create "same-site" requests without the risk of user
       detection.

   When possible, developers should use a session management mechanism
   such as that described in Section 8.8.2 to mitigate the risk of CSRF
   more completely.

5.4.  Storage Model

   The user agent stores the following fields about each cookie: name,
   value, expiry-time, domain, path, creation-time, last-access-time,
   persistent-flag, host-only-flag, secure-only-flag, http-only-flag,
   and same-site-flag.

   When the user agent "receives a cookie" from a request-uri with name
   cookie-name, value cookie-value, and attributes cookie-attribute-
   list, the user agent MUST process the cookie as follows:

   1.   A user agent MAY ignore a received cookie in its entirety.  For
        example, the user agent might wish to block receiving cookies




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        from "third-party" responses or the user agent might not wish to
        store cookies that exceed some size.

   2.   Create a new cookie with name cookie-name, value cookie-value.
        Set the creation-time and the last-access-time to the current
        date and time.

   3.   If the cookie-attribute-list contains an attribute with an
        attribute-name of "Max-Age":

        1.  Set the cookie's persistent-flag to true.

        2.  Set the cookie's expiry-time to attribute-value of the last
            attribute in the cookie-attribute-list with an attribute-
            name of "Max-Age".

        Otherwise, if the cookie-attribute-list contains an attribute
        with an attribute-name of "Expires" (and does not contain an
        attribute with an attribute-name of "Max-Age"):

        1.  Set the cookie's persistent-flag to true.

        2.  Set the cookie's expiry-time to attribute-value of the last
            attribute in the cookie-attribute-list with an attribute-
            name of "Expires".

        Otherwise:

        1.  Set the cookie's persistent-flag to false.

        2.  Set the cookie's expiry-time to the latest representable
            date.

   4.   If the cookie-attribute-list contains an attribute with an
        attribute-name of "Domain":

        1.  Let the domain-attribute be the attribute-value of the last
            attribute in the cookie-attribute-list with an attribute-
            name of "Domain".

        Otherwise:

        1.  Let the domain-attribute be the empty string.

   5.   If the user agent is configured to reject "public suffixes" and
        the domain-attribute is a public suffix:





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        1.  If the domain-attribute is identical to the canonicalized
            request-host:

            1.  Let the domain-attribute be the empty string.

            Otherwise:

            1.  Ignore the cookie entirely and abort these steps.

        NOTE: A "public suffix" is a domain that is controlled by a
        public registry, such as "com", "co.uk", and "pvt.k12.wy.us".
        This step is essential for preventing attacker.com from
        disrupting the integrity of site.example by setting a cookie
        with a Domain attribute of "com".  Unfortunately, the set of
        public suffixes (also known as "registry controlled domains")
        changes over time.  If feasible, user agents SHOULD use an up-
        to-date public suffix list, such as the one maintained by the
        Mozilla project at http://publicsuffix.org/ [4].

   6.   If the domain-attribute is non-empty:

        1.  If the canonicalized request-host does not domain-match the
            domain-attribute:

            1.  Ignore the cookie entirely and abort these steps.

            Otherwise:

            1.  Set the cookie's host-only-flag to false.

            2.  Set the cookie's domain to the domain-attribute.

        Otherwise:

        1.  Set the cookie's host-only-flag to true.

        2.  Set the cookie's domain to the canonicalized request-host.

   7.   If the cookie-attribute-list contains an attribute with an
        attribute-name of "Path", set the cookie's path to attribute-
        value of the last attribute in the cookie-attribute-list with an
        attribute-name of "Path".  Otherwise, set the cookie's path to
        the default-path of the request-uri.

   8.   If the cookie-attribute-list contains an attribute with an
        attribute-name of "Secure", set the cookie's secure-only-flag to
        true.  Otherwise, set the cookie's secure-only-flag to false.




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   9.   If the scheme component of the request-uri does not denote a
        "secure" protocol (as defined by the user agent), and the
        cookie's secure-only-flag is true, then abort these steps and
        ignore the cookie entirely.

   10.  If the cookie-attribute-list contains an attribute with an
        attribute-name of "HttpOnly", set the cookie's http-only-flag to
        true.  Otherwise, set the cookie's http-only-flag to false.

   11.  If the cookie was received from a "non-HTTP" API and the
        cookie's http-only-flag is true, abort these steps and ignore
        the cookie entirely.

   12.  If the cookie's secure-only-flag is not set, and the scheme
        component of request-uri does not denote a "secure" protocol,
        then abort these steps and ignore the cookie entirely if the
        cookie store contains one or more cookies that meet all of the
        following criteria:

        1.  Their name matches the name of the newly-created cookie.

        2.  Their secure-only-flag is true.

        3.  Their domain domain-matches the domain of the newly-created
            cookie, or vice-versa.

        4.  The path of the newly-created cookie path-matches the path
            of the existing cookie.

        Note: The path comparison is not symmetric, ensuring only that a
        newly-created, non-secure cookie does not overlay an existing
        secure cookie, providing some mitigation against cookie-fixing
        attacks.  That is, given an existing secure cookie named 'a'
        with a path of '/login', a non-secure cookie named 'a' could be
        set for a path of '/' or '/foo', but not for a path of '/login'
        or '/login/en'.

   13.  If the cookie-attribute-list contains an attribute with an
        attribute-name of "SameSite", set the cookie's same-site-flag to
        the attribute-value of the last attribute in the cookie-
        attribute-list with an attribute-name of "SameSite" (i.e. either
        "Strict", "Lax", or "None").  Otherwise, set the cookie's same-
        site-flag to "None".

   14.  If the cookie's "same-site-flag" is not "None":

        1.  If the cookie was received from a "non-HTTP" API, and the
            API was called from a context whose "site for cookies" is



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            not an exact match for request-uri's host's registered
            domain, then abort these steps and ignore the newly created
            cookie entirely.

        2.  If the cookie was received from a "same-site" request (as
            defined in Section 5.2), skip the remaining substeps and
            continue processing the cookie.

        3.  If the cookie was received from a request which is
            navigating a top-level browsing context [HTML] (e.g. if the
            request's "reserved client" is either "null" or an
            environment whose "target browsing context" is a top-level
            browing context), skip the remaining substeps and continue
            processing the cookie.

            Note: Top-level navigations can create a cookie with any
            "SameSite" value, even if the new cookie wouldn't have been
            sent along with the request had it already existed prior to
            the navigation.

        4.  Abort these steps and ignore the newly created cookie
            entirely.

   15.  If the cookie-name begins with a case-sensitive match for the
        string "__Secure-", abort these steps and ignore the cookie
        entirely unless the cookie's secure-only-flag is true.

   16.  If the cookie-name begins with a case-sensitive match for the
        string "__Host-", abort these steps and ignore the cookie
        entirely unless the cookie meets all the following criteria:

        1.  The cookie's secure-only-flag is true.

        2.  The cookie's host-only-flag is true.

        3.  The cookie-attribute-list contains an attribute with an
            attribute-name of "Path", and the cookie's path is "/".

   17.  If the cookie store contains a cookie with the same name,
        domain, host-only-flag, and path as the newly-created cookie:

        1.  Let old-cookie be the existing cookie with the same name,
            domain, host-only-flag, and path as the newly-created
            cookie.  (Notice that this algorithm maintains the invariant
            that there is at most one such cookie.)






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        2.  If the newly-created cookie was received from a "non-HTTP"
            API and the old-cookie's http-only-flag is true, abort these
            steps and ignore the newly created cookie entirely.

        3.  Update the creation-time of the newly-created cookie to
            match the creation-time of the old-cookie.

        4.  Remove the old-cookie from the cookie store.

   18.  Insert the newly-created cookie into the cookie store.

   A cookie is "expired" if the cookie has an expiry date in the past.

   The user agent MUST evict all expired cookies from the cookie store
   if, at any time, an expired cookie exists in the cookie store.

   At any time, the user agent MAY "remove excess cookies" from the
   cookie store if the number of cookies sharing a domain field exceeds
   some implementation-defined upper bound (such as 50 cookies).

   At any time, the user agent MAY "remove excess cookies" from the
   cookie store if the cookie store exceeds some predetermined upper
   bound (such as 3000 cookies).

   When the user agent removes excess cookies from the cookie store, the
   user agent MUST evict cookies in the following priority order:

   1.  Expired cookies.

   2.  Cookies whose secure-only-flag is not set, and which share a
       domain field with more than a predetermined number of other
       cookies.

   3.  Cookies that share a domain field with more than a predetermined
       number of other cookies.

   4.  All cookies.

   If two cookies have the same removal priority, the user agent MUST
   evict the cookie with the earliest last-access date first.

   When "the current session is over" (as defined by the user agent),
   the user agent MUST remove from the cookie store all cookies with the
   persistent-flag set to false.







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5.5.  The Cookie Header

   The user agent includes stored cookies in the Cookie HTTP request
   header.

   When the user agent generates an HTTP request, the user agent MUST
   NOT attach more than one Cookie header field.

   A user agent MAY omit the Cookie header in its entirety.  For
   example, the user agent might wish to block sending cookies during
   "third-party" requests from setting cookies (see Section 7.1).

   If the user agent does attach a Cookie header field to an HTTP
   request, the user agent MUST send the cookie-string (defined below)
   as the value of the header field.

   The user agent MUST use an algorithm equivalent to the following
   algorithm to compute the cookie-string from a cookie store and a
   request-uri:

   1.  Let cookie-list be the set of cookies from the cookie store that
       meets all of the following requirements:

       *  Either:

          +  The cookie's host-only-flag is true and the canonicalized
             request-host is identical to the cookie's domain.

          Or:

          +  The cookie's host-only-flag is false and the canonicalized
             request-host domain-matches the cookie's domain.

       *  The request-uri's path path-matches the cookie's path.

       *  If the cookie's secure-only-flag is true, then the request-
          uri's scheme must denote a "secure" protocol (as defined by
          the user agent).

          NOTE: The notion of a "secure" protocol is not defined by this
          document.  Typically, user agents consider a protocol secure
          if the protocol makes use of transport-layer security, such as
          SSL or TLS.  For example, most user agents consider "https" to
          be a scheme that denotes a secure protocol.

       *  If the cookie's http-only-flag is true, then exclude the
          cookie if the cookie-string is being generated for a "non-
          HTTP" API (as defined by the user agent).



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       *  If the cookie's same-site-flag is not "None", and the HTTP
          request is cross-site (as defined in Section 5.2) then exclude
          the cookie unless all of the following statements hold:

          1.  The same-site-flag is "Lax"

          2.  The HTTP request's method is "safe".

          3.  The HTTP request's target browsing context is a top-level
              browsing context.

   2.  The user agent SHOULD sort the cookie-list in the following
       order:

       *  Cookies with longer paths are listed before cookies with
          shorter paths.

       *  Among cookies that have equal-length path fields, cookies with
          earlier creation-times are listed before cookies with later
          creation-times.

       NOTE: Not all user agents sort the cookie-list in this order, but
       this order reflects common practice when this document was
       written, and, historically, there have been servers that
       (erroneously) depended on this order.

   3.  Update the last-access-time of each cookie in the cookie-list to
       the current date and time.

   4.  Serialize the cookie-list into a cookie-string by processing each
       cookie in the cookie-list in order:

       1.  Output the cookie's name, the %x3D ("=") character, and the
           cookie's value.

       2.  If there is an unprocessed cookie in the cookie-list, output
           the characters %x3B and %x20 ("; ").

   NOTE: Despite its name, the cookie-string is actually a sequence of
   octets, not a sequence of characters.  To convert the cookie-string
   (or components thereof) into a sequence of characters (e.g., for
   presentation to the user), the user agent might wish to try using the
   UTF-8 character encoding [RFC3629] to decode the octet sequence.
   This decoding might fail, however, because not every sequence of
   octets is valid UTF-8.






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6.  Implementation Considerations

6.1.  Limits

   Practical user agent implementations have limits on the number and
   size of cookies that they can store.  General-use user agents SHOULD
   provide each of the following minimum capabilities:

   o  At least 4096 bytes per cookie (as measured by the sum of the
      length of the cookie's name, value, and attributes).

   o  At least 50 cookies per domain.

   o  At least 3000 cookies total.

   Servers SHOULD use as few and as small cookies as possible to avoid
   reaching these implementation limits and to minimize network
   bandwidth due to the Cookie header being included in every request.

   Servers SHOULD gracefully degrade if the user agent fails to return
   one or more cookies in the Cookie header because the user agent might
   evict any cookie at any time on orders from the user.

6.2.  Application Programming Interfaces

   One reason the Cookie and Set-Cookie headers use such esoteric syntax
   is that many platforms (both in servers and user agents) provide a
   string-based application programming interface (API) to cookies,
   requiring application-layer programmers to generate and parse the
   syntax used by the Cookie and Set-Cookie headers, which many
   programmers have done incorrectly, resulting in interoperability
   problems.

   Instead of providing string-based APIs to cookies, platforms would be
   well-served by providing more semantic APIs.  It is beyond the scope
   of this document to recommend specific API designs, but there are
   clear benefits to accepting an abstract "Date" object instead of a
   serialized date string.

6.3.  IDNA Dependency and Migration

   IDNA2008 [RFC5890] supersedes IDNA2003 [RFC3490].  However, there are
   differences between the two specifications, and thus there can be
   differences in processing (e.g., converting) domain name labels that
   have been registered under one from those registered under the other.
   There will be a transition period of some time during which
   IDNA2003-based domain name labels will exist in the wild.  User
   agents SHOULD implement IDNA2008 [RFC5890] and MAY implement [UTS46]



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   or [RFC5895] in order to facilitate their IDNA transition.  If a user
   agent does not implement IDNA2008, the user agent MUST implement
   IDNA2003 [RFC3490].

7.  Privacy Considerations

   Cookies are often criticized for letting servers track users.  For
   example, a number of "web analytics" companies use cookies to
   recognize when a user returns to a web site or visits another web
   site.  Although cookies are not the only mechanism servers can use to
   track users across HTTP requests, cookies facilitate tracking because
   they are persistent across user agent sessions and can be shared
   between hosts.

7.1.  Third-Party Cookies

   Particularly worrisome are so-called "third-party" cookies.  In
   rendering an HTML document, a user agent often requests resources
   from other servers (such as advertising networks).  These third-party
   servers can use cookies to track the user even if the user never
   visits the server directly.  For example, if a user visits a site
   that contains content from a third party and then later visits
   another site that contains content from the same third party, the
   third party can track the user between the two sites.

   Given this risk to user privacy, some user agents restrict how third-
   party cookies behave, and those restrictions vary widly.  For
   instance, user agents might block third-party cookies entirely by
   refusing to send Cookie headers or process Set-Cookie headers during
   third-party requests.  They might take a less draconian approach by
   partitioning cookies based on the first-party context, sending one
   set of cookies to a given third party in one first-party context, and
   another to the same third party in another.

   This document grants user agents wide latitude to experiment with
   third-party cookie policies that balance the privacy and
   compatibility needs of their users.  However, this document does not
   endorse any particular third-party cookie policy.

   Third-party cookie blocking policies are often ineffective at
   achieving their privacy goals if servers attempt to work around their
   restrictions to track users.  In particular, two collaborating
   servers can often track users without using cookies at all by
   injecting identifying information into dynamic URLs.







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7.2.  User Controls

   User agents SHOULD provide users with a mechanism for managing the
   cookies stored in the cookie store.  For example, a user agent might
   let users delete all cookies received during a specified time period
   or all the cookies related to a particular domain.  In addition, many
   user agents include a user interface element that lets users examine
   the cookies stored in their cookie store.

   User agents SHOULD provide users with a mechanism for disabling
   cookies.  When cookies are disabled, the user agent MUST NOT include
   a Cookie header in outbound HTTP requests and the user agent MUST NOT
   process Set-Cookie headers in inbound HTTP responses.

   Some user agents provide users the option of preventing persistent
   storage of cookies across sessions.  When configured thusly, user
   agents MUST treat all received cookies as if the persistent-flag were
   set to false.  Some popular user agents expose this functionality via
   "private browsing" mode [Aggarwal2010].

   Some user agents provide users with the ability to approve individual
   writes to the cookie store.  In many common usage scenarios, these
   controls generate a large number of prompts.  However, some privacy-
   conscious users find these controls useful nonetheless.

7.3.  Expiration Dates

   Although servers can set the expiration date for cookies to the
   distant future, most user agents do not actually retain cookies for
   multiple decades.  Rather than choosing gratuitously long expiration
   periods, servers SHOULD promote user privacy by selecting reasonable
   cookie expiration periods based on the purpose of the cookie.  For
   example, a typical session identifier might reasonably be set to
   expire in two weeks.

8.  Security Considerations

8.1.  Overview

   Cookies have a number of security pitfalls.  This section overviews a
   few of the more salient issues.

   In particular, cookies encourage developers to rely on ambient
   authority for authentication, often becoming vulnerable to attacks
   such as cross-site request forgery [CSRF].  Also, when storing
   session identifiers in cookies, developers often create session
   fixation vulnerabilities.




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   Transport-layer encryption, such as that employed in HTTPS, is
   insufficient to prevent a network attacker from obtaining or altering
   a victim's cookies because the cookie protocol itself has various
   vulnerabilities (see "Weak Confidentiality" and "Weak Integrity",
   below).  In addition, by default, cookies do not provide
   confidentiality or integrity from network attackers, even when used
   in conjunction with HTTPS.

8.2.  Ambient Authority

   A server that uses cookies to authenticate users can suffer security
   vulnerabilities because some user agents let remote parties issue
   HTTP requests from the user agent (e.g., via HTTP redirects or HTML
   forms).  When issuing those requests, user agents attach cookies even
   if the remote party does not know the contents of the cookies,
   potentially letting the remote party exercise authority at an unwary
   server.

   Although this security concern goes by a number of names (e.g.,
   cross-site request forgery, confused deputy), the issue stems from
   cookies being a form of ambient authority.  Cookies encourage server
   operators to separate designation (in the form of URLs) from
   authorization (in the form of cookies).  Consequently, the user agent
   might supply the authorization for a resource designated by the
   attacker, possibly causing the server or its clients to undertake
   actions designated by the attacker as though they were authorized by
   the user.

   Instead of using cookies for authorization, server operators might
   wish to consider entangling designation and authorization by treating
   URLs as capabilities.  Instead of storing secrets in cookies, this
   approach stores secrets in URLs, requiring the remote entity to
   supply the secret itself.  Although this approach is not a panacea,
   judicious application of these principles can lead to more robust
   security.

8.3.  Clear Text

   Unless sent over a secure channel (such as TLS), the information in
   the Cookie and Set-Cookie headers is transmitted in the clear.

   1.  All sensitive information conveyed in these headers is exposed to
       an eavesdropper.

   2.  A malicious intermediary could alter the headers as they travel
       in either direction, with unpredictable results.





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   3.  A malicious client could alter the Cookie header before
       transmission, with unpredictable results.

   Servers SHOULD encrypt and sign the contents of cookies (using
   whatever format the server desires) when transmitting them to the
   user agent (even when sending the cookies over a secure channel).
   However, encrypting and signing cookie contents does not prevent an
   attacker from transplanting a cookie from one user agent to another
   or from replaying the cookie at a later time.

   In addition to encrypting and signing the contents of every cookie,
   servers that require a higher level of security SHOULD use the Cookie
   and Set-Cookie headers only over a secure channel.  When using
   cookies over a secure channel, servers SHOULD set the Secure
   attribute (see Section 4.1.2.5) for every cookie.  If a server does
   not set the Secure attribute, the protection provided by the secure
   channel will be largely moot.

   For example, consider a webmail server that stores a session
   identifier in a cookie and is typically accessed over HTTPS.  If the
   server does not set the Secure attribute on its cookies, an active
   network attacker can intercept any outbound HTTP request from the
   user agent and redirect that request to the webmail server over HTTP.
   Even if the webmail server is not listening for HTTP connections, the
   user agent will still include cookies in the request.  The active
   network attacker can intercept these cookies, replay them against the
   server, and learn the contents of the user's email.  If, instead, the
   server had set the Secure attribute on its cookies, the user agent
   would not have included the cookies in the clear-text request.

8.4.  Session Identifiers

   Instead of storing session information directly in a cookie (where it
   might be exposed to or replayed by an attacker), servers commonly
   store a nonce (or "session identifier") in a cookie.  When the server
   receives an HTTP request with a nonce, the server can look up state
   information associated with the cookie using the nonce as a key.

   Using session identifier cookies limits the damage an attacker can
   cause if the attacker learns the contents of a cookie because the
   nonce is useful only for interacting with the server (unlike non-
   nonce cookie content, which might itself be sensitive).  Furthermore,
   using a single nonce prevents an attacker from "splicing" together
   cookie content from two interactions with the server, which could
   cause the server to behave unexpectedly.

   Using session identifiers is not without risk.  For example, the
   server SHOULD take care to avoid "session fixation" vulnerabilities.



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   A session fixation attack proceeds in three steps.  First, the
   attacker transplants a session identifier from his or her user agent
   to the victim's user agent.  Second, the victim uses that session
   identifier to interact with the server, possibly imbuing the session
   identifier with the user's credentials or confidential information.
   Third, the attacker uses the session identifier to interact with
   server directly, possibly obtaining the user's authority or
   confidential information.

8.5.  Weak Confidentiality

   Cookies do not provide isolation by port.  If a cookie is readable by
   a service running on one port, the cookie is also readable by a
   service running on another port of the same server.  If a cookie is
   writable by a service on one port, the cookie is also writable by a
   service running on another port of the same server.  For this reason,
   servers SHOULD NOT both run mutually distrusting services on
   different ports of the same host and use cookies to store security-
   sensitive information.

   Cookies do not provide isolation by scheme.  Although most commonly
   used with the http and https schemes, the cookies for a given host
   might also be available to other schemes, such as ftp and gopher.
   Although this lack of isolation by scheme is most apparent in non-
   HTTP APIs that permit access to cookies (e.g., HTML's document.cookie
   API), the lack of isolation by scheme is actually present in
   requirements for processing cookies themselves (e.g., consider
   retrieving a URI with the gopher scheme via HTTP).

   Cookies do not always provide isolation by path.  Although the
   network-level protocol does not send cookies stored for one path to
   another, some user agents expose cookies via non-HTTP APIs, such as
   HTML's document.cookie API.  Because some of these user agents (e.g.,
   web browsers) do not isolate resources received from different paths,
   a resource retrieved from one path might be able to access cookies
   stored for another path.

8.6.  Weak Integrity

   Cookies do not provide integrity guarantees for sibling domains (and
   their subdomains).  For example, consider foo.site.example and
   bar.site.example.  The foo.site.example server can set a cookie with
   a Domain attribute of "site.example" (possibly overwriting an
   existing "site.example" cookie set by bar.site.example), and the user
   agent will include that cookie in HTTP requests to bar.site.example.
   In the worst case, bar.site.example will be unable to distinguish
   this cookie from a cookie it set itself.  The foo.site.example server




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   might be able to leverage this ability to mount an attack against
   bar.site.example.

   Even though the Set-Cookie header supports the Path attribute, the
   Path attribute does not provide any integrity protection because the
   user agent will accept an arbitrary Path attribute in a Set-Cookie
   header.  For example, an HTTP response to a request for
   http://site.example/foo/bar can set a cookie with a Path attribute of
   "/qux".  Consequently, servers SHOULD NOT both run mutually
   distrusting services on different paths of the same host and use
   cookies to store security-sensitive information.

   An active network attacker can also inject cookies into the Cookie
   header sent to https://site.example/ by impersonating a response from
   http://site.example/ and injecting a Set-Cookie header.  The HTTPS
   server at site.example will be unable to distinguish these cookies
   from cookies that it set itself in an HTTPS response.  An active
   network attacker might be able to leverage this ability to mount an
   attack against site.example even if site.example uses HTTPS
   exclusively.

   Servers can partially mitigate these attacks by encrypting and
   signing the contents of their cookies.  However, using cryptography
   does not mitigate the issue completely because an attacker can replay
   a cookie he or she received from the authentic site.example server in
   the user's session, with unpredictable results.

   Finally, an attacker might be able to force the user agent to delete
   cookies by storing a large number of cookies.  Once the user agent
   reaches its storage limit, the user agent will be forced to evict
   some cookies.  Servers SHOULD NOT rely upon user agents retaining
   cookies.

8.7.  Reliance on DNS

   Cookies rely upon the Domain Name System (DNS) for security.  If the
   DNS is partially or fully compromised, the cookie protocol might fail
   to provide the security properties required by applications.

8.8.  SameSite Cookies

8.8.1.  Defense in depth

   "SameSite" cookies offer a robust defense against CSRF attack when
   deployed in strict mode, and when supported by the client.  It is,
   however, prudent to ensure that this designation is not the extent of
   a site's defense against CSRF, as same-site navigations and




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   submissions can certainly be executed in conjunction with other
   attack vectors such as cross-site scripting.

   Developers are strongly encouraged to deploy the usual server-side
   defenses (CSRF tokens, ensuring that "safe" HTTP methods are
   idempotent, etc) to mitigate the risk more fully.

   Additionally, client-side techniques such as those described in
   [app-isolation] may also prove effective against CSRF, and are
   certainly worth exploring in combination with "SameSite" cookies.

8.8.2.  Top-level Navigations

   Setting the "SameSite" attribute in "strict" mode provides robust
   defense in depth against CSRF attacks, but has the potential to
   confuse users unless sites' developers carefully ensure that their
   cookie-based session management systems deal reasonably well with
   top-level navigations.

   Consider the scenario in which a user reads their email at MegaCorp
   Inc's webmail provider "https://site.example/".  They might expect
   that clicking on an emailed link to "https://projects.example/secret/
   project" would show them the secret project that they're authorized
   to see, but if "projects.example" has marked their session cookies as
   "SameSite", then this cross-site navigation won't send them along
   with the request. "projects.com" will render a 404 error to avoid
   leaking secret information, and the user will be quite confused.

   Developers can avoid this confusion by adopting a session management
   system that relies on not one, but two cookies: one conceptually
   granting "read" access, another granting "write" access.  The latter
   could be marked as "SameSite", and its absence would prompt a
   reauthentication step before executing any non-idempotent action.
   The former could drop the "SameSite" attribute entirely, or choose
   the "Lax" version of enforcement, in order to allow users access to
   data via top-level navigation.

8.8.3.  Mashups and Widgets

   The "SameSite" attribute is inappropriate for some important use-
   cases.  In particular, note that content intended for embedding in a
   cross-site contexts (social networking widgets or commenting
   services, for instance) will not have access to same-site cookies.
   Cookies may be required for requests triggered in these cross-site
   contexts in order to provide seamless functionality that relies on a
   user's state.





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   Likewise, some forms of Single-Sign-On might require cookie-based
   authentication in a cross-site context; these mechanisms will not
   function as intended with same-site cookies.

8.8.4.  Server-controlled

   SameSite cookies in and of themselves don't do anything to address
   the general privacy concerns outlined in Section 7.1 of [RFC6265].
   The "SameSite" attribute is set by the server, and serves to mitigate
   the risk of certain kinds of attacks that the server is worried
   about.  The user is not involved in this decision.  Moreover, a
   number of side-channels exist which could allow a server to link
   distinct requests even in the absence of cookies.  Connection and/or
   socket pooling, Token Binding, and Channel ID all offer explicit
   methods of identification that servers could take advantage of.

9.  IANA Considerations

   The permanent message header field registry (see [RFC3864]) needs to
   be updated with the following registrations.

9.1.  Cookie

   Header field name:  Cookie

   Applicable protocol:  http

   Status:  standard

   Author/Change controller:  IETF

   Specification document:  this specification (Section 5.5)

9.2.  Set-Cookie

   Header field name:  Set-Cookie

   Applicable protocol:  http

   Status:  standard

   Author/Change controller:  IETF

   Specification document:  this specification (Section 5.3)







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10.  References

10.1.  Normative References

   [FETCH]    van Kesteren, A., "Fetch", n.d.,
              <https://fetch.spec.whatwg.org/>.

   [HTML]     Hickson, I., Pieters, S., van Kesteren, A., Jaegenstedt,
              P., and D. Denicola, "HTML", n.d.,
              <https://html.spec.whatwg.org/>.

   [PSL]      "Public Suffix List", n.d.,
              <https://publicsuffix.org/list/>.

   [RFC1034]  Mockapetris, P., "Domain names - concepts and facilities",
              STD 13, RFC 1034, DOI 10.17487/RFC1034, November 1987,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc1034>.

   [RFC1123]  Braden, R., Ed., "Requirements for Internet Hosts -
              Application and Support", STD 3, RFC 1123,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC1123, October 1989,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc1123>.

   [RFC2119]  Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
              Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2119>.

   [RFC3490]  Costello, A., "Internationalizing Domain Names in
              Applications (IDNA)", RFC 3490, March 2003.

              See Section 6.3 for an explanation why the normative
              reference to an obsoleted specification is needed.

   [RFC4790]  Newman, C., Duerst, M., and A. Gulbrandsen, "Internet
              Application Protocol Collation Registry", RFC 4790,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC4790, March 2007,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4790>.

   [RFC5234]  Crocker, D., Ed. and P. Overell, "Augmented BNF for Syntax
              Specifications: ABNF", STD 68, RFC 5234,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC5234, January 2008,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5234>.

   [RFC5890]  Klensin, J., "Internationalized Domain Names for
              Applications (IDNA): Definitions and Document Framework",
              RFC 5890, DOI 10.17487/RFC5890, August 2010,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5890>.



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   [RFC6454]  Barth, A., "The Web Origin Concept", RFC 6454,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC6454, December 2011,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6454>.

   [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,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7230>.

   [RFC7231]  Fielding, R., Ed. and J. Reschke, Ed., "Hypertext Transfer
              Protocol (HTTP/1.1): Semantics and Content", RFC 7231,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC7231, June 2014,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7231>.

   [SERVICE-WORKERS]
              Russell, A., Song, J., and J. Archibald, "Service
              Workers", n.d., <http://www.w3.org/TR/service-workers/>.

   [USASCII]  American National Standards Institute, "Coded Character
              Set -- 7-bit American Standard Code for Information
              Interchange", ANSI X3.4, 1986.

10.2.  Informative References

   [Aggarwal2010]
              Aggarwal, G., Burzstein, E., Jackson, C., and D. Boneh,
              "An Analysis of Private Browsing Modes in Modern
              Browsers", 2010,
              <http://www.usenix.org/events/sec10/tech/full_papers/
              Aggarwal.pdf>.

   [app-isolation]
              Chen, E., Bau, J., Reis, C., Barth, A., and C. Jackson,
              "App Isolation - Get the Security of Multiple Browsers
              with Just One", 2011,
              <http://www.collinjackson.com/research/papers/
              appisolation.pdf>.

   [CSRF]     Barth, A., Jackson, C., and J. Mitchell, "Robust Defenses
              for Cross-Site Request Forgery",
              DOI 10.1145/1455770.1455782, ISBN 978-1-59593-810-7,
              ACM CCS '08: Proceedings of the 15th ACM conference on
              Computer and communications security (pages 75-88),
              October 2008,
              <http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1455770.1455782>.






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   [I-D.ietf-httpbis-cookie-alone]
              West, M., "Deprecate modification of 'secure' cookies from
              non-secure origins", draft-ietf-httpbis-cookie-alone-01
              (work in progress), September 2016.

   [I-D.ietf-httpbis-cookie-prefixes]
              West, M., "Cookie Prefixes", draft-ietf-httpbis-cookie-
              prefixes-00 (work in progress), February 2016.

   [I-D.ietf-httpbis-cookie-same-site]
              West, M. and M. Goodwin, "Same-Site Cookies", draft-ietf-
              httpbis-cookie-same-site-00 (work in progress), June 2016.

   [prerendering]
              Bentzel, C., "Chrome Prerendering", n.d.,
              <https://www.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/
              prerender>.

   [RFC2818]  Rescorla, E., "HTTP Over TLS", RFC 2818,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC2818, May 2000,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2818>.

   [RFC3629]  Yergeau, F., "UTF-8, a transformation format of ISO
              10646", STD 63, RFC 3629, DOI 10.17487/RFC3629, November
              2003, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3629>.

   [RFC3864]  Klyne, G., Nottingham, M., and J. Mogul, "Registration
              Procedures for Message Header Fields", BCP 90, RFC 3864,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC3864, September 2004,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3864>.

   [RFC3986]  Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R., and L. Masinter, "Uniform
              Resource Identifier (URI): Generic Syntax", STD 66,
              RFC 3986, DOI 10.17487/RFC3986, January 2005,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3986>.

   [RFC4648]  Josefsson, S., "The Base16, Base32, and Base64 Data
              Encodings", RFC 4648, DOI 10.17487/RFC4648, October 2006,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4648>.

   [RFC5895]  Resnick, P. and P. Hoffman, "Mapping Characters for
              Internationalized Domain Names in Applications (IDNA)
              2008", RFC 5895, DOI 10.17487/RFC5895, September 2010,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5895>.

   [RFC6265]  Barth, A., "HTTP State Management Mechanism", RFC 6265,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC6265, April 2011,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6265>.



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   [RFC7034]  Ross, D. and T. Gondrom, "HTTP Header Field X-Frame-
              Options", RFC 7034, DOI 10.17487/RFC7034, October 2013,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7034>.

   [UTS46]    Davis, M. and M. Suignard, "Unicode IDNA Compatibility
              Processing", UNICODE Unicode Technical Standards # 46,
              June 2016, <http://unicode.org/reports/tr46/>.

10.3.  URIs

   [1] https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/ietf-http-wg/

   [2] http://httpwg.github.io/

   [3] https://github.com/httpwg/http-extensions/labels/6265bis

   [4] http://publicsuffix.org/

   [5] https://github.com/httpwg/http-extensions/issues/243

   [6] https://github.com/httpwg/http-extensions/issues/246

   [7] https://www.rfc-editor.org/errata_search.php/doc/html/rfc6265

   [8] https://github.com/httpwg/http-extensions/issues/247

   [9] https://github.com/httpwg/http-extensions/issues/201

   [10] https://github.com/httpwg/http-extensions/issues/204

   [11] https://github.com/httpwg/http-extensions/issues/222

   [12] https://github.com/httpwg/http-extensions/issues/248

   [13] https://github.com/httpwg/http-extensions/issues/295

   [14] https://github.com/httpwg/http-extensions/issues/302

   [15] https://github.com/httpwg/http-extensions/issues/389

   [16] https://github.com/httpwg/http-extensions/issues/199

   [17] https://github.com/httpwg/http-extensions/issues/788

   [18] https://github.com/httpwg/http-extensions/issues/594

   [19] https://github.com/httpwg/http-extensions/issues/159




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   [20] https://github.com/httpwg/http-extensions/issues/159

   [21] https://github.com/httpwg/http-extensions/issues/901

Appendix A.  Changes

A.1.  draft-ietf-httpbis-rfc6265bis-00

   o  Port [RFC6265] to Markdown.  No (intentional) normative changes.

A.2.  draft-ietf-httpbis-rfc6265bis-01

   o  Fixes to formatting caused by mistakes in the initial port to
      Markdown:

      *  https://github.com/httpwg/http-extensions/issues/243 [5]

      *  https://github.com/httpwg/http-extensions/issues/246 [6]

   o  Addresses errata 3444 by updating the "path-value" and "extension-
      av" grammar, errata 4148 by updating the "day-of-month", "year",
      and "time" grammar, and errata 3663 by adding the requested note.
      https://www.rfc-editor.org/errata_search.php/doc/html/rfc6265 [7]

   o  Dropped "Cookie2" and "Set-Cookie2" from the IANA Considerations
      section: https://github.com/httpwg/http-extensions/issues/247 [8]

   o  Merged the recommendations from [I-D.ietf-httpbis-cookie-alone],
      removing the ability for a non-secure origin to set cookies with a
      'secure' flag, and to overwrite cookies whose 'secure' flag is
      true.

   o  Merged the recommendations from
      [I-D.ietf-httpbis-cookie-prefixes], adding "__Secure-" and
      "__Host-" cookie name prefix processing instructions.

A.3.  draft-ietf-httpbis-rfc6265bis-02

   o  Merged the recommendations from
      [I-D.ietf-httpbis-cookie-same-site], adding support for the
      "SameSite" attribute.

   o  Closed a number of editorial bugs:

      *  Clarified address bar behavior for SameSite cookies:
         https://github.com/httpwg/http-extensions/issues/201 [9]





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      *  Added the word "Cookies" to the document's name:
         https://github.com/httpwg/http-extensions/issues/204 [10]

      *  Clarified that the "__Host-" prefix requires an explicit "Path"
         attribute: https://github.com/httpwg/http-extensions/issues/222
         [11]

      *  Expanded the options for dealing with third-party cookies to
         include a brief mention of partitioning based on first-party:
         https://github.com/httpwg/http-extensions/issues/248 [12]

      *  Noted that double-quotes in cookie values are part of the
         value, and are not stripped: https://github.com/httpwg/http-
         extensions/issues/295 [13]

      *  Fixed the "site for cookies" algorithm to return something that
         makes sense: https://github.com/httpwg/http-extensions/
         issues/302 [14]

A.4.  draft-ietf-httpbis-rfc6265bis-03

   o  Clarified handling of invalid SameSite values:
      https://github.com/httpwg/http-extensions/issues/389 [15]

   o  Reflect widespread implementation practice of including a cookie's
      "host-only-flag" when calculating its uniqueness:
      https://github.com/httpwg/http-extensions/issues/199 [16]

   o  Introduced an explicit "None" value for the SameSite attribute:
      https://github.com/httpwg/http-extensions/issues/788 [17]

A.5.  draft-ietf-httpbis-rfc6265bis-04

   o  Allow "SameSite" cookies to be set for all top-level navigations.
      https://github.com/httpwg/http-extensions/issues/594 [18]

   o  Treat "Set-Cookie: token" as creating the cookie "("", "token")":
      https://github.com/httpwg/http-extensions/issues/159 [19]

   o  Reject cookies with neither name nor value (e.g.  "Set-Cookie: ="
      and "Set-Cookie:": https://github.com/httpwg/http-extensions/
      issues/159 [20]

   o  Clarified behavior of multiple "SameSite" attributes in a cookie
      string: https://github.com/httpwg/http-extensions/issues/901 [21]






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Acknowledgements

   RFC 6265 was written by Adam Barth.  This document is a minor update
   of RFC 6265, adding small features, and aligning the specification
   with the reality of today's deployments.  Here, we're standing upon
   the shoulders of a giant since the majority of the text is still
   Adam's.

Authors' Addresses

   Mike West (editor)
   Google, Inc

   Email: mkwst@google.com
   URI:   https://mikewest.org/


   John Wilander (editor)
   Apple, Inc

   Email: wilander@apple.com






























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