Subject: [websec] [Errata Rejected] RFC6797 (4075)

From: RFC Errata System <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Aug 2014 09:31:35 -0700 (PDT)

The following errata report has been rejected for RFC6797,
"HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS)".

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You may review the report below and at:
http://www.rfc-editor.org/errata_search.php?rfc=6797&eid=4075

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Status: Rejected
Type: Technical

Reported by: Eric Lawrence <[email-masked]>
Date Reported: 2014-08-08
Rejected by: Barry Leiba (IESG)

Section: 14

Original Text
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   Without the "includeSubDomains" directive, HSTS is unable to protect
   such Secure-flagged domain cookies.

Corrected Text
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   Without the "includeSubDomains" directive, HSTS is unable to protect
   such Secure-flagged domain cookies.

   Even with the "includeSubDomains" directive, the unavailability of 
   an "includeParent" directive means that an Active MITM attacker can 
   perform a cookie-injection attack against an otherwise 
   HSTS-protected victim domain.

   Consider the following scenario:

    The user visits https://sub.example.com and gets a HSTS policy with
    includeSubdomains set. All subsequent navigations to 
    sub.example.com and its subdomains will be secure.

    An attacker causes the victim's browser to navigate to 
    http://example.com. Because the HSTS policy applies only to 
    sub.example.com and its superdomain matches, this insecure 
    navigation is not blocked by the user agent.

    The attacker intercepts this insecure request and returns a 
    response that sets a cookie on the entire domain tree using a 
    Set-Cookie header.

    All subsequent requests to sub.example.com carry the injected
    cookie, despite the use of HSTS.

Notes
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To mitigate this attack, HSTS-protected websites should perform a background fetch of a resource at the first-level domain. This resource should carry a HSTS header that will apply to the entire domain and all subdomains.
 --VERIFIER NOTES-- 
This is a valid issue, but not suitable for the errata system.  The websec working group is discussing handling this with a short document to update RFC 6797.

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RFC6797 (draft-ietf-websec-strict-transport-sec-14)
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Title               : HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS)
Publication Date    : November 2012
Author(s)           : J. Hodges, C. Jackson, A. Barth
Category            : PROPOSED STANDARD
Source              : Web Security
Area                : Applications
Stream              : IETF
Verifying Party     : IESG