Subject: Reminder: Comments on Domain Structure and cookie drafts requested

From: "Yngve Nysaeter Pettersen" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Jan 2007 19:25:22 +0100

Hi,

In October I released the Internet Drafts listed below, and announced them  
here in the HTTP WG list <URL:  
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/ietf-http-wg/2006OctDec/0116 >.

I'd like to ask the HTTP community to consider the problems described in  
the drafts, the possible solutions that are proposed, and whether or not  
there are alternative solutions that will work better.

---------------------------------------
	Title		: The TLD Subdomain Structure Protocol and its
                           use for Cookie domain validation
	Author(s)	: Y. Pettersen
	Filename	: draft-pettersen-subtld-structure-01.txt
	Pages		: 14
	Date		: 2006-10-26
	
This document defines a protocol and specification format that can be
    used by a client to discover how a Top Level Domain (TLD) is
    organized in terms of what subdomains are used to place closely
    related but independent domains, e.g. commercial domains in country
    code TLDs (ccTLD) like .uk are placed in the registry-like .co.uk
    subTLD domain.  This information is then used to limit which domains
    an Internet service can set cookies for, strengthening the rules
    already defined by the cookie specifications.

A URL for this Internet-Draft is:
http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-pettersen-subtld-structure-01.txt

---------------------------------------

	Title		: Enhanced validation of domains for HTTP State
                           Management Cookies using DNS
	Author(s)	: Y. Pettersen
	Filename	: draft-pettersen-dns-cookie-validate-01.txt
	Pages		: 13
	Date		: 2006-10-26
	
HTTP State Management Cookies are used for a wide variety of tasks on
    the Internet, from preference handling to user identification.  An
    important privacy and security feature of cookies is that their
    information can only be sent to a servers in a limited namespace, the
    domain.

    The variation of domain structures that are in use by domain name
    registries, especially the country code Top Level Domains (ccTLD)
    namespaces, makes it difficult to determine what is a valid domain,
    e.g. example.co.uk and example.no, which cookies should be permitted
    for, and a registry-like domain (subTLDs) like co.uk where cookies
    should not be permitted.

    This document specifies an imperfect method using DNS name lookups
    for cookie domains to determine if cookies can be permitted for that
    domain, based on the assumption that most subTLD domains will not
    have an IP address assigned to them, while most legitimate services
    that share cookies among multiple servers will have an IP address for
    their domain name to make the user's navigation easier by omitting
    the customary "www" prefix.

A URL for this Internet-Draft is:
http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-pettersen-dns-cookie-validate-01.txt
---------------------------------------

	Title		: HTTP State Management Mechanism v2
	Author(s)	: Y. Pettersen
	Filename	: draft-pettersen-cookie-v2-00.txt
	Pages		: 30
	Date		: 2006-10-18

    This document specifies a way to create a stateful session with
    Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) requests and responses.  It
    describes three headers, Cookie, Cookie2, and Set-Cookie2, which
    carry state information between participating origin servers and user
    agents.  The method described here differs from both Netscape's
    Cookie proposal [Netscape], and [RFC2965], but it can, provided some
    requirements are met, interoperate with HTTP/1.1 user agents that use
    Netscape's method.  (See the HISTORICAL section.)

    This document defines new rules for how cookies can be shared between
    servers within a domain.  These new rules are intended to address
    security and privacy concerns that are difficult to counter for
    clients implementing Netscape's proposed rules or the rules specified
    by RFC 2965.

    This document reflects implementation experience with RFC 2965 and
    obsoletes it.

A URL for this Internet-Draft is:
http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-pettersen-cookie-v2-00.txt

---------------------------------------

-- 
Sincerely,
Yngve N. Pettersen

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