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title: HTTP State Tokens docname: draft-west-http-state-tokens-latest date: {DATE} category: std ipr: trust200902 area: Applications and Real-Time keyword: Internet-Draft

stand_alone: yes #_ pi: toc: yes tocindent: yes sortrefs: yes symrefs: yes strict: yes compact: yes comments: yes inline: yes tocdepth: 2

author:

ins: M. West
name: Mike West
organization: Google
email: mkwst@google.com
uri: https://www.mikewest.org/

normative: I-D.ietf-httpbis-header-structure: I-D.yasskin-http-origin-signed-responses: RFC2104: RFC2109: RFC2119: RFC4648: Mixed-Content: target: https://w3c.github.io/webappsec-mixed-content/ title: Mixed Content author: - ins: M. West name: Mike West organization: Google Fetch: target: https://fetch.spec.whatwg.org/ title: Fetch author: - ins: A. van Kesteren name: Anne van Kesteren organization: Mozilla

informative: RFC6265: I-D.abarth-cake: I-D.ietf-cbor-cddl:

--- abstract

This document describes a mechanism which allows HTTP servers to maintain stateful sessions with HTTP user agents. It aims to address some of the security and privacy considerations which have been identified in existing state management mechanisms, providing developers with a well-lit path towards our current understanding of best practice.

--- middle

Introduction

This document defines a state-management mechanism for HTTP that allows clients to create and persist origin-bound session identifiers that can be delivered to servers in order to enable stateful interaction. In a nutshell, each user agent will generate a single token per secure origin, and will deliver it as a Sec-Http-State structured header along with requests to that origin (defined in {{sec-http-state}} and {{delivery}}).

Servers can configure this token's characteristics via a Sec-Http-State-Options response header (defined in {{sec-http-state-options}} and {{config}}).

That's it.

Wait. Don't we already have cookies?

Cookies {{RFC6265}} are indeed a pervasive HTTP state management mechanism in the status quo, and they enable practically everything interesting on the web today. That said, cookies have some issues: they're hard to use securely, they add substantial weight to users' outgoing requests, and they enable tracking users' activity across the web in potentially surprising ways.

The mechanism proposed in this document aims at a more minimal and opinionated construct which takes inspiration from some of cookies' optional characteristics. In particular:

  1. The client controls the token's value, not the server.

  2. The token will only be available to the network layer, not to JavaScript (including network-like JavaScript, such as Service Workers).

  3. The user agent will generate only one token per origin, and will only expose the token to the origin for which it was generated.

  4. Tokens will not be generated for, or delivered to, non-secure origins.

  5. By default, token delivery and configuration is constrained to same-site requests.

  6. Each token persists for one hour after generation by default. This default expiration time can be overwritten by servers, and tokens can be reset at any time by servers, users, or user agents.

These distinctions might not be appropriate for all use cases, but seem like a reasonable set of defaults. For folks for whom these defaults aren't good enough, we'll provide developers with a few control points that can be triggered via a Sec-HTTP-State-Options HTTP response header, described in {{sec-http-state-options}}.

No. Really. We have cookies today. Why do we need this new thing?

We do have cookies. And we've defined a number of extensions to cookies to blunt some of their sharper edges: the HttpOnly attribute, the Secure attribute, SameSite, prefixes like __Host- and __Secure-, and so on. It's reasonable to suggest that pushing developers towards these existing flags on our existing state management primitive is the right way forward.

A counterpoint is that we're collectively pretty bad at helping developers understand the risks that might lead them to adopt The Good Cookie Syntax(tm) above. Adoption of these features has been quite slow. The Secure flag, for example, has been around since at least 1997 {{RFC2109}}, and is hovering around 9% adoption based on data gathered from Chrome's telemetry in March, 2019. In that dataset, cookies' other properties are set as follows:

  • ~6.8% of cookies are set with HttpOnly.
  • ~5.5% are set with Secure.
  • ~3.1% are set with HttpOnly; Secure.
  • ~0.06% are set with SameSite=*; Secure.
  • ~0.05% are set with SameSite=*.
  • ~0.03% are set with HttpOnly; Secure; SameSite=*.
  • ~0.006% are set with SameSite=*; HttpOnly.
  • ~0.005% are set with a __Secure- prefix.
  • ~0.01% are set with a __Host- prefix.

In total:

  • ~9.9% of cookies are marked as HttpOnly.
  • ~8.8% of cookies are marked as Secure.
  • ~0.1% of cookies are marked as SameSite.
  • ~84.2% of cookies use none of these features.

This document's underlying assumption is that it's going to be easier to teach developers about a crazy new thing that's secure by default than it would be to convince them to change their Set-Cookie headers to be more like __Host-name=value; HttpOnly; Secure; SameSite=Lax; Path=/. A new thing resets expectations in a way that vastly exceeds the impact of explanations about the the four attributes that must be used, the one attribute that must not be used, and the weird naming convention that ought to be adopted.

Examples

User agents can deliver HTTP state tokens to a server in a Sec-Http-State header. For example, if a user agent has generated a token bound to https://example.com/ whose base64 encoding is hB2RfWaGyNk60sjHze5DzGYjSnL7tRF2HWSBx6J1o4k= ({{RFC4648}}, Section 4), then it would generate the following header when delivering the token along with requests to https://example.com/:

Sec-Http-State: token=*hB2RfWaGyNk60sjHze5DzGYjSnL7tRF2HWSBx6J1o4k*

{: artwork-align="center"}

The server can control certain aspects of the token's delivery by responding to requests with a Sec-Http-State-Options header:

Sec-Http-State-Options: max-age=3600, key=*b7kuUkp...lkRioC2=*

{: artwork-align="center"}

Conventions

Conformance

{::boilerplate bcp14}

Syntax

This document defines two Structured Headers {{!I-D.ietf-httpbis-header-structure}}. In doing so it relies upon the Augmented Backus-Naur Form (ABNF) notation of {{!RFC5234}} and the OWS rule from {{!RFC7230}}.

Infrastructure

HTTP State Tokens

An HTTP State Token holds a session identifier which allows a user agent to maintain a stateful session with a specific origin, along with associated metadata:

  • creation is a timestamp representing the point in time when the token was created.

  • delivery specifies the initiating contexts from which the token can be delivered. It is an enum of either same-origin, same-site, or cross-site. Unless otherwise specified, its value is same-site.

  • key is a server-provided key which can be used to sign requests with which the token is delivered. It is either null, or contains up to 256-bits of binary data. Unless otherwise specified, its value is null.

  • max-age is a number representing the token's lifetime in seconds. Unless otherwise specified, its value is 3600 (1 hour).

  • value is the token's value (surprising, right?). It contains up to 256-bits of binary data.

An HTTP State Token is said to be "expired" if its creation timestamp plus max-age seconds is in the past.

Requests and Responses

This document relies upon the definitions of "request" and "response" found in {{Fetch}}.

A request's delivery scope is same-origin if the request's initiator and target are exactly the same origin, same-site if the request's initiator and target are not same-origin but share a registrable domain (e.g. https://www.example.com/ and https://not-www.example.com/), and cross-site otherwise. The following algorithm spells this relationship out more formally:

  1. If the request was generated by the user agent as a response to direct user interaction with the user agent (e.g. the user typed an address into the agent's address bar, clicked a bookmark, or etc.), return same-origin.

  2. Let request-origin be the request's origin, and target-origin be the request's URL's origin.

  3. If request-origin is same-origin with target-origin, return same-origin.

  4. If request-origin's registrable domain is the same as target-origin's registrable domain, return same-site.

  5. Return cross-site.

Token Storage

User agents MUST keep a list of all the unexpired HTTP State Tokens which have been created. For the purposes of this document, we'll assume that user agents keep this list in the form of a map whose keys are origins, and whose values are HTTP State Tokens.

This map exposes three functions:

  • An HTTP State Token can be stored for a given origin. If the origin already exists in the map, the entry's value will be overwritten with the new HTTP State Token.

  • An origin's HTTP State Token can be retrieved. If the origin does not exist in the map, null will be returned instead.

  • An origin (along with its HTTP State Token) can be deleted from the map.

The map is initially empty.

Generate an HTTP State Token for an origin {#generate}

The user agent MUST generate a new HTTP State Token for an origin using an algorithm equivalent to the following:

  1. Delete origin from the user agent's token store.

  2. Let token be a newly created HTTP State Token with its properties set as follows:

    • creation: The current time.
    • delivery: same-site
    • key: null
    • max-age: 3600
    • value: 256 cryptographically random bits.

  3. Store token in the user agent's token store for origin.

  4. If the user agent has defined a NotifyHostHTTPStateReset(origin) algorithm, call it with origin (see {{notify-reset}} for more context on this step).

  5. Return token.

Syntax

The 'Sec-Http-State' HTTP Header Field {#sec-http-state}

The Sec-Http-State HTTP header field allows user agents to deliver HTTP state tokens to servers as part of an HTTP request.

Sec-Http-State is a Structured Header {{!I-D.ietf-httpbis-header-structure}}. Its value MUST be a dictionary ({{!I-D.ietf-httpbis-header-structure}}, Section 3.1). Its ABNF is:

Sec-Http-State = sh-dictionary

{: artwork-align="center"}

The dictionary MUST contain:

  • Exactly one member whose key is token, and whose value is binary content ({{!I-D.ietf-httpbis-header-structure}}, Section 3.9) that encodes the HTTP state token's value for the origin to which the header is delivered.

    If the token member contains more than 256 bits of binary content, the member MUST be ignored.

The dictionary MAY contain:

  • Exactly one member whose key is sig, and whose value is binary content ({{!I-D.ietf-httpbis-header-structure}}, Section 3.9) that encodes a signature over the token and the request which contains it, using a key previously delivered by the server. This mechanism is described in {{sign}}.

    If the sig member contains more than 256 bits of binary content, the member MUST be ignored.

The Sec-Http-State header is parsed per the algorithm in Section 4.2 of {{I-D.ietf-httpbis-header-structure}}. Servers MUST ignore the header if parsing fails, or if the parsed header does not contain a member whose key is token.

User agents will attach a Sec-Http-State header to outgoing requests according to the processing rules described in {{delivery}}.

The 'Sec-Http-State-Options' HTTP Header Field {#sec-http-state-options}

The Sec-Http-State-Options HTTP header field allows servers to deliver configuration information to user agents as part of an HTTP response.

Sec-Http-State-Options is a Structured Header {{!I-D.ietf-httpbis-header-structure}}. Its value MUST be a dictionary ({{!I-D.ietf-httpbis-header-structure}}, Section 3.1). Its ABNF is:

Sec-Http-State-Options = sh-dictionary

{: artwork-align="center"}

The Sec-Http-State-Options header is parsed per the algorithm in Section 4.2 of {{I-D.ietf-httpbis-header-structure}}. User agents MUST ignore the header if parsing fails.

The dictionary MAY contain:

  • Exactly one member whose key is key, and whose value is binary content ({{!I-D.ietf-httpbis-header-structure}}, Section 3.10) that encodes an key which can be used to generate a signature over outgoing requests.

  • Exactly one member whose key is delivery, and whose value is one of the following tokens ({{!I-D.ietf-httpbis-header-structure}}, Section 3.9): same-origin, same-site, or cross-site.

    If the delivery member contains an unknown identifier, the member MUST be ignored.

  • Exactly one member whose key is max-age, and whose value is an integer ({{!I-D.ietf-httpbis-header-structure}}, Section 3.6) representing the server's desired lifetime for its HTTP State Token.

    If the max-age member contains anything other than a positive integer, the member MUST be ignored.

User agents will process the Sec-Http-State-Options header on incoming responses according to the processing rules described in {{config}}.

Examples

Cross-Site Delivery

Some servers will require access to their tokens from cross-site contexts (perhaps to support authenticated activity or single-sign on, etc). These servers can request a cross-site delivery option by delivering the following header:

Sec-Http-State-Options: delivery=cross-site, ...

{: artwork-align="center"}

Token Lifetime

Other servers might want their sessions to persist for more than an hour. These servers can request a more reasonable token lifetime lifetime by by delivering the following header:

Sec-Http-State-Options: max-age=2592000, ...

{: artwork-align="center"}

Servers may also wish to explicitly trigger the token's expiration (upon signout, for instance). Setting a max-age of 0 does the trick:

Sec-Http-State-Options: max-age=0, ...

{: artwork-align="center"}

Token Provenance

For some servers, the client-generated token will be enough to maintain state. They can treat it as an opaque session identifier, and bind the user's state to it server-side. Other servers will require additional assurance that they can trust the token's provenance. To that end, servers can generate a unique key, associate it with the session identifier on the server, and deliver it to the client via an HTTP response header:

Sec-Http-State-Options: key=*ZH0GxtBMWA...nJudhZ8dtz*, ...

{: artwork-align="center"}

Clients will store that key, and use it to generate a signature over some set of data that mitigates the risk of token capture:

Sec-HTTP-State:
    token=*J6BRKa...MonM*,
    sig=*(HMAC-SHA256(key, token+metadata))*

{: artwork-align="center"}

Note: This part in particular is not fully baked, and we need to do some more work to flesh out the threat model (see also Token Binding). Look at it as an area to explore, not a solidly thought-out solution.

Delivering HTTP State Tokens {#delivery}

User agents deliver HTTP state tokens to servers by appending a Sec-Http-State header field to outgoing requests.

This specification provides algorithms which are called at the appropriate points in {{Fetch}} in order to attach Sec-Http-State headers to outgoing requests, and to ensure that Sec-Http-State-Options headers are correctly processed.

Attach HTTP State Tokens to a request {#attach}

The user agent can attach HTTP State Tokens to a given request using an algorithm equivalent to the following. This algorithm is intended to execute as the request is being sent out over the network (after Service Worker processing), perhaps after the Cookie header is handled in step 5.17.1 of Section 4.5 of {{Fetch}}, describing the "HTTP-network-or-cache fetch" algorithm:

  1. If the user agent is configured to suppress explicit identifiers for the request, or if the request's URL is not a priori authenticated {{Mixed-Content}}, then skip the remaining steps in this algorithm, and return without modifying the request.

  2. Let target-origin be the origin of request's current URL.

  3. Let request-token be the result of retrieving origin's token from the user agent's token store, or null if no such token exists.

  4. If request-token is expired, clear the user agent's token store for target-origin, and set request-token to null.

  5. If request-token is null, then:

    1. If request's delivery scope is cross-site, return without modifying the request.

      Note: As the default delivery for HTTP State Tokens is same-site, we return early rather than generating a token for a cross-site request.

    2. Set request-token to the result of generating an HTTP State Token for target-origin, as defined in {{generate}}.

  6. Return without modifying the request if either of the following statements are true:

    • request-token's delivery is same-origin, and request's delivery scope is not same-origin.

    • request-token's delivery is same-site, and request's delivery scope is neither same-origin nor same-site.

  7. Let serialized-value be the base64 encoding ({{!RFC4648}}, Section 4) of request-token's value.

  8. Insert a member into header-value whose key is token and whose value is serialized-value.

  9. If request-token's key is not null, then insert a member into header-value whose key is sig, and whose value is the result of executing {{sign}} on request, serialized-value, and request-token's key.

  10. Append a header to request's header list whose name is Sec-Http-State, and whose value is the result of serializing header-value ({{I-D.ietf-httpbis-header-structure}}, Section 4.1).

Generate a request's signature {#sign}

If the origin server provides a key, the user agent will use it to sign any outgoing requests which target that origin and include an HTTP State Token. Note that the signature is produced before adding the Sec-Http-State header to the request.

Given a request, a base64-encoded token value, and a key:

  1. Let cbor-request be the result of building a CBOR representation {{!RFC7409}} of the given request, as specified in the first element of the array described in Section 3.2 of {{I-D.yasskin-http-origin-signed-responses}}.

  2. Add an item to cbor-request which maps the byte string ':token' to the byte string containing the given base64-encoded token value.

  3. Return the result of computing HMAC-SHA256 {{!RFC2104}} over the canonical CBOR serialization of cbor-request (Section 3.4 of {{I-D.yasskin-http-origin-signed-responses}}), using the given key.

Example

The following request:

GET / HTTP/1.1
Host: example.com
Accept: */*

results in the following CBOR representation (represented using the extended diagnostic notation from Appendix G of {{I-D.ietf-cbor-cddl}}):

{
  ':method': 'GET',
  ':token': 'hB2RfWaGyNk60sjHze5DzGYjSnL7tRF2HWSBx6J1o4k='
  ':url': 'https://example.com/',
  'accept': '*/*',
}

Configuring HTTP State Tokens {#config}

Servers configure the HTTP State Token representing a given users' state by appending a Sec-Http-State-Options header field to outgoing responses.

User agents MUST process this header on a given response as per the following algorithm, which is intended to be called after the Set-Cookie header is handled in step 11.4 of Section 4.6 of {{Fetch}}, which defines the "HTTP-network fetch" algorithm.

  1. Let response-origin be the origin of response's URL.

  2. If the response's URL is not a priori authenticated {{Mixed-Content}}, return without altering response-origin's HTTP State Token.

  3. Let token be the result of retrieving response-origin's token from the user agent's token store, or null if no such token exists.

  4. If token is expired, clear the user agent's token store for response-origin, and set token to null.

  5. If token is null, then:

    1. If request's delivery scope is cross-site, return without modifying the request.

      Note: As the default delivery for HTTP State Tokens is same-site, we return early rather than generating a token for a cross-site request.

    2. Set token to the result of generating an HTTP State Token for target-origin, as defined in {{generate}}.

  6. If the response's header list contains Sec-Http-State-Options, then:

    1. Let header be the result of getting response's Sec-Http-State-Options header, and parsing parsing it per the algorithm in Section 4.2 of {{I-D.ietf-httpbis-header-structure}}.

    2. Return without altering response-origin's HTTP State Token if any of the following conditions hold:

      • Parsing the header results in failure.
      • header has a member named key whose value is not a byte sequence (Section 3.10 of {{I-D.ietf-httpbis-header-structure}})
      • header has a member named delivery whose value is not one of the following tokens (Section 3.9 of {{I-D.ietf-httpbis-header-structure}}): "same-origin", "same-site", and "cross-site".
      • header has a member named max-age whose value is not a positive integer (Section 3.6 of {{I-D.ietf-httpbis-header-structure}}).

    3. If header has a member named key, set token's key to the member's value.

    4. If header has a member named delivery, set token's delivery to the member's value.

    5. If header has a member named max-age:

      1. If the member's value is 0, generate a new HTTP State Token for response-origin as defined in {{generate}}.

        Otherwise, set token's max-age to the member's value.

      Note that max-age is processed last, meaning that any other options specified alongside max-age=0 will be de facto ignored as a new token is generated, replacing the old.

Security and Privacy Considerations

HTTP State Tokens aim to mitigate some of the security and privacy drawbacks that decades of implementation experience with cookies have laid bare. It would be worthwhile to skim through the privacy considerations (Section 7 of {{RFC6265}}) and security considerations (Section 8 of {{RFC6265}}) of that existing state management mechanism, as it forms a foundation upon which this document builds.

Confidentiality and Integrity

HTTP State Tokens improve upon cookies' weak confidentiality/integrity guarantees (see Sections 8.3, 8.5, 8.6, and 8.7 of {{RFC6265}}) in several ways:

  1. User agents MUST require secure channels (such as TLS) for delivery and configuration of HTTP State Tokens. User agents cannot be induced to deliver an origin's tokens across channels visible to (and modifiable by) network attackers, nor can an attack on DNS cause tokens to be revealed (as any server to which the user could be directed will also need to authenticate itself, which is presumably difficult).

  2. HTTP State Tokens are mapped to origins, matching developers expectations for client-side data generally. This ensures that tokens are isolated by host and port: code running on https://bar.example.com/ cannot alter state on https://foo.example.com/ without the latter's cooperation, and that the same applies to https://example.com:8000/ and https://example.com:80/.

    Note that this origin binding means that there are no path restrictions for tokens. Servers relying upon these tokens for state management SHOULD NOT run mutually distrusting services on different paths of the same origin.

  3. User agents MUST NOT expose HTTP State Tokens to non-HTTP APIs which are web-accessible, thereby reducing the risk of accidental exposure via cross-site scripting attack.

    Further, the Sec- prefix on both Sec-HTTP-State and Sec-HTTP-State-Options ensures that both are considered "forbidden header names" by {{Fetch}}. The latter should also be treated as a "forbidden response header".

Signed Sessions

HTTP State Tokens embrace the session identifier pattern discussed in Section 8.4 of {{RFC6265}} by requiring that the client control the token's value, setting it to a fixed-length, random byte sequence. The client's control mitigates the risk of sensitive information being stored in the token directly, and the token's length makes it unlikely to be easily guessed.

Some servers will be interested in proving the token's provenance over time, which they do today by storing cookies with signed values. Since storing a signed value directly is impossible in a client-controlled world, servers can instead store a key, which is used to sign outgoing requests. Since this key is never exposed directly to the web, it provides a reasonable guarantee of client stability over time which a server can rely upon when making risk judgements.

User Control

User agents MUST provide users with the ability to control the creation and distribution of HTTP State Tokens, just as they do for cookies today. This certainly means providing controls over first- vs third-party distribution, control over the origins which can store state, control over the state presented to origins, visibility into the state of the user agent's token store, and etc.

Further, this document grants user agents wide latitude to experiment with various distribution policies and limitations. The capabilities offered by delivery and max-age should be considered upper bounds on distribution, within which user agents are free to roam.

Lifetime

By default, HTTP State Tokens live for an hour, which is a compromise between the reasonable desire of servers to maintain state across a given user's session, and the privacy risks associated with long-lived tokens stored on a user's disk.

Servers that desire a longer session lifetime can explicitly request an extension, which the browser can choose to act on.

Ambient Authority and Cross-Site Delivery

HTTP State Tokens, like cookies, provide a form of ambient authority (see Section 8.2 of {{RFC6265}}). By default, this authority is limited to requests initiated by same-site actors, which serves as a reasonable mitigation against some classes of attack (e.g. https://evil.com/ making authenticated requests to https://example.com/).

Servers that desire to interact in an authenticated manner in cross-site contexts are required to opt-into doing so by delivering an appropriate delivery value in a Sec-HTTP-State-Options response header. Servers which choose to do so SHOULD take reasonable precautions, implementing CSRF tokens for sensitive actions, and taking stock of the context from which a given request is initiated (by examining incoming Referrer, Origin, and Sec-Fetch-Site headers).

Further, tokens can only be created in same-origin or same-site contexts, which means that cross-site identifier would only be available after the relevant origin was visited in a same-site context, and explicitly declared its tokens as being deliverable cross-site (at which point the user agent is empowered to make some decisions about how to handle that declaration).

Implementation Considerations

Notifying developers on token reset {#notify-reset}

Step 4 of the token generation algorithm ({{generate}}) recognizes that user agents may wish to notify an origin's developers that HTTP state has been reset in order to enable cleanup of state stored client-side. Embedding environments are encouraged to define an implementation of the NotifyHostHTTPStateReset(origin) algorithm that's appropriate for the environment.

For example, HTML may wish to enable developers to respond to token generation by posting a message to a specially-named BroadcastChannel for the to enable this kind of work:

let resetChannel = new BroadcastChannel('http-state-reset'));
resetChannel.onmessage = e => { /* Do exciting cleanup here. */ };

{: artwork-align="center"}

This algorithm could take something like the following form:

TODO(mkwst): Write a reasonable implementation of this once I have internet again.

IANA Considerations

Header Field Registry

This document registers the Sec-Http-State and Sec-Http-State-Options header fields in the "Permanent Message Header Field Names" registry located at https://www.iana.org/assignments/message-headers.

Sec-Http-State Header Field

Header field name:

: Sec-Http-State

Applicable protocol:

: http

Status:

: experimental

Author/Change controller:

: IETF

Specification document(s):

: This document (see {{sec-http-state}})

Related information:

: (empty)

Sec-Http-State-Options Header Field

Header field name:

: Sec-Http-State-Options

Applicable protocol:

: http

Status:

: experimental

Author/Change controller:

: IETF

Specification document(s):

: This document (see {{sec-http-state-options}})

Related information:

: (empty)

--- back

Acknowledgements

This document owes much to Adam Barth's {{I-D.abarth-cake}} and {{RFC6265}}.

Changes

RFC Editor: Please remove this section before publication.

  • -01

    • General editorial cleanup.
    • Explanation of NotifyHostHTTPStateReset(origin) algorithm in {{notify-reset}}.

  • -00

    • This document was created.