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+Network Working Group                                            K. Moore
+Request for Comments: 2964                        University of Tennessee
+BCP: 44                                                          N. Freed
+Category: Best Current Practice                                  Innosoft
+                                                             October 2000
+
+
+                      Use of HTTP State Management
+
+Status of this Memo
+
+   This document specifies an Internet Best Current Practices for the
+   Internet Community, and requests discussion and suggestions for
+   improvements.  Distribution of this memo is unlimited.
+
+Copyright Notice
+
+   Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2000).  All Rights Reserved.
+
+IESG Note
+
+   The IESG notes that this mechanism makes use of the .local top-level
+   domain (TLD) internally when handling host names that don't contain
+   any dots, and that this mechanism might not work in the expected way
+   should an actual .local TLD ever be registered.
+
+Abstract
+
+   The mechanisms described in "HTTP State Management Mechanism" (RFC-
+   2965), and its predecessor (RFC-2109), can be used for many different
+   purposes.  However, some current and potential uses of the protocol
+   are controversial because they have significant user privacy and
+   security implications.  This memo identifies specific uses of
+   Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) State Management protocol which
+   are either (a) not recommended by the IETF, or (b) believed to be
+   harmful, and discouraged.  This memo also details additional privacy
+   considerations which are not covered by the HTTP State Management
+   protocol specification.
+
+1.  Introduction
+
+   The HTTP State Management mechanism is both useful and controversial.
+   It is useful because numerous applications of HTTP benefit from the
+   ability to save state between HTTP transactions, without encoding
+   such state in URLs.  It is controversial because the mechanism has
+   been used to accomplish things for which it was not designed and is
+   not well-suited.  Some of these uses have attracted a great deal of
+   public criticism because they threaten to violate the privacy of web
+
+
+
+Moore & Freed            Best Current Practice                  [Page 1]
+
+RFC 2964              Use of HTTP State Management          October 2000
+
+
+   users, specifically by leaking potentially sensitive information to
+   third parties such as the Web sites a user has visited.  There are
+   also other uses of HTTP State Management which are inappropriate even
+   though they do not threaten user privacy.
+
+   This memo therefore identifies uses of the HTTP State Management
+   protocol specified in RFC-2965 which are not recommended by the IETF,
+   or which are believed to be harmful and are therefore discouraged.
+
+   This document occasionally uses terms that appear in capital letters.
+   When the terms "MUST", "MUST NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", and "MAY"
+   appear capitalized, they are being used to indicate particular
+   requirements of this specification.  A discussion of the meanings of
+   the terms "MUST", "SHOULD", and "MAY" appears in [RFC-1123]; the
+   terms "MUST NOT" and "SHOULD NOT" are logical extensions of this
+   usage.
+
+2.  Uses of HTTP State Management
+
+   The purpose of HTTP State Management is to allow an HTTP-based
+   service to create stateful "sessions" which persist across multiple
+   HTTP transactions.  A single session may involve transactions with
+   multiple server hosts.  Multiple client hosts may also be involved in
+   a single session when the session data for a particular user is
+   shared between client hosts (e.g., via a networked file system).  In
+   other words, the "session" retains state between a "user" and a
+   "service", not between particular hosts.
+
+   It's important to realize that similar capabilities may also be
+   achieved using the "bare" HTTP protocol, and/or dynamically-generated
+   HTML, without the State Management extensions.  For example, state
+   information can be transmitted from the service to the user by
+   embedding a session identifier in one or more URLs which appear in
+   HTTP redirects, or dynamically generated HTML; and the state
+   information may be returned from the user to the service when such
+   URLs appear in a GET or POST request.  HTML forms can also be used to
+   pass state information from the service to the user and back, without
+   the user being aware of this happening.
+
+   However, the HTTP State Management facility does provide an increase
+   in functionality over ordinary HTTP and HTML.  In practice, this
+   additional functionality includes:
+
+   (1)   The ability to exchange URLs between users, of resources
+         accessed during stateful sessions, without leaking the state
+         information associated with those sessions.  (e.g. "Here's the
+         URL for the FooCorp web catalog entry for those sandals that
+         you wanted.")
+
+
+
+Moore & Freed            Best Current Practice                  [Page 2]
+
+RFC 2964              Use of HTTP State Management          October 2000
+
+
+   (2)   The ability to maintain session state without "cache-busting".
+         That is, separating the session state from the URL allows a web
+         cache to maintain only a single copy of the named resource.  If
+         the state is maintained in session-specific URLs, the cache
+         would likely have to maintain several identical copies of the
+         resource.
+
+   (3)   The ability to implement sessions with minimal server
+         configuration and minimal protocol overhead, as compared to
+         other techniques of maintaining session state.
+
+   (4)   The ability to associate the user with session state whenever a
+         user accesses the service, regardless of whether the user
+         enters through a particular "home page" or "portal".
+
+   (5)   The ability to save session information in stable storage, so
+         that a "session" can be maintained across client invocations,
+         system reboots, and client or system crashes.
+
+2.1.  Recommended Uses
+
+   Use of HTTP State Management is appropriate whenever it is desirable
+   to maintain state between a user and a service across multiple HTTP
+   transactions, provided that:
+
+   (1)   the user is aware that session state is being maintained and
+         consents to it,
+
+   (2)   the user has the ability to delete the state associated with
+         such a session at any time,
+
+   (3)   the information obtained through the ability to track the
+         user's usage of the service is not disclosed to other parties
+         without the user's explicit consent, and
+
+   (4)   session information itself cannot contain sensitive information
+         and cannot be used to obtain sensitive information that is not
+         otherwise available to an eavesdropper.
+
+   This last point is important because cookies are usually sent in the
+   clear and hence are readily available to eavesdroppers.
+
+   An example of such a recommended use would be a "shopping cart",
+   where the existence of the shopping cart is explicitly made known to
+   the user, the user can explicitly "empty" his or her shopping cart
+   (either by requesting that it be emptied or by purchasing those
+
+
+
+
+
+Moore & Freed            Best Current Practice                  [Page 3]
+
+RFC 2964              Use of HTTP State Management          October 2000
+
+
+   items) and thus cause the shared state to be discarded, and the
+   service asserts that it will not disclose the user's shopping or
+   browsing habits to third parties without the user's consent.
+
+   Note that the HTTP State Management protocol effectively allows a
+   service provider to refuse to provide a service, or provide a reduced
+   level of service, if the user or a user's client fails to honor a
+   request to maintain session state.  Absent legal prohibition to the
+   contrary, the server MAY refuse to provide the service, or provide a
+   reduced level of service, under these conditions.  As a purely
+   practical consideration, services designed to utilize HTTP State
+   Management may be unable to function properly if the client does not
+   provide it.  Such servers SHOULD gracefully handle such conditions
+   and explain to the user why the full level of service is not
+   available.
+
+2.2.  Problematic Uses
+
+   The following uses of HTTP State Management are deemed inappropriate
+   and contrary to this specification:
+
+2.2.1.  Leakage of Information to Third Parties
+
+   HTTP State Management MUST NOT be used to leak information about the
+   user or the user's browsing habits to other parties besides the user
+   or service, without the user's explicit consent.  Such usage is
+   prohibited even if the user's name or other externally-assigned
+   identifier are not exposed to other parties, because the state
+   management mechanism itself provides an identifier which can be used
+   to compile information about the user.
+
+   Because such practices encourage users to defeat HTTP State
+   Management mechanisms, they tend to reduce the effectiveness of HTTP
+   State Management, and are therefore considered detrimental to the
+   operation of the web.
+
+2.2.2.  Use as an Authentication Mechanism
+
+   It is generally inappropriate to use the HTTP State Management
+   protocol as an authentication mechanism.  HTTP State Management is
+   not designed with such use in mind, and safeguards for protection of
+   authentication credentials are lacking in both the protocol
+   specification and in widely deployed HTTP clients and servers.  Most
+   HTTP sessions are not encrypted and "cookies" may therefore be
+   exposed to passive eavesdroppers.  Furthermore, HTTP clients and
+   servers typically store "cookies" in cleartext with little or no
+   protection against exposure.  HTTP State Management therefore SHOULD
+
+
+
+
+Moore & Freed            Best Current Practice                  [Page 4]
+
+RFC 2964              Use of HTTP State Management          October 2000
+
+
+   NOT be used as an authentication mechanism to protect information
+   from being exposed to unauthorized parties, even if the HTTP sessions
+   are encrypted.
+
+   The prohibition against using HTTP State Management for
+   authentication includes both its use to protect information which is
+   provided by the service, and its use to protect potentially sensitive
+   information about the user which is entrusted to the service's care.
+   For example, it would be inappropriate to expose a user's name,
+   address, telephone number, or billing information to a client that
+   merely presented a cookie which had been previously associated with
+   the user.
+
+   Similarly, HTTP State Management SHOULD NOT be used to authenticate
+   user requests if unauthorized requests might have undesirable side-
+   effects for the user, unless the user is aware of the potential for
+   such side-effects and explicitly consents to such use.  For example,
+   a service which allowed a user to order merchandise with a single
+   "click", based entirely on the user's stored "cookies", could
+   inconvenience the user by requiring her to dispute charges to her
+   credit card, and/or return the unwanted merchandise, in the event
+   that the cookies were exposed to third parties.
+
+   Some uses of HTTP State Management to identify users may be
+   relatively harmless, for example, if the only information which can
+   be thus exposed belongs to the service, and the service will suffer
+   little harm from the exposure of such information.
+
+3.  User Interface Considerations for HTTP State Management
+
+   HTTP State Management has been very controversial because of its
+   potential to expose information about a user's browsing habits to
+   third parties, without the knowledge or consent of the user.  While
+   such exposure is possible, this is less a flaw in the protocol itself
+   than a failure of HTTP client implementations (and of some providers
+   of HTTP-based services) to protect users' interests.
+
+   As implied above, there are other ways to maintain session state than
+   using HTTP State Management, and therefore other ways in which users'
+   browsing habits can be tracked.  Indeed, it is difficult to imagine
+   how the HTTP protocol or an HTTP client could actually prevent a
+   service from disclosing a user's "click trail" to other parties if
+   the service chose to do so.  Protection of such information from
+   inappropriate exposure must therefore be the responsibility of the
+   service.  HTTP client implementations inherently cannot provide such
+   protection, though they can implement countermeasures which make it
+   more difficult for HTTP State Management to be used as the mechanism
+   by which such information is exposed.
+
+
+
+Moore & Freed            Best Current Practice                  [Page 5]
+
+RFC 2964              Use of HTTP State Management          October 2000
+
+
+   It is arguable that HTTP clients should provide more protection in
+   general against inappropriate exposure of tracking information,
+   regardless of whether the exposure were facilitated by use of HTTP
+   State Management or by some other means.  However, issues related to
+   other mechanisms are beyond the scope of this memo.
+
+3.1.  Capabilities Required of an HTTP Client
+
+   A user's willingness to consent to use of HTTP State Management is
+   likely to vary from one service to another, according to whether the
+   user trusts the service to use the information appropriately and to
+   limit its exposure to other parties.  The user therefore SHOULD be
+   able to control whether his client supports a service's request to
+   use HTTP State Management, on a per-service basis.  In particular:
+
+   (1)   Clients MUST NOT respond to HTTP State Management requests
+         unless explicitly enabled by the user.
+
+   (2)   Clients SHOULD provide an effective interface which allows
+         users to review, and approve or refuse, any particular requests
+         from a server to maintain state information, before the client
+         provides any state information to the server.
+
+   (3)   Clients SHOULD provide an effective interface which allows
+         users to instruct their clients to ignore all requests from a
+         particular service to maintain state information, on a per-
+         service basis, immediately in response to any particular
+         request from a server, before the client provides any state
+         information to the server.
+
+   (4)   Clients SHOULD provide an effective interface which allows a
+         user to disable future transmission of any state information to
+         a service, and/or discard any saved state information for that
+         service, even though the user has previously approved a
+         service's request to maintain state information.
+
+   (5)   Clients SHOULD provide an effective interface which allows a
+         user to terminate a previous request not to retain state
+         management information for a given service.
+
+3.2.  Limitations of the domain-match algorithm
+
+   The domain-match algorithm in RFC-2965 section 2 is intended as a
+   heuristic to allow a client to "guess" whether or not two domains are
+   part of the same service.  There are few rules about how domain names
+   can be used, and the structure of domain names and how they are
+   delegated varies from one top-level domain to another (i.e. the
+   client cannot tell which part of the domain was assigned to the
+
+
+
+Moore & Freed            Best Current Practice                  [Page 6]
+
+RFC 2964              Use of HTTP State Management          October 2000
+
+
+   service).  Therefore NO string comparison algorithm (including the
+   domain-match algorithm) can be relied on to distinguish a domain that
+   belongs to a particular service, from a domain that belongs to
+   another party.
+
+   As stated above, each service is ultimately responsible for ensuring
+   that user information is not inappropriately leaked to third parties.
+   Leaking information to third parties via State Management by careful
+   selection of domain names, or by assigning domain names to hosts
+   maintained by third parties, is at least as inappropriate as leaking
+   the same information by other means.
+
+4.  Security Considerations
+
+   This entire memo is about security considerations.
+
+5.  Authors' Addresses
+
+   Keith Moore
+   University of Tennessee Computer Science Department
+   1122 Volunteer Blvd, Suite 203
+   Knoxville TN, 37996-3450
+
+   EMail: moore@cs.utk.edu
+
+
+   Ned Freed
+   Innosoft International, Inc.
+   1050 Lakes Drive
+   West Covina, CA 81790
+
+   EMail: ned.freed@innosoft.com
+
+6.  References
+
+   [RFC 1123] Braden, R., "Requirements for Internet Hosts --
+              Application and Support", STD 3, RFC 1123, October 1989.
+
+   [RFC 2965] Kristol, D. and L. Montulli, "HTTP State Management
+              Mechanism", RFC 2965, October 2000.
+
+   [RFC 2109] Kristol, D. and L. Montulli, "HTTP State Management
+              Mechanism", RFC 2109, February 1997.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Moore & Freed            Best Current Practice                  [Page 7]
+
+RFC 2964              Use of HTTP State Management          October 2000
+
+
+7.  Full Copyright Statement
+
+   Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2000).  All Rights Reserved.
+
+   This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
+   others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
+   or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published
+   and distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any
+   kind, provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
+   included on all such copies and derivative works.  However, this
+   document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
+   the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
+   Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of
+   developing Internet standards in which case the procedures for
+   copyrights defined in the Internet Standards process must be
+   followed, or as required to translate it into languages other than
+   English.
+
+   The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
+   revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.
+
+   This document and the information contained herein is provided on an
+   "AS IS" basis and THE INTERNET SOCIETY AND THE INTERNET ENGINEERING
+   TASK FORCE DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING
+   BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT THE USE OF THE INFORMATION
+   HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
+   MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
+
+Acknowledgement
+
+   Funding for the RFC Editor function is currently provided by the
+   Internet Society.
+
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