Bugtraq mailing list archives
Re: base64
From: achurch () achurch org (Andrew Church)
Date: Thu, 25 Sep 2003 14:20:44 JST
On Wed, Sep 24, 2003 at 03:13:57PM -0400, MightyE wrote:I agree, I don't think it's unreasonable to reject improperly formatted messages.Take the low road catchall, and simply reject them as a matter of course.this runs counter to the maxim of Postel <http://www.postel.org/postel.html>: "Be liberal in what you accept, and conservative in what you send."
It depends how you interpret it. I'd interpret the rejection as being conservative on the sending side--leaving the data as is would violate _that_. I could see an argument for correcting malformed data where possible (e.g. cutting off all data after the first = sign), but that raises the question of how to know that you're transmitting the same content that the sender intended. Particularly in cases like this, where the standard is ambiguous, the only "safe" options with respect to preserving the content are to send the data on as is or reject it entirely, and in that case I think Postel's maxim would lean toward rejection; the "liberal" part is only for data you can accurately interpret. --Andrew Church achurch () achurch org http://achurch.org/
Current thread:
- Re: base64, (continued)
- Re: base64 Seth Breidbart (Sep 24)
- Re: base64 Alexander Ogol (Sep 23)
- Re: base64 Christian Vogel (Sep 24)
- Re: base64 David Wilson (Sep 24)
- Re: base64 der Mouse (Sep 24)
- Re: base64 Christian Vogel (Sep 24)
- Re: base64 Earl Hood (Sep 26)
- RE: base64 latte (Sep 23)
- Re: base64 Ilya Teterin (Sep 23)
- Re: base64 MightyE (Sep 24)
- Re: base64 Buck Huppmann (Sep 24)
- Re: base64 Andrew Church (Sep 25)
- Message not available
- Re: base64 MightyE (Sep 25)
- Re: base64 Bennett Todd (Sep 25)
- Re: base64 MightyE (Sep 25)
- Re: base64 Earl Hood (Sep 26)
- Re: base64 Bennett Todd (Sep 26)
- Re[2]: base64 3APA3A (Sep 26)
- RE: base64 Alun Jones (Sep 26)
- Re: base64 Bennett Todd (Sep 26)
- Re: base64 Buck Huppmann (Sep 24)