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The Tunnel-Protocol HTTP Header FieldUnifyTechnology DriveNottinghamNG9 1LAUKandrew.hutton@unify.comGoogle747 6th Ave SKirklandWA98033USjustin@uberti.nameMozilla331 E Evelyn StreetMountain ViewCA94041USmartin.thomson@gmail.com
Applications
HTTPHTTP CONNECTFirewallHTTP proxy
This specification allows HTTP CONNECT requests to indicate what
protocol will be used within the tunnel once established, using the
Tunnel-Protocol header field.
Discussion of this draft takes place on the HTTPBIS working group mailing list
(ietf-http-wg@w3.org), which is archived at .
Working Group information can be found at
and ; source code and issues
list for this draft can be found at
.
The HTTP CONNECT method ()
requests that the recipient establish a tunnel to the identified origin
server and thereafter forward packets, in both directions, until the
tunnel is closed. Such tunnels are commonly used to create end-to-end
virtual connections, through one or more proxies.
The HTTP Tunnel-Protocol header field identifies the protocol that will
be spoken within the tunnel, using the Application Layer Protocol
Negotiation identifier (ALPN, ).
When the CONNECT method is used to establish a tunnel, the
Tunnel-Protocol header field can be used to identify the protocol that
the client intends to use with that tunnel. For a tunnel that is then
secured using TLS, the header field
carries the same application protocol label as will be carried within
the TLS handshake. If there are multiple possible application
protocols, all of those application protocols are indicated.
The Tunnel-Protocol header field carries an indication of client intent
only. In TLS, the final choice of application protocol is made by the
server from the set of choices presented by the client. Other protocols
could negotiate protocols differently.
Proxies do not implement the tunneled protocol, though they might choose
to make policy decisions based on the value of the header field. For
example, a proxy could use the application protocol to select
appropriate traffic prioritization.
The key words “MUST”, “MUST NOT”, “REQUIRED”, “SHALL”, “SHALL NOT”,
“SHOULD”, “SHOULD NOT”, “RECOMMENDED”, “MAY”, and “OPTIONAL” in this
document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119.
Clients include the Tunnel-Protocol header field in an HTTP CONNECT
request to indicate the application layer protocol that will be used within
the tunnel, or the set of protocols that might be used within the
tunnel.
Valid values for the protocol field are taken from the
“Application-Layer Protocol Negotiation (ALPN) Protocol ID” registry
()
established by .
The ABNF (Augmented Backus-Naur Form) syntax for the Tunnel-Protocol
header field is given below. It is based on the Generic Grammar
defined in .
ALPN protocol names are octet sequences with no additional constraints
on format. Octets not allowed in tokens () MUST be percent-encoded as per . Consequently, the octet
representing the percent character “%” (hex 25) MUST be
percent-encoded as well.
In order to have precisely one way to represent any ALPN protocol
name, the following additional constraints apply:
Octets in the ALPN protocol MUST NOT be percent-encoded if they
are valid token characters except “%”, and
When using percent-encoding, uppercase hex digits MUST be used.
With these constraints, recipients can apply simple string comparison
to match protocol identifiers.
For example:
CONNECT www.example.com HTTP/1.1
Host: www.example.com
Tunnel-Protocol: h2, http%2F1.1
HTTP header fields are registered within the “Message Headers” registry
maintained at . This
document defines and registers the Tunnel-Protocol header field,
according to as follows:
Tunnel-Protocol
http
Standard
IETF (iesg@ietf.org) – Internet Engineering Task Force
In case of using HTTP CONNECT to a TURN server (“Traversal Using Relays
around NAT”, ) the security considerations of
apply. It states that
there “are significant risks in establishing a tunnel to arbitrary
servers, particularly when the destination is a well-known or reserved
TCP port that is not intended for Web traffic. Proxies that support
CONNECT SHOULD restrict its use to a limited set of known ports or a
configurable whitelist of safe request targets.”
The Tunnel-Protocol header field described in this document is an
OPTIONAL header field. Clients and HTTP proxies could choose to not support
the header and therefore fail to provide it, or ignore it when
present. If the header is not available or ignored, a proxy cannot
identify the purpose of the tunnel and use this as input to any
authorization decision regarding the tunnel. This is indistinguishable
from the case where either client or proxy does not support the
Tunnel-Protocol header field.
The value of the Tunnel-Protocol header field could be falsified by a
client. If the data being sent through the tunnel is encrypted (for
example, with TLS), then the proxy might
not be able to directly inspect the data to verify that the claimed
protocol is the one which is actually being used, though a proxy might
be able to perform traffic analysis . A proxy
therefore cannot rely on the value of the Tunnel-Protocol header field
as a policy input in all cases.
&RFC2119;
&RFC3864;
&RFC3986;
&RFC7230;
&RFC7231;
&RFC7301;
&RFC5246;
&RFC5766;
Website Users by TLS Traffic Analysis: New Attacks and Effective
Countermeasures, Revision 1