Internet DRAFT - draft-lee-sdch-spec

draft-lee-sdch-spec







Network Working Group                                          J. Butler
Internet-Draft
Intended status: Informational                                    W. Lee
Expires: May 1, 2017
                                                              B. McQuade

                                                               K. Mixter
                                                        October 28, 2016


         A Proposal for Shared Dictionary Compression over HTTP
                         draft-lee-sdch-spec-00

Abstract

   This paper proposes an HTTP/1.1-compatible extension that supports
   inter-response data compression by means of a reference dictionary
   shared between user agent and server.

Status of This Memo

   This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
   provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.

   Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
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   This Internet-Draft will expire on May 1, 2017.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2016 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
   document authors.  All rights reserved.

   This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
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   publication of this document.  Please review these documents
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   to this document.  Code Components extracted from this document must
   include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of



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   the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
   described in the Simplified BSD License.

1.  Introduction

   In order to reduce payload size, HTTP/1.1 supports response
   compression via the Accept-Encoding and Content-Encoding headers.
   The most commonly used HTTP response compression encoding is gzip,
   which compresses data that is repeated within a given response.
   However, HTTP/1.1 does not provide a mechanism for compressing data
   that is repeated between responses.  A different class of encoding
   technique, known as delta encoding, has proven effective at
   compressing inter-response data.

   Previous efforts to extend HTTP/1.1 to support delta compression have
   focused on encoding an HTTP response as a delta of a previous version
   of that response.  One such approach is discussed in RFC 3229 "Delta
   encoding in HTTP" [RFC3229].  While RFC 3229 is effective at reducing
   payload size for many types of resources, it may not be suitable for
   certain classes of responses.

   Specifically, under RFC 3229, deltas can only be applied to responses
   originating from the same URL, and the means of identifying the
   instance to delta "from" is by a Last-Modified timestamp or entity-
   tag.  This makes RFC 3229 unsuitable for compressing dynamically
   generated responses to a given URL with varying query parameters
   (e.g. a search results page), since these types of responses are
   difficult to identify uniquely using entity tags or last modified
   timestamps.  Content hashes can be used, but false positives are
   possible.  Also, storing all previous responses on the server may not
   be practical.

2.  Proposal: Shared Dictionary Compression over HTTP

   Existing techniques compress each response in isolation, and so
   cannot take advantage of cross-payload redundancy.  For example,
   retrieving a set of HTML pages with the same header, footer, inlined
   JavaScript and CSS requires the retransmission of the same data
   multiple times.  This paper proposes a compression technique that
   leverages this cross-payload redundancy.

   In this proposal, a dictionary is a file downloaded by the user agent
   from the server that contains strings which are likely to appear in
   subsequent HTTP responses.  In the case described above, if the
   header, footer, JavaScript and CSS are stored in a dictionary
   possessed by both user agent and server, the server can substitute
   these elements with references to the dictionary, and the user agent
   can reconstruct the original page from these references.  By



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   substituting dictionary references for repeated elements in HTTP
   responses, the payload size can be reduced.

   If either the user agent or the server does not support the
   extension, then ordinary HTTP responses are served.

   If both the user agent and the server support the extension but the
   user agent does not have an applicable dictionary (as described in
   detail below), the server responds with an ordinary HTTP response
   that includes a header advertising the location of a relevant
   dictionary.  This dictionary can be retrieved out-of-band by the user
   agent.

   If both the user agent and the server support the extension and the
   user agent has an applicable dictionary, then each HTTP response
   includes references to strings in the dictionary, rather than
   repeating those strings in the response.  The references require
   fewer bytes to encode than the strings themselves, reducing the
   payload size.

   The HTTP header-based protocol for negotiating the presence of
   dictionaries on user agent and server is referred to in this proposal
   as the SDCH protocol.  The compression scheme based on a particular
   dictionary shared between user agent and server is referred to as the
   SDCH encoding, and is built upon the VCDIFF compression data format
   [RFC3284].

3.  Syntax

   The grammar descriptions in the sections that follow depend on the
   following syntax: DIGIT (decimal digit), BASE64URLDIGIT (alphanumeric
   digit or "-" or "_"), PAYLOADBYTE (a byte), token (informally, a
   sequence of non-special, non-white space characters), rest-of-line
   (informally, a sequence of characters not including carriage return
   or line-feed).  In the grammar below, HTTP_url, abs_path, and query
   are defined in RFC 7230 [RFC7230].

   header = attr ":" value "\n"
   attr = token
   value = rest-of-line
   dictionary-client-id = 1*BASE64URLDIGIT
   dictionary-server-id = 1*BASE64URLDIGIT
   payload = 1*PAYLOADBYTE
   vcdiff-payload = 1*PAYLOADBYTE
   partial-url = HTTP_url | abs_path [ "?" query ]

   The attribute names (attr) are case-insensitive.  White space is
   permitted between tokens.



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4.  Dictionary Description

4.1.  General

   In the proposed protocol, a dictionary can only be used with a
   limited set of URLs and for a limited duration of time, referred to
   as its scope and lifetime, respectively.  A dictionary is composed of
   the data used by the compression algorithm, known as the payload, as
   well as metadata describing its scope and lifetime.  The scope is
   specified by a domain attribute and path attribute that are patterned
   after the same named attributes from the HTTP State Management
   Specification [RFC2965].

4.2.  Syntax of Dictionary Metadata

   The syntax of dictionary metadata is as follows:

   dictionary-metadata = 1*dictionary-header "\n"
   dictionary-header = "domain" ":" value "\n"
   | "path" ":" value "\n"
   | "path-equals" ":" value "\n"
   | "format-version" ":" value "\n"
   | "max-age" ":" value "\n"
   | "port" ":" <"> portlist <"> "\n"
   portlist = 1#portnum
   portnum = 1*DIGIT

   A complete dictionary definition then has this format: n dictionary-
   definition = dictionary-metadata payload

   Informally, the metadata for a dictionary is a series of headers,
   similar in form to HTTP headers, terminated by an empty line.  The
   dictionary payload begins immediately after this blank line.

   The valid dictionary header identifiers are described below:

   o  Domain: domain.

   Required.  Indicates the domain to which the dictionary applies.  The
   domain specification must explicitly start with a dot.  For example,
   a dictionary with the domain specification ".google.com" may be used
   to compress a response served from the host name www.google.com, but
   not used to compress a response served from the host name
   www.gmail.com.  Only printable ASCII characters are permitted in the
   domain value.  International Domain Names must be specified using
   IDNA.

   o  Path: path.



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   Optional.  Indicates the set of URL paths for which this dictionary
   is valid.  If unspecified, the dictionary applies to all paths within
   the given domain.

   o  Path-equals: path.

   Optional.  Indicates the exact URL path for which this dictionary is
   valid.  If both "path" and "path-equals" are specified, the
   dictionary applies only to those URLs which satisfy both criteria.

   o  Format-version: version.

   Optional.  Indicates the version of the dictionary payload.  If
   unspecified, the format version defaults to "1.0".  Currently, the
   only acceptable value is "1.0".

   o  Max-age: delta-seconds.

   Optional.  Indicates the amount of time that a dictionary can be
   advertised to the server by the user agent, relative to the time it
   was downloaded.  If unspecified, the default is 30 days from the time
   the dictionary was downloaded by the user agent.  * Port: port list.
   Optional.  Indicates the comma-separated list of ports to which this
   dictionary applies.  If unspecified, the dictionary applies to all
   ports.

   Like HTTP headers, dictionary header identifiers are case-
   insensitive.  Unknown headers will be ignored by the user agent,
   allowing other headers to be added in the future.

4.3.  Dictionary Scope

   The specific rules of when a dictionary can be applied to a URL, i.e.
   that define its scope, are modeled after the rules for cookie
   scoping.  The term "domain-match" is defined in RFC 2965.  We define
   path-matching as follows For two strings that represent paths, P1 and
   P2, P1 path-matches P2 if either:

   1.  P2 is equal to P1

   2.  P2 is a prefix of P1 and either the final character in P2 is "/"
       or the character following P2 in P1 is "/".

   For example, "/tec/waldo" path-matches "/tec", "/tec/", and "/tec/
   waldo", but does not path-match "/tec/wal".






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   Given these definitions of domain-match and path-match, a request URL
   falls within a dictionary's scope exactly when all of the following
   are true:

   1.  The request URL's host name domain-matches the Domain attribute
       of the dictionary.

   2.  If the dictionary has a Port attribute, the request port is one
       of the ports listed in the Port attribute.

   3.  The request URL path-matches the path attribute of the
       dictionary.

   4.  The request URL's scheme matches the scheme of the dictionary.

   If a URL falls within a dictionary's scope, the dictionary is said to
   "apply" to the URL.

4.4.  Dictionary Identifier

   In communications between user agent and server, a dictionary is
   identified by the first 96 bits of the SHA-256 digest [RFC6234] of a
   dictionary's metadata and payload (see dictionary-definition above)
   exactly as it is received by the user agent from the server.  Both
   user agent and server compute this identifier independently, based on
   the metadata and the payload of the dictionary.  This digest should
   be unique within a dictionary's scope (domain and path) in order to
   prevent dictionary identifier collisions.

   The digest serves not only as an identifier but also as a safeguard
   against attempts to maliciously intercept or otherwise modify
   dictionary contents, since a compromised dictionary will hash to a
   different identifier and the server will not recognize it.  The user
   agent identifier for a dictionary is defined as the URL-safe base64
   encoding (as described in RFC 3548, section 4 [RFC3548] of the first
   48 bits (bits 0..47) of the dictionary's SHA-256 digest.  The server
   identifier for a dictionary is the URL-safe base64 encoding of the
   second 48 bits (bits 48..95).  When identifying a dictionary to the
   server, the user agent uses the user agent identifier, and similarly,
   when identifying a dictionary to the user agent, the server uses the
   server identifier.  Note that both user agent and server have the
   entire dictionary and can thus compute both identifiers for the
   dictionary.

   As a consequence of this scheme, dictionaries do not need to be
   explicitly named by site maintainers, as the protocol avoids
   identifying them in any way other than the above digest-generated
   identifiers.



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4.5.  Differences between Dictionaries and Cookies

   Dictionaries are similar to cookies in that they allow sharing of
   state over HTTP.  Thus, we have modeled dictionaries after cookies,
   as described in RFC 2965.  However, because dictionaries are
   typically larger than cookies, embedding a dictionary in the response
   would increase latency of the response.  Thus a dictionary is always
   sent as a separate HTTP response (unlike a cookie which is included
   in a Set-Cookie header of any HTTP response).  The Get-Dictionary
   HTTP response header is used to tell the user agent that it should
   fetch a dictionary separately for use in future requests.

   Likewise, rather than including the dictionary contents in the HTTP
   request headers (like a cookie in the Cookie header), dictionary
   identifiers (described above) are used to advertise available
   dictionaries in HTTP requests from the user agent to the server.

5.  User Agent / Server Interaction Description

5.1.  User Agent Role in HTTP Request Generation

   The user agent:

   1.  Advertises support for the proposed protocol by adding the "sdch"
       token to the Accept-Encoding header of HTTP requests.

   2.  Advertises any dictionaries it possesses that apply to the URL
       being requested (per the scoping rules above) in the Avail-
       Dictionary request header.

   The Avail-Dictionary header syntax is as follows: avail-dictionary-
   header = "Avail-Dictionary" ":" 1#dictionary-client where dictionary-
   client-id is the user agent identifier part for the dictionary based
   on the SHA-256 digest as described above.  The value of this header
   is informally a comma separated list of user agent dictionary
   identifiers.

   The user agent must advertise every dictionary it has cached that
   applies to the requested URL.  It is only the presence of the
   dictionary identifier in this header that indicates to the server
   that the user agent possesses and therefore does not need to download
   the dictionary.  Since the user agent must advertise every dictionary
   it has, it is the site maintainer's responsibility to avoid making
   too many dictionaries available at a given time.  Advertising many
   dictionaries in this header can counteract the benefits of
   compression.





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   Note that for each individual request the user agent has discretion
   over whether or not to add "sdch" Accept-Encoding token and the
   Avail-Dictionary header.  Since some responses, such as image data,
   are unlikely to benefit from dictionary compression, the user agent
   can reduce the size of its requests by not sending this token and
   header.  The user agent may decide whether or not to add these
   headers based on file extensions in URLs or the context of the
   request.  For instance, the user agent may choose to not advertise
   SDCH for URLs referenced in IMG elements.

5.2.  Server Role in HTTP Response Generation

   When a server that supports the extension receives a request that
   indicates that the user agent supports the protocol (e.g. the "sdch"
   token is present in the Accept-Encoding request header), two
   independent decisions must be made.  The server must decide: 1. if it
   wants to send an encoded response.  2. if it wants to inform the user
   agent about additional dictionaries it can download and use in the
   future.

   The server may return an encoded response only if all of the
   following are true: 1.  The Accept-Encoding request header contains
   the "sdch" token.  2.  The server can send a response compressed with
   a dictionary whose dictionary-client-id is in the Avail-Dictionary
   request header.

   A server may return a response that is not encoded even if it
   recognizes a dictionary advertised by the user agent.  If the server
   decides to not use SDCH encoding when a Avail-Dictionary header is
   present, it must include a specific HTTP header X-SDCH-Encoding with
   value "0" in the response.  The syntax of the X-SDCH-Encoding header
   is:

   sdch-not-used-header = "X-SDCH-Encoding" ":" "0"

   The server indicates that an HTTP response is encoded by inserting
   the token "sdch" into the Content-Encoding header of the HTTP
   response.

   A compatible server may instruct a compatible user agent to download
   one or more new dictionaries by including the Get-Dictionary header
   in the HTTP response.  The server may advertise a Get-Dictionary
   header even if the response is not encoded.  The syntax of the Get-
   Dictionary header is: get-dictionary-header = "Get-Dictionary" ":"
   1#partial-url where partial-url is either a complete URL, or just the
   absolute URL path (in which case the scheme, host, and port of the
   originating server would be used when requesting the dictionary).  If
   a complete URL is provided, it must have the same scheme, host, and



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   port as the originating server.  The Content-Type header of
   dictionary responses must be application/x-sdch-dictionary.  The
   value in the get dictionary header is a comma-separated list of
   partial-url elements.

   The server must not advertise a dictionary with a dictionary-client-
   id that the user agent has listed in the Avail-Dictionary header.

   The server may use SDCH compression with a dictionary that the user
   agent has advertised and also include a Get-Dictionary header for a
   different dictionary that the user agent has not advertised.

   The server must prevent SDCH-encoded responses from being cached by
   intermediate proxies.  See the section below on proxy caching for
   additional details.

   The server should limit the number of active dictionaries at any one
   time, by using well-scoped dictionaries.  A server that has many
   active dictionaries with overlapping scope will cause user agents to
   generate a very long Avail-Dictionary header, the overhead of which
   can counteract the benefits of SDCH compression.

   The server may decide to precompute and cache SDCH-encoded responses
   if a given SDCH-encoded response will be served multiple times (e.g.
   for static content).

   The server may apply multiple Content-Encodings to the response,
   (e.g. sdch and gzip) in which case subsequent encoding tokens are
   appended to the Content-Encoding header, per the HTTP/1.1 RFC section
   14.11.

5.3.  User Agent Role in HTTP Response Handling

   An SDCH-compatible user agent must inspect the Content-Encoding HTTP
   response header to determine if the response is SDCH-encoded.  If the
   Content-Encoding includes the "sdch" token, the user agent must
   perform SDCH decompression on the response.

   If the HTTP response includes a Get-Dictionary header, the user agent
   must verify that the partial-url specified refers to the same server
   that generated the response.  If so, the user agent may download the
   dictionary at the given URL.

   There are two different URLs to consider when downloading and storing
   a dictionary.  The referer URL is the URL of the request that
   resulted in the server responding with a Get-Dictionary header.

   The dictionary URL is defined as follows:



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   1.  If the partial-url is a complete URL, the dictionary URL is the
       partial-url.

   2.  If the partial-url is just a path URL, the dictionary URL is
       generated from the scheme and host name of the referrer URL and
       the path in the partial-url.

   The user agent may retrieve a dictionary if the origin of the
   dictionary matches the origin of the referrer.  HTTP redirects may
   only be followed if the origin matches as well.

   Upon retrieving the dictionary, the user agent must validate the
   dictionary.  Here again, the validation rules are modeled after the
   rules for when a user agent can accept an HTTP cookie.  A dictionary
   is invalid and must not be stored if any of the following are true:

   1.  The dictionary has no Domain attribute.

   2.  The effective host name that derives from the referrer URL host
       name does not domain-match the Domain attribute.

   3.  The Domain attribute is a top level domain.

   4.  The referrer URL host is a host domain name (not IP address) and
       has the form HD, where D is the value of the Domain attribute,
       and H is a string that contains one or more dots.

   5.  If the dictionary has a Port attribute and the referrer URL's
       port was not in the list.

   If the dictionary is valid and user agent decides to store the
   dictionary, the scheme of the dictionary URL should also be stored
   along with dictionary.

5.4.  SDCH-Encoded Response Body

   An SDCH-encoded response starts with the dictionary-server-id used to
   compress the response.  The syntax of the SDCH-encoded response is:
   dictionary-compression-response = dictionary-server-id "\0" vcdiff-
   payload

6.  Examples

   For the purpose of these examples, assume the following dictionaries
   exist on the server and can be downloaded from the following URLs:

   "Search results" dictionary




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   o  domain: .google.com

   o  path: /search

   o  user agent ID: TWFuIGlz

   o  server ID: JOWk0d2N

   o  download location: /dictionaries/search_dict

   "Help pages" dictionary

   o  domain: .google.com

   o  path: /

   o  user agent ID: GVhc3V48

   o  server ID: O9d2_m3-

   o  download location: /dictionaries/help_dict

   Note that the dictionary identifier consists of two parts: user agent
   ID and the server ID.  Most of the detail of the request and response
   headers has been omitted.

6.1.  Example 1: Initial Interaction, User Agent has No Dictionaries

   1.  user agent's request

   GET /search?q=sprouts HTTP/1.1
   Host: www.google.com
   Accept-Encoding: sdch, gzip

   1.  server's response

   HTTP/1.1 200 OK
   Content-type: text/html
   Content-Encoding: gzip
   Get-Dictionary: /dictionaries/search_dict, /dictionaries/help_dict
   Cache-Control: private

   Note that the response returned by the server does NOT use SDCH
   encoding, since the user agent does not have a dictionary.  The
   server simply provides the locations of the dictionaries for future
   use.  The user agent may choose to retrieve one or both dictionaries
   separately.




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6.2.  Example 2: User Agent Requests the Dictionary

   1.  user agent's request

   GET /dictionaries/search_dict HTTP/1.1
   Host: www.google.com
   Accept-Encoding: sdch, gzip

   1.  server's response

   HTTP/1.1 200 OK
   Content-type: application/x-sdch-dictionary
   Content-Encoding: gzip

   Domain: .google.com
   Path: /search
   Format-version: 1.0

   ...dictionary contents...

   Upon receiving this response, the user agent computes the digest of
   the dictionary and determines the user agent ID is TWFuIGlz and the
   server ID is JOWk0d2N.

6.3.  Example 3: User Requests Page AND User Agent Has Already
      Downloaded

   the Dictionary

   1.  user agent's request

   GET /search&q=brussel+sprouts HTTP/1.1
   Host: www.google.com
   Accept-Encoding: sdch, gzip
   Avail-Dictionary: TWFuIGlz

   1.  server's response

   HTTP/1.1 200 OK
   Content-type: text/html
   Content-Encoding: sdch, gzip
   Get-Dictionary: /dictionaries/help_dict
   Cache-Control: private

   JOWk0d2N<NUL>...VCDIFFed response...
   (note that the response shown to the left the result of gzip
   decompression)




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   The server has properly identified the dictionary using its server ID
   and the user agent can confirm that the second 48 bits of the SHA-256
   digest of the dictionary match its computation.  It can then
   decompress the VCDIFF response using this dictionary.  Even though
   the "search results" dictionary was used to decompress the response,
   the server has chosen to indicate another dictionary could be
   requested by the user agent from http://www.google.com/dictionaries/
   help_dict.  This dictionary must be different than the "search
   results" dictionary as the server must never request the user agent
   download a dictionary it knows the user agent already has.  Let's
   assume the user agent decides to download this dictionary.

6.4.  Example 4: User Requests with Multiple Dictionaries

   1.  user agent's request

   GET /search&q=brussels HTTP/1.1
   Host: www.google.com
   Accept-Encoding: sdch, gzip
   Avail-Dictionary: GVhc3V48,TWFuIGlz

   1.  server's response

   HTTP/1.1 200 OK
   Content-type: text/html
   Content-Encoding: sdch, gzip
   Cache-Control: private

   JOWk0d2N<NUL>...VCDIFFed response...  (note that the response shown
   to the left the result of gzip decompression)

   The user agent advertises that it has already downloaded two
   dictionaries that apply.  The server may compress the response with
   either dictionary.  As the server has no other dictionaries that
   apply to the request, it does not advertise any dictionaries in its
   response.

7.  Implementation Considerations

7.1.  Implementation Limits

   There are practical limitations to the number and size of the
   dictionaries a user agent can store.  It is suggested that general
   use, non-mobile user agents should have the following minimum
   capabilities:

   o  At least 300 dictionaries stored




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   o  At least 100KB of payload per dictionary

   o  At least 10MB of total dictionary contents

   o  At least 20 dictionaries stored per domain

7.2.  Dictionary Downloading

   The user agent always has the choice of whether or not to download a
   dictionary.  It is recommended that the user agent be implemented
   with sufficient state to avoid downloading too many dictionaries from
   the same server.  A malfunctioning server may also request the user
   agent continually download the same dictionary.  One simple method to
   avoid both of these possibilities is for the user agent to rate-limit
   downloading dictionaries from the same domain.

   When the user agent receives a response with a Get-Dictionary header
   with dictionary download URLs that it may fetch, it should perform
   the dictionary downloads in the background.  This is possible as the
   dictionary to be downloaded is guaranteed to not be needed to
   decompress the response with the Get-Dictionary header.  The user
   agent should be careful to abort background dictionary downloads that
   do not complete in a reasonable amount of time.

7.3.  Data Integrity

   If the dictionaries are tied to individual users or specific user
   actions, HTTP may leak this information to passive attacker by
   allowing the Get-Dictionary info to be seen.  When using HTTPS, the
   same risk is prevented in the design document since Get-Dictionary
   URLs are required to be same-origin as the response.

   However, Downloading dictionaries over HTTPS or advertising
   dictionaries over HTTPS might introduce new security risks.

   TODO: add some examples.  For example, SDCH-over-HTTPS subject to
   compression oracle attacks similar to CRIME/BREACH with the
   difference that the compression context is not supplied by the
   attacker.  If an attacker had the contents of a dictionary, there is
   a theoretical possibility where a server sends a static response
   XOR'ed with user-provided data.  The Attacker can provide data which
   reduced the size of the response when XOR'ed with the static
   response, the attacker may then be able to determine the contents of
   the static response.

   The protocol needs to ensure that the content as decompressed by the
   user agent with a given dictionary is identical to the server's




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   originally intended content.  The three areas that can cause a data
   integrity problem are discussed below.

7.3.1.  Data tampered by Proxy

   We have found incorrectly implemented proxies which tamper with an
   SDCH response and make the response unable to be decompressed to the
   server's originally intended content.  The tampering may not be
   detected in the SDCH encoding itself if the proxy makes SDCH content
   look like non-SDCH content, for instance, by stripping the 'sdch'
   token from the content-encoding header of the response or by adding
   additional encodings (like gzip) on top of the SDCH and gzipped
   response without making the Content-Encoding header match.  In order
   to detect when this occurs, the HTTP header X-SDCH-Encoding must be
   added to the response by the server to inform the client that the
   response was originally not SDCH encoded by the server.  Should the
   user agent advertise SDCH capability in the request but receive a
   non-SDCH encoded response without the X-SDCH-Encoding header, it
   suggests that the response was tampered by a proxy.  The user agent
   may then take action to avoid using SDCH in the future.

7.3.2.  Dictionary mismatch

   When a dictionary information is exchanged between user agent and
   server, it is necessary to ensure that the dictionary identifiers are
   completely unambiguous, or the decompressed result may differ from
   the original content.  To address this issue, SDCH uses the first 96
   bits of the SHA-256 digest of a dictionary's metadata and payload to
   create the dictionary identifiers used by the user agent and server
   to avoid ambiguity.  (Please refer to the section "Dictionaries
   description" above for details.)

7.3.3.  Data corruption / malicious attacks

   While this issue is not specific to SDCH, it can be exacerbated due
   to the nature of the stateful compression.  For example, if the
   dictionary is corrupted or maliciously modified in a persistent on-
   disk cache, all subsequent responses decoded by using this dictionary
   will be corrupt.  For this reason, the user agent and server should
   revalidate the dictionaries' integrity when they are loaded from non-
   volatile storage.

   Other issues like data corruption during transmission in the encoded
   payload could have much bigger adverse effect than that in the plain
   text.  TCP provides a checksum, but it cannot detect some errors like
   swapped bytes.  To address this issue, SDCH includes an Adler32
   checksum [RFC1950] in the encoded data shards.  (Please refer to
   appendix "VCDIFF Encoding Format and SDCH" for details.)



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8.  Response Caching

8.1.  User Agent Cache

   The user agent should honor HTTP caching directives (Cache-Control,
   Expires,...) for caching responses, whether or not the responses are
   SDCH-encoded.  When caching the SDCH-encoded responses, the SDCH-
   encoded responses should be decoded before being written to the
   cache.  If this is not possible, the user agent may cache SDCH-
   encoded responses, unless the HTTP response headers indicate that the
   response is not cacheable.  In this case, an SDCH-encoded cache entry
   should be invalidated when (1) the dictionary used to encode that
   response is deleted from the dictionary store, (2) the SDCH
   decompression user agent is uninstalled (if it is implemented as a
   browser add-on), or (3) the SDCH capable user agent is disabled.

   Intermediate Caches

   The server should use HTTP cache headers that prevent non-SDCH-aware
   intermediate cache servers from storing the encoded contents.  The
   cache directive "Cache-Control: private" can be used for this
   purpose.

   If the compressed response can be cached by proxy caches, the server
   must include the HTTP header "Vary: Accept-Encoding, Avail-
   Dictionary" to alert proxies about sending the cached content only to
   the user agents who can decode it.  Note that some proxies may not
   respect the Vary header, in which case non-SDCH-capable user agents
   would end up downloading SDCH-encoded responses.  Thus, we recommend
   that SDCH-encoded responses not be cacheable by intermediate proxies
   unless there is a very compelling reason.  Further, "Vary: Accept-
   Encoding, Avail-Dictionary" will not match requests unless these
   headers match exactly.

   A proxy cache may provide one of three levels of support for caching
   SDCH-encoded objects.

   1.  No support - Never cache any response if the header Vary is
       present.

   2.  Basic support - The proxy cache only serves cached SDCH-encoded
       content if all cache serving conditions are satisfied and the
       values of the HTTP headers specified in the Vary header of the
       cached content exactly match the corresponding headers in the
       HTTP request.

   3.  Full support - The proxy should understand the SDCH protocol,
       should know what dictionary is used to encode/decode the



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       response, and should be able to download advertised dictionaries.
       The cache needs to have both SDCH user agent and server logic in
       it.  The server should store the SDCH decoded responses in its
       cache.

   Dictionary Caching User Agent Cache

   As dictionary payloads may be large compared to the size of
   individual HTTP responses, in order to maximize latency improvements
   and minimize the bandwidth overhead of downloading dictionaries, it
   is recommended that the user agent persistently store dictionaries in
   a dictionary cache (e.g. on disk).  It is suggested that the user
   agent implement a maximum limit on number of dictionaries stored per
   domain in order to avoid allowing one domain to force dictionaries
   for other domains out of the user agent's dictionary cache.  To
   implement a fixed maximum size cache it is recommended that the cache
   manager first evict the dictionaries that were least recently used
   for decoding.

   Ideally dictionaries will be stored in the same cache as HTTP
   responses and may be inspected and cleared by the user using existing
   user interfaces.  However, new support may be created to fulfill the
   need for the user agent to be able to quickly determine which
   dictionaries should be advertised for a given request.

   The user agent should be careful to validate that a dictionary
   matches its original identifier before being used for decompression
   to prevent malicious attacks on the dictionary cache.  The user agent
   may implicitly handle this by always recomputing the hash before
   advertising the dictionary.  However, to improve efficiency, the user
   agent may cache the original digest of the dictionary, advertise the
   dictionary with that digest, and then only for the dictionary
   selected by the server to encode the response, verify that the cached
   dictionary digest still matches the digest computed from the cached
   dictionary.

   The user agent must not evict dictionaries from its dictionary store
   that have been advertised in the Avail-Dictionary header of a HTTP
   request for which a response has not yet been returned.

   If a user agent downloads a dictionary which has the same identifier
   as another previously downloaded dictionary which are applicable to
   the same hosts, the user agent must be careful to either ignore the
   new dictionary or evict the old dictionary.  If the two dictionaries
   with the same identifier have exactly the same contents the choice is
   not important, however this indicates a server error as a server must
   never instruct the user agent to download a dictionary that was
   advertised by the user agent.  The user agent may want to avoid



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   downloading dictionaries from this server in the future as they may
   not be new and downloading unnecessary dictionaries can increase
   latency.

   Intermediate Caches

   The dictionary should be treated as a regular HTTP response by
   intermediate proxies.  Thus, the normal HTTP caching consideration
   for intermediate proxies should apply to the dictionary as well.

9.  Future Directions

   =====================

   As currently proposed, SDCH is not applicable to another case where
   differential compression would be beneficial: large files that change
   infrequently and in small ways, such as JavaScript and CSS files
   referenced by other HTML documents.

   TODO: Re-evaluate dictionary scoping rules, current approach that
   patterned after the same named attributes from the HTTP State
   Management Specification [RFC2965] may not be the best choice.

10.  Current Status and Updates

   For current information about the status of this proposal:
   https://groups.google.com/group/SDCH

11.  IANA Considerations

   This document makes no requests of IANA.

12.  Security Considerations

   Some security considerations are discussed in the data integrity
   section above, but the author anticipates further work to describe
   these.

13.  Acknowledgements

   The authors would like to acknowledge the support of Google, Inc. for
   the development of this work.  Technical editor: Harriett Hardman.
   Feedback and comments: Greg Badros, Chandra Chereddi, Darren Fisher,
   Ted Hardie, Ashu Jain, Ian Hickson, Othman Laraki, Jim Roskind, Ryan
   Sleevi, Lincoln Smith, Randy Smith, and Linus Upson.






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14.  Appendix: VCDIFF Encoding Format and SDCH

   Although the SDCH protocol is proposed so that it could be adapted
   for use with any differential-encoding format, it currently uses the
   VCDIFF encoding format.  This format was chosen because its
   definition is publicly available as the RFC 3284 draft standard.  The
   VCDIFF format is independent of the method used for finding the
   longest possible matches between the dictionary (source) data and the
   payload (target) data.

   An encoder and decoder for the VCDIFF format, intended for use with
   SDCH, has been released as open-source under the Apache license.
   This package is called "open-vcdiff".  It uses the Bentley/McIlroy
   technique for finding matches between the dictionary and target data.
   It conforms to the VCDIFF draft standard, with the following
   exceptions:

   Interleaved format

   The VCDIFF draft standard format divides each encoded delta window
   into three sections (data, instructions, and addresses), with the aim
   of improving compressibility of the encoded file using a secondary
   compressor such as gzip.  The drawback to this approach is that none
   of the target data can be reconstructed unless the entire delta
   window is available.  The delta window is received in packets over
   the network and it is desirable to be able to process its contents as
   they arrive.  In order to facilitate decoding a stream of packets
   from the network, we have modified the VCDIFF format so that it
   interleaves the data, instructions, and addresses instead of placing
   them in three separate sections.  Each instruction is followed by its
   size and then by an address or literal data.

   Adler32 checksum

   The format can be modified to include an Adler32 checksum [RFC1950]
   of the target window data.  If the checksum format is used, then bit
   2 (0x04, defined as VCD_CHECKSUM) of the Win_Indicator byte will be
   set, and the checksum will appear just after the "Length of addresses
   for COPYs" field and before the "Data section for ADDs and RUNs"
   section in the encoding.

   Version header byte (Header4)

   If either of the two enhancements described above is used, then the
   resulting format will not conform to the VCDIFF draft standard as
   described in RFC 3284.  In order to indicate this deviation from the
   standard, the fourth byte in the encoding (Header4, reserved for the
   VCDIFF version code) will be set to 0x53 (a capital "S" character in



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   ASCII.)  If neither enhancement is used, the fourth byte may be 0x00
   (a null character), the default value described in the standard.

   VCD_TARGET flag and target COPY instructions not allowed for SDCH

   The SDCH protocol is intended to produce a delta between static
   dictionary data and target data.  Secondary compression with gzip
   will be used to eliminate redundancy within the target data.  For
   this reason, when using VCDIFF for SDCH, the Win_Indicator flag
   should always include the VCD_SOURCE flag, never the VCD_TARGET flag.
   COPY instructions should only reference addresses within the source
   data, never within the previously decoded target.

   The Xdelta package (http://xdelta.org) produces a format based on
   VCDIFF, though not 100% compatible with the RFC draft standard.  That
   package has been released under the GNU General Public License.

15.  References

15.1.  Normative References

   [RFC2119]  Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
              Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997,
              <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2119>.

   [RFC7230]  Fielding, R., Ed. and J. Reschke, Ed., "Hypertext Transfer
              Protocol (HTTP/1.1): Message Syntax and Routing",
              RFC 7230, DOI 10.17487/RFC7230, June 2014,
              <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7230>.

15.2.  Informative References

   [RFC3284]  Korn, D., MacDonald, J., Mogul, J., and K. Vo, "The VCDIFF
              Generic Differencing and Compression Data Format",
              RFC 3284, DOI 10.17487/RFC3284, June 2002,
              <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3284>.

   [RFC3229]  Mogul, J., Krishnamurthy, B., Douglis, F., Feldmann, A.,
              Goland, Y., van Hoff, A., and D. Hellerstein, "Delta
              encoding in HTTP", RFC 3229, DOI 10.17487/RFC3229, January
              2002, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3229>.

   [RFC3929]  Hardie, T., "Alternative Decision Making Processes for
              Consensus-Blocked Decisions in the IETF", RFC 3929,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC3929, October 2004,
              <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3929>.




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   [RFC3548]  Josefsson, S., Ed., "The Base16, Base32, and Base64 Data
              Encodings", RFC 3548, DOI 10.17487/RFC3548, July 2003,
              <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3548>.

   [RFC2965]  Kristol, D. and L. Montulli, "HTTP State Management
              Mechanism", RFC 2965, DOI 10.17487/RFC2965, October 2000,
              <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2965>.

   [RFC1950]  Deutsch, P. and J-L. Gailly, "ZLIB Compressed Data Format
              Specification version 3.3", RFC 1950,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC1950, May 1996,
              <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc1950>.

   [RFC6234]  Eastlake 3rd, D. and T. Hansen, "US Secure Hash Algorithms
              (SHA and SHA-based HMAC and HKDF)", RFC 6234,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC6234, May 2011,
              <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6234>.

Authors' Addresses

   Jon Butler

   Email: jkbutler@google.com


   Wei-Hsin Lee

   Email: weihsinl@google.com


   Bryan McQuade

   Email: mcquade@google.com


   Kenneth Mixter

   Email: kmixter@google.com













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