Session Initiation Protocol





Network Working Group                                     E. Burger, Ed.
Internet-Draft
Request for Comments: 4483                   Brooktrout Technology, Inc.
Expires:
Category: Standards Track                                     April 25, 2005                                 October 25, 2004 2006


                  A Mechanism for Content Indirection
             in Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) Messages
                draft-ietf-sip-content-indirect-mech-05

Status of this This Memo

   This document is specifies an Internet-Draft and is subject to all provisions
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   RFC 3668.

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   This Internet-Draft will expire on April 25, 2005. this memo is unlimited.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2004). (2006).

Abstract

   This document defines an extension to the URL MIME External-Body
   Access-Type to satisfy the content indirection requirements for SIP. the
   Session Initiation Protocol (SIP).  These extensions are aimed at
   allowing any MIME part in a SIP message to be referred to indirectly
   via a URI.






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Table of Contents

   1.   Terminology  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   2. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3 ....................................................2
   2. Terminology .....................................................3
   3.   Example Use Cases  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
     3.1 Case Examples ...............................................3
      3.1. Presence Notification  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
     3.2 ......................................4
      3.2. Document Sharing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5 ...........................................4
   4. Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6 ....................................................5
   5. Application of RFC2017 RFC 2017 to the Content Indirection Problem  .   7
     5.1 ......6
      5.1. Specifying support Support for content indirection . . . . . . . .   7
     5.2 Content Indirection .................6
      5.2. Mandatory support for HTTP URI . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
     5.3 .............................6
      5.3. Rejecting content indirection  . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
     5.4 Content Indirection ..............................7
      5.4. Specifying the location Location of the content Content via a URI . . . . .   8
     5.5 ...........7
      5.5. Marking indirect content optional  . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
     5.6 Indirect Content Optional ..........................7
      5.6. Specifying versioning information Versioning Information for the URI  . . . . . .   8
     5.7 ..............7
      5.7. Specifying the lifetime of the URI . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
     5.8 Lifetime ................................8
      5.8. Specifying the type of the indirect content  . . . . . . .   9
     5.9 Indirect Content ................8
      5.9. Specifying the size Size of the indirect content  . . . . . . .  10
     5.10 Indirect Content ................9
      5.10. Specifying the purpose Purpose of the indirect content . . . . .  10
     5.11 Indirect Content ............9
      5.11. Specifying multiple Multiple URIs for content indirection . . . .  10
     5.12 Content Indirection ..........9



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      5.12. Specifying a hash value Hash Value for the indirect content . . . .  11
     5.13 Indirect Content .........10
      5.13. Supplying additional comments Additional Comments about the indirect
            content  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  12
     5.14 Indirect
            Content ..................................................10
      5.14. Relationship to Call-Info, Error-Info, and
            Alert-Info Headers  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  12 .......................................11
   6. Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  12
     6.1 .......................................................11
      6.1. Single Content Indirection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  13
     6.2 ................................11
      6.2. Multipart MIME with Content Indirection  . . . . . . . . .  13 ...................12
   7. Security Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  14 ........................................12
   8.   IANA Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  16
   9. Contributions  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  16
   10. ..................................................14
   9. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  16
   11. ...............................................14
   10. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  17
   11.1 ....................................................15
      10.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  17
   11.2 .....................................15
      10.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  17
        Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  18
        Intellectual Property and Copyright Statements . . . . . . .  19














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1.  Terminology

   RFC 2119 [5] defines the key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED",
   "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY",
   and "OPTIONAL".

2.  Introduction

   The purpose of the Session Initiation Protocol [9] (SIP) is to
   create, modify, or terminate sessions with one or more participants.
   SIP messages, like HTTP, are syntactically composed of a start line,
   one or more headers, and an optional body.  Unlike HTTP, SIP is not
   designed as a general-purpose data transport protocol.

   There are numerous reasons why it might be desirable to indirectly specify the
   content of the SIP message body. body indirectly.  For bandwidth limited bandwidth-limited
   applications such as cellular wireless, indirection provides a means
   to annotate the (indirect) content with meta-data meta-data, which may be used
   by the recipient to determine whether or not to retrieve the content
   over the resource limited resource-limited link.

   It is also possible that the content size to be transferred might
   potentially overwhelm intermediate signaling proxies, thereby
   unnecessarily increasing network latency.  For time-sensitive SIP
   applications, this may be unacceptable.  Indirect content can remedy
   this by moving the transfer of this content out of the SIP signaling
   network and into a potentially separate data transfer channel.

   There may also be scenarios where the session related session-related data (body)
   that needs to be conveyed does not directly reside on the endpoint or
   User Agent.  In such scenarios, it is desirable to have a mechanism
   whereby the SIP message can contain an indirect reference to the
   desired content.  The receiving party would then use this indirect
   reference to retrieve the content via a non-SIP transfer channel such
   as HTTP, FTP, or LDAP.

   The purpose of content indirection is purely to provide an
   alternative transport mechanism for SIP MIME body parts.  With the
   exception of the transport mechanism, indirect body parts are
   equivalent, and should have the same treatment, as



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   equivalent to, and should have the same treatment as, in-line body
   parts.

   Previous attempts at solving the content indirection problem made use
   of the text/uri-list [6] MIME type.  While attractive for its
   simplicity (a list of URIs delimited by end-of-line markers), it
   failed to satisfy a number of the requirements for a more
   general-purpose general-
   purpose content indirection mechanism in SIP.  Most notably lacking
   is the ability to specify various attributes on a per-URI



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   These attributes might include version information, the MIME type of
   the referenced content, etc.

   In searching

   RFC 2017 defines a strong candidate for a replacement for the
   text/uri-list MIME type,
   RFC2017 defines a strong candidate.  RFC2017 type.  RFC 2017 [1] defines an extension to the
   message/external-body MIME type originally defined in RFC2046 [3].
   The extension that RFC2017 RFC 2017 makes is to allow allows a generic URI to specify the
   location of the content rather than protocol specific protocol-specific parameters for
   FTP, etc. etc., as originally defined in RFC2046.  While
   providing  Although it provides
   most of the functionality needed for a SIP content indirection
   mechanism, RFC2017 RFC 2017 by itself is not a complete solution.  This
   document specifies the usage of RFC2017 RFC 2017 necessary to fulfill the
   requirements outlined for content indirection.

   The requirements can be classified as applying either to the URI,
   which indirectly references the desired content, or to the content
   itself.  Where possible, existing MIME parameters and entity headers
   are used to satisfy those requirements.  MIME (Content-Type)
   parameters are the preferred manner of describing the URI URI, while
   entity headers are the preferred manner of describing the (indirect)
   content.  See RFC 2045 [2] for a description of most of these entity
   headers and MIME parameters.

2.  Terminology

   RFC 2119 [5] defines the keywords "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED",
   "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY",
   and "OPTIONAL".

3.  Example  Use Cases Case Examples

   There are several example users examples of using such a content indirection
   mechanism.  These are examples only and are not intended to limit the
   scope or applicability of the mechanism.

3.1








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3.1.  Presence Notification

   The information carried in a presence document could potentially
   exceed the recommended size for a SIP (NOTIFY) request, particularly
   if the document carries aggregated information from multiple
   endpoints.  In such a situation, it would be desirable to send the
   NOTIFY request with an indirect pointer to the presence document document,
   which could then be retrieved by, for example, HTTP.














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                Watcher                 Presence Server
                   |                           |
                   |         SUBSCRIBE         |
                   |-------------------------->|
                   |          200 OK           |
                   |<--------------------------|
                   |                           |
                   |          NOTIFY           |
                   |-------------------------->|
                   |          200 OK           |
                   |<--------------------------|
                   |                           |
                   |      NOTIFY (w/URI)       |
                   |<--------------------------|
                   |           200             |
                   |-------------------------->|
                   |                           |
                   |         HTTP GET          |
                   |-------------------------->|
                   |                           |
                   | application/cpim-pidf+xml |
                   |<--------------------------|
                   |                           |

   In this example, the presence server returns an HTTP URI pointing to
   a presence document on the presence server server, which the watcher can
   then fetch by using an HTTP GET.

3.2

3.2.  Document Sharing

   During an instant messaging conversation, a useful service is
   document sharing sharing, wherein one party sends an IM (MESSAGE request)
   with an indirect pointer to a document which that is meant to be rendered
   by the remote party.  Carrying such a document directly in the
   MESSAGE request is not appropriate for most documents.  Furthermore,
   the document to be shared may reside on a completely independent
   server from that of the originating party.





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                  UAC                  UAS         Web Server
                  (User Agent        (User Agent         |
                   Client)            Server)            |
                   |                    |                |
                   |   MESSAGE w/URI    |                |
                   |------------------->|                |
                   |        200         |                |
                   |<-------------------|                |
                   |                    |                |
                   |                    |    HTTP GET    |
                   |                    |--------------->|
                   |                    |   image/jpeg   |
                   |                    |<---------------|
                   |                    |                |

   In this example, a user UAC wishes to exchange a JPEG image that she
   has stored on her web server with another user UAS with whom she has an IM conversation
   with.
   conversation.  She intends to render the JPEG inline in the IM
   conversation.  The recipient of the MESSAGE request launches a an HTTP
   GET request to the web server to retrieve the JPEG image.

4.  Requirements

   o  It MUST be possible to specify the location of content via a URI.
      Such URIs MUST conform with RFC2396 [7] or its successors, such as
      [13]. [7].

   o  It MUST be possible to specify the length of the indirect content.

   o  It MUST be possible to specify the type of the indirect content.

   o  It MUST be possible to specify the disposition of each URI
      independently.

   o  It MUST be possible to label each URI to identify if and when the
      content referred to by that URI has changed.  Applications of this
      mechanism may send the same URI more than once.  The intention of
      this requirement is to allow the receiving party to determine if
      whether the content referenced by the URI has changed changed, without
      having to
      actually retrieve that content.  Example  Examples of ways the URI could
      be labeled include a sequence number, timestamp, and version number, etc.
      number.  When used with HTTP, the entity-tag (ETAG) mechanism mechanism, as
      defined in RFC2068 [4] [4], may be appropriate.  Note that we are not
      labeling not the URI itself, itself but the content to which the URI
      refers, and that the label is therefore effectively "metadata" of
      the content itself.

   o  It MUST be possible to specify the time span for which a given URI
      is valid.  This may or may not be the same as the lifetime for the



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      content itself.

   o  It MUST be possible for the UAC and the UAS to indicate support of
      this content indirection mechanism.  A fallback mechanism SHOULD
      be specified in the event that one of the parties is unable to
      support content indirection.




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   o  It MUST be possible for the UAC and UAS to negotiate the type of
      the indirect content when using the content indirection mechanism.

   o  It MUST be possible for the UAC and UAS to negotiate support for
      any URI scheme(s) scheme to be used in the content indirection mechanism.
      This is in addition to the ability to negotiate the content type.

   o  It SHOULD be possible to ensure the integrity and confidentiality
      of the URI when it is received by the remote party.

   o  It MUST be possible to process the content indirection without
      human intervention.

   o  It MUST allow for indirect transference of content in any SIP
      message that would otherwise carry that content as a body.

5.  Application of RFC2017 RFC 2017 to the Content Indirection Problem

   The following text describes the application of RFC2017 RFC 2017 to the
   requirements for content indirection.

5.1

5.1.  Specifying support Support for content indirection Content Indirection

   A UAC/UAS indicates support for content indirection by including the
   message/external-body MIME type in the Accept header.  The UAC/UAS
   MAY supply additional values in the Accept header to indicate the
   content types that it is willing to accept, either directly or
   through content indirection.  User-Agents supporting content
   indirection MUST support content indirection of the application/sdp
   MIME type.

   For example:

            Accept: message/external-body, image/*, application/sdp


5.2

5.2.  Mandatory support for HTTP URI

   Applications which that use this content indirection mechanism MUST support
   the HTTP URI scheme.  Additional URI schemes MAY be used, but a
   UAC/UAS MUST support receiving a HTTP URI for indirect content if it
   advertises support for content indirection.



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   The UAS MAY advertise alternate access schemes in the schemes
   parameter of the Contact header in the UAS response to the UAC's
   session establishment request (e.g., INVITE, SUBSCRIBE, etc.), SUBSCRIBE), as described
   in Application Interaction RFC 3840 [11].

5.3

5.3.  Rejecting content indirection Content Indirection

   If a UAS receives a SIP request which that contains a content indirection



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   payload,
   payload and the UAS cannot or does not wish to support such a content
   type, it MUST reject the request with a 415 Unsupported Media Type
   response as defined in section 21.4.13 of SIP [9] [9].  In particular,
   the UAC should note the absence of the message/external-body MIME
   type in the Accept header of this response to indicate that the UAS
   does not support content indirection, or the absence of the
   particular MIME type of the requested comment to indicate that the
   UAS does not support the particular media type.

5.4

5.4.  Specifying the location Location of the content Content via a URI

   The URI for the indirect content is specified in a "URI" parameter of
   the message/external-body MIME type.  An access-type parameter
   indicates that the external content is referenced by a URI.  HTTP URI
   specifications MUST conform to RFC2396 [7] or its successors [13]. RFC 2396 [7].

   For example:

            Content-Type: message/external-body; access-type="URL";
                URL="http://www.example.com/the-indirect-content"


5.5

5.5.  Marking indirect content optional Indirect Content Optional

   Some content is not critical to the context of the communication if
   there is a fetch or conversion failure.  The content indirection
   mechanism uses the Critical-Content mechanism described in RFC3459 RFC 3459
   [10].  In particular, if the UAS is unable to fetch or render an
   optional body part, then the server MUST NOT return an error to the
   UAC.

5.6

5.6.  Specifying versioning information Versioning Information for the URI

   In order to determine whether or not the content indirectly referenced by
   the URI has changed, a Content-ID entity header is used.  The syntax
   of this header is defined in RFC2045 RFC 2045 [2].  Changes in the underlying
   content referred to by a URI MUST result in a change in the Content-ID Content-
   ID associated with that URI.  Multiple SIP messages carrying URI URIs
   that refer to the same content SHOULD reuse the same Content-ID Content-ID, to
   allow the receiver to cache this content and  to avoid unnecessary
   retrievals.  The Content-ID is intended to be globally unique and



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   SHOULD be temporally unique across SIP dialogs.

   For example:





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            Content-ID: <4232423424@www.example.com>


5.7

5.7.  Specifying the lifetime of the URI Lifetime

   The URI supplied by in Content-Type header is not required to be
   accessible or valid for an indefinite period of time.  Rather, the
   supplier of the URI MUST specify the time period for which this URI
   is valid and accessible.  This is done through an "EXPIRATION"
   parameter of the Content-Type.  The format of this expiration
   parameter is a RFC1123 RFC 1123 date-time value.  This is further restricted
   in this application to use only GMT time, consistent with the Date:
   header in SIP.  This is a mandatory parameter.  Note that the
   date-time date-
   time value can range from minutes to days or even years.

   For example:

            Content-Type: message/external-body; expiration="Mon, 24
                          June 2002 09:00:00 GMT"



5.8

5.8.  Specifying the type of the indirect content Indirect Content

   To support existing SIP mechanisms for the negotiation of content
   types, a Content-Type entity header SHOULD be present in the entity
   (payload) itself.  If the protocol (scheme) of the URI supports its
   own content negotiation mechanisms (e.g. (e.g., HTTP), this header may be
   omitted.  The sender MUST however MUST, however, be prepared for the receiving
   party to reject content indirection if the receiver is unable to
   negotiate an appropriate MIME type by using the underlying protocol
   for the URI scheme.

   For example:

            Content-Type: message/external-body; access-type="URL";
                expiration="Mon, 24 June 2002 09:00:00 GMT";
                URL="http://www.example.com/the-indirect-content"
            <CRLF>
            Content-Type: application/sdp
            Content-Disposition: session
            <CRLF>








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5.9         April 2006


5.9.  Specifying the size Size of the indirect content Indirect Content

   When known in advance, the size of the indirect content SHOULD be
   supplied via a size parameter on the Content-Type header.  This is an
   extension of RFC2017 RFC 2017 but is in line with other access types defined
   for the message/external-body MIME type in RFC2046. RFC 2046.  The content
   size is

   useful for the receiving party to make a determination about whether
   or not
   to retrieve the content.  As with directly supplied content, a UAS
   may return a 513 error response in the event that the content size is
   too large.  This is an optional parameter.

   For example:

            Content-Type: message/external-body; access-type="URL";
                expiration="Mon, 24 June 2002 09:00:00 GMT";
                URL="http://www.example.com/the-indirect-content";
                size=4123



5.10

5.10.  Specifying the purpose Purpose of the indirect content Indirect Content

   A Content-Disposition entity header MUST be present for all indirect
   content.

   For example:

            Content-Type: message/external-body; access-type="URL";
                expiration="Mon, 24 June 2002 09:00:00 GMT";
                URL="http://www.example.com/the-indirect-content"
            <CRLF>
            Content-Type: image/jpeg
            Content-Disposition: render



5.11

5.11.  Specifying multiple Multiple URIs for content indirection Content Indirection

   If there is a need to send multiple URIs for the purpose of content indirection, an
   appropriate multipart MIME type [3] should be used.  Each URI MUST be
   contained in a single entity.  Indirect content may be mixed with directly supplied
   directly-supplied content.  This is particularly useful with the
   multipart/alternative MIME type.

   NOTE: This specification does not change the meanings of the various
   multipart flavors, particularly multipart/related, as described in RFC2387
   RFC 2387 [12].






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   For example:

           MIME-Version: 1.0
           Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary=boundary42

           --boundary42
           Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

           The company announcement for June, 2002 follows:
           --boundary42
           Content-Type: message/external-body;
                access-type="URL";
                expiration="Mon, 24 June 2002 09:00:00 GMT";
                URL="http://www.example.com/announcements/07242002";
                size=4123

           Content-Type: text/html
           Content-Disposition: render

           --boundary42--



5.12

5.12.  Specifying a hash value Hash Value for the indirect content Indirect Content

   If the sender knows the specific content being referenced by the
   indirection, and if the sender wishes the recipient to be able to
   validate that this content has not been altered from that intended by
   the sender, the sender includes a SHA-1 [8] hash of the content.  If
   it is included, the hash is encoded by extending the MIME syntax [3]
   to include a "hash" parameter for the content type
   "message/external-body", the "message/
   external-body", whose value of which is a hexadecimal encoding of the hash.

   For example:

            Content-Type: message/external-body;
                access-type="URL";
                expiration="Mon, 24 June 2002 09:00:00 GMT";
                URL="http://www.example.com/the-indirect-content.au";
                size=52723;
                hash=10AB568E91245681AC1B
            <CRLF>
            Content-Disposition: render






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5.13

5.13.  Supplying additional comments Additional Comments about the indirect content Indirect Content

   One MAY use the Content-Description entity header to provide
   optional, freeform text to comment on the indirect content.  This
   text MAY be displayed to the end user but MUST NOT used by other
   elements to determine the disposition of the body.



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   For example:

            Content-Type: message/external-body;
                access-type="URL";
                expiration="Mon, 24 June 2002 09:00:00 GMT";
                URL="http://www.example.com/the-indirect-content";
                size=52723
            <CRLF>
            Content-Description: Multicast gaming session
            Content-Disposition: render


5.14

5.14.  Relationship to Call-Info, Error-Info, and Alert-Info Headers

   SIP [9] defines three headers that supply additional information with
   regard to a session, a particular error response, or alerting.  All
   three of these headers allow the UAC or UAS to indicate additional
   information through a URI.  They may be considered a form of content
   indirection.  The content indirection mechanism defined in this
   document is not intended as a replacement for these headers.  Rather,
   the headers defined in SIP MUST be used in preference to this
   mechanism
   mechanism, where applicable applicable, because of the well-defined semantics of
   those headers.

6.  Examples



















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6.1

6.1.  Single Content Indirection

           INVITE sip:boromir@example.com SIP/2.0
           From: <sip:gandalf@example.net>;tag=347242
           To: <sip:boromir@example.com>
           Call-ID: 3573853342923422@example.net
           CSeq: 2131 INVITE
           Accept: message/external-body application/sdp
           Content-Type: message/external-body;
                ACCESS-TYPE=URL;
                URL="http://www.example.net/party/06/2002/announcement";
                EXPIRATION="Sat, 20 Jun 2002 12:00:00 GMT";
                size=231
           Content-Length: ...

           Content-Type: application/sdp
           Content-Disposition: session
           Content-ID: <4e5562cd1214427d@example.net>



6.2  Multipart MIME with Content Indirection








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6.2.  Multipart MIME with Content Indirection

           MESSAGE sip:boromir@example.com SIP/2.0
           From: <sip:gandalf@example.net>;tag=34589882
           To: <sip:boromir@example.com>
           Call-ID: 9242892442211117@example.net
           CSeq: 388 MESSAGE
           Accept: message/external-body, text/html, text/plain,
                   image/*, text/x-emoticon
           MIME-Version: 1.0
           Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary=zz993453

           --zz993453
           Content-Type: message/external-body;
                access-type="URL";
                expiration="Mon, 24 June 2002 09:00:00 GMT";
                URL="http://www.example.net/company_picnic/image1.png";
                size=234422

           Content-Type: image/png
           Content-ID: <9535035333@example.net>
           Content-Disposition: render
           Content-Description: Kevin getting dunked in the wading pool

           --zz993453

           Content-Type: message/external-body;
                access-type="URL";
                expiration="Mon, 24 June 2002 09:00:00 GMT";
                URL="http://www.example.net/company_picnic/image2.png";
                size=233811

           Content-Type: image/png
           Content-ID: <1134299224244@example.net>
           Content-Disposition: render
           Content-Description: Peter on his tricycle

           --zz993453--

7.  Security Considerations

   Any content indirection mechanism introduces additional security
   concerns.  By its nature, content indirection requires an extra
   processing step and information transfer.  There are a number of
   potential abuses of a content indirection mechanism:






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   o  Content indirection allows the initiator to choose an alternative
      protocol with weaker security or known vulnerabilities for the



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      content transfer.  For transfer (for example, asking the recipient to issue an
      HTTP request that results in a Basic authentication challenge. challenge).

   o  Content indirection allows the initiator to ask the recipient to
      consume additional resources in the information transfer and
      content processing, potentially creating an avenue for denial of denial-of-
      service attacks.  For attacks (for example, an active FTP URL consuming 2
      connections for every indirect content message. message).

   o  Content indirection could be used as a form of port scanning port-scanning
      attack where the indirect content URL is actually a bogus URL
      pointing to an internal resource of the recipient.  The response
      to the content indirection request could reveal information about
      open (and vulnerable) ports on these internal resources.

   o  A content indirection URL can disclose sensitive information about
      the initiator such as an internal user name (as part of an HTTP
      URL) or possibly geolocation information.

   Fortunately, all of these potential threats can be mitigated through
   careful screening of both the indirect content URIs that are received
   as well as
   and those that are sent.  Integrity and confidentiality protection of
   the indirect content URI can prevent additional attacks as well.

   For confidentiality, integrity, and authentication, this content
   indirection mechanism relies on the security mechanisms outlined in
   RFC3261.
   RFC 3261.  In particular, the usage of S/MIME as defined in section
   23 of RFC3261 RFC 3261 provides the necessary mechanism to ensure integrity,
   protection, and confidentiality of the indirect content URI and
   associated parameters.

   Securing the transfer of the indirect content is the responsibility
   of the underlying protocol used for this transfer.  If HTTP is used,
   applications implementing this content indirection method SHOULD
   support the HTTPS URI scheme for secure transfer of content and MUST
   support the upgrading of connections to TLS TLS, by using starttls.  Note
   that a failure to complete HTTPS or starttls (for example, due to
   cert
   certificate or encryption mismatch) after having accepted the
   indirect content in the SIP request is not the same as rejecting the
   SIP request, and it may require additional user-user communication
   for correction.

   Note that this document does not advocate the use of transitive
   trust.  That is, just because the UAS receives a URI from a UAC that
   the UAS trusts, the UAS SHOULD NOT implicitly trust the object
   referred to by the URI without establishing its own trust



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   relationship with the URI provider.

   Access control to the content referenced by the URI is not defined by
   this specification.  Access control mechanisms may be defined by the



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   protocol for the scheme of the indirect content URI.

   If the UAC knows the content in advance, the UAC SHOULD include a
   hash parameter in the content indirection.  The hash parameter is a
   hexadecimal-encoded SHA-1 [8] hash of the indirect content.  If a
   hash value is included, the recipient MUST check the indirect content
   against that hash and indicate any mismatch to the user.

   In addition, if the hash parameter is included, included and the target URI
   involves setting up a security context using certificates, the UAS
   MUST ignore the results of the certificate validation procedure, and
   instead verify that the hash of the (canonicalized) content received
   matches the hash presented in the content-indirection hash parameter.

   If the hash parameter is NOT included, the sender SHOULD use only
   schemes that offer message integrity (such as https:).  When the hash
   parameter is not included and security using certificates is used,
   the UAS MUST verify any server certificates certificates, by using the UAS's list
   of trusted top-level certificate authorities.

   If hashing of indirect content is not used, the possibility exists
   that the content returned to
   the recipient by exercise of the indirection has might have been altered
   from that intended by the sender.

8.  IANA Considerations

   This document raises no new IANA considerations.

9.  Contributions

   Sean Olson, seanol@microsoft.com, provided the vast majority of the
   content of this document, including editorship through the first IESG
   review.  Dean Willis touched it next.

   Eric Burger edited the document and addressed IESG comments,
   including the access protocol negotiation mechanism.

10.

9.  Acknowledgements

   Cullen Jennings and Nancy Greene provided a through review and
   valuable comments and suggestions.

11.  References










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11.1         April 2006


10.  References

10.1.  Normative References

   [1]   Freed, N. and K. Moore, "Definition of the URL MIME
         External-Body External-
         Body Access-Type", RFC 2017, October 1996.

   [2]   Freed, N. and N. Borenstein, "Multipurpose Internet Mail
         Extensions (MIME) Part One: Format of Internet Message Bodies",
         RFC 2045, November 1996.

   [3]   Freed, N. and N. Borenstein, "Multipurpose Internet Mail
         Extensions (MIME) Part Two: Media Types", RFC 2046, November
         1996.

   [4]   Fielding, R., Gettys, J., Mogul, J., Nielsen, H. H., and T.
         Berners-Lee, "Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1", RFC
         2068, January 1997.

   [5]   Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement
         Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.

   [6]   Daniel, R., "A Trivial Convention for using HTTP in URN
         Resolution", RFC 2169, June 1997.

   [7]   Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R. R., and L. Masinter, "Uniform
         Resource Identifiers (URI): Generic Syntax", STD 66, RFC 2396, August
         1998. 3986,
         January 2005.

   [8]   Eastlake, D. and P. Jones, "US Secure Hash Algorithm 1 (SHA1)",
         RFC 3174, September 2001.

   [9]   Rosenberg, J., Schulzrinne, H., Camarillo, G., Johnston, A.,
         Peterson, J., Sparks, R., Handley, M. M., and E. Schooler, "SIP:
         Session Initiation Protocol", RFC 3261, June 2002.

   [10]  Burger, E., "Critical Content Multi-purpose Internet Mail
         Extensions (MIME) Parameter", RFC 3459, January 2003.

   [11]  Rosenberg, J., "A Framework for Application Interaction Schulzrinne, H., and P. Kyzivat, "Indicating
         User Agent Capabilities in the Session Initiation Protocol
         (SIP)",
         draft-ietf-sipping-app-interaction-framework-02 (work in
         progress), July RFC 3840, August 2004.

11.2

10.2.  Informative References Reference

   [12]  Levinson, E., "The MIME Multipart/Related Content-type", RFC
         2387, August 1998.

   [13]  Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R. and L. Masinter, "Uniform




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         Resource Identifier (URI): Generic Syntax",
         draft-fielding-uri-rfc2396bis-06 (work in progress), July 2004.         April 2006


Author's Address

   Eric Burger (editor)
   Brooktrout Technology, Inc.

   EMail: eburger@brooktrout.com
   URI:   http://www.brooktrout.com












































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Full Copyright Statement

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   This document is subject to the rights, licenses and restrictions
   contained in BCP 78, and except as set forth therein, the authors
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   OR IS SPONSORED BY (IF ANY), THE INTERNET SOCIETY AND THE INTERNET
   ENGINEERING TASK FORCE DISCLAIM 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.


Copyright Statement

   Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2004).  This document is subject
   to the rights, licenses and restrictions contained in BCP 78, and
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Acknowledgement

   Funding for the RFC Editor function is currently provided by the
   Internet Society. IETF
   Administrative Support Activity (IASA).







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