RFC 6797, "HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS)", November 2012

Errata ID: 5204
Status: Reported
Type: Technical
Publication Format(s) : TEXT
Reported By: Nick Dilßner
Date Reported: 2017-12-13

Section 6.1.2 says:

includeSubDomains

It should say:

include-sub-domains

or

includesubdomains

Notes:

- In Section 6.1 the Strict-Transport-Security is defined as follows:

Strict-Transport-Security = "Strict-Transport-Security" ":" [ directive ] *( ";" [ directive ] )

- valueless Directive "includeSubDomains" is defined as a optional directive
- a directive is definied as followed:

directive = directive-name [ "=" directive-value ]

- so "includeSubDomains" is only a directive-name which is defined as "token"
- according to "[RFC2616], Section 2.2" a token is any octet from 0 - 127 except CTL's (octets 0 - 31 + 127) and separators which NOT exclude '-' (octet 45)


So all Fine? Yes, BUT at [RFC6797], Section 6.1 the "overall reuqirements for directives", Rule 3 defines:

3. Directive names are case-insensitive.

And there is no other specification in Section 6.1.2 or has a IANA policy definition [RFC5226] like it is defined for additionals.



- That means the "directive-name" includeSubDomains is "case-insensitive"!

The "case-sensitive" camelized directive-name is misleading, because of many other definitions with "-", like seen in all examples or in Header Field itself.


- to aware the clear understanding the "directive definition" in section 6.1.2 and ALL occurences needs to be renamend.

the minimum of renaming is "includesubdomains" OR "INCLUDESUBDOMAINS", but this is not readable anymore.
- So it should be renamed like other valuless directives for Example the "schemes-source's" directives at "Content-Security-Policy", which means:

"include-sub-domains"


Best Regards

Nick

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