On Tue, Nov 8, 2011 at 7:48 PM, Steingruebl, Andy
<[email protected]> wrote:
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From:  Chris Palmer
>> >  - There is no directive or suggestion to User Agents about saving or
>> > not saving pins received in a private browsing mode.  Maybe there
>> > shouldn't be, but if a User-Agent does save them, the same 304/ETag
>> > trick malicious sites use to track users can be created using certs
>> > and subdomains.
>>
>> Yes, another person raised this concern, and it is real. I don't see a way to
>> resolve this problem; perhaps I am not smart enough, but I can't see a way to
>> have both dynamic pinning AND avoid this tracking attack.
>>
>> I am willing to add a paragraph about what browsers should do in private
>> browsing mode, and I am willing to go either way on what the requirement
>> should be. I don't know what is best.
>
> We battled this problem with HSTS as well.  I think what Mozilla settled on 
> (and I don't remember the Chrome solution) is to use a different storage 
> mechanism when HSTS is *set* during private browsing mode, and clear on exit 
> from private browsing.

It's been a while since I wrote that code, but I'm pretty sure that's
how it works in Chrome too.  There's a separate memory-only HSTS store
that's used for incognito.  That's consistent with how we handle other
host-specific data stored by the network layer, such as cookies.

Adam


> Clearing history/cookies on the browser is similarly problematic for HSTS and 
> pinning.  This is unfortunate in that we'd really like it to be hard for 
> users to clear HSTS state because it is "good for them".  Not clear whether 
> this belongs in the spec, or a set of implementation guidelines.  Folks got 
> squeamish here about talking about exact UA behavior, etc.
>
> There is a Firefox bugzilla bug about this issue, I'll try to go find it and 
> post back here unless someone beats me to it.
>
> - Andy
>
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