Abstract
This memo explains how to usethe Upgrade mechanism in HTTP/1.1 to
initiate Transport LayerSecurity (TLS) over an existing TCP
connection. This allowsunsecured and secured HTTP traffic to share
the same well known port (inthis case, http: at 80 rather than
https: at 443). It alsoenables "virtual hosting", so a single HTTP +
TLS server can disambiguatetraffic intended for several hostnames at
a single IP address.
Since HTTP/1.1 [1] definesUpgrade as a hop-by-hop mechanism, this
memo also documents the HTTPCONNECT method for establishing end-to-
end tunnels across HTTPproxies. Finally, this memo establishes new
IANA registries for publicHTTP status codes, as well as public or
private Upgrade producttokens.
This memo does NOT affect thecurrent definition of the 'https' URI
scheme, which already definesa separate namespace
(http://example.org/ andhttps://example.org/ are not equivalent).
1. Motivation
The historical practice ofdeploying HTTP over SSL3 [3] has
distinguished the combinationfrom HTTP alone by a unique URI scheme
and the TCP port number. Thescheme 'http' meant the HTTP protocol
alone on port 80, while'https' meant the HTTP protocol over SSL on
port 443.
Parallel well-known port numbers have similarly been
requested -- and in somecases, granted -- to distinguish between
secured and unsecured use ofother application protocols (e.g.
snews, ftps). This approacheffectively halves the number of
available well knownports.
At the Washington DC IETFmeeting in December 1997, the Applications
Area Directors and the IESGreaffirmed that the practice of issuing
parallel "secure" port numbersshould be deprecated. The HTTP/1.1
Upgrade mechanism can applyTransport Layer Security [6] to an open
HTTP connection.
In the nearly two years since,there has been broad acceptance of the
concept behind this proposal,but little interest in implementing
alternatives to port 443 forgeneric Web browsing. In fact, nothing
in this memo affects thecurrent interpretation of https: URIs.
However, new applicationprotocols built atop HTTP, such as the
Internet Printing Protocol[7], call for just such a mechanism in
order to move ahead in theIETF standards process.
The Upgrade mechanism alsosolves the "virtual hosting" problem.
Rather than allocatingmultiple IP addresses to a single host, an
HTTP/1.1 server will use theHost: header to disambiguate the
intended web service. AsHTTP/1.1 usage has grown more prevalent,
more ISPs are offeringname-based virtual hosting, thus delaying IP
address spaceexhaustion.
TLS (and SSL) have beenhobbled by the same limitation as earlier
versions of HTTP: the initialhandshake does not specify the intended
hostname, relying exclusivelyon the IP address. Using a cleartext
HTTP/1.1 Upgrade: preamble tothe TLS handshake -- choosing the
certificates based on theinitial Host: header -- will allow ISPs to
provide secure name-basedvirtual hosting as well.
2. Introduction
TLS, a.k.a., SSL (SecureSockets Layer), establishes a private end-
to-end connection, optionallyincluding strong mutual authentication,
using a variety ofcryptosystems. Initially, a handshake phase uses
three subprotocols to set up arecord layer, authenticate endpoints,
set parameters, as well asreport errors.
Then, there is an ongoing
layered record protocol thathandles encryption, compression, and
reassembly for the remainderof the connection. The latter is
intended to be completelytransparent. For example, there is no
dependency between TLS'srecord markers and or certificates and
HTTP/1.1's chunked encoding orauthentication.
Either the client or servercan use the HTTP/1.1 [1] Upgrade
mechanism (Section 14.42) toindicate that a TLS-secured connection
is desired or necessary. Thismemo defines the "TLS/1.0" Upgrade
token, and a new HTTP StatusCode, "426 Upgrade Required".
Section 3 and Section 4describe the operation of a directly
connected client and server.Intermediate proxies must establish an
end-to-end tunnel beforeapplying those operations, as explained in
Section 5.
3. Client Requested Upgrade to HTTP over TLS
When the client sends anHTTP/1.1 request with an Upgrade header
field containing the token"TLS/1.0", it is requesting the server to
complete the current HTTP/1.1request after switching to TLS/1.0.
3.1 Optional Upgrade
A client MAY offer to switchto secured operation during any clear
HTTP request when an unsecuredresponse would be acceptable:
GET http://example.bank.com/acct_stat.html?749394889300HTTP/1.1
Host: example.bank.com
Upgrade: TLS/1.0
Connection: Upgrade
In this case, the server MAYrespond to the clear HTTP operation
normally, OR switch to securedoperation (as detailed in the next
section).
Note that HTTP/1.1 [1]specifies "the upgrade keyword MUST be
supplied within a Connectionheader field (section 14.10) whenever
Upgrade is present in anHTTP/1.1 message".
3.2 Mandatory Upgrade
If an unsecured response wouldbe unacceptable, a client MUST send an
OPTIONS request first tocomplete the switch to TLS/1.0 (if
possible).
OPTIONS * HTTP/1.1
Host: example.bank.com
Upgrade: TLS/1.0
Connection: Upgrade
3.3 Server Acceptance of Upgrade Request
As specified in HTTP/1.1 [1],if the server is prepared to initiate
the TLS handshake, it MUSTsend the intermediate "101 Switching
Protocol" and MUST include anUpgrade response header specifying the
tokens of the protocol stackit is switching to:
HTTP/1.1 101 Switching Protocols
Upgrade: TLS/1.0, HTTP/1.1
Connection: Upgrade
Note that the protocol tokenslisted in the Upgrade header of a 101
Switching Protocols responsespecify an ordered 'bottom-up' stack.
As specifiedin
HTTP/1.1 [1], Section 10.1.2: "The serverwill
switch protocols to thosedefined by the response's Upgrade header
field immediately after theempty line which terminates the 101
response".
Once the TLS handshakecompletes successfully, the server MUST
continue with the response tothe original request. Any TLS handshake
failure MUST lead todisconnection, per the TLS error alert
specification.
4. Server Requested Upgrade to HTTP over TLS
The Upgrade response headerfield advertises possible protocol
upgrades a server MAY accept.In conjunction with the "426 Upgrade
Required" status code, aserver can advertise the exact protocol
upgrade(s) that a client MUSTaccept to complete the request.
4.1 Optional Advertisement
As specified in HTTP/1.1 [1],the server MAY include an Upgrade
header in any response otherthan 101 or 426 to indicate a
willingness to switch to any(combination) of the protocols listed.
4.2 Mandatory Advertisement
A server MAY indicate that aclient request can not be completed
without TLS using the "426Upgrade Required" status code, which MUST
include an an Upgrade headerfield specifying the token of the
required TLS version.
HTTP/1.1 426 Upgrade Required
Upgrade: TLS/1.0, HTTP/1.1
Connection: Upgrade
The server SHOULD include amessage body in the 426 response which
indicates in human readableform the reason for the error and
describes any alternativecourses which may be available to the user.
Note that even if a client iswilling to use TLS, it must use the
operations in Section 3 toproceed; the TLS handshake cannot begin
immediately after the 426response.
5. Upgrade across Proxies
As a hop-by-hop header,Upgrade is negotiated between each pair of
HTTPcounterparties.
If a User Agent sends a requestwith an Upgrade
header to a proxy, it isrequesting a change to the protocol between
itself and the proxy, not anend-to-end change.
Since TLS, in particular,requires end-to-end connectivity to provide
authentication and preventman-in-the-middle attacks, this memo
specifies the CONNECT methodto establish a tunnel across proxies.
Once a tunnel is established,any of the operations in Section 3 can
be used to establish a TLSconnection.
5.1 Implications of Hop By Hop Upgrade
If an origin server receivesan Upgrade header from a proxy and
responds with a 101 SwitchingProtocols response, it is changing the
protocol only on theconnection between the proxy and itself.
Similarly, a proxy mightreturn a 101 response to its client to
change the protocol on thatconnection independently of the protocols
it is using to communicatetoward the origin server.
These scenarios alsocomplicate diagnosis of a 426 response.
Since
Upgrade is a hop-by-hopheader, a proxy that does not recognize 426
might remove the accompanyingUpgrade header and prevent the client
from determining the requiredprotocol switch.
If a client receives
a 426 status without anaccompanying Upgrade header, it will need to
request an end to end tunnelconnection as described in Section 5.2
and repeat the request inorder to obtain the required upgrade
information.
This hop-by-hop definition ofUpgrade was a deliberate choice.
It
allows for incrementaldeployment on either side of proxies, and for
optimized protocols betweencascaded proxies without the knowledge of
the parties that are not apart of the change.
5.2 Requesting a Tunnel with CONNECT
A CONNECT method requests thata proxy establish a tunnel connection
on its behalf. The Request-URIportion of the Request-Line is always
an 'authority' as defined byURI Generic Syntax [2], which is to say
the host name and port numberdestination of the requested connection
separated by a colon:
CONNECT server.example.com:80 HTTP/1.1
Host: server.example.com:80
Other HTTP mechanisms can beused normally with the CONNECT method --
except end-to-end protocolUpgrade requests, of course, since the
tunnel must be establishedfirst.
For example, proxyauthentication might be used to establish the
authority to create atunnel:
CONNECT server.example.com:80 HTTP/1.1
Host: server.example.com:80
Proxy-Authorization: basic aGVsbG86d29ybGQ=
Like any other pipelinedHTTP/1.1 request, data to be tunneled may be
sent immediately after theblank line. The usual caveats also apply:
data may be discarded if theeventual response is negative, and the
connection may be reset withno response if more than one TCP segment
is outstanding.
5.3 Establishing a Tunnel with CONNECT
Any successful (2xx) responseto a CONNECT request indicates that the
proxy has established aconnection to the requested host and port,
and has switched to tunnelingthe current connection to that server
connection.
It may be the case that theproxy itself can only reach the requested
origin server through anotherproxy.
In this case, the first proxy
SHOULD make a CONNECT requestof that next proxy, requesting a tunnel
to theauthority.
A proxy MUST NOT respond with any 2xxstatus code
unless it has either a director tunnel connection established to the
authority.
An origin server whichreceives a CONNECT request for itself MAY
respond with a 2xx status codeto indicate that a connection is
established.
If at any point either one ofthe peers gets disconnected, any
outstanding data that camefrom that peer will be passed to the other
one, and after that also theother connection will be terminated by
the proxy. If there isoutstanding data to that peer undelivered,
that data will bediscarded.
6. Rationale for the use of a 4xx (client error) Status Code
Reliable, interoperablenegotiation of Upgrade features requires an
unambiguous failure signal.The 426 Upgrade Required status code
allows a server todefinitively state the precise protocol extensions
a given resource must beserved with.
It might at first appear thatthe response should have been some form
of redirection (a 3xx code),by analogy to an old-style redirection
to an https:URI.
User agents that do not understandUpgrade:
preclude this.
Suppose that a 3xx code hadbeen assigned for "Upgrade Required"; a
user agent that did notrecognize it would treat it as 300.
Itwould
then properly look for a"Location" header in the response and
attempt to repeat the requestat the URL in that header field. Since
it did not know to Upgrade toincorporate the TLS layer, it would at
best fail again at the newURL.
7.1 HTTP Status Code Registry
The HTTP Status Code Registrydefines the name space for the Status-
Code token in the Status lineof an HTTP response.
The initial
values for this name space arethose specified by:
1.
DraftStandard for HTTP/1.1 [1]
2.
WebDistributed Authoring and Versioning [4] [defines 420-424]
3.
WebDAVAdvanced Collections [5] (Work in Progress) [defines 425]
4.
Section 6[defines 426]
Values to be added to thisname space SHOULD be subject to review in
the form of a standards trackdocument within the IETF Applications
Area.
Anysuch document SHOULD be traceable through statuses of
either 'Obsoletes' or'Updates' to the Draft Standard for
HTTP/1.1 [1].
7.2 HTTP Upgrade Token Registry
The HTTP Upgrade TokenRegistry defines the name space for product
tokens used to identifyprotocols in the Upgrade HTTP header field.
Each registered token shouldbe associated with one or a set of
specifications, and withcontact information.
The Draft Standard forHTTP/1.1 [1] specifies that these tokens obey
the production for'product':
product
= token ["/" product-version]
product-version = token
Registrations should beallowed on a First Come First Served basis as
described in BCP 26 [10].These specifications need not be IETF
documents or be subject toIESG review, but should obey the following
rules:
1.
A token,once registered, stays registered forever.
2.
Theregistration MUST name a responsible party for the
registration.
3.
Theregistration MUST name a point of contact.
4.
Theregistration MAY name the documentation required for the
token.
5.
Theresponsible party MAY change the registration at any time.
The IANA will keep a record of all such changes, and makethem
available upon request.
6.
Theresponsible party for the first registration of a "product"
token MUST approve later registrations of a "version" token
together with that "product" token before they can beregistered.
7.
Ifabsolutely required, the IESG MAY reassign the responsibility
for a token. This will normally only be used in the case whena
responsible party cannot be contacted.
This specification defines theprotocol token "TLS/1.0" as the
identifier for the protocolspecified by The TLS Protocol [6].
It is NOT required thatspecifications for upgrade tokens be made
publicly available, but thecontact information for the registration
SHOULD be.
1. Motivation
2. Introduction
3. Client Requested Upgrade to HTTP over TLS
3.1 Optional Upgrade
3.2 Mandatory Upgrade
3.3 Server Acceptance of Upgrade Request
4. Server Requested Upgrade to HTTP over TLS
4.1 Optional Advertisement
4.2 Mandatory Advertisement
5. Upgrade across Proxies
5.1 Implications of Hop By Hop Upgrade
5.2 Requesting a Tunnel with CONNECT
5.3 Establishing a Tunnel with CONNECT
6. Rationale for the use of a 4xx (client error) Status Code
7.1 HTTP Status Code Registry
7.2 HTTP Upgrade Token Registry