Internet Draft Application/MIME10/22/96 (Expiration: 4/97) Network Working Group D. Crocker Internet-Draft: DRAFT-CROCKER-WRAP-01.TXT Brandenburg Consulting Expiration <4/97> Laurence Lundblade Qualcomm, Inc. Jamie Zawinski Netscape Communcations, Inc. October 22, 1996 Wrapping MIME Objects: Application/MIME STATUS OF THIS MEMO This document is an Internet-Draft. Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet- Drafts. Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet- Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as ``work in progress.'' To learn the current status of any Internet-Draft, please check the ``1id-abstracts.txt'' listing contained in the Internet- Drafts Shadow Directories on ftp.is.co.za (Africa), nic.nordu.net (Europe), munnari.oz.au (Pacific Rim), ds.internic.net (US East Coast), or ftp.isi.edu (US West Coast). INTRODUCTION MIME permits labeling and aggregating objects into complex hierarchies. Support for MIME mechanisms is not universal although it is growing quickly, so that gateways are often required to translate portions of a MIME object into its constituent pieces, that is, as independent attachments. Further some uses of MIME's aggregation mechanism, Content- Type:Multipart, are leading to requirements for processing an entire aggregated object as a single unit. This is in contrast to Content-type:Multipart/Mixed which specifies separate processing of constituent components, and to which multipart sub-types default if they are unknown to the processing software. This specification defines Content- Type:Application/MIME to provide an encapsulation mechanism for arbitrary MIME structures. This facilitates their treatment, as a single attachment, by software that is otherwise unfamiliar with the types of objects contained in the encapsulation. It is expected that Application/MIME will be especially useful in getting data past gateways. The specification simply defines an object which contains MIME data. When the object is removed from its Content- Type:Application/MIME wrapper, what remains is an entire MIME object, beginning with a (new) Content-type header. APPLICATION/EDIFACT SPECIFICATION MIME type name: Application MIME subtype name: MIME Required parameters: Content-type, Optional parameters: None Encoding considerations: May need BASE64 or QUOTED- PRINTABLE transfer encoding, as appropriate for the contained data. Careful use of QUOTED- PRINTABLE will maintain clear text as robust against gateway processing yet still be readable without special processing. Security considerations: See separate section in this document. Published specification: See detail, below. Rationale: Gateways and some other processing environments can alter and destroy MIME data structure; the defined data type will permit "hiding" the structure inside an object that is much less likely to be modified by such software. It also permits passing an aggregate object as a single entity, through processors that would otherwise separate the components. Contact-info: See Contact section, below. Detail specific to MIME-based usage: This is a generic mechanism for encapsulating any MIME object structure. The object is self-defining, since it begins with a MIME Content-Type header and is then processed (recursively). The mechanism is intended for use when correct processing of the basic MIME structure is at risk, in effect allowing the MIME structure to be tunneled through such an environment. The Content-Type parameter comprises the type and sub- type tokens of the Content-Type header for the contained MIME component, i.e., type := "Content-Type=" <"> type "/" subtype <"> where the type and subtype tokens are defined by the MIME [2] specification. The value of the Content-Type parameter specifies the MIME Content-Type and subtype of the data structure contained inside the Application/MIME object. The parameters replicate all of the parameters which are present in the Content-Type specification header referenced by the Content-Type parameter. That is, they replicate the contained object's parameters, in their entirety. This is done to facilitate dispatch of a particular type to a handler without parsing the contained MIME structure. If the contained object is, itself Application/MIME, then none of the parameters of that contained object shall be included. (Using Application/MIME for doubly-wrapping MIME data may provide a necessary level of protection in some cases.) GATEWAY AND PASS-THROUGH PROCESSING Software which manipulates an Application/MIME component must do so ONLY when processing can be done fully and correctly. In the extreme, this may require full parsing of the contained MIME structure and its parameters, prior to deciding whether to take responsibility for the content. Typically, however, review of the Application/MIME type and parameters will suffice. Any MIME-aware software which encounters an Application/MIME component must leave the component in its existing form, unless that software is able to fully and correctly process ALL of the component contents AND such processing is appropriate to the environment in which the software is operating. GATEWAY IMPLEMENTORS ARE SPECIFICALLY AND STRONGLY CAUTIONED AGAINST MODIFICATION OF AN APPLICATION/MIME COMPONENT. The question of whether to unwrap content which is embedded in an Application/MIME becomes very simple. Application/MIME is used to provide protection against mishandling by intermediaries. Hence, only end-system software-including gateways and regular email user agents-should even consider touching the content and then it should only do so when the recipient has a basis for believing that the processing will be correct. SAMPLE USAGE IN MIME-BASED EMAIL This section is intended as a simple example of the gist of the formatting required to encapsulate MIME objects within Internet mail, using Application/MIME: To: Subject: From: Date: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: Application/MIME; content- type=Multipart/signed; protocol="application/somesigscheme"; boundary="//signatureboundary//" Content-Type: Multipart/Signed; boundary=//signatureboundary//; protocol="application/somesigscheme" --//signatureboundary// Content-type:<> <> --//signatureboundary// Content-type:application/somesigscheme <> --//signatureboundary//-- SECURITY CONSIDERATIONS MIME content often includes sensitive data, so that transmission often needs to attend to authentication, data integrity, privacy and access control, and the like as appropriate. In particular, the recursive processing required by the mechanism defined here MUST be sure to include whatever security checks are applied to newly- received MIME data. This specification does NOT, itself, provide any security- related mechanisms. As needed and appropriate, such mechanisms MUST be added, either via Internet MIME-based security services or any other services which are appropriate to the user requirements. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The idea for Application/MIME first developed out of conversations with Einar Stefferud and Marshall Rose, in trying to find a way for exchanging valid Internet Mail, complete with RFC822 headers and MIME content, through environments that provided no other Internet Mail technology besides a gateway between the proprietary environment and the Internet. Additional benefits of this mechanism then surfaced during discussions on the S/MIME development list. CONTACT David H. Crocker Internet Mail Consortium 675 Spruce Dr. Sunnyvale, CA 94086 USA Phone: +1 408 246 8253 Fax: +1 408 249 6205 Laurence Lundblade Qualcomm, Inc. 6455 Lusk Blvd San Diego Ca 92121 USA Phone: 619-658-3584 Jamie Zawinski Netscape Communciations, Inc. 501 East Middlefield Road Mountain View, CA 94043