RE: Plain text files in internet explorer

From: Alan Ramsbottom (alancr@ntlworld.com)
Date: 09/01/02 

From: "Alan Ramsbottom" <alancr@ntlworld.com>
To: "John Hennessy" <johnh@charm.net>, <vuln-dev@securityfocus.com>
Date: Sun, 1 Sep 2002 14:47:20 +0100

John Hennessy [mailto:johnh@charm.net wrote:

> Is it just me or is impossible to have plain text in internet
> explorer?

It's everyone. Read all about it (datasniffing) here:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/workshop/networking/m
oniker/overview/appendix_a.asp

 "A MIME type is ambiguous if it is 'text/plain',
'application/octet-stream', an empty string, or null (that is, the
server failed to provide it)."

 "If the server-provided MIME type is either known or ambiguous, the
buffer is scanned in an attempt to verify or obtain a MIME type from the
actual content. If a positive match is found (one of the hard-coded
tests succeeded), this MIME type is immediately returned as the final
determination, overriding the server-provided MIME type (this type of
behavior is necessary to identify a .gif file being sent as text/html)."

-Alan-

Relevant Pages

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