One document matched: draft-ietf-webdav-acl-05.txt

Differences from draft-ietf-webdav-acl-04.txt


INTERNET-DRAFT                   Geoffrey Clemm, Rational Software 
draft-ietf-webdav-acl-05         Anne Hopkins, Microsoft Corporation 
                                 Eric Sedlar, Oracle Corporation 
                                 Jim Whitehead, U.C. Santa Cruz 
                                  
Expires July 21, 2001            April 23, 2001 



                     WebDAV Access Control Protocol 


Status of this Memo 

This document is an Internet-Draft and is in full conformance with all 
provisions of Section 10 of RFC2026. 

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." 

The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at 
http://www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-abstracts.txt 

The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at 
http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html. 

Abstract 

This document specifies a set of methods, headers, and message bodies 
that define the WebDAV Access Control extensions to the HTTP/1.1 
protocol. This protocol permits a client to remotely read and modify 
access control lists that instruct a server whether to grant or deny 
operations upon a resource (such as HTTP method invocations) by a given 
principal. 

This document is a product of the Web Distributed Authoring and 
Versioning (WebDAV) working group of the Internet Engineering Task 
Force. Comments on this draft are welcomed, and should be addressed to 
the acl@webdav.org mailing list. Other related documents can be found at 
http://www.webdav.org/acl/, and http://www.ics.uci.edu/pub/ietf/webdav/. 














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Table of Contents 

1 INTRODUCTION......................................................4 
1.1 Terms...........................................................5 
1.2 Notational Conventions..........................................6 

2 PRINCIPALS........................................................6 

3 PRIVILEGES........................................................6 
3.1 DAV:read Privilege..............................................7 
3.2 DAV:write Privilege.............................................7 
3.3 DAV:read-acl Privilege..........................................8 
3.4 DAV:read-cuprivset Privilege....................................8 
3.5 DAV:write-acl Privilege.........................................8 
3.6 DAV:all Privilege...............................................8 

4 PRINCIPAL PROPERTIES..............................................8 
4.1 DAV:is-principal................................................9 
4.2 DAV:alternate-URL...............................................9 

5 ACCESS CONTROL PROPERTIES.........................................9 
5.1 DAV:owner.......................................................9 
5.2 DAV:supported-privilege-set....................................10 
5.3 DAV:current-user-privilege-set.................................11 
5.4 DAV:acl........................................................11 
 5.4.1 ACE Principal...............................................11 
 5.4.2 ACE Grant and Deny..........................................13 
 5.4.3 ACE Protection..............................................13 
 5.4.4 ACE Inheritance.............................................13 
5.5 DAV:acl-semantics..............................................13 
5.6 DAV:principal-collection-set...................................14 
5.7 Example: PROPFIND to retrieve access control properties........14 

6 ACL SEMANTICS....................................................17 
6.1 ACE Combination................................................17 
 6.1.1 DAV:first-match ACE Combination.............................18 
 6.1.2 DAV:all-grant-before-any-deny ACE Combination...............18 
 6.1.3 DAV:specific-deny-overrides-grant ACE Combination...........18 
6.2 ACE Ordering...................................................18 
 6.2.1 DAV:deny-before-grant ACE Ordering..........................18 
6.3 Required Principals............................................18 

7 ACCESS CONTROL AND EXISTING METHODS..............................19 
7.1 OPTIONS........................................................19 
 7.1.1 Example - OPTIONS...........................................19 

8 ACCESS CONTROL METHODS...........................................19 
8.1 ACL............................................................19 
 8.1.1 ACL Preconditions...........................................20 
 8.1.2 Example: the ACL method.....................................20 
 8.1.3 Example: ACL method failure due to omission of protected ACE21 
 8.1.4 Example: ACL method failure due to inherited ACEs preceding 
 non-inherited ACEs................................................22 


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 8.1.5 Example: ACL method failure due to an attempt to set grant and 
 deny in a single ACE..............................................23 

9 INTERNATIONALIZATION CONSIDERATIONS..............................24 

10  SECURITY CONSIDERATIONS........................................25 
10.1 Increased Risk of Compromised Users...........................25 
10.2 Risks of the read-acl and cuprivset Privileges................25 

11  AUTHENTICATION.................................................26 

12  IANA CONSIDERATIONS............................................26 

13  INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY..........................................26 

14  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS...............................................26 

15  REFERENCES.....................................................27 
15.1 Normative References..........................................27 
15.2 Informational References......................................28 

16  AUTHORS' ADDRESSES.............................................28 

17  APPENDICIES....................................................28 
17.1 XML Document Type Definition..................................28 
  





























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1  INTRODUCTION 

     The goal of the WebDAV access control extensions is to provide an 
     interoperable mechanism for handling discretionary access control 
     for content in WebDAV servers.  WebDAV access control can be 
     implemented on content repositories with security as simple as that 
     of a UNIX file system, as well as more sophisticated models.  The 
     underlying principle of access control is that who you are 
     determines how you can access a resource. The "who you are" is 
     defined by a "principal" identifier; users, client software, 
     servers, and groups of the previous have principal identifiers. The 
     "how" is determined by a single "access control list" (ACL) 
     associated with a resource.  An ACL contains a set of "access 
     control entries" (ACEs), where each ACE specifies a principal and a 
     set of privileges that are either granted or denied to that 
     principal. When a principal submits an operation (such as an HTTP 
     or WebDAV method) to a resource for execution, the server evaluates 
     the ACEs in the ACL to determine if the principal has permission 
     for that operation. 

     This specification intentionally omits discussion of 
     authentication, as the HTTP protocol already has a number of 
     authentication mechanisms [RFC2617].  Some authentication mechanism 
     (such as HTTP Digest Authentication, which all WebDAV compliant 
     implementations are required to support) must be available to 
     validate the identity of a principal.  

     In the interests of timeliness, the following set of security 
     mechanisms are not addressed by this document: 

       * Access control that applies only to a particular property on a 
          resource (excepting the access control properties DAV:acl and 
          DAV:current-user-privilege-set), rather than the entire 
          resource, 

       * Role-based security (where a role can be seen as a dynamically 
          defined collection of principals), 

       * Specification of the ways an ACL on a resource is initialized, 

       * Specification of an ACL that applies globally to a method, 
          rather than to a particular resource. 

     This specification is organized as follows. Section 1.1 defines key 
     concepts used throughout the specification, and is followed by more 
     in-depth discussion of principals (Section 2), and privileges 
     (Section 3). Properties defined on principals are specified in 
     Section 4, and access control properties for content resources are 
     specified in Section 5. The semantics of access control lists are 
     described in Section 6, including sections on ACE combination 
     (Section 6.1), ACE ordering (Section 6.2), and principals required 
     to be present in an ACE (Section 6.3). Client discovery of access 
     control capability using OPTIONS is described in Section 7.1, and 
     the access control setting method, ACL, is specified in Section 8. 

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     Internationalization considerations (Section 9) and security 
     considerations (Section 10) round out the specification. An 
     appendix (Section 17.1) provides an XML Document Type Definition 
     (DTD) for the XML elements defined in the specification. 

1.1 Terms 

     This draft uses the terms defined in HTTP [RFC2616] and WebDAV 
     [RFC2518].  In addition, the following terms are defined: 

   principal 

     A "principal" is a distinct human or computational actor that 
     initiates access to network resources.  In this protocol, a 
     principal is an HTTP resource that represents such an actor. 

   principal collection 

     A "principal collection" is a group of principals, and is 
     represented in this protocol by a WebDAV collection containing HTTP 
     resources that represent principals, and principal collections. 

   privilege 

     A "privilege" controls access to a particular set of HTTP 
     operations on a resource. 

   aggregate privilege

     An "aggregate privilege" is a privilege that contains a set of 
     other privileges. 

   abstract privilege 

     The modifier "abstract", when applied to an atomic or aggregate 
     privilege, means the privilege cannot be set in an access control 
     element (ace).  

   access control list (acl) 

     An "acl" is a list of access control elements that define access 
     control to a particular resource. 

   access control element (ace) 

     An "ace" either grants or denies a particular set of (non-abstract) 
     privileges for a particular principal. 

   inherited ace 

     An "inherited ace" is an ace that is shared from the acl of another 
     resource. 






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1.2 Notational Conventions 

     The augmented BNF used by this document to describe protocol 
     elements is described in Section 2.1 of [RFC2616]. Because this 
     augmented BNF uses the basic production rules provided in Section 
     2.2 of [RFC2616], those rules apply to this document as well. 

     The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", 
     "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in 
     this document are to be interpreted as described in [RFC2119]. 

2  PRINCIPALS 

     A principal is a network resource that represents a distinct human 
     or computational actor that initiates access to network resources. 
     On many implementations, users and groups are represented as 
     principals; other types of principals are also possible. A URL of 
     any scheme MAY be used to identify a principal resource. However, 
     servers implementing this specification SHOULD expose principal 
     resources at an http(s) URL, which is a privileged scheme that 
     points to resources that have additional properties, as described 
     in Section 4. Although an implementation SHOULD support PROPFIND 
     and PROPPATCH to access and modify information about a principal, 
     it is not required to do so.   

     A principal resource may or may not be a collection.  A collection 
     principal may only contain other principals (not other types of 
     resources).  Servers that support aggregation of principals (e.g. 
     groups of users or other groups) MUST manifest them as collection 
     principals.  The WebDAV methods for examining and maintaining 
     collections (e.g. DELETE, PROPFIND) MAY be used to maintain 
     collection principals.  Membership in a collection principal is 
     recursive, so a principal in a collection principal GRPA contained 
     by collection principal GRPB is a member of both GRPA and GRPB.  
     Implementations not supporting recursive membership in principal 
     collections can return an error if the client attempts to bind 
     collection principals into other collection principals. 

3  PRIVILEGES 

     Ability to perform a given method on a resource SHOULD be 
     controlled by one or more privileges.  Authors of protocol 
     extensions that define new HTTP methods SHOULD specify which 
     privileges (by defining new privileges, or mapping to ones below) 
     are required to perform the method.  A principal with no privileges 
     to a resource SHOULD be denied any HTTP access to that resource. 

     Privileges may be containers of other privileges, in which case 
     they are termed aggregate privileges.  If a principal is granted or 
     denied an aggregate privilege, it is semantically equivalent to 
     granting or denying each of the aggregated privileges individually.  
     For example, an implementation may define add-member and remove-
     member privileges that control the ability to add and remove an 
     internal member of a collection.  Since these privileges control 

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     the ability to update the state of a collection, these privileges 
     would be aggregated by the DAV:write privilege on a collection, and 
     granting the DAV:write privilege on a collection would also grant 
     the add-member and remove-member privileges. 

     Privileges may have the quality of being abstract, in which case 
     they cannot be set in an ACE. Aggregate and atomic privileges are 
     both capable of being abstract. Abstract privileges are useful for 
     modeling privileges that otherwise would not be exposed via the 
     protocol. Abstract privileges also provide server implementations 
     with flexibility in implementing the privileges defined in this 
     specification.  For example, if a server is incapable of separating 
     the read resource capability from the read ACL capability, it can 
     still model the DAV:read and DAV:read-acl privileges defined in 
     this specification by declaring them abstract, and containing them 
     within a non-abstract aggregate privilege (say, read-all) that 
     holds DAV:read, and DAV:read-acl. In this way, it is possible to 
     set the aggregate privilege, read-all, thus coupling the setting of 
     DAV:read and DAV:read-acl, but it is not possible to set DAV:read, 
     or DAV:read-acl individually. Since aggregate privileges can be 
     abstract, it is also possible to use abstract privileges to group 
     and classify non-abstract privileges.  

     The set of privileges that apply to a particular resource may vary 
     with the DAV:resourcetype of the resource, as well as between 
     different server implementations.  To promote interoperability, 
     however, WebDAV defines a set of well-known privileges (e.g. 
     DAV:read and DAV:write), which can at least be used to classify the 
     other privileges defined on a particular resource. The access 
     permissions on null and lock-null resources are solely those they 
     inherit (if any), and they are not discoverable (i.e., the ACL 
     properties specified in Section 5 are not defined on null and lock-
     null resources). On the transition from null or lock-null to a 
     stateful resource, the initial access control list is set by the 
     server's default ACL value policy (if any). 

3.1 DAV:read Privilege 

     The read privilege controls methods that return information about 
     the state of the resource, including the resource's properties. 
     Affected methods include GET and PROPFIND.  Additionally, the read 
     privilege MAY control the OPTIONS method. 

     <!ELEMENT read EMPTY> 

3.2 DAV:write Privilege 

     The write privilege controls methods that modify the state of the 
     resource, such as PUT and PROPPATCH.  Note that state modification 
     is also controlled via locking (see section 5.3 of [WEBDAV]), so 
     effective write access requires that both write privileges and 
     write locking requirements are satisfied. 

     <!ELEMENT write EMPTY> 


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3.3 DAV:read-acl Privilege 

     The DAV:read-acl privilege controls the use of PROPFIND to retrieve 
     the DAV:acl property of the resource. 

     <!ELEMENT read-acl EMPTY> 

3.4 DAV:read-cuprivset Privilege 

     The DAV:read-cuprivset privilege controls the use of PROPFIND to 
     retrieve the DAV:current-user-privilege-set property of the 
     resource.  

     Clients are intended to use this property to visually indicate in 
     their UI items that are dependent on the permissions of a resource, 
     for example, by graying out resources that are not writeable. 

     This privilege is separate from DAV:read-acl because there is a 
     need to allow most users access to the privileges permitted the 
     current user (due to its use in creating the UI), while the full 
     ACL contains information that may not be appropriate for the 
     current authenticated user. As a result, the set of users who can 
     view the full ACL is expected to be much smaller than those who can 
     read the current user privilege set, and hence distinct privileges 
     are needed for each 

     <!ELEMENT read-cuprivset EMPTY> 

3.5 DAV:write-acl Privilege 

     The DAV:write-acl privilege controls use of the ACL method to 
     modify the DAV:acl property of the resource. 

     <!ELEMENT write-acl EMPTY> 

3.6 DAV:all Privilege 

     DAV:all is an aggregate privilege that contains all privileges on 
     the resource. 

     <!ELEMENT all EMPTY> 

4  PRINCIPAL PROPERTIES 

     Principals are manifested to clients as an HTTP resource, 
     identified by a URL.  A principal MUST have a DAV:displayname 
     property.  This protocol defines the following additional 
     properties for a principal. The name and value of these properties 
     SHOULD NOT be returned by PROPFIND allprop request (as defined in 
     Section 12.14.1 of [RFC2518]). In the descriptions below, a read-
     only property is defined as a property that MUST NOT be writeable 
     using PROPPATCH. 




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4.1 DAV:is-principal 

     This is a read-only property that indicates whether this resource 
     is a principal.  A resource MUST have a non-empty DAV:is-principal 
     property if and only if it is a principal resource.   

     <!ELEMENT is-principal (#PCDATA)> 
     PCDATA value: "true" - resource is a principal, "false" - resource 
     is not a principal (note that in cases where the "F" value might be 
     used, this specification requires the property not be present at 
     all). 
      

4.2 DAV:alternate-URL 

     This read-only property, if present, contains the URL of a network 
     resource with additional descriptive information about the 
     principal. This property identifies one or more additional network 
     resources (i.e., it contains one or more URLs) that may be 
     consulted by a client to gain additional knowledge concerning a 
     principal. Two potential uses for this property are to store an 
     ldap [RFC2255] or mailto [RFC2368] scheme URL. Support for this 
     property is OPTIONAL. 

     <!ELEMENT alternate-URL (href*)> 

5  ACCESS CONTROL PROPERTIES 

     This specification defines a number of new properties for WebDAV 
     resources.  Access control properties may be retrieved just like 
     other WebDAV properties, using the PROPFIND method.  Some access 
     control properties (such as DAV:owner) MAY be updated with the 
     PROPPATCH method.  In the descriptions below, a read-only property 
     is defined as a property that MUST NOT be writeable using 
     PROPPATCH. Since it is expensive, for many servers, to retrieve 
     access control information, a PROPFIND allprop request (as defined 
     in Section 12.14.1 of [RFC2518]) SHOULD NOT return the names and 
     values of the properties defined in this section. 

     HTTP resources that support the WebDAV Access Control Protocol MUST 
     contain the following properties. Null, and lock-null resources 
     (described in Section 7.4 of [RFC2518]) MUST NOT contain the 
     following properties: 

5.1 DAV:owner 

     This property identifies a particular principal as being the 
     "owner" of the resource. Since the owner of a resource often has 
     special access control capabilities (e.g., the owner frequently has 
     permanent write-ACL privilege), clients might display the resource 
     owner in their user interface. 

     <!ELEMENT owner (href prop?)> 
     <!ELEMENT prop (see [RFC2518], section 12.11)> 

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     An implementation MAY include a list of selected properties of that 
     principal resource.  Which properties (if any) are included is 
     implementation defined, but might reasonably include properties 
     such as DAV:displayname, which is useful for the construction of 
     access control user interfaces on the client. A server might 
     support this capability if it wished to save the client the 
     additional network round-trip delay required to retrieve this 
     information using a PROPFIND request on the principal URL in the 
     href element. Servers that do not directly support PROPFIND on 
     principal resources might also support this feature, since it 
     allows them to return a server-controlled subset of the properties 
     on the principal resource. 

     An implementation MAY allow the use of PROPPATCH to update the 
     DAV:owner field. If the DAV:owner property is writeable, clients 
     MUST NOT submit the prop element; only the href element can be 
     modified by the client. The purpose of this restriction is to limit 
     the scope of effect of a PROPPATCH to just the owner property's 
     resource; setting the prop element would additionally require 
     modification to properties of the principal resource identified by 
     the href element. 

5.2 DAV:supported-privilege-set 

     This is a read-only property that identifies the privileges defined 
     for the resource.   

     <!ELEMENT supported-privilege-set (supported-privilege*)> 
      
     Each privilege appears as an XML element, where aggregate 
     privileges list as sub-elements all of the privileges that they 
     aggregate. 

     <!ELEMENT supported-privilege 
      (privilege, abstract?, description, supported-privilege*)> 
     <!ELEMENT privilege ANY> 
      
     An abstract privilege of a resource MUST NOT be used in an ACE for 
     that resource. Servers MUST fail an attempt to set an abstract 
     privilege. 

     <!ELEMENT abstract EMPTY> 
      
     A description is a human-readable description of what this 
     privilege controls access to.  

     <!ELEMENT description #PCDATA> 
      
     It is envisioned that a WebDAV ACL-aware administrative client 
     would list the supported privileges in a dialog box, and allow the 
     user to choose non-abstract privileges to apply in an ACE.  The 
     privileges tree is useful programmatically to map well-known 
     privileges (defined by WebDAV or other standards groups) into 


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     privileges that are supported by any particular server 
     implementation.  The privilege tree also serves to hide complexity 
     in implementations allowing large number of privileges to be 
     defined by displaying aggregates to the user. 

5.3 DAV:current-user-privilege-set 

     DAV:current-user-privilege-set is a read-only property containing 
     the exact set of privileges (as computed by the server) granted to 
     the currently authenticated HTTP user. Aggregate privileges and 
     their contained privileges are listed. A user-agent can use the 
     value of this property to adjust its user interface to make actions 
     inaccessible (e.g., by graying out a menu item or button) for which 
     the current principal does not have permission. This is 
     particularly useful for an access control user interface, which can 
     be constructed without knowing the ACE combining semantics of the 
     server. This property is also useful for determining what 
     operations the current principal can perform, without having to 
     actually execute an operation. 

     <!ELEMENT current-user-privilege-set (privilege*)> 
     <!ELEMENT privilege ANY> 
      
     If the current user is granted a specific privilege, that privilege 
     must belong to the set of privileges that may be set on this 
     resource. Therefore, each element in the DAV:current-user-
     privilege-set property MUST identify a non-abstract privilege from 
     the DAV:supported-privilege-set property. 

5.4 DAV:acl 

     This is a read-only property that specifies the list of access 
     control entries (ACEs), which define what principals are to get 
     what privileges for this resource. 

     <!ELEMENT acl (ace*)> 
      
     Each DAV:ace element specifies the set of privileges to be either 
     granted or denied to a single principal.  If the DAV:acl property 
     is empty, no principal is granted any privilege. 

     <!ELEMENT ace (principal, (grant|deny), protected?, inherited?)> 
      

5.4.1 ACE Principal 

     The DAV:principal element identifies the principal to which this 
     ACE applies. 

     <!ELEMENT principal ((href, prop?) 
      | all | authenticated | unauthenticated 
      | property | self)> 
      

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     The current user matches DAV:href only if that user is 
     authenticated as being (or being a member of) the principal 
     identified by the URL contained by that DAV:href. An implementation 
     MAY include a DAV:prop element after the DAV:href element, 
     containing a list of selected properties of that principal 
     resource. Which properties (if any) are included in the DAV:prop 
     element is implementation defined. The DAV:prop element can be used 
     by servers  that do not support PROPFIND requests on principal 
     resources to return principal-related information (such as the 
     value of the DAV:displayname property) that a client would find 
     useful in the creation of an access control user interface. A 
     server might also support this capability if it wished to save the 
     client the additional network round-trip delays required to 
     retrieve this information via a series of PROPFIND requests on each 
     principal URL in the ACL. In the worst case, this is one additional 
     PROPFIND per ACE. 

     <!ELEMENT prop (see [RFC2518], section 12.11)> 
      
     The current user always matches DAV:all.  

     <!ELEMENT all EMPTY> 
      
     The current user matches DAV:authenticated only if authenticated. 

     <!ELEMENT authenticated EMPTY> 
      
     The current user matches DAV:unauthenticated only if not 
     authenticated. 

     <!ELEMENT unauthenticated EMPTY> 
      
     DAV:all is the union of DAV:authenticated, and DAV:unauthenticated. 
     For a given request, the user matches either DAV:authenticated, or 
     DAV:unauthenticated, but not both. 

     The current user matches a DAV:property principal in a DAV:acl 
     property of a resource only if the identified property of that 
     resource contains a DAV:href that identifies a principal, and the 
     current user is authenticated as being (or being a member of) that 
     principal.  For example, if the DAV:property element contained 
     <DAV:owner/>, the current user would match the DAV:property 
     principal only if the current user is authenticated as matching the 
     principal identified by the DAV:owner property of the resource. 

     <!ELEMENT property ANY> 
      
     The current user matches DAV:self in a DAV:acl property of the 
     resource only if that resource is a principal object and the 
     current user is authenticated as being that principal. 

     <!ELEMENT self EMPTY> 



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5.4.2 ACE Grant and Deny 

     Each DAV:grant or DAV:deny element specifies the set of privileges 
     to be either granted or denied to the specified principal.  A 
     DAV:grant or DAV:deny element of the DAV:acl of a resource MUST 
     only contain non-abstract elements specified in the DAV:supported-
     privilege-set of that resource. 

     <!ELEMENT grant (privilege+)> 
     <!ELEMENT deny (privilege+)> 
     <!ELEMENT privilege ANY> 

5.4.3 ACE Protection 

     If an ACE contains a DAV:protected element, an ACL request without 
     that ACE MUST fail. 

     <!ELEMENT protected EMPTY> 

5.4.4 ACE Inheritance 

     The presence of a DAV:inherited element indicates that this ACE is 
     inherited from another resource that is identified by the URL 
     contained in a DAV:href element.  An inherited ACE cannot be 
     modified directly, but instead the ACL on the resource from which 
     it is inherited must be modified. 

     Note that ACE inheritance is not the same as ACL initialization.  
     ACL initialization defines the ACL that a newly created resource 
     will use (if not specified).  ACE inheritance refers to an ACE that 
     is logically shared - where an update to the resource containing an 
     ACE will affect the ACE of each resource that inherits that ACE.  
     The method by which ACLs are initialized or by which ACEs are 
     inherited is not defined by this document. 

     <!ELEMENT inherited (href)> 

5.5 DAV:acl-semantics 

     This is a read-only property that defines the ACL semantics.  These 
     semantics define how multiple ACEs that match the current user are 
     combined, what are the constraints on how ACEs can be ordered, and 
     which principals must have an ACE. A client user interface could 
     use the value of this property to provide feedback to a human 
     operator concerning the impact of proposed changes to an ACL. 
     Alternately, a client could use this property to determine exactly, 
     before submitting an ACL method invocation, what ACL changes it 
     needs to make to accomplish a specific goal (or whether that goal 
     is even achievable on this server). 

     Since it is not practical to require all implementations to use the 
     same ACL semantics, the DAV:acl-semantics property is used to 
     identify the ACL semantics for a particular resource.  The DAV:acl-
     semantics element is defined in section 6. 

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5.6 DAV:principal-collection-set 

     This read-only property contains zero, one, or more URLs that 
     identify a collection principal. It is expected that 
     implementations of this protocol will typically employ a relatively 
     small number of locations in the URL namespace for principal, and 
     collection principals. In cases where this assumption holds, the 
     DAV:principal-collection-set property will contain a small set of 
     URLs identifying the top of collection hierarchy containing 
     multiple principals and collection principals. An access control 
     protocol user agent could use the contents of DAV:principal-
     collection-set to query the DAV:displayname property (specified in 
     Section 13.2 of [RFC2518]) of all principals on that server, 
     thereby yielding human-readable names for each principal that could 
     be displayed in a user interface. 

     <!ELEMENT principal-collection-set (href*)> 
     Since different servers can control different parts of the URL 
     namespace, different resources on the same host MAY have different 
     DAV:principal-collection-set values. The collections specified in 
     the DAV:principal-collection-set MAY be located on different hosts 
     from the resource. The URLs in DAV:principal-collection-set SHOULD 
     be http or https scheme URLs. For security and scalability reasons, 
     a server MAY report only a subset of the entire set of known 
     collection principals, and therefore clients should not assume they 
     have retrieved an exhaustive listing. Additionally, a server MAY 
     elect to report none of the collection principals it knows about. 

5.7 Example: PROPFIND to retrieve access control properties 

     The following example shows how access control information can be 
     retrieved by using the PROPFIND method to fetch the values of the 
     DAV:owner, DAV:supported-privilege-set, DAV:current-user-privilege-
     set, and DAV:acl properties. 

     >> Request << 
      
     PROPFIND /top/container/ HTTP/1.1 
     Host: www.foo.org 
     Content-type: text/xml; charset="utf-8"  
     Content-Length: xxx 
     Depth: 0 
     Authorization: Digest username="ejw",  
        realm="users@foo.org", nonce="...", 
        uri="/top/container/", response="...", opaque="..." 
      
     <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> 
     <D:propfind xmlns:D="DAV:"> 
       <D:owner/> 
       <D:supported-privilege-set/> 
       <D:current-user-privilege-set/> 
       <D:acl/> 
     </D:propfind> 

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     >> Response << 
      
     HTTP/1.1 207 Multi-Status 
     Content-Type: text/xml; charset="utf-8" 
     Content-Length: xxx 
      
     <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> 
     <D:multistatus 
        xmlns:D="DAV:" 
        xmlns:A="http://www.webdav.org/acl/"> <D:response> <D:propstat> 
       <D:status>HTTP/1.1 200 OK</D:status> 
       <D:prop> 
         <D:owner> 
           <D:href>http://www.foo.org/users/gclemm</D:href> </D:owner> 
         <D:supported-privilege-set> 
           <D:supported-privilege> 
             <D:privilege> <D:all/> </D:privilege> 
             <D:abstract/> 
             <D:description>Any operation</D:description> 
             <D:supported-privilege> 
               <D:privilege> <D:read/> </D:privilege> 
               <D:description>Read any object</D:description> 
             </D:supported-privilege> 
             <D:supported-privilege> 
               <D:privilege> <D:write/> </D:privilege> 
               <D:abstract/> 
               <D:description>Write any object</D:description> 
               <D:supported-privilege> 
                 <D:privilege> <A:create/> </D:privilege> 
                 <D:description>Create an object</D:description> 
               </D:supported-privilege> 
               <D:supported-privilege> 
                 <D:privilege> <A:update/> </D:privilege> 
                 <D:description>Update an object</D:description> 
               </D:supported-privilege> 
               <D:supported-privilege> 
                 <D:privilege> <A:delete/> </D:privilege> 
                 <D:description>Delete an object</D:description> 
               </D:supported-privilege> 
             </D:supported-privilege> 
             <D:supported-privilege> 
               <D:privilege> <D:read-acl/> </D:privilege> 
               <D:description>Read the ACL</D:description> 
             </D:supported-privilege> 
             <D:supported-privilege> 
               <D:privilege> <D:write-acl/> </D:privilege> 
               <D:description>Write the ACL</D:description> 
             </D:supported-privilege> 
           </D:supported-privilege> 
         </D:supported-privilege-set> 
         <D:current-user-privilege-set> 
           <D:privilege> <D:read/> </D:privilege> 
           <D:privilege> <D:read-acl/> </D:privilege> 

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         </D:current-user-privilege-set> 
         <D:acl> 
           <D:ace> 
             <D:principal> 
               <D:href>http://www.foo.org/users/esedlar</D:href> 
               <D:prop> 
                 <D:displayname>Eric Sedlar</D:displayname> 
               </D:prop> </D:principal>  
             <D:grant> 
               <D:privilege> <D:read/> </D:privilege> 
               <D:privilege> <D:write/> </D:privilege> 
               <D:privilege> <D:read-acl/> </D:privilege> </D:grant> 
           </D:ace> 
           <D:ace> 
             <D:principal> 
               <D:href>http://www.foo.org/groups/marketing/</D:href> 
             </D:principal> 
             <D:deny> 
               <D:privilege> <D:read/> </D:privilege> </D:deny> 
           </D:ace> 
           <D:ace> 
             <D:principal> 
               <D:property> <D:owner/> </D:property> </D:principal> 
             <D:grant> 
               <D:privilege> <D:read-acl/> </D:privilege> 
               <D:privilege> <D:write-acl/> </D:privilege> </D:grant> 
           </D:ace> 
           <D:ace> 
             <D:principal> <D:all/> </D:principal> 
             <D:grant> 
               <D:privilege> <D:read/> </D:privilege></D:grant> 
             <D:inherited> 
               <D:href>http://www.foo.org/top/</D:href> </D:inherited> 
           </D:ace> </D:acl> 
         </D:prop> 
       </D:propstat> </D:response> </D:multistatus> 
      

     The value of the DAV:owner property is a single DAV:href XML 
     element containing the URL of the principal that owns this 
     resource.  

     The value of the DAV:supported-privilege-set property is a tree of 
     supported privileges: 

       DAV:all (aggregate, abstract) 
           | 
         +-- DAV:read 
         +-- DAV:write (aggregate, abstract) 
              | 
              +-- http://www.webdav.org/acl/create 
              +-- http://www.webdav.org/acl/update 
              +-- http://www.webdav.org/acl/delete 

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           +-- DAV:read-acl 
           +-- DAV:write-acl 
      

     The DAV:current-user-privilege-set property contains two 
     privileges, DAV:read, and DAV:read-acl. This indicates that the 
     current authenticated user only has the ability to read the 
     resource, and read the DAV:acl property on the resource. 

     The DAV:acl property contains a set of four ACEs: 

     ACE #1: The principal identified by the URL 
     http://www.foo.org/users/esedlar is granted the DAV:read, 
     DAV:write, and DAV:read-acl privileges. 

     ACE #2: The principals identified by the URL 
     http://www.foo.org/groups/marketing/ are denied the DAV:read 
     privilege.  In this example, the principal URL identifies a group, 
     which is represented by a collection principal. 

     ACE #3: In this ACE, the principal is a property principal, 
     specifically the DAV:owner property. When evaluating this ACE, the 
     value of the DAV:owner property is retrieved, and is examined to 
     see if it contains a DAV:href XML element. If so, the URL within 
     the DAV:href element is read, and identifies a principal. In this 
     ACE, the owner is granted DAV:read-acl, and DAV:write-acl 
     privileges. 

     ACE #4: This ACE grants the DAV:all principal (all users) the 
     DAV:read privilege. This ACE is inherited from the resource 
     http://www.foo.org/top/, the parent collection of this resource. 

6  ACL SEMANTICS 

     The ACL semantics define how multiple ACEs that match the current 
     user are combined, what are the constraints on how ACEs can be 
     ordered, and which principals must have an ACE. 

     <!ELEMENT acl-semantics acl-sem*> 
       
     <!ELEMENT acl-sem (ace-combination, ace-ordering, required-
     principal*)> 

6.1 ACE Combination 

     The DAV:ace-combination element defines how privileges from 
     multiple ACEs that match the current user will be combined to 
     determine the access privileges for that user.  Multiple ACEs may 
     match the same user because the same principal can appear in 
     multiple ACEs, because multiple principals can identify the same 
     user, and because one principal can be a member of another 
     principal.   

     <!ELEMENT ace-combination 

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      (first-match | all-grant-before-any-deny | specific-deny-
       overrides-grant)> 

6.1.1 DAV:first-match ACE Combination 

     The ACEs are evaluated in the order in which they appear in the 
     ACL.  If the first ACE that matches the current user does not grant 
     all the privileges needed for the request, the request MUST fail. 

     <!ELEMENT first-match EMPTY> 

6.1.2 DAV:all-grant-before-any-deny ACE Combination 

     The ACEs are evaluated in the order in which they appear in the 
     ACL.  If an evaluated ACE denies a privilege needed for the 
     request, the request MUST fail.  If all ACEs have been evaluated 
     without the user being granted all privileges needed for the 
     request, the request MUST fail.  

     <!ELEMENT all-grant-before-any-deny EMPTY> 

6.1.3 DAV:specific-deny-overrides-grant ACE Combination 

     All ACEs in the ACL are evaluated.  An "individual ACE" is one 
     whose principal identifies the current user.  A "group ACE" is one 
     whose principal is a collection that contains a principal that 
     identifies the current user.  A privilege is granted if it is 
     granted by an individual ACE and not denied by an individual ACE, 
     or if it is granted by a group ACE and not denied by an individual 
     or group ACE.  A request MUST fail if any of its needed privileges 
     are not granted. 

     <!ELEMENT specific-deny-overrides-grant EMPTY> 

6.2 ACE Ordering 

     The DAV:ace-ordering element defines a constraint on how the ACEs 
     can be ordered in the ACL.   

     <!ELEMENT ace-ordering (deny-before-grant)? > 

6.2.1 DAV:deny-before-grant ACE Ordering 

     This element indicates that all deny ACEs must precede all grant 
     ACEs. 

     <!ELEMENT deny-before-grant EMPTY> 

6.3 Required Principals 

     The required principal elements identify which principals must have 
     an ACE defined in the ACL.   

     <!ELEMENT required-principal 
       (href | all | authenticated | unauthenticated | property | self)> 

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     For example, the following element requires that the ACL contain a 
     DAV:owner property ACE: 

     <D:required-principal xmlns:D="DAV:"> 
       <D:property> <D:owner/> </D:property> 
     </D:required-principal> 

7  ACCESS CONTROL AND EXISTING METHODS 

     This section defines the impact of access control functionality on 
     existing methods. 

7.1 OPTIONS 

     If the server supports access control, it MUST return "access-
     control" as a field in the DAV response header from an OPTIONS 
     request on any resource implemented by that server. 

7.1.1 Example - OPTIONS 

     >> Request << 
      
       OPTIONS /foo.html HTTP/1.1  
       Host: www.webdav.org 
       Content-Length: 0 
         
     >> Response << 
      
       HTTP/1.1 200 OK 
       DAV: 1, 2, access-control 
       Allow: OPTIONS, GET, PUT, PROPFIND, PROPPATCH, ACL 
      
     In this example, the OPTIONS response indicates that the server 
     supports access control and that /foo.html can have its access 
     control list modified by the ACL method. 

8  ACCESS CONTROL METHODS 

8.1 ACL 

     The ACL method modifies the DAV:acl property of a resource.  A new 
     DAV:acl value must be written in its entirety, including any 
     inherited ACEs.  Unless the DAV:acl property of the resource can be 
     updated to be exactly the value specified in the ACL request, the 
     ACL request MUST fail.  If a server restricts the set of ACEs 
     visible to the current user via the DAV:acl property, then the ACL 
     request would only replace the set of ACEs visible to the current 
     user, and would not affect any ACE that was not visible. 

     In order to avoid overwriting DAV:acl changes by another client, a 
     client SHOULD acquire a WebDAV lock on the resource before 
     retrieving the DAV:acl property of a resource that it intends on 
     updating. 

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     When submitting ACEs, clients MUST NOT include the optional prop 
     element (a child of the principal element). The purpose of this 
     restriction is to limit the scope of effect of the ACL method to 
     just the resource identified by the Request-URI; setting the prop 
     element would additionally require property modification for one or 
     more principal resources. 

8.1.1 ACL Preconditions 

     An implementation MAY enforce one or more of the following 
     constraints on an ACL request.  If the constraint is violated, a 
     403 (Forbidden) response MUST be returned and the indicated XML 
     element MUST be returned in the response body. 

     <DAV:protected/>: An implementation MAY protect an ACE from 
     modification or deletion.  For example, some implementations 
     implicitly grant the DAV:owner of a resource DAV:read-acl and 
     DAV:write-acl privileges, and this cannot be changed by a client.   

     <DAV:too-many-aces/>: An implementation MAY limit the number of 
     ACEs in an ACL.  However, ACL-compliant servers MUST support at 
     least one ACE granting privileges to a single principal, and one 
     ACE granting privileges to a collection principal. 

     <DAV:non-inherited-must-precede-inherited/>: All non-inherited ACEs 
     MUST precede all inherited ACEs. 

     <DAV:deny-must-precede-grant/>: All non-inherited deny ACEs MUST 
     precede all non-inherited grant ACEs. 

     If the following precondition is not met, the server MUST return a 
     409 (Conflict) response, and the indicated XML element MUST be 
     returned in the response body: 

     <DAV:inhereted-exist-parent>: Inherited ACEs MUST exist on a parent 
     resource. 

8.1.2 Example: the ACL method 

     In the following example, user "fielding", authenticated by 
     information in the Authorization header, grants the principal 
     identified by the URL http://www.foo.org/users/esedlar  (i.e., the 
     user "esedlar") read and write privileges, grants the owner of the 
     resource read-acl and write-acl privileges, and grants everyone 
     read privileges inherited from the parent collection 
     http://www.foo.bar/top/.  

     >> Request << 
      
     ACL /top/container/ HTTP/1.1 
     Host: www.foo.org 
     Content-Type: text/xml; charset="utf-8" 
     Content-Length: xxxx 
     Authorization: Digest username="fielding",  
        realm="users@foo.org", nonce="...", 

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        uri="/top/container/", response="...", opaque="..." 
      
     <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> 
     <D:acl xmlns:D="DAV:"> 
       <D:ace> 
         <D:principal> 
           <D:href>http://www.foo.org/users/esedlar</D:href> 
         </D:principal> 
         <D:grant> 
           <D:privilege> <D:read/> </D:privilege> 
           <D:privilege> <D:write/> </D:privilege> </D:grant> 
       </D:ace> 
       <D:ace> 
         <D:principal> 
           <D:property> <D:owner/> </D:property> </D:principal> 
         <D:grant> 
           <D:privilege> <D:read-acl/> </D:privilege> 
           <D:privilege> <D:write-acl/> </D:privilege> </D:grant> 
       </D:ace> 
       <D:ace> 
         <D:principal> <D:all/> </D:principal> 
         <D:grant> 
           <D:privilege> <D:read/> </D:privilege></D:grant> 
         <D:inherited> 
           <D:href>http://www.foo.org/top/</D:href> </D:inherited> 
       </D:ace> </D:acl> 
      
     >> Response << 
      
     HTTP/1.1 200 OK 

8.1.3 Example: ACL method failure due to omission of protected ACE 

     In the following request, user "fielding", authenticated by 
     information in the Authorization header, attempts to grant the 
     principal identified by the URL http://www.foo.org/users/esedlar  
     (i.e., the user "esedlar") read privileges. Prior to the request, 
     the DAV:acl property on the resource contained a protected ACE (see 
     Section 5.4.3) granting DAV:owner the DAV:read-acl and DAV:write-
     acl privileges. The ACL method invocation fails because this 
     protected ACE is omitted, thus violating the semantics of ACE 
     protection.. 

     >> Request << 
      
     ACL /top/container/ HTTP/1.1 
     Host: www.foo.org 
     Content-Type: text/xml; charset="utf-8" 
     Content-Length: xxxx 
     Authorization: Digest username="fielding",  
        realm="users@foo.org", nonce="...", 
        uri="/top/container/", response="...", opaque="..." 
      
     <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> 

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     <D:acl xmlns:D="DAV:"> 
       <D:ace> 
         <D:principal> 
           <D:href>http://www.foo.org/users/esedlar</D:href> 
         </D:principal> 
         <D:grant>  
           <D:privilege> <D:read/> </D:privilege> </D:grant> 
       </D:ace> 
     </D:acl> 
      
     >> Response << 
      
     HTTP/1.1 403 Forbidden 
     Content-Type: text/xml; charset="utf-8" 
     Content-Length: xxx 
      
     <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> 
     <DAV:protected/> 

8.1.4 Example: ACL method failure due to inherited ACEs preceding non-
      inherited ACEs 

     In the following request, user "ejw", authenticated by information 
     in the Authorization header, tries to change the access control 
     list on the resource http://www.foo.org/top/index.html. This 
     resource has two inherited ACEs.  

     Inherited ACE #1 grants the principal identified by URL 
     http://www.foo.org/users/ejw (i.e., the user "ejw") 
     http://www.foo.org/privs/write-all and DAV:read-acl privileges. On 
     this server, http://www.foo.org/privs/write-all is an aggregate 
     privilege containing DAV:write, and DAV:write-acl.  

     Inherited ACE #2 grants principal DAV:all the DAV:read privilege. 

     The request attempts to add a third ACE, granting the principal 
     identified by the URL http://www.foo.org/users/gclemm (i.e., the 
     user ôgclemmö) DAV:write permission, but in the request places the 
     inherited ACEs before the non-inherited ACEs, causing an error on 
     this specific server implementation. Note that on a different 
     implementation, this request might be accepted. 

     >> Request << 
      
     ACL /top/index.html HTTP/1.1 
     Host: www.foo.org 
     Content-Type: text/xml; charset="utf-8" 
     Content-Length: xxxx 
     Authorization: Digest username="ejw",  
        realm="users@foo.org", nonce="...", 
        uri="/top/index.html", response="...", opaque="..." 
      
     <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> 
     <D:acl xmlns:D="DAV:" xmlns:F="http://www.foo.org/privs/"> 

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       <D:ace> 
         <D:principal> 
           <D:href>http://www.foo.org/users/ejw</D:href> 
         </D:principal> 
         <D:grant> 
           <D:privilege><F:write-all/></D:privilege> 
           <D:privilege><D:read-acl/></D:privilege> 
         </D:grant> 
         <D:inherited/> 
       </D:ace> 
       <D:ace> 
         <D:principal><D:all/></D:principal> 
         <D:grant><D:read/></D:grant> 
         <D:inherited/> 
       </D:ace> 
       <D:ace> 
         <D:principal> 
           <D:href>http://www.foo.org/users/gclemm</D:href> 
         </D:principal> 
         <D:grant><D:write/></D:grant> 
       </D:ace> 
     </D:acl> 
      
     >> Response << 
      
     HTTP/1.1 403 Forbidden 
     Content-Type: text/xml; charset="utf-8" 
     Content-Length: xxx 
      
     <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> 
     <DAV:non-inherited-must-precede-inherited/> 

8.1.5 Example: ACL method failure due to an attempt to set grant and deny 
      in a single ACE. 

     In this example, user "ygoland", authenticated by information in 
     the Authorization header, tries to change the access control list 
     on the resource http://www.foo.org/diamond/engagement-ring.gif. The 
     ACL request includes a single, syntactically and semantically 
     incorrect ACE, which attempts to grant the collection principal 
     identified by the URL http://www.foo.org/users/friends/ DAV:read 
     privilege and deny the principal identified by URL 
     http://www.foo.org/users/ygoland-so (i.e., the user "ygoland-so") 
     DAV:read privilege. However, it is illegal to have multiple 
     principal elements, as well as both a grant and deny element in the 
     same ACE, so the request fails due to poor syntax. 

     >> Request << 
      
     ACL /diamond/engagement-ring.gif HTTP/1.1 
     Host: www.foo.org 
     Content-Type: text/xml; charset="utf-8" 
     Content-Length: xxxx 
     Authorization: Digest username="ygoland",  

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        realm="users@foo.org", nonce="...", 
        uri="/diamond/engagement-ring.gif", response="...", opaque="..." 
      
     <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> 
     <D:acl xmlns:D="DAV:"> 
       <D:ace> 
         <D:principal> 
           <D:href>http://www.foo.org/users/friends/</D:href> 
         </D:principal> 
         <D:grant><D:read/></D:grant> 
         <D:principal> 
           <D:href>http://www.foo.org/users/ygoland-so</D:href> 
         </D:principal> 
         <D:deny><D:read/></D:deny> 
       </D:ace> 
     </D:acl> 
      
     >> Response << 
      
     HTTP/1.1 400 Bad Request 
     Content-Length: 0 
      
     Note that if the request had been divided into two ACEs, one to 
     grant, and one to deny, the request would have been syntactically 
     well formed. 

9  INTERNATIONALIZATION CONSIDERATIONS 

     In this specification, the only human-readable content can be found 
     in the description XML element, found within the DAV:supported-
     privilege-set property.  This element contains a human-readable 
     description of the capabilities controlled by a privilege.  As a 
     result, the description element must be capable of representing 
     descriptions in multiple character sets.  Since the description 
     element is found within a WebDAV property, it is represented on-
     the-wire as XML [REC-XML], and hence can leverage XML's language 
     tagging and character set encoding capabilities. Specifically, XML 
     processors must, at minimum, be able to read XML elements encoded 
     using the UTF-8 [UTF-8] encoding of the ISO 10646 multilingual 
     plane. XML examples in this specification demonstrate use of the 
     charset parameter of the Content-Type header, as defined in 
     [RFC3023], as well as the XML "encoding" attribute, which together 
     provide charset identification information for MIME and XML 
     processors. 

     For XML elements other than the description element, it is expected 
     that implementations will treat the property names, privilege 
     names, and values as tokens, and convert these tokens into human-
     readable text in the user's language and character set when 
     displayed to a person.  Only a generic WebDAV property display 
     utility would display these values in their raw form to a human 
     user. 


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     For error reporting, we follow the convention of HTTP/1.1 status 
     codes, including with each status code a short, English description 
     of the code (e.g., 200 (OK)).  While the possibility exists that a 
     poorly crafted user agent would display this message to a user, 
     internationalized applications will ignore this message, and 
     display an appropriate message in the user's language and character 
     set. 

     Further internationalization considerations for this protocol are 
     described in the WebDAV Distributed Authoring protocol 
     specification [RFC2518]. 

10 SECURITY CONSIDERATIONS  

     Applications and users of this access control protocol should be 
     aware of several security considerations, detailed below. In 
     addition to the discussion in this document, the security 
     considerations detailed in the HTTP/1.1 specification [RFC2616], 
     the WebDAV Distributed Authoring Protocol specification [RFC2518], 
     and the XML Media Types specification [RFC3023] should be 
     considered in a security analysis of this protocol.  

10.1 Increased Risk of Compromised Users 

     In the absence of a mechanism for remotely manipulating access 
     control lists, if a single user's authentication credentials are 
     compromised, only those resources for which the user has access 
     permission can be read, modified, moved, or deleted. With the 
     introduction of this access control protocol, if a single 
     compromised user has the ability to change ACLs for a broad range 
     of other users (e.g., a super-user), the number of resources that 
     could be altered by a single compromised user increases. This risk 
     can be mitigated by limiting the number of people who have write-
     acl privileges across a broad range of resources. 

10.2 Risks of the read-acl and cuprivset Privileges 

     The ability to read the access privileges (stored in the DAV:acl 
     property), or the privileges permitted the currently authenticated 
     user (stored in the DAV:current-user-privilege-set property) on a 
     resource may seem innocuous, since reading an ACL cannot possibly 
     affect the resource's state. However, if all resources have world-
     readable ACLs, it is possible to perform an exhaustive search for 
     those resources that have inadvertently left themselves in a 
     vulnerable state, such as being world-writeable. In particular, the 
     property retrieval method PROPFIND, executed with Depth infinity on 
     an entire hierarchy, is a very efficient way to retrieve the 
     DAV:acl or DAV:current-user-privilege-set properties. Once found, 
     this vulnerability can be exploited by a denial of service attack 
     in which the open resource is repeatedly overwritten. Alternately, 
     writeable resources can be modified in undesirable ways. 

     To reduce this risk, read-acl privileges should not be granted to 
     unauthenticated principals, and restrictions on read-acl and 

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     cuprivset privileges for authenticated principals should be 
     carefully analyzed when deploying this protocol. Access to the 
     current-user-privilege-set property will involve a tradeoff of 
     usability versus security. When the current-user-privilege-set is 
     visible, user interfaces are expected to provide enhanced 
     information concerning permitted and restricted operations, yet 
     this information may also indicate a vulnerability that could be 
     exploited. Deployment of this protocol will need to evaluate this 
     tradeoff in light of the requirements of the deployment 
     environment. 

11 AUTHENTICATION 

     Authentication mechanisms defined in WebDAV also apply to this 
     WebDAV Access Control Protocol, in particular the Basic and Digest 
     authentication mechanisms defined in [RFC2617]. 

12 IANA CONSIDERATIONS 

     This document uses the namespace defined by [RFC2518] for XML 
     elements.  All other IANA considerations mentioned in [RFC2518] 
     also applicable to WebDAV ACL. 

13 INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY 

     The following notice is copied from RFC 2026, section 10.4, and 
     describes the position of the IETF concerning intellectual property 
     claims made against this document. 

     The IETF takes no position regarding the validity or scope of any 
     intellectual property or other rights that might be claimed to 
     pertain to the implementation or use other technology described in 
     this document or the extent to which any license under such rights 
     might or might not be available; neither does it represent that it 
     has made any effort to identify any such rights.  Information on 
     the IETF's procedures with respect to rights in standards-track and 
     standards-related documentation can be found in BCP-11.  Copies of 
     claims of rights made available for publication and any assurances 
     of licenses to be made available, or the result of an attempt made 
     to obtain a general license or permission for the use of such 
     proprietary rights by implementers or users of this specification 
     can be obtained from the IETF Secretariat. 
 
     The IETF invites any interested party to bring to its attention any 
     copyrights, patents or patent applications, or other proprietary 
     rights that may cover technology that may be required to practice 
     this standard.  Please address the information to the IETF 
     Executive Director. 

14 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 

     This protocol is the collaborative product of the WebDAV ACL design 
     team: Bernard Chester, Geoff Clemm (Rational), Anne Hopkins 


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     (Microsoft), Barry Lind (Xythos), Sean Lyndersay (Microsoft), Eric 
     Sedlar (Oracle), Greg Stein (Apache.org), and Jim Whitehead (UC 
     Santa Cruz). The authors are grateful for the detailed review and 
     comments provided by Jim Amsden, Gino Basso, Murthy Chintalapati, 
     Dennis Hamilton, Laurie Harper, Ron Jacobs, Chris Knight, and Remy 
     Maucherat. Prior work on WebDAV access control protocols has been 
     performed by Yaron Goland, Paul Leach, Lisa Dusseault, Howard 
     Palmer, and Jon Radoff. We would like to acknowledge the foundation 
     laid for us by the authors of the WebDAV and HTTP protocols upon 
     which this protocol is layered, and the invaluable feedback from 
     the WebDAV working group. 

15 REFERENCES 

15.1 Normative References 

     [RFC2119] S.Bradner, "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate 
     Requirement Levels." RFC 2119, BCP 14, Harvard, March, 1997. 

     [REC-XML] T. Bray, J. Paoli, C.M. Sperberg-McQueen, "Extensible 
     Markup Language (XML)." World Wide Web Consortium Recommendation 
     REC-xml-19980210. http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml-19980210. 

     [RFC2616] R. Fielding, J. Gettys, J. C. Mogul, H. Frystyk, L. 
     Masinter, P. Leach, and T. Berners-Lee, "Hypertext Transfer 
     Protocol -- HTTP/1.1." RFC 2616. U.C.Irvine, Compaq, Xerox, 
     Microsoft, MIT/LCS, June, 1999. 

     [RFC2617] J. Franks, P. Hallam-Baker, J. Hostetler, S. Lawrence, P. 
     Leach, A. Luotonen, L. Stewart, "HTTP Authentication: Basic and 
     Digest Access Authentication. " RFC 2617. Northwestern University, 
     Verisign, AbiSource, Agranat, Microsoft, Netscape, Open Market, 
     June, 1999. 

     [RFC2518] Y. Goland, E. Whitehead, A. Faizi, S. R. Carter, D. 
     Jensen, "HTTP Extensions for Distributed Authoring -- WEBDAV." RFC 
     2518. Microsoft, U.C.Irvine, Netscape, Novell, February, 1999. 

     [RFC2368] P. Hoffman, L. Masinter, J. Zawinski, "The mailto URL 
     scheme." RFC 2368. Internet Mail Consortium, Xerox, Netscape, July, 
     1998. 

     [RFC2255] T. Howes, M. Smith, "The LDAP URL Format." RFC 2255. 
     Netscape, December, 1997. 

     [RFC3023] M. Murata, S. St.Laurent, D. Kohn, "XML Media Types." RFC 
     3023. IBM Tokyo Research Laboratory, simonstl.com, Skymoon 
     Ventures, January, 2001. 

     [UTF-8] F. Yergeau, "UTF-8, a transformation format of Unicode and 
     ISO 10646." RFC 2279. Alis Technologies. January, 1998. 




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15.2 Informational References 

     [RFC2026] S.Bradner, "The Internet Standards Process -- Revision 3." 
     RFC 2026, BCP 9. Harvard, October, 1996. 

16 AUTHORS' ADDRESSES 

     Geoffrey Clemm 
     Rational Software 
     20 Maguire Road 
     Lexington, MA 02421 
     Email: geoffrey.clemm@rational.com 
      
     Anne Hopkins 
     Microsoft Corporation 
     One Microsoft Way 
     Redmond, WA 98052 
     Email: annehop@microsoft.com 
      
     Eric Sedlar 
     Oracle Corporation 
     500 Oracle Parkway 
     Redwood Shores, CA 94065 
     Email: esedlar@us.oracle.com 
      
     Jim Whitehead 
     U.C. Santa Cruz 
     Dept. of Computer Science 
     Baskin Engineering 
     1156 High Street 
     Santa Cruz, CA 95064 
     Email: ejw@cse.ucsc.edu 
      

17 APPENDICIES 

17.1 XML Document Type Definition 

     <!-- Privileges --> 
      
     <!ELEMENT read EMPTY> 
     <!ELEMENT write EMPTY> 
     <!ELEMENT read-acl EMPTY> 
     <!ELEMENT read-cuprivset EMPTY> 
     <!ELEMENT write-acl EMPTY> 
     <!ELEMENT all EMPTY> 
      
      
     <!-- Principal Properties (Section 4) --> 
      
     <!ELEMENT is-principal (#PCDATA)> 
      
     <!ELEMENT alternate-URL (href*)> 
      
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     <!-- Access Control Properties (Section 5) --> 
      
     <!-- DAV:owner Property (Section 5.1) --> 
      
     <!ELEMENT owner (href prop?)> 
     <!ELEMENT prop (see [RFC2518], section 12.11)> 
      
      
     <!-- DAV:supported-privilege-set Property (Section 5.2) -->  
      
     <!ELEMENT supported-privilege-set (supported-privilege*)> 
     <!ELEMENT supported-privilege 
      (privilege, abstract?, description, supported-privilege*)> 
      
     <!ELEMENT privilege ANY> 
     <!ELEMENT abstract EMPTY> 
     <!ELEMENT description #PCDATA>  
     <!ELEMENT privilege ANY> 
      
      
     <!-- DAV:current-user-privilege-set Property (Section 5.3) --> 
      
     <!ELEMENT current-user-privilege-set (privilege*)> 
      
      
     <!-- DAV:acl Property (Section 5.4) --> 
      
     <!ELEMENT acl (ace*)> 
      
     <!ELEMENT ace (principal, (grant|deny), protected?, inherited?)> 
     <!ELEMENT principal ((href, prop?) 
      | all | authenticated | unauthenticated 
      | property | self)> 
      
     <!ELEMENT prop (see [RFC2518], section 12.11)> 
     <!ELEMENT all EMPTY> 
     <!ELEMENT authenticated EMPTY> 
     <!ELEMENT unauthenticated EMPTY> 
     <!ELEMENT property ANY> 
     <!ELEMENT self EMPTY> 
      
     <!ELEMENT grant (privilege+)> 
     <!ELEMENT deny (privilege+)> 
     <!ELEMENT privilege ANY> 
      
     <!ELEMENT protected EMPTY> 
      
     <!ELEMENT inherited (href)> 
      
      
     <!-- DAV:principal-collection-set Property (Section 5.6) --> 
      
     <!ELEMENT principal-collection-set (href*)> 
      
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     <!-- DAV:acl-semantics Property (Section 6) --> 
      
     <!ELEMENT acl-semantics acl-sem*> 
     <!ELEMENT acl-sem (ace-combination, ace-ordering, required-
     principal*)> 
       
     <!ELEMENT ace-combination 
      (first-match | all-grant-before-any-deny | specific-deny-
     overrides-grant)> 
     <!ELEMENT first-match EMPTY> 
     <!ELEMENT all-grant-before-any-deny EMPTY> 
     <!ELEMENT specific-deny-overrides-grant EMPTY> 
      
     <!ELEMENT ace-ordering (deny-before-grant)? > 
     <!ELEMENT deny-before-grant EMPTY> 
      

     <!ELEMENT required-principal 
       (href | all | authenticated | unauthenticated | property | self)> 
      
      
     <!-- ACL method preconditions (Section 8.1.1) --> 
      
     <!ELEMENT protected EMPTY>  
     <!ELEMENT too-many-aces EMPTY> 
     <!ELEMENT non-inherited-must-precede-inherited EMPTY> 
     <!ELEMENT deny-must-precede-grant EMPTY> 
     <!ELEMENT acl-requires-lock-token EMPTY> 
     <!ELEMENT inherited-exist-parent EMPTY> 

























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