Date: Sun, 14 Nov 2010 00:44:41 -0500 (EST) From: Garrett Wollman <wollman@hergotha.csail.mit.edu> To: FreeBSD-gnats-submit@FreeBSD.org Subject: bin/152229: b64decode(1)/b64_pton(3) should decode common variant of base64 Message-ID: <201011140544.oAE5ifbQ000514@hergotha.csail.mit.edu> Resent-Message-ID: <201011140610.oAE6A5Aq098993@freefall.freebsd.org>
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>Number: 152229 >Category: bin >Synopsis: b64decode(1)/b64_pton(3) should decode common variant of base64 >Confidential: no >Severity: non-critical >Priority: low >Responsible: freebsd-bugs >State: open >Quarter: >Keywords: >Date-Required: >Class: change-request >Submitter-Id: current-users >Arrival-Date: Sun Nov 14 06:10:04 UTC 2010 >Closed-Date: >Last-Modified: >Originator: Garrett Wollman >Release: FreeBSD 8.1-RELEASE amd64 >Organization: >Environment: System: FreeBSD hergotha.csail.mit.edu 8.1-RELEASE FreeBSD 8.1-RELEASE #0 r212140M: Sat Sep 4 00:16:21 EDT 2010 wollman@hergotha.csail.mit.edu:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/HERGOTHA amd64 >Description: A friend recently asked me to decode some text he had received, which was in a mutant version of the base64 encoding. A quick search led me to the O'Reilly book /Unicode Explained/, which describes a "URL/file-system-safe variant" of base64 which uses '-' and '_' in place of the standard '+' and '/', respectively. We should not generate this nonstandard form, but we should accept it, since it is unambiguous, in accordance with Postel's Robustness Principle. (The specific reference is on page 308, found in Google Books for the search 'base64 with hyphen'.) >How-To-Repeat: >Fix: I don't have a suggested fix (I hacked around it to answer the question at hand but the hack is not suitable for general use). I'm not sure if we should require a flag to be set (or a special version of b64_pton() to be called) to decode this version, or just treat it as normal base64. >Release-Note: >Audit-Trail: >Unformatted:
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