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Comments on Why does Firefox block based on a restrictive default-src directive, when more specific, more permissive *-src exist?

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Why does Firefox block based on a restrictive default-src directive, when more specific, more permissive *-src exist?

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I am working on a website which unfortunately uses a mix of linked and inline CSS and Javascript (and, even more unfortunately, I can't do a lot about the use of inline CSS and Javascript), and am trying to set up an appropriate Content-Security-Policy for it.

When I serve the content (over proper HTTPS with a CA-signed certificate) with a CSP that doesn't include any default-src directive, things work as I expect. For example, if the HTTP response contains the two HTTP headers

Content-Security-Policy: style-src 'self' 'unsafe-inline' https://fonts.googleapis.com/;
Content-Security-Policy: font-src 'self' https://fonts.gstatic.com/;

then Google-hosted fonts are loaded; if I remove the https://fonts.gstatic.com/ entry from font-src but leave the font-src directive itself in place, then the browser reports that they were blocked based on font-src. This is exactly what I expect to happen.

However, if I also add a third HTTP header

Content-Security-Policy: default-src 'self';

then I get a whole bunch of errors, including ones where the reference points at the beginning of an inline <style> element, even though I'm still serving the same style-src directive as above including the 'unsafe-inline' in its own CSP HTTP header.

MDN says that (my emphasis):

The HTTP Content-Security-Policy (CSP) default-src directive serves as a fallback for the other CSP fetch directives. For each of the following directives that are absent, the user agent looks for the default-src directive and uses this value for it:

style-src is one of the directives thus listed, and 'self' is one of the valid values for default-src.

I would expect the more specific (and in this case, more permissive) style-src to take precedence over the more restrictive, fallback default-src, but that doesn't seem to be happening. Rather, it seems that the default-src directive is being used instead of (or possibly as further restricting) the more specific style-src directive.

Although Firefox doesn't currently support the corresponding *-src-attr and *-src-elem directives, I tried adding script-src-attr, script-src-elem, style-src-attr and style-src-elem anyway with the same value as script-src and style-src respectively just to see if it would make any difference. The only observable difference was the browser complaining about the four unsupported CSP directives.

What am I missing? Is the CSP default-src directive useless for my use case, and I need to list all CSP directives explicitly to get the effect I am after, namely providing a highly restrictive policy for everything that doesn't actually need to be more permissive?

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2 comment threads

Stylesheet being loaded perhaps referring to a resource at fonts.gstatic.com? (4 comments)
Sending multiple headers won't work (4 comments)
Stylesheet being loaded perhaps referring to a resource at fonts.gstatic.com?

Skipping 1 deleted comment.

elgonzo‭ wrote over 2 years ago

[Snip] ... deleted my former comment. Thinking about it somewhat longer, i guess the suspicion i had expressed about what's going on doesn't really match your case. Hmm...

Canina‭ wrote over 2 years ago

elgonzo‭ No, that wasn't the case at all. There is now an answer.

elgonzo‭ wrote over 2 years ago

Yeah, i figured as much. Hence why i deleted my original comment and wrote another comment to highlight my previously expressed suspicion being wrong. (i unfortunately can not edit thread title, though...)