How to determine the MIME type of the loading document in a Content Policy

Add-ons Development
1

In this add-on, we’d like to allow loading of private internal resources (chrome:// or resource://), which we usually block, into a tab not controllable by any site. Active documents such as (X)HTML or SVG are insecure. JSON preview, image preview and movies on tabs are supposedly not controllable by a website and we intend to whitelist them. All of the insecure and secure documents have a content principal but we need to distinguish tabs that websites can’t access.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Tech/XPCOM/Reference/Interface/nsIContentPolicy

  /**
   * Should the resource at this location be loaded?
   * ShouldLoad will be called before loading the resource at aContentLocation
   * to determine whether to start the load at all.
   *
   * @param aContentType      the type of content being tested. This will be one
   *                          one of the TYPE_* constants.
   *
   * @param aContentLocation  the location of the content being checked; must
   *                          not be null
   *
   * @param aRequestOrigin    OPTIONAL. the location of the resource that
   *                          initiated this load request; can be null if
   *                          inapplicable
   *
   * @param aContext          OPTIONAL. the nsIDOMNode or nsIDOMWindow that
   *                          initiated the request, or something that can QI
   *                          to one of those; can be null if inapplicable.
   *                          Note that for navigation events (new windows and
   *                          link clicks), this is the NEW window.
   *
   * @param aMimeTypeGuess    OPTIONAL. a guess for the requested content's
   *                          MIME type, based on information available to
   *                          the request initiator (e.g., an OBJECT's type
   *                          attribute); does not reliably reflect the
   *                          actual MIME type of the requested content
   *
   * @param aExtra            an OPTIONAL argument, pass-through for non-Gecko
   *                          callers to pass extra data to callees.
   *
   * @param aRequestPrincipal an OPTIONAL argument, defines the principal that
   *                          caused the load. This is optional only for
   *                          non-gecko code: all gecko code should set this
   *                          argument.  For navigation events, this is
   *                          the principal of the page that caused this load.
   *
   * @return ACCEPT or REJECT_*
   *
   * @note shouldLoad can be called while the DOM and layout of the document
   * involved is in an inconsistent state.  This means that implementors of
   * this method MUST NOT do any of the following:
   * 1)  Modify the DOM in any way (e.g. setting attributes is a no-no).
   * 2)  Query any DOM properties that depend on layout (e.g. offset*
   *     properties).
   * 3)  Query any DOM properties that depend on style (e.g. computed style).
   * 4)  Query any DOM properties that depend on the current state of the DOM
   *     outside the "context" node (e.g. lengths of node lists).
   * 5)  [JavaScript implementations only] Access properties of any sort on any
   *     object without using XPCNativeWrapper (either explicitly or
   *     implicitly).  Due to various DOM0 things, this leads to item 4.
   * If you do any of these things in your shouldLoad implementation, expect
   * unpredictable behavior, possibly including crashes, content not showing
   * up, content showing up doubled, etc.  If you need to do any of the things
   * above, do them off timeout or event.
   */
  short shouldLoad(in nsContentPolicyType aContentType,
                   in nsIURI        aContentLocation,
                   in nsIURI        aRequestOrigin,
                   in nsISupports   aContext,
                   in ACString      aMimeTypeGuess,
                   in nsISupports   aExtra,
                   [optional] in nsIPrincipal  aRequestPrincipal);

Thanks.

2

Just wanted to make sure, this is not a question is it? I wanted to try to reply if it was, I know mime type was dicussed a lot on stackoverflow:

http://stackoverflow.com/search?q=[firefox-addon]+mime

3

Getting the tab from which the request originated should help:

Now you only need to know the type of resource displayed in that tab …

1 Like
4

Yes, since a content policy lives in the same process as the DOM.

Actually, we need to know how to determine the original mime type of a rendered DOM document reliably. You know, this is something security-critical: I’m well afraid that an attacker might trick the process to defeat the whole protection. (Xray wrapper might help here)