Scanning the content of a file allows web browsers to detect the format of a file regardless of the specified Content-Type by the web server. For example, if Firefox requests script from a web server and that web server sends that script using a Content-Type of “image/jpg” Firefox will successfully detect the actual format and will execute the script. This technique, colloquially known as “MIME sniffing”, compensates for incorrect, or even complete absence of metadata browsers need to interpret the contents of a page resource. Firefox uses contextual clues (the HTML element that triggered the fetch) or also inspects the initial bytes of media type loads to determine the correct content type. While MIME sniffing increases the web experience for the majority of users, it also opens up an attack vector known as MIME confusion attack.

Consider a web application which allows users to upload image files but does not verify that the user actually uploaded a valid image, e.g., the web application just checks for a valid file extension. This lack of verification allows an attacker to craft and upload an image which contains scripting content. The browser then renders the content as HTML opening the possibility for a Cross-Site Scripting attack (XSS). Even worse, some files can even be polyglots, which means their content satisfies two content types. E.g., a GIF can be crafted in a way to be valid image and also valid JavaScript and the correct interpretation of the file solely depends on the context.

Starting with Firefox 50, Firefox will reject stylesheets, images or scripts if their MIME type does not match the context in which the file is loaded if the server sends the response header “X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff” (view specification). More precisely, if the Content-Type of a file does not match the context (see detailed list of accepted Content-Types for each format underneath) Firefox will block the file, hence prevent such MIME confusion attacks and will display the following message in the console:

Valid Content-Types for Stylesheets:

– “text/css”

Valid Content-Types for images:

– have to start with “image/”

Valid Content-Types for Scripts:

– “application/javascript”

– “application/x-javascript”

– “application/ecmascript”

– “application/json”

– “text/ecmascript”

– “text/javascript”

– “text/json”