| only for RuBoard - do not distribute or recompile | |
Clients and servers can optionally identify themselves. Clients send a User-agent header and servers sent the Server header. Even though these headers are optional, the protocol specification encourages their use. Some benefits are:
Servers can respond with customized content for a particular client. Such customized content may work around a bug in a particular version of a browser, or may make use of advanced features in more modern browsers when possible.
Surveys and statistics collections of browser and server deployment.
Tracking of client or server software that violates the HTTP specification.
However, when a server identifies itself, there is some security risk, given that a user now knows the type of server and may be able to apply security exploits for a known vulnerability on a particular version of the server software. In light of this, some web servers are configured to not display the Server header.
| only for RuBoard - do not distribute or recompile | |