Apache - Error with Permissions-Policy header: Parse of permission policy failed because of errors reported by strctured header parser

FrankT
February 24, 2021
254 views
2 votes
3 Answers

I recently have tried to update settings on the server of a non-profit website I host and have run into configuration issues in regards to the Permissions Policy. I haven’t found many examples of the proper use-case and syntax to use for this setting and thus have run into errors in the Chrome console for cimarronoutdoors.org. Here is the Permissions Policy I am trying.

Header always set Permissions-Policy "geolocation=();midi=();microphone=();camera=();fullscreen=(self);payment=()"

In the console it returns the following.

Error with Permissions-Policy header: Parse of permission policy failed because of errors reported by strctured header parser.

I have tried only listing items from the link below and limiting it to a few to see if that might be the issue but I can’t get the error to go away.

https://github.com/w3c/webappsec-permissions-policy/blob/main/features.md

Any advice on this issue would be greatly appreciated.

Server OS: Ubuntu 16.04.7 LTS
Permission Policy set in site conf file.

Answers

- Eric
- March 3, 2021 at 6:46 pm
- 0 votes
0
Use commas instead of semicolons as delimiters.

See example here:

https://www.w3.org/TR/permissions-policy-1/#policy-directive

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- Diar
- March 4, 2021 at 10:46 am
- 0 votes
0
The way to creating Permission-Policy has changed.

You have to add parentheses around lists, use commas instead of semi-colons, and add double-quotes around most strings:
```
fullscreen=(self 'https://example.com'), geolocation=*, camera=()
```
Here’s a link: Appendix: Big changes since this was called Feature Policy
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- Pene
- May 6, 2021 at 10:01 pm
- 0 votes
0
I found out that the scheme changed from microphone 'none'; geolocation *; payment https://*.paypal.com; to microphone=(),geolocation=*,payment=("https://*.paypal.com").

At the moment the below code is valid, so it won’t produce nor the "We didn’t detect a viable policy." on securityheaders.com neither the "Error with Permissions-Policy header: Parse of permissions policy failed because of errors reported by structured header parser." in Google Chrome console.

Keep in mind to properly escape double quotes in configs, use commas instead of semi-colons (as mentioned also below) and use the "new format".

nginx.conf example:
```
add_header Permissions-Policy "accelerometer=(),autoplay=(),camera=(),encrypted-media=(),fullscreen=*,geolocation=*,gyroscope=(),interest-cohort=(),magnetometer=(),microphone=(),midi=(),payment=("https://*.paypal.com" "https://*.barion.com"),sync-xhr=*,usb=(),xr-spatial-tracking=()" always;
```
apache.conf example:
```
Header always set Permissions-Policy "accelerometer=(),autoplay=(),camera=(),encrypted-media=(),fullscreen=*,geolocation=*,gyroscope=(),interest-cohort=(),magnetometer=(),microphone=(),midi=(),payment=("https://*.paypal.com" "https://*.barion.com"),sync-xhr=*,usb=(),xr-spatial-tracking=()"
```
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