incumbent settings object?

[ak-14]

What is the purpose of the incumbent settings object (step 4 in algorithm 4.9)?

4.9. Process response to request as COWL

[deian]

The note right after should clarify this:

Note, the client associated with the request is null when navigating, so we use the incumbent settings object to get or set the COWL state of the context that initiated the request.

or am I missing something?

[deian]

@ak-14 ^

[ak-14]

@deian if I remember correctly the thing I was confused about is when navigating, my understanding is that a new context is created and it isn't clear to me why we care about the cowl state from the context that initiated the request. Shouldn't we just create a new cowl state for the new context?

[deian]

Ah, because we need to make sure that even making the request is okay. Suppose I am tainted as a.com, I should not be able to navigate to b.com since doing so would (potentially) leak a.com data to b.com

[ak-14]

Doesn't navigation always correspond to a fetch request? (Which is handled by 4.8)