Created attachment 172412 [details] repro case Browsers tested: Chrome Canary 25.0.1317.0 - FAIL Webkit Nightly 6.0.2 (7536.26.17, 537+) - FAIL Firefox 16.0.2 - PASS Repro steps: 1) Run the attached test.html with the web inspector open. 2) Click the Network tab and click icon-gold.png. Expected: The HTTP REFERER header is sent when requesting the image. Actual: Notice that the HTTP REFERER header isn't sent when requesting the image. This is because the iframe doesn't have a 'src' attribute. However, the iframe is created and written into by the parent page, so it should send the parent page's REFERER. This breaks sites that need to use a local iframe to sandbox css styles, and that iframe also loads external content that relies on HTTP REFERER.
What is a "local" iframe?
I thought I checked all these cases and made us match Firefox, but it sounds like I missed this one. Thanks for the report.
"Local iframe": an empty iframe without the 'src' attribute. E.g.: <iframe></iframe> <script> var iframe = document.querySelector('iframe'); iframe.open(); iframe.write('content'); iframe.close(); </script>
I can confirm that IE 9 and 10 also set the HTTP Referer header properly in this use case. This is a particular problem for anyone using the WordPress Theme Customizer (which uses a src-less, dynamic iframe) in conjunction with any authenticated requests that rely on the Referer (eg Typekit) inside that iframe.
Cross filed for Blink at https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=226858