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Re: Proposal: new fsfs.conf properties

From: Paul Hammant <paul_at_hammant.org>
Date: Wed, 12 Jul 2017 15:50:38 -0400

You know, in all seriousness I think the (empty by default) list of
exempted files suffixes the the best way forward. If suffixes is good
enough for Apache itself to use (link provided earlier), it is good enough
in this scenario on the server side of Svn. If the function in question
doesn't know the file name then I that param should be added to the
functions args (and backwards through all the methods in the stack until
it's reached the place where the resource name was known).

I'd be cranking up the JetBrains' Clion myself to do the refactoring and
giving you *cough* a pull request, but I've not done any C since 1991 -
https://paulhammant.com/images/swapcols_mag_page.jpg - (top right).
 Anyone in NYC want to bring be up to speed with the build, and acclimate
me to the source? Or by ScreenHero (will send invites).

- Paul

On Wed, Jul 12, 2017 at 6:33 AM, Johan Corveleyn <jcorvel_at_gmail.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Jul 12, 2017 at 12:27 PM, Branko Čibej <brane_at_apache.org> wrote:
> > On 12.07.2017 12:24, Johan Corveleyn wrote:
> >> On Wed, Jul 12, 2017 at 12:09 PM, Branko Čibej <brane_at_apache.org>
> wrote:
> >>> On 11.07.2017 22:50, Stefan Sperling wrote:
> >>>> On Tue, Jul 11, 2017 at 09:11:58PM +0200, Branko Čibej wrote:
> >>>>> Another issue I have with the proposal is the idea to use file
> suffixes.
> >>>>> That's usually the wrong way to go about things (case in point:
> Windows
> >>>>> does it, with didastrous results). It's much better to determine file
> >>>>> format by inspection, such as, e.g., libmagic does. We already have
> >>>>> optional support for libmagic in the client (to set svn:mime-type).
> >>>> I would not feel comfortable having the server parse arbitrary data
> with
> >>>> libmagic. The libmagic code is not very safe to run on untrusted
> input.
> >>>> I have seen libmagic crash my svn client on several occasions even on
> >>>> text files I wrote.
> >>>>
> >>>> At the client side it's a bit less dangerous because users have
> already
> >>>> told svn to add the files in question to version control, and a
> libmagic
> >>>> exploit running on the client machine can do less harm than a
> server-side one.
> >>>>
> >>>> Granted, commits are usually authenticated. If we did this we should
> at
> >>>> least make really sure that no unauthenticated access can trigger
> this code.
> >>>> Ideally, it would be sandboxed somehow if we started using it on the
> server.
> >>> I wasn't really proposing to use libmagic on the server. My point is
> >>> that instead of using file name suffixes (which the compression and
> >>> deltification code don't know about), we'd do some sort of inspection
> >>> instead. Detecting ZIP files, or gzip/bzip2/xz-compressed files, etc.,
> >>> is fairly easy just from looking at a few bytes of headers. Same goes
> >>> for most image and video formats.
> >>>
> >>> Of course, one could always concoct a file that would trick such
> >>> inspection, but at least that's marginally harder to do than commit a
> >>> large text file full of spaces and calling it 'spaceinvaders.jpg'. :)
> >>>
> >>> Random binary data is harder to detect, but we already deal with that
> >>> after the fact by using the plain text if the delta is too large.
> >> We could also make the process driven by a "client-side suggestion".
> >> Driving it from the client-side also gives us the possibility to
> >> eliminate the client-side deltification overhead.
> >>
> >> I.e. the client has some logic (libmagic, suffix, looking at the first
> >> 100 bytes, ...) to determine that it's not worth deltifying and/or
> >> compressing. It doesn't do deltification itself, and lets the server
> >> know that it probably shouldn't either (or the server sees that the
> >> client hasn't deltified, so accepts the content automatically as
> >> "non-deltifiable / non-compressable"?).
> >>
> >> Maybe needs a server-side config setting to make it respect or ignore
> >> the client-side suggestion.
> >
> > That's such an easy way to make a malicious client explode the
> > repository size. And ... there's realy no reason to complicate. The
> > server's storage layer can cheaply do all the necessary checks without
> > having to believe the client, and without adding yet another
> > (dangerous!) config knob.
>
> Yes, well in any case allowing this by server-side inspection will
> also open up possibilities for blowing up the repository by a
> malicious client.
>
> In fact, making it coupled with "client also non-deltifies" forces the
> client to also send those huge files over the wire, making it a little
> bit more difficult to DoS the server by blowing it up. If the client
> can still deltify (only sending a few bytes), but trick the server
> into storing those as full-texts, the attack can be more powerful I
> guess.
>
> --
> Johan
>
Received on 2017-07-12 21:50:56 CEST

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