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Re: authz changes between 1.9 and 1.10

From: Branko Čibej <brane_at_apache.org>
Date: Sun, 2 Dec 2018 10:38:23 +0100

On 02.12.2018 08:43, Branko Čibej wrote:
> On 02.12.2018 08:25, Branko Čibej wrote:
>> On 08.09.2018 11:17, Stefan Fuhrmann wrote:
>>> These are the guiding principles for the 1.10 authz design:
>>>
>>> (1) ACLs are only evaluated on a per-user bases; ACLs that
>>>     don't mention this user (or any of their groups)  are ignored.
>>>     Rationale: We don't want to explicitly repeat inherited access
>>>     specs that don't change for the respective path / section.
>> This is not entirely true, as seen in the fix for SVN-4793. If a user is
>> "not mentioned" in an inverted selector, those rights do propagate to
>> the global level. For example:
>>
>> [groups]
>> readers = foo, bar
>>
>> [/]
>> ~@readers = rw
>> @readers = r
>>
>>
>> In this case 'user' has read-write access to '[/]' even though she's not
>> mentioned anywhere in the authz file or the specific ACL for '[/]'.
>>
>>
>>>> In 1.9 any repeat acl lines that were the exact same match, such as:
>>>>
>>>>    [/some/path]
>>>>    user = rw
>>>>    user = r
>>>>
>>>> resulted in the last line overriding all the other lines, so user=r in
>>>> the example above.  In 1.10 the lines combine, so user=rw in the example
>>>> above.  Is this a bug in 1.10, or a bug in 1.9 that is fixed in 1.10, or
>>>> an acceptable behaviour change?
>>> Ouch. That is a bad one and an oversight in the design - I think.
>>>
>>> According to (3), 1.9 behaves correctly. I guess we consider it
>>> an unordered collection in 1.10 and then a union is the only thing
>>> that approximates intent when a user is a member of different
>>> groups with different access rights. Strict ordering becomes
>>> very useful when assigning rights to groups:
>>>
>>> [/some/path]
>>> @Users = rw
>>> @BadUsers = r
>> We already have strict ordering within an ACL (authz_acl_t in
>> libsvn_repos/authz.h):
>>
>> /* All other user- or group-specific access rights.
>> Aliases are replaced with their definitions, rules for the same
>> user or group are merged. */
>> apr_array_header_t *user_access;
>>
>>
>>
>> The "merge" semantics was intentional; if we decide it's a bug (and I
>> think it is), it's fairly easy to change. I would lean in the direction
>> of making repeating the same access entry selection a hard error at
>> parsing time. This requires changes to the merge semantics implemented
>> in add_access_entry() and merge_alias_ace() in
>> libsvn_repos/authz_parse.c. The nice part is that it would catch errors
>> like this:
>>
>> [aliases]
>> afoo = foo
>> abar = bar
>>
>> [/]
>> &afoo = rw
>> foo = r
>> ~&abar = rw
>> ~bar = r
>>
>>
>> With the current implementation we translate the ACL to:
>>
>> [/]
>> foo = rw
>> foo = r
>> ~bar = rw
>> ~bar = r
>>
>>
>> and even with strict ordering I'd say this is a bug and not intentional.
>
> Note that this should also be an error:
>
> [/]
> $anonymous = r
> ~$authenticated = rw

I have a patch ready, here are some examples of what it does (currently,
all these examples are valid and produce merged access rights):

$ cat authz.conf
[/]
user = rw
user = r
$ svnauthz validate authz.conf
svnauthz: E220003: Error while parsing authz file: 'authz.conf':
svnauthz: E220003: Duplicate access entry 'user' in rule [/]

$ cat authz.conf
[/]
$authenticated = rw
~$anonymous = r
$ svnauthz validate authz.conf
svnauthz: E220003: Error while parsing authz file: 'authz.conf':
svnauthz: E220003: Duplicate access entry '~$anonymous' (matches '$authenticated') in rule [/]

$ cat authz.conf
[aliases]
resu = user

[/]
~&resu = rw
~user = r
$ svnauthz validate authz.conf
svnauthz: E220003: Error while parsing authz file: 'authz.conf':
svnauthz: E220003: Duplicate access entry '~&resu' (matches '~user') in rule [/]

-- Brane
Received on 2018-12-02 10:38:38 CET

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