[PATCH] hgweb: support Content Security Policy

Pierre-Yves David pierre-yves.david at ens-lyon.org
Thu Jan 12 06:45:47 EST 2017



On 01/12/2017 01:18 AM, Gregory Szorc wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 11, 2017 at 10:53 AM, Sean Farley <sean at farley.io
> <mailto:sean at farley.io>> wrote:
>
>     Gregory Szorc <gregory.szorc at gmail.com
>     <mailto:gregory.szorc at gmail.com>> writes:
>
>     > # HG changeset patch
>     > # User Gregory Szorc <gregory.szorc at gmail.com
>     <mailto:gregory.szorc at gmail.com>>
>     > # Date 1484120228 28800
>     > #      Tue Jan 10 23:37:08 2017 -0800
>     > # Node ID 113293954736e020d29e8e48aa3e01657ec853f3
>     > # Parent  79314c9a79b3aa033b6f79d066b97d7157ecac33
>     > hgweb: support Content Security Policy
>     >
>     > Content-Security-Policy (CSP) is a web security feature that allows
>     > servers to declare what loaded content is allowed to do. For example,
>     > a policy can prevent loading of images, JavaScript, CSS, etc unless
>     > the source of that content is whitelisted (by hostname, URI scheme,
>     > hashes of content, etc). It's a nifty security feature that provides
>     > extra mitigation against some attacks, notably XSS.
>     >
>     > Mitigation against these attacks is important for Mercurial because
>     > hgweb renders repository data, which is commonly untrusted. While we
>     > make attempts to escape things, etc, there's the possibility that
>     > malicious data could be injected into the site content. If this
>     happens
>     > today, the full power of the web browser is available to that
>     > malicious content. A restrictive CSP policy (defined by the server
>     > operator and sent in an HTTP header which is outside the control of
>     > malicious content), could restrict browser capabilities and mitigate
>     > security problems posed by malicious data.
>     >
>     > CSP works by emitting an HTTP header declaring the policy that
>     browsers
>     > should apply. Ideally, this header would be emitted by a layer above
>     > Mercurial (likely the HTTP server doing the WSGI "proxying"). This
>     > works for some CSP policies, but not all.
>     >
>     > For example, policies to allow inline JavaScript may require setting
>     > a "nonce" attribute on <script>. This attribute value must be unique
>     > and non-guessable. And, the value must be present in the HTTP header
>     > and the HTML body. This means that coordinating the value between
>     > Mercurial and another HTTP server could be difficult: it is much
>     > easier to generate and emit the nonce in a central location.
>     >
>     > This commit introduces support for emitting a
>     > Content-Security-Policy header from hgweb. A config option defines
>     > the header value. If present, the header is emitted. A special
>     > "%nonce%" syntax in the value triggers generation of a nonce and
>     > inclusion in <script> elements in templates. The inclusion of a
>     > nonce does not occur unless "%nonce%" is present. This makes this
>     > commit completely backwards compatible and the feature opt-in.
>     >
>     > The nonce is a type 4 UUID, which is the flavor that is randomly
>     > generated. It has 122 random bits, which should be plenty to satisfy
>     > the guarantees of a nonce.
>
>     Looks pretty good to me. I'd appreciate if someone else with web server
>     experience to gave it a look over. One small nit below.
>
>     > diff --git a/mercurial/help/config.txt b/mercurial/help/config.txt
>     > --- a/mercurial/help/config.txt
>     > +++ b/mercurial/help/config.txt
>     > @@ -2084,6 +2084,20 @@ The full set of options is:
>     >      Name or email address of the person in charge of the repository.
>     >      (default: ui.username or ``$EMAIL`` or "unknown" if unset or
>     empty)
>     >
>     > +``csp``
>     > +    Send a ``Content-Security-Policy`` HTTP header with this value.
>     > +
>     > +    The value may contain a special string ``%nonce%``, which
>     will be replaced
>     > +    by a randomly-generated one-time use value. If the value contains
>     > +    ``%nonce%``, ``web.cache`` will be disabled, as caching
>     undermines the
>     > +    one-time property of the nonce. This nonce will also be
>     inserted into
>     > +    ``<script>`` elements containing inline JavaScript.
>     > +
>     > +    Note: lots of HTML content sent by the server is derived from
>     repository
>     > +    data. Please consider the potential for malicious repository
>     data to
>     > +    "inject" itself into generated HTML content as part of your
>     security
>     > +    threat model.
>     > +
>     >  ``deny_push``
>     >      Whether to deny pushing to the repository. If empty or not set,
>     >      push is not denied. If the special value ``*``, all remote
>     users are
>     > diff --git a/mercurial/hgweb/common.py b/mercurial/hgweb/common.py
>     > --- a/mercurial/hgweb/common.py
>     > +++ b/mercurial/hgweb/common.py
>     > @@ -8,9 +8,11 @@
>     >
>     >  from __future__ import absolute_import
>     >
>     > +import base64
>     >  import errno
>     >  import mimetypes
>     >  import os
>     > +import uuid
>     >
>     >  from .. import (
>     >      encoding,
>     > @@ -199,3 +201,22 @@ def caching(web, req):
>     >      if req.env.get('HTTP_IF_NONE_MATCH') == tag:
>     >          raise ErrorResponse(HTTP_NOT_MODIFIED)
>     >      req.headers.append(('ETag', tag))
>     > +
>     > +def cspvalues(ui):
>     > +    """Obtain the Content-Security-Policy header and nonce value.
>     > +
>     > +    Returns a 2-tuple of the CSP header value and the nonce value.
>     > +
>     > +    First value is ``None`` if CSP isn't enabled. Second value is
>     ``None``
>     > +    if CSP isn't enabled or if the CSP header doesn't need a nonce.
>     > +    """
>     > +    # Don't allow untrusted CSP setting since it be disable
>     protections
>     > +    # from a trusted/global source.
>     > +    csp = ui.config('web', 'csp', untrusted=False)
>     > +    nonce = None
>     > +
>     > +    if csp and '%nonce%' in csp:
>
>     Since we just talked about this recently, should we test 'if csp is not
>     None'?
>
>
> I'm not sure exactly which conversation you are referring to, but
> ui.config() will return a string or None. A Python string can only be
> true if it is non-empty. So an explicit identity check against None
> should not be necessary

If '' (empty string) is a valid value, equivalent to None, boolean 
checks seems fine.
However if the string is empty, the 'in' check will fails, so it might 
be useful to switch the first check to explicit None to make the 
possibility of a None clear.

> (and is unPythonic).

I'm not certain what you exactly meant here, but for clarity, let me 
remind that explicit identity check is the Pythonic way to check for 
None. Doing otherwise might lead to bugs. this was brought up in a 
couple of discussion recently including your series about mutable 
default value.

Quoting PEP8: https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0008/

>> Comparisons to singletons like None should always be done with is or is
>> not , never the equality operators.
>>
>> Also, beware of writing if x when you really mean if x is not None --
>> e.g. when testing whether a variable or argument that defaults to None
>> was set to some other value. The other value might have a type (such as
>> a container) that could be false in a boolean context!


> (Or am I missing a scenario where ui.config() returns something other
> than a string or None?)

Cheers,

-- 
Pierre-Yves David


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