| Re: [cross-project-issues-dev] (Mirror) security |
Wim,
Comments below.
> I'll not outline the possible ways that I can think of... :-P
Well, I don't think that this is a good approach. Although we might give some kids a good idea to do low-level hacking, what /we know is also known to the bad tech people. They are the experts. I think we should name all the possible threats that we can think of and see how likely it is that this will happen. Even if it is just for fun. An open-source foundation should have some information about this part of the security.
For example, I could imagine modifying the p2 available update
site preferences to include a URI that will contact some arbitrary
site and then include information in that URI that is extracted
from the computer, thereby transmitting that information to that
arbitrary site when updates are checked. The preference to do
automatic update checking could also be set. Or change the
workbench.xmi to add an open editor/browser for such a URI.
But again, I think the fundamental point is that if you have a
rogue process modifying things on your computer, all bets are
off. I.e., what if anything prevents the rogue process from
directly transmitting files to some arbitrary site, or simply
destroying your entire file system?
Yes, this issue has come up before. I think this destructive behavior has actually happened. But I could be wrong in my recollection.
For instance, I am worried about a "Gerrit/Jenkins Bomb". Anyone can push a change to Gerrit. This will start the Jenkins build. I imagine it is not hard to add some code to the pom that's gets executed during the build. This is a bit mitigated on Github because new contributors cannot start a build before the admin gives the ok. However, we tend to add frequent contributors to the whitelist.
On the other hand, the CI builds are properly sandboxed by our relengs so it might not be an issue at all.
After the reply of Ed and Thomas, I was thinking about how a jar could be doped with tampered classes and be signed again. Suppose I have access to the build infra. Would that be enough to sign the jars of any project that I choose to build and replace it in a mirror?
Well, downloading it via p2 would notice that the checksum is different, so you would find out before installing it; I think that would be handled the same way as if the artifact were actually corruptly downloaded (transmission error) and a different mirror would be tried before failing completely.
There was a period when the download.eclipse.org server did
"transparent" mirroring where the update site information itself
could come from a mirror; that would be more problematic, but
that's not the case anymore.
No, nothing prevents me or any other committer from putting evil hooks in our code and then signing and distributing it. In that regard, nothing from the markplace is intrinsically safe, even if signed...Getting access to a build is not that hard.
Cheers,
Wim
On Fri, Sep 25, 2020 at 10:10 AM Ed Merks <ed.merks@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
_______________________________________________Denis,
If one has a rogue running process that can write arbitrarily to your file system (or parts thereof), it could tamper anything, so it would seem that at that point you would have arbitrary security risks even without an Eclipse IDE. Even Windows doesn't prevent a tampered or unsigned executable from running. I don't think that Linux even has signed executables, given there is no signing of such things in the Tycho builds.
Looking at this search:
https://www.google.com/search?q=java+run+only+signed+jars
and at answers like these:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/54011270/allow-a-jar-to-run-only-if-it-is-signed
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/34641305/is-it-possible-to-force-jvm-to-check-that-every-jar-must-be-signed
suggests that it's not really so feasible to prevent Java from running unsigned jars, though I expect from Thomas' answer that OSGi can do verification with its specialized class loader (though presumably that has a performance impact).
Running Java with a security manager enabled for the purpose of running an IDE I think makes zero sense, so generally the IDE can do anything and can itself be a rogue process (if and when the user installs arbitrary things from the marketplace).
Even if the jars are verified, I can still personally think of a number of ways that I could tamper data files used by the IDE that would make the IDE "do bad things". I'll not outline the possible ways that I can think of... :-P
I think a fundamental aspect (assumption?) of security is that the machine itself is secure, sufficiently so that a process that does rogue things never runs in the first place. Verifying signatures and checksums ensures that only known content is downloaded and installed in order to keep the machine secure.
Regards,
EdOn 24.09.2020 19:53, Denis Roy wrote:
So it's possible for another process to tamper with jars and have Eclipse run them blindly.
Do we know if that is industry practice?
On 2020-09-24 12:07 p.m., Thomas Watson wrote:
Yes, p2 verifies the signatures and content of the JARs to confirm it hasn't been tampered with before installing the JAR. At runtime the verification of JARs is not enabled by default. Otherwise what you did would have resulted in a runtime exception for the class you changed.
Tom
----- Original message -----
From: Wim Jongman <wim.jongman@xxxxxxxxx>
Sent by: cross-project-issues-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx
To: Cross project issues <cross-project-issues-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc:
Subject: [EXTERNAL] [cross-project-issues-dev] (Mirror) security
Date: Thu, Sep 24, 2020 10:18 AM
Hi,This is probably a silly question but I was wondering how we protect the content of jar files as they are being pulled from mirrors all over the world.Due to a recent break in the Platform class, I compiled my own version of the Platform class where I re-added the removed method. Then I replaced it in the plugins/o.e.c.runtime jar using 7-zip.This solved my issue but it also made me wonder how this was protected if some mirror-server user used the same hack to dope our jars.I assume this is being done by p2 when downloading the jar files by comparing some MDA hash?Please enlighten me.Cheers,Wim_______________________________________________
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Denis Roy
Director, IT Services | Eclipse Foundation, Inc.
Eclipse Foundation: The Platform for Open Innovation and Collaboration
Twitter: @droy_eclipse
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