On Wed, Dec 10, 2008 at 6:00 PM, Thomas Bruederli <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 10, 2008 at 13:43, till <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 8:40 PM, Kris Steinhoff <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>> While it is still unclear whether or not there is a problem with
>>> bin/html2text.php (http://trac.roundcube.net/ticket/1485618), maybe it's 
>>> worth
>>> considering adding session checking to all of the utilities in the bin
>>> directory. If a vulnerability exists in a utility, then having a session 
>>> check
>>> will limit or complicate its exploitation.
>>>
>>> The way quotaimg.php was doing session checking could be used in the other
>>> utilities. (quotaimg.php's session checking was removed in October:
>>> http://trac.roundcube.net/changeset/2012).
>>
>> Wow, thanks for pointing that out.
>>
>> @Thomas: Can we roll back in there? The reason the code is in there is
>> that otherwise people can "execute" quotaimg.php without being logged
>> in. I know that a log is not the ultimate security measure (malicious
>> user logged in ;-), but it is worse without.
>
> Actually I don't see a real reason why a script that does not require
> a session state should have to check the session (and maybe even do an
> IMAP login?). Adding a session check will probably cause even more
> load because there are more classes to be included and instantiated
> and the database is queried since the session info is stored there.
>>
>> Reason why I include it is, there are scripts in the wild that run DoS
>> attacks on servers by requesting the quota functions thus rending
>> images (again, and again, and again) and in the end creating a lot of
>> load on the server which can lead to a crash.
>
> In this particular case we need to investigate if the image rendering
> causes more load than the session checking (database!).

It's a trade-off, imho. Speed vs. "security".

> However, if one is looking to DoS your server there are other
> vulnerabilities than the quotaimg or the html2text script. What about
> the login page? This will not only put heavy load on the web server
> but also the IMAP server.

I guess we could implement a captcha there -- if we notice a lot of
failed attempts. No idea how easy it is to implement it though.
There's no ultimate security per se.

> If you guys think we should add this, then I'll not revert it this time :-)
>
> ~Thomas
>
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