On 7 March 2013 04:31, Angela Schreiber <[email protected]> wrote:
> hi carsten
>
>> Finally, although this feature is optional and has no impact if not
>> used, there are valid concerns that this might be easily abused. But
>> we can't prevent anyone from abusing stuff and we already have various
>> places where people do funny things.
>
>
> just to make it very clear: it's not only that people make funny
> things. it's infinitely easy to create critical security issues
> with sling without noticing and i hope you are aware of this.
>
> i don't want to spread FUD here but IMHO it's time that the sling
> community is taking security concerns serious and thrives for a
> project that is secure by default.
>
> statements like "Features can be abused - no matter what we do"
> will likely create the impression that you don't really care.
>
> kind regards
> angela

Hi,

IMHO:
We should not be adding features that make it easy to bypass security,
other than the necessary and very well known
SlingRepository.loginAdministrative(..) method. I assume that is what
Carsten is referencing ?

also IMHO:
Once it is easy for a trusted and authorised 3rd party developer to
add executable code into a JVM all bets are off, even in OSGi. Unless
the Java security manager is enabled  and policies configured, which
we all know is fiendishly hard to get right, javax.reflect and
net.sf.cglib can be used to drill deep into the internals of the
implementation of any bundle.

Having said that:
I strongly agree that Sling as a community should not be providing any
features (beyond the necessary feature mentioned above) that weaken
breach or bypass the intrinsic security provided by underlying
repository.

As for  SlingRepository.loginAdministrative(..), we have to remain
vigilant and provide tools to ensure it is only used when absolutely
necessary. ( there are 15 classes in Sling where this is used in some
way, excluding contrib, samples and tests)

If there are other areas where its possible, with ease to create
critical security issues, then I think we must address those
immediately.

Please share, ideally on list.
If you think its not for public list consumption please send a message
to sling-private so the issue can be added to the normal cert
procedure.

Best Regards,
Ian

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