Hi Roland, We are in fact spinning up Jupyter in a Docker container, so a) users can't restart it and b) if they break their environment, too bad. They can start again with a fresh instance and not mess it up this time :)
If you're right in saying that user modifications to the config file only take effect on a server restart, I think that's secure enough for us. Though: can they mess with the running Jupyter instance programmatically? If they can do something like import IPython.NotebookApp and monkeypatch the URL handlers, that would be baaaaad. Thanks, -Hussein On Monday, November 6, 2017 at 2:20:23 AM UTC-5, Roland Weber wrote: > > Hello Hussein, > > in a typical Jupyter installation, users have write access to the > configuration files and kernel specs. They can wreak all kinds of havoc > there. Even if you stop them from messing with configuration files and > kernel specs, they may be able to install at ~/.local/ different versions > of Python packages, or site-customization files, which are loaded by the > Jupyter server on startup. Unless you've taken special precautions, like > running the Jupyter server in a read-only environment and without access to > the user's home directory, it's safest to assume that it is completely open > to modification by users. > > I think notebook server extensions are loaded when the server is started. > User modifications to the config file will not take effect until the server > is restarted. If you're always starting the notebook server from clean > config files, for example in a fresh Docker container, there are no user > modifications. But if your config files are persistent, the user > modifications kick in the next time the server is started. > If you prevent users from modifying notebook server extensions, they will > not be able to install notebook extensions on their own, which can be > annoying: https://stackoverflow.com/a/45961414/5629418 > So you have a choice of letting users install their own notebook server > extensions and disabling yours, or to block them from changing notebook > server extensions at all. > > I'd love to learn that I'm wrong though... :-) > > cheers, > Roland > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Project Jupyter" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/jupyter/7f9662dc-b81c-4ef1-8109-44d33691b92c%40googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
