On 8/29/11 9:18 AM, Matthew A. Miller wrote:
> 
> On Aug 27, 2011, at 01:41, Pedro Melo wrote:
> 
>> Hi,
>> 
>> On Sat, Aug 27, 2011 at 12:52 AM, Matthew A. Miller 
>> <[email protected]> wrote:
>>> On Aug 26, 2011, at 16:32, Waqas Hussain wrote:
>>>> On Sat, Aug 27, 2011 at 1:53 AM, Samantha Mizzi
>>>> <[email protected]> wrote: The proposed changes don't solve the
>>>> problem. See what I wrote in the "Attempting to fix the
>>>> algorithm" section of the email you linked. Particularly "As
>>>> far as I can see, there is no way of fixing attacks 2 and 3
>>>> other than fundamentally changing the algorithm."
>>> 
>>> Attacks #3 and #4 should not be successful, because they violate
>>> the schema for disco#info; the category and type attribute values
>>> MUST be present, and MUST be non-empty strings.
>>> 
>>> As for attack #2, I wonder how worthwhile it is to send a disco
>>> extension that only contains a FORM_TYPE.  Verifying that each
>>> form has at least one non-FORM_TYPE var-ed field might be enough
>>> to prevent this attack.
>> 
>> You are right, but if possible it would be better to have an
>> algorithm whose security is not based on restrictions that for some
>> reason we might want to lift later.
>> 
> 
> I do appreciate this position in general, but let's look at this
> particular case.  Disco extensions are additional information about
> an entity that doesn't fit in <identity/> or <feature/>.  We've
> already set the precedence with MUC and PubSub to use features as
> flags, so using this in the same manner seems a little phishy to
> begin with.
> 
> This kind of restriction (or security consideration?) is starting to
> look like something we ought to have put on XEP-0128 in the first
> place.

Very much so. The point of a form is to include data, not just the mere
FORM_TYPE (which would be like an XML namespace with no elements or
attributes).

Note that even XEP-0004 says:

   A data form of type "form", "submit", or "result" SHOULD contain at
   least one <field/> element...

Is there a strong reason why that isn't MUST?

Peter

-- 
Peter Saint-Andre
https://stpeter.im/


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