Hi all,
being part of Commons Conservancy brought up yet another subject,
which is whether we should add a header with license information in
every file in the projects under idpy. This is not something done in
an abstract way, there is a specific format modelling this information
(see https://spdx.org/ and https://reuse.software/ - more specifically
https://reuse.software/practices/2.0/) Still, I find it problematic.
We want to open up the question to the wider community and consider
their thoughts on this. The forwarded message below is discussing this
subject. You can see the question we posed, the answer we got and my
comments. Feel free to tell us what you think on this.
---------- Forwarded message ---------
Date: Thu, 16 May 2019 at 09:56
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> Date: May 8, 2019, 8:15 AM -0700
>
> > Why does CC think having a single license file per project is
> > insufficient? Our thought is that if we can avoid adding a header to
> > every single file, that would be nice, esp. given we already have this
> > info in the license file and we have the Note Well.
>
>
> this is not just our opinion, but something that is an industry and
> community standard for legal compliance these days. When companies like
> Siemens, Samsung or Honeywell use some code in one of the hundreds or
> thousands of devices and systems in their product line, they need to be
> able to provide the correct license and a download of the exact version.
> This means machine readability too.
>
I've actually observed the opposite of that. Communities abandon the
"license in every file" model, and just use a single LICENSE file in
the root of the project. The LICENSE file contains license
information, that is, it is not a single license but it has exception
sections and so on.
> To quote from https://reuse.software/practices/2.0/ :
>
> Scroll to the section "2. Include a copyright notice and license in each
> file"...
>
> "Source code files are often reused across multiple projects, taken from
> their origin and repurposed, or otherwise end up in repositories where
> they are separate from its origin. You should therefore ensure that all
> files in your project have a comment header that convey that file’s
> copyright and license information: Who are the copyright holders and
> under which license(s) do they release the file?
>
Continuing from above, the standardization of package-management
formats and tools has helped exactly with that: to avoid distribution
of single files, and instead provide packages and modules. It is bad
practice and considered a hack to copy files. Nobody liked that model
and everyone is moving away; it is unstructured, it becomes
unmanageable and it will cause problems.
> It is highly recommended that you keep the format of these headers
> consistent across your files. It is important, however, that you do not
> remove any information from headers in files of which you are not the
> sole author.
>
> You must convey the license information of your source code file in a
> standardised way, so that computers can interpret it. You can do this
> with an SPDX-License-Identifier tag followed by an SPDX expression
> defined by the SPDX specifications."
>
> (the text goes on for a while after this, to clarify the point but this
> is the basic gist of it)
>
> There is a nice Python tool to check:
>
> https://github.com/fsfe/reuse-tool
>
> I hope this makes sense
>
Well, it does not make complete sense. We're talking about licensing a
project. A project is not just code; there are data files (html, xml,
yaml, json files), binary files (archives/zip, images, audio, video,
etc), text files (configs, ini-files, etc) all "not-code". How do you
mark those files? Does the LICENSE file need a license-header? The
json format does not define comments, how do you add a header there?
If a binary file does not get a license header, why should a file with
code get one?
I would expect there to be a way to have the needed information
unified. If the files themselves cannot provide this information it
has to be external; thus the LICENSE file. If someone is worried about
somebody else re-using single files that do not have license
information (a python file, a png image, etc) there is really nothing
you can do (the DRM industry has been trying to solve for a long time;
and still your best bet is "social DRM").
Since, we're developing on open source with a permissive license, even
if someone does that, should we be happy that someone is actually
using what we built or sad that the files they copied did not have a
license header? And if they include the license information of that
copied file in their project's LICENSE file, is this solved?
Having pointed these contradictions, I am thinking that the "license
in every file" model seems to be a step backwards. It is introducing
overhead and does not really solve the problem, while at the same time
it enables a culture of bad practice (copying files around).
Cheers,
--
Ivan c00kiemon5ter Kanakarakis >:3
Hello everyone,
there has been a report on incident-response at idpy.org about a security
issue in PySaml2.
Alexey Sintsov and Yuri Goltsev from HERE Technologies reached out and
reported a XML Signature Wrapping (XSW) vulnerability. The issue
affects responses with signed assertions. PySaml2 can be tricked to
think that an assertion had been signed and use the assertion
information, when in reality the Signature points to another part of
the xml document that is controlled by another party.
The issue was assigned CVE-2020-5390 and is now fixed in the latest
pysaml2 release.
The relevant code commit that fixes is the issue:
https://github.com/IdentityPython/pysaml2/commit/5e9d5acbcd8ae45c4e736ac521…
Release v5.0.0 contains more changes, including:
- Add freshness period feature for MetaDataMDX
- Fix ipv6 validation to accommodate for addresses with brackets
- Fix xmlsec temporary files deletions
- Add method to get supported algorithms from metadata
- Add mdstore method to extract assurance certifications
- Add mdstore method to extract contact_person data
- Start dropping python2 support
Pointers to the release with changelog and more information, below:
- the relevant release commit:
https://github.com/IdentityPython/pysaml2/commit/f27c7e7a7010f83380566a219f…
- the github release:
https://github.com/IdentityPython/pysaml2/releases/tag/v5.0.0
- the pypi package:
https://pypi.org/project/pysaml2/5.0.0/
+ + + + + + + +
In more detail, regarding the XSW vulnerability:
libxml2 follows the xmldsig-core specification. The xmldsig
specification is way too
general. saml-core reuses the xmldsig specification, but constrains it to use of
specific facilities. The implementation of the SAML specification is
responsible to
enforce those constraints. libxml2/xmlsec1 are not aware of those
constraints and thus
process the document based on the full/general xmldsig rules.
What is happening is the following:
- xmldsig-core allows the signature-information and the data that was
signed to be in
different places. This works by setting the URI attribute of the
Reference element.
The URI attribute contains an optional identifier of the object
being signed. (see
"4.4.3 The Reference Element" --
https://www.w3.org/TR/xmldsig-core1/#sec-Reference)
This identifier is actually a pointer that can be defined in many
different ways; from
XPath expressions that need to be executed(!), to a full URL that
should be fetched(!)
in order to recalculate the signature.
- saml-core section "5.4 XML Signature Profile" defines constrains on
the xmldsig-core
facilities. It explicitly dictates that enveloped signatures are the
only signatures
allowed. This mean that:
* Assertion/RequestType/ResponseType elements must have an ID attribute
* signatures must have a single Reference element
* the Reference element must have a URI attribute
* the URI attribute contains an anchor
* the anchor points to the enclosing element's ID attribute
xmlsec1 does the right thing - it follows the reference URI pointer
and validates the
assertion. But, the pointer points to an assertion in another part of
the document; not
the assertion in which the signature is embedded/enveloped. SAML
processing thinks that
the signature is fine (that's what xmlsec1 said), and gets the
assertion data from the
assertion that contains the signature - but that assertion was never
validated. The
issue is that pysaml2 does not enforce the constrains on the signature
validation
facilities of xmldsig-core, that the saml-core spec defines.
The solution is simple; all we need is to make sure that assertions
with signatures (1)
contain one reference element that (2) has a URI attribute (3) that is
an anchor that
(4) points to the assertion in which the signature is embedded. If
those conditions are
met then we're good, otherwise we should fail the verification.
--
Ivan c00kiemon5ter Kanakarakis >:3
Hi Leif,
I added 2 pipes to buildin.py:
- publish_html creates static HTML views of IDPs and SPs, using XSLT based on Peter Schober’s alternative to MET;
- publish_split: similar to store, but added validUntil and creates signed XML-file per EntityDescriptor. This can be consumed dynamically by ADFS in an IDP role.
I put it directly into buildin.py because it shares some code with the sign pipe. Is this viable from your PoV - if yes, I would make an PR.
Cheers, Rainer
Hello idpy developers!
It’s that time again! Time to accept nominations for the Board slate. Three of the current board members are at the end of their term; all three have agreed to continue on as Board members:
• Heather Flanagan (Spherical Cow Group)
• Leif Johansson (SUNET)
• Christos Kanellopoulos (GÉANT)
As a reminder regarding board seats:
"The IdentityPython Board has a minimum of three, and a maximum of seven natural persons. The founding IdentityPython Board has appointed a number of its constituting Directors to serve a half (12 month) term, and the remainder to serve a regular (24 month) term. Subsequent Directors are elected by the IdentityPython Board to regular 24-month terms according to the procedure set out in these Statutes. The founding Board will select a nominating committee of active developers and other contributors to identify candidates for ongoing Board membership. Directors are permitted to seek office for multiple terms, however, when running against other candidates the amount of terms they have consecutively served is deducted from the votes cast in their favour. This provides a balance between continuity, equal opportunities and renewal of qualities and competences."
(From the Identity Python statutes, officially published with The Commons Conservancy: https://dracc.commonsconservancy.org/0024/)
If you have interest in serving on the board, please let Ivan or I know. Nominations are open until 15 January 2023. If no new nominations come in, the board will re-appoint the current members.
Thanks! Heather
Hello all!
The idpy developers call this Tuesday, 13 December is cancelled. But don’t worry, you can get your craving for idpy information satisfied through Roland’s seminar on Wednesday, 14 December!
——
I plan to hold a seminar on December 14th this year between 17:00-19:00 CET, on Zoom (the link will be published later).
The outline of the seminar:
"If you ever have wondered why a software package looks like it does now is your chance to get to know all about one package. In this seminar I will describe the underlying architecture of IdpyOIDC, a software implementation of all things OpenID Connect and OAuth2. The intended audience is both implementers and people the are using or plan to use IdpyOIDC in a project."
——
The link is available on the idpy slack channel. If you are not on that channel and would like to attend the seminar, let me know and I’ll make sure to send you the zoom link.
While our next call is scheduled for 20 December 2022, it’s highly likely we’ll cancel that for the holidays. I will send out an announcement and let you know closer to the date.
Heather
Sent from my iPad
Hi !
December 14th 17:00-19:00 CET I will hold a seminar:
"If you ever have wondered why a software package looks like it does now is your chance to get to know all about one package. In this seminar I will describe the underlying architecture of IdpyOIDC, a software implementation of all things OpenID Connect and OAuth2. The intended audience is both implementers and people the are using or plan to use IdpyOIDC in a project.”
The link to the Zoom room is https://sunet.zoom.us/j/63605279502
— Roland
