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
Attendees: Johan W, Shayna, Ivan
0 - Agenda bash
1 - Project review
a. General -
b. OIDC libraries - https://github.com/IdentityPython (idpy-oidc,
JWTConnect-Python-CryptoJWT, etc)
- Ivan chatted with Roland and people from SUNET about the things Roland
has split up into multiple MRs, related to wallets and
federation. This way
they can be reviewed and incorporated slowly into the
idpy-oidc library.
- This work is needed by some people sooner - so need to create a
release from a branch which will be marked as a
development release- e.g.
5.1.dev0.
- This will be considered a pre-release. Regular users will not
get it unless they explicitly request it using a specific flag or
installation (e.g., pip install idpy-oidc=xxxx)
- some things currently in the library may break as part of
this pre-release- tests cannot cover all edge cases
c. Satosa - https://github.com/IdentityPython/SATOSA
- Still trying to get the release out - sometime today hopefully? Will
contact Matthew after tagging and posting to pypi, to address
changes for
the container image due to the loss of samltest.id
- would like to transition to use Poetry like pySAML2 does- makes
it easier to package releases, do version bumps, etc.
d. pySAML2 - https://github.com/IdentityPython/pysaml2
- local cleanup, revamping of dependencies coming up
e. Any other project (pyFF, djangosaml2, pyMDOC-CBOR, etc)
2 - AOB
- Next meeting will be 8 January 2025. Happy Holidays!
*Idpy meeting 20 November 2024*
Attendees: Johan W, Johan L, Shayna, Ivan, Roland, Hannah S, Ali H, Mikael F
0 - Agenda bash
1 - Project review
a. General -
b. OIDC libraries - https://github.com/IdentityPython (idpy-oidc,
JWTConnect-Python-CryptoJWT, etc)
- Roland's big PR - lots of changes to idpyoidc. He will divide into
smaller chunks and issue as PRs.
- upcoming work on audience policies - GRnet
c. Satosa - https://github.com/IdentityPython/SATOSA
- Ivan has prepared new patches/releases - haven't posted but has the
tags locally. Will announce on slack when the new version is available.
- plan to merge in stages
- Ivan has been getting requests to easily setup an environment to
run satosa and run it locally. He has been thinking about doing something
similar to the reflector backend (the reflector backend, instead of going
out to a actual idp, immediately creates a payload and returns a
response).
To start the flow we need a service - create something like the reflector
backend which will act as a frontend. It will directly trigger a
flow when
you try to access it, and once it gets a response it will just show the
response. Then we don't need to involve any other service that acts as an
SP or IdP. Can configure how we want IdP to behave. Frederik from Umea
Universitat - plugin that displayed a page and allowed you to insert your
own values for attributes; it also created several profiles.
Would like to
try and build on this.
- Single logout discussion with Hannah Sebuliba
- Met with Ivan and Ali in January 2024 to try and merge the work she
had done into Satosa. There are some conflicts and Hannah would like
guidance how to proceed.
- In provious discussions, the recommendation was to hide the
single logout capabilities behind a flag in order to control
when they are
enabled, so that changes will not affect existing workflows.
This allows
merging without breaking, and testing and testing and fixing
things as we
go along. Then when everything looks good, either remove the
flag, or keep
it so people have the option to enable or disable the feature.
- Important to document what the new features are - what bindings
are supported, what the checks that are implemented actually
do, verify
messages, signatures, and identifiers within logout request
and response
messages.
- The most important thing is to record what we do with the state.
To support logout we need to keep state, The state has to do with the
sessions, the identifiers of the users, and the identifiers
of requests
that came in and correspond to the logout message. Also
allows us to avoid
attacks where someone could send logout requests using an
identifier they
found somewhere.
- It would be good to update the state diagrams
- Hannah felt an important idea was to move the session handling
to SATOSA rather than SAML ends - this is under discussion
- Ali's work has the storage within SATOSA - some parts of the
storage are in the frontend or backend. There is a map
between frontends
and backends connecting the session. The logout request should not be
specific to only one protocol. This required the session to
be kept within
SATOSA. Currently Ali's work supports Postgres. Can add other
adapters.
Also has the logout enabled flag.
- There are differences in the work Ali and Hannah have done, not
just the protocol but also the flow itself. Hannah has worked on SP
initiated logout - with SAML SPs and only logs out SAML IdPs.
It will not
log out OIDC-based IdPs. Ali worked on the OP initiated
logout. Even so,
the requirements and the state that needs to be kept are very similar.
- Need to get back to original code and review it. Should be able
to merge PRs independently, as long as they are behind the
feature flag.
Storage - abstract managed by the proxy and not related to
the protocols
directly. This will add some complexity before and can be
messy. Ivan is
not totally sure this is the right way. If code is kept
isolated, should
work.
- There was some discussion on 1) whether the flag should be the
same or separate for each protocol. Ivan seemed to think it
should be the
same overall. 2) Whether the logout should work for both protocols (no
matter which protocol initiates the logout, SPs and IdPs from both
protocols are logged out). Ivan thinks eventually it should
work this way
but initially each developer should focus on the protocol
they have been
working with.
- Hannah asks are there any services to use as test RP/OP? At one
time Ivan had done someting simple with Apache module -
modauth openidc
https://github.com/OpenIDC/mod_auth_openidc. Ivan doesn't think
she should worry about that right now. Merge the initial
patches and then
worry about oidc.
d. pySAML2 - https://github.com/IdentityPython/pysaml2
e. Any other project (pyFF, djangosaml2, pyMDOC-CBOR, etc)
- new release coming that will allow filtering of idps based on trust
authority. Discovery service parts are being tested right now.
- two phases - information processed by pyff - produces artifacts
that are fed into thiss-ds and are searchable by users.
- maybe there can be an information session on this during a
future meeting.
2 - AOB
- Roland has big demo on digital wallet coming up in Paris.
- He has created a document with Giuseppe about profiling the federation
specification.
