Re: [PATCH] http(s): automatically try NTLM authentication first

[Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>]

Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:

> On Wed, Feb 22, 2017 at 11:34:19PM +0000, brian m. carlson wrote:
>
>> Browsers usually disable this feature by default, as it basically will
>> attempt to authenticate to any site that sends a 401.  For Kerberos
>> against a malicious site, the user will either not have a valid ticket
>> for that domain, or the user's Kerberos server will refuse to provide a
>> ticket to pass to the server, so there's no security risk involved.
>> 
>> I'm unclear how SPNEGO works with NTLM, so I can't speak for the
>> security of it.  From what I understand of NTLM and from RFC 4559, it
>> consists of a shared secret.  I'm unsure what security measures are in
>> place to not send that to an untrusted server.
>> 
>> As far as Kerberos, this is a desirable feature to have enabled, with
>> little downside.  I just don't know about the security of the NTLM part,
>> and I don't think we should take this patch unless we're sure we know
>> the consequences of it.
>
> Hmm. That would be a problem with my proposed patch 2 then, too, if only
> because it turns the feature on by default in more places.
>
> If it _is_ dangerous to turn on all the time, I'd think we should
> consider warning people in the http.emptyauth documentation.

I presume that we have finished discussing the security
ramification, and if I am not mistaken the conclusion was that it
could leak information if we turned on emptyAuth unconditionally
when talking to a wrong server, and that the documentation needs an
update to recommend those who use emptyAuth because they want to
talk to Negotiate servers to use the http.<site>.emptyAuth form,
limited to such servers, not a more generic http.emptyAuth, to avoid
information leakage?

If that is the case, let's take your 1/2 in the near-by thread
without 2/2 (auto-enable emptyAuth) for now, as Dscho seems to have
a case that may be helped by it.