user/dev discussion of public-inbox itself
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From: Ali Alnubani <alialnu@mellanox.com>
To: Eric Wong <e@80x24.org>, "meta@public-inbox.org" <meta@public-inbox.org>
Subject: RE: [RFC] searchview: don't be too verbose about bad queries
Date: Wed, 12 Jun 2019 08:36:18 +0000	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <AM4PR0501MB2161859AE4E8D78E74CB2585D7EC0@AM4PR0501MB2161.eurprd05.prod.outlook.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20190611193815.c4uovtlp574bid6x@dcvr>

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Eric Wong <e@80x24.org>
> Sent: Tuesday, June 11, 2019 10:38 PM
> To: meta@public-inbox.org
> Cc: Ali Alnubani <alialnu@mellanox.com>
> Subject: [RFC] searchview: don't be too verbose about bad queries
> 
> Ali sent this privately to me as a potential security issue.
> I am not a security expert and I certainly don't consider this a big enough
> problem to discuss privately...
> 
> The potential issue is exposing path names of Xapian installs.
> 
> I figure installation paths of open source software (particularly with FHS / LSB
> systems) is well-standardized to the point that it's pointless to obscure or
> obfuscate anyways.
They are standardized for system-wide installations. But having perl libs/modules/binaries
installed per user or on non-default paths could expose some private info, including usernames
for example, making those system users subject to some attacks.
> 
> *shrug*

Anyway, I also agree that it's not that critical.

Thanks,
Ali
> 
> ---------8<-----------
> From: Ali Alnubani <alialnu@mellanox.com>
> Date: Tue, 11 Jun 2019 10:03:17 +0000
> Subject: [PATCH] searchview: don't be too verbose about bad queries
> 
> This is to omit the message "something terrible happened at .."
> from the http view when searching, since it contains absolute system paths.
> This is debug information and shouldn't be displayed to the user.
> ---
>  lib/PublicInbox/SearchView.pm | 10 ++++++++--
>  1 file changed, 8 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)
> 
> diff --git a/lib/PublicInbox/SearchView.pm b/lib/PublicInbox/SearchView.pm
> index b089de9..b7859df 100644
> --- a/lib/PublicInbox/SearchView.pm
> +++ b/lib/PublicInbox/SearchView.pm
> @@ -15,6 +15,7 @@ use PublicInbox::MIME;  require PublicInbox::Git;
> require PublicInbox::SearchThread;  our $LIM = 200;
> +our $ERR_TXT_VERBOSE=0;
> 
>  sub noop {}
> 
> @@ -136,8 +137,13 @@ sub err_txt {
>  	my $u = $ctx->{-inbox}->base_url($ctx->{env}) . '_/text/help/';
>  	$err =~ s/^\s*Exception:\s*//; # bad word to show users :P
>  	$err = ascii_html($err);
> -	"\nBad query: <b>$err</b>\n" .
> -		qq{See <a\nhref="$u">$u</a> for help on using search};
> +	my $to_print = "\nBad query";
> +	if ($ERR_TXT_VERBOSE) {
> +		$to_print .= ": <b>$err</b>\n";
> +	} else {
> +		$to_print .= ", or search returned too many results.\n";
> +	}
> +	$to_print . qq{See <a\nhref="$u">$u</a> for help on using search};
>  }
> 
>  sub search_nav_top {
> --
> EW

  reply	other threads:[~2019-06-12  8:36 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 6+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2019-06-11 19:38 [RFC] searchview: don't be too verbose about bad queries Eric Wong
2019-06-12  8:36 ` Ali Alnubani [this message]
2019-06-12 17:18   ` Eric Wong
2019-06-25  6:37     ` [PATCH] searchview: avoid displaying full paths on errors Eric Wong
2019-06-25  7:33       ` Ali Alnubani
2019-06-26  6:35         ` Eric Wong

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