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Speaking unofficially, I can imagine that Unidata could support CORS on an opt-in basis. That is, there would be a configuration option to turn it on, but it would be off by default. That way any malicious behavior would be on the head of the person who turned it on. I frankly would be happier if it was possible to enable this at the Apache/Tomcat level so that the thredds and other software providers would be completely out of the loop. If this is possible, can someone describe in detail who to do this for, say, Tomcat? =Dennis Heimbigner Unidata Gerry Creager - NOAA Affiliate wrote:
Jon, Roy, If there are no sensitive data on the server, it's a non-issue, or I at least feel I could successfully make that argument. Where we'd run into problems is in a case where there might be data residing on the system that ARE restricted. Even if the DAP server didn't access those, the consideration for potential exploits has to be considered. Unless you can demonstrate that the data are so well embargoed from the OpENDAP server side that they could never escape that way. And, it's not always just the government worried about these things. There's a "major university" I used to work for, and by the time I'd left, I was answering questions about my TDS installations on a regular basis because A) the administration had out-sourced the scanning systems, with only reports coming into administration/management. Thus, the security folks I'd dealt with were out of the loop and couldn't readily help interpret the scans until things were already mired in "investigations"; B) said scanning organization, external to the university, was engaged in penetration testing and would flag any system they couldn't gain access to as "infected". Yes. If the security was sufficient they couldn't actively snoop, they claimed the machine was a problem and it had to be opened up more. The degree of security theatre we're engaged in is sufficiently dense that we do have to worry about even the silly little unlikely things. 10 years ago, CORS would have looked like a great idea, and if it'd been implemented then, it probably would have been grandfathered in with things like SOAP and REST-ful services as the norm. However, to put a point on things, while javaScript is gaining popularity again, it's also a significant threat vector for attacks on users via browser access. From that perspective, and on its face, this proposal worries me. gerry On Thu, Apr 25, 2013 at 10:09 AM, Roy Mendelssohn - NOAA Federal < roy.mendelssohn@xxxxxxxx> wrote:Hi Gerry: Thanks for the example. So if there are no restricted data, then there wouldn't be a problem, is that correct? This is why I posted - I want to gain an understanding of the issues, and am hoping that others have a better hold on them than I do. What would help me understand this better also is if someone knowledgeable can review what my options are for implementing Rob's request. I would prefer not to alter THREDDS directly, so that i can easily undo the change if I needed to. Thanks, -Roy PS - Just to give some more background, we have a server called ERDDAP, and for some agencies to deploy it has required that it undergo a scan. That is not necessarily my preference, but that is the reality, So i would rather anticipate and deal with these issues up front, rather than after the scan finds shortcomings. On Apr 25, 2013, at 8:00 AM, Gerry Creager - NOAA Affiliate < gerry.creager@xxxxxxxx> wrote:Jon -- A big concern from our point of view (note: some mentalgemnastics may be involved in following this) is that a site accessed from another "trusted" site via cross-origin credentials, may serve sensitive data to an unprivileged user. That constitutes a data breach and as such, tends to cause alarms to go off around here. Speaking as someone who just endured over 2 months of bureaucratic wrangling to gain access to a "restricted" dataset, if the work to get those data got worse because someone had made this same set publicly accessible, even inadvertently, it would start approaching "useless" within my organization.Benno -- tell me you don't expect Microsoft to conform to a standardthey don't either own, or have claimed to own?gerry On Thu, Apr 25, 2013 at 9:46 AM, Jon Blower <j.d.blower@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>wrote:Hi all, An honest (and perhaps innocent) question - if a server is alreadypublic and read-only, what is there to lose by enabling CORS? The cross-origin security constraints exist for the security of the client (browser), not the server. You could after all be accessing the server through something that isn't a browser at all.However, if a server requires logins, and/or allows changes to theserver to be made through the web interface, then CORS is perhaps more of an issue (most of the examples in the website Dennis quotes are around these use cases).>From that same website, the risk of allowing CORS for a publicread-only site appears to be that an attacker could use users' web browsers to perform a distributed denial-of-service attack, which is surely already possible anyway (and is why many sysadmins implement throttling or some other strategy).Cheers, Jon (not a security expert or a sysadmin!) _______________________________________________ thredds mailing list thredds@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx For list information or to unsubscribe, visit:http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/mailing_lists/-- Gerry Creager NSSL/CIMMS 405.325.6371 ++++++++++++++++++++++ “Big whorls have little whorls, That feed on their velocity; And little whorls have lesser whorls, And so on to viscosity.” Lewis Fry Richardson (1881-1953) _______________________________________________ thredds mailing list thredds@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx For list information or to unsubscribe, visit:http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/mailing_lists/ ********************** "The contents of this message do not reflect any position of the U.S. Government or NOAA." ********************** Roy Mendelssohn Supervisory Operations Research Analyst NOAA/NMFS Environmental Research Division Southwest Fisheries Science Center 1352 Lighthouse Avenue Pacific Grove, CA 93950-2097 e-mail: Roy.Mendelssohn@xxxxxxxx (Note new e-mail address) voice: (831)-648-9029 fax: (831)-648-8440 www: http://www.pfeg.noaa.gov/ "Old age and treachery will overcome youth and skill." "From those who have been given much, much will be expected" "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice" -MLK Jr.------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ thredds mailing list thredds@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxFor list information or to unsubscribe, visit: http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/mailing_lists/
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