We were overzealous with matching on a raw error from the object fetch that should have never been relied on like this. If we can't fetch successfully we should assume that the collection is private.
Building a more expressive and universal error struct to match on may be something to consider.
"id" is used for the canonical link to the AS2 representation of an object.
"url" is typically used for the canonical link to the HTTP representation.
It is what we use, for example, when following the "external source" link
in the frontend. However, it's not the link we include in the post contents
for quote posts.
Using URL instead means we include a more user-friendly URL for Mastodon,
and a working (in the browser) URL for Threads
previously we would uncritically take data and format it into
tags for static-fe and the like - however, instances can be
configured to disallow unauthenticated access to these resources.
this means that OG tags as a vector for information leakage.
_technically_ this should only occur if you have both
restrict_unauthenticated *AND* you run static-fe, which makes no
sense since static-fe is for unauthenticated people in particular,
but hey ho.
Per the XRD specification:
> 2.4. Element <Alias>
>
> The <Alias> element contains a URI value that is an additional
> identifier for the resource described by the XRD. This value
> MUST be an absolute URI. The <Alias> element does not identify
> additional resources the XRD is describing, **but rather provides
> additional identifiers for the same resource.**
(http://docs.oasis-open.org/xri/xrd/v1.0/os/xrd-1.0-os.html#element.alias, emphasis mine)
In other words, the alias list is expected to link to things which are
not just semantically the same, but exactly the same. Old user accounts
don't do that
This change should not pose a compatibility issue: Mastodon does not
list old accounts here (See e1fcb02867/app/serializers/webfinger_serializer.rb (L12))
The use of as:alsoKnownAs is also not quite semantically right here
(see https://www.w3.org/TR/did-core/#dfn-alsoknownas, which defines
it to be used to refer to identifiers which are interchangable) but
that's what DID get for reusing a property definition that Mastodon
already squatted long before they got to it
Since we always followed redirects (and until recently allowed fuzzy id
matches), the ap_id of the received object might differ from the iniital
fetch url. This lead to us mistakenly trying to insert a new user with
the same nickname, ap_id, etc as an existing user (which will fail due
to uniqueness constraints) instead of updating the existing one.
In order to properly process incoming notes we need
to be able to map the key id back to an actor.
Also, check collections actually belong to the same server.
Key ids of Hubzilla and Bridgy samples were updated to what
modern versions of those output. If anything still uses the
old format, we would not be able to verify their posts anyway.
To save on bandwith and avoid OOMs with large files.
Ofc, this relies on the remote server
(a) sending a content-length header and
(b) being honest about the size.
Common fedi servers seem to provide the header and (b) at least raises
the required privilege of an malicious actor to a server infrastructure
admin of an explicitly allowed host.
A more complete defense which still works when faced with
a malicious server requires changes in upstream Finch;
see https://github.com/sneako/finch/issues/224
Certain attacks rely on predictable paths for their payloads.
If we weren’t so overly lax in our (id, URL) check, the current
counterfeit activity exploit would be one of those.
It seems plausible for future attacks to hinge on
or being made easier by predictable paths too.
In general, letting remote actors place arbitrary data at
a path within our domain of their choosing (sans prefix)
just doesn’t seem like a good idea.
Using fully random filenames would have worked as well, but this
is less friendly for admins checking emoji dirs.
The generated suffix should still be more than enough;
an attacker needs on average 140 trillion attempts to
correctly guess the final path.
This will decouple filenames from shortcodes and
allow more image formats to work instead of only
those included in the auto-load glob. (Albeit we
still saved other formats to disk, wasting space)
Furthermore, this will allow us to make
final URL paths infeasible to predict.
Since 3 commits ago we restrict shortcodes to a subset of
the POSIX Portable Filename Character Set, therefore
this can never have a directory component.
E.g. *key’s emoji URLs typically don’t have file extensions, but
until now we just slapped ".png" at its end hoping for the best.
Furthermore, this gives us a chance to actually reject non-images,
which before was not feasible exatly due to those extension-less URLs
As suggested in b387f4a1c1, only steal
emoji with alphanumerc, dash, or underscore characters.
Also consolidate all validation logic into a single function.
===
Taken from akkoma#703 with cosmetic tweaks
This matches our existing validation logic from Pleroma.Emoji,
and apart from excluding the dot also POSIX’s Portable Filename
Character Set making it always safe for use in filenames.
Mastodon is even stricter also disallowing U+002D HYPEN-MINUS
and requiring at least two characters.
Given both we and Mastodon reject shortcodes excluded
by this anyway, this doesn’t seem like a loss.
Even more than with user uploads, a same-domain proxy setup bears
significant security risks due to serving untrusted content under
the main domain space.
A risky setup like that should never be the default.
Else malicious emoji packs or our EmojiStealer MRF can
put payloads into the same domain as the instance itself.
Sanitising the content type should prevent proper clients
from acting on any potential payload.
Note, this does not affect the default emoji shipped with Akkoma
as they are handled by another plug. However, those are fully trusted
and thus not in needed of sanitisation.
The lack thereof enables spoofing ActivityPub objects.
A malicious user could upload fake activities as attachments
and (if having access to remote search) trick local and remote
fedi instances into fetching and processing it as a valid object.
If uploads are hosted on the same domain as the instance itself,
it is possible for anyone with upload access to impersonate(!)
other users of the same instance.
If uploads are exclusively hosted on a different domain, even the most
basic check of domain of the object id and fetch url matching should
prevent impersonation. However, it may still be possible to trick
servers into accepting bogus users on the upload (sub)domain and bogus
notes attributed to such users.
Instances which later migrated to a different domain and have a
permissive redirect rule in place can still be vulnerable.
If — like Akkoma — the fetching server is overly permissive with
redirects, impersonation still works.
This was possible because Plug.Static also uses our custom
MIME type mappings used for actually authentic AP objects.
Provided external storage providers don’t somehow return ActivityStream
Content-Types on their own, instances using those are also safe against
their users being spoofed via uploads.
Akkoma instances using the OnlyMedia upload filter
cannot be exploited as a vector in this way — IF the
fetching server validates the Content-Type of
fetched objects (Akkoma itself does this already).
However, restricting uploads to only multimedia files may be a bit too
heavy-handed. Instead this commit will restrict the returned
Content-Type headers for user uploaded files to a safe subset, falling
back to generic 'application/octet-stream' for anything else.
This will also protect against non-AP payloads as e.g. used in
past frontend code injection attacks.
It’s a slight regression in user comfort, if say PDFs are uploaded,
but this trade-off seems fairly acceptable.
(Note, just excluding our own custom types would offer no protection
against non-AP payloads and bear a (perhaps small) risk of a silent
regression should MIME ever decide to add a canonical extension for
ActivityPub objects)
Now, one might expect there to be other defence mechanisms
besides Content-Type preventing counterfeits from being accepted,
like e.g. validation of the queried URL and AP ID matching.
Inserting a self-reference into our uploads is hard, but unfortunately
*oma does not verify the id in such a way and happily accepts _anything_
from the same domain (without even considering redirects).
E.g. Sharkey (and possibly other *keys) seem to attempt to guard
against this by immediately refetching the object from its ID, but
this is easily circumvented by just uploading two payloads with the
ID of one linking to the other.
Unfortunately *oma is thus _both_ a vector for spoofing and
vulnerable to those spoof payloads, resulting in an easy way
to impersonate our users.
Similar flaws exists for emoji and media proxy.
Subsequent commits will fix this by rigorously sanitising
content types in more areas, hardening our checks, improving
the default config and discouraging insecure config options.
The default refresh interval of 1 day is woefully inadequate here;
users expect to be able to add the alias to their new account and
press the move button on their old account and have it work.
This allows callers to specify a maximum age before a refetch is
triggered. We set that to 5s for the move code, as a nice compromise
between Making Things Work and ensuring that this can't be used
to hammer a remote server
Mastodon at the very least seems to prevent the creation of emoji with
dots in their name (and refuses to accept them in federation). It feels
like being cautious in what we accept is reasonable here.
Colons are the emoji separator and so obviously should be blocked.
Perhaps instead of filtering out things like this we should just
do a regex match on `[a-zA-Z0-9_-]`? But that's plausibly a decision
for another day
Perhaps we should also have a centralised "is this a valid emoji shortcode?"
function
This partly reverts 1d884fd914
while fixing both the issue it addressed and the issue it caused.
The above commit successfully fixed OpenGraph metadata tags
which until then always showed the user bio instead of post content
by handing the activities AP ID as url to the Metadata builder
_instead_ of passing the internal ID as activity_id.
However, in doing so the commit instead inflicted this very problem
onto Twitter metadata tags which ironically are used by akkoma-fe.
This is because while the OpenGraph builder wants an URL as url,
the Twitter builder needs the internal ID to build the URL to the
embedded player for videos and has no URL property.
Thanks to twpol for tracking down this root cause in #644.
Now, once identified the problem is simple, but this simplicity
invites multiple possible solutions to bikeshed about.
1. Just pass both properties to the builder and let them pick
2. Drop the url parameter from the OpenGraph builder and instead
a) build static-fe URL of the post from the ID (like Twitter)
b) use the passed-in object’s AP ID as an URL
Approach 2a has the disadvantage of hardcoding the expected URL outside
the router, which will be problematic should it ever change.
Approach 2b is conceptually similar to how the builder works atm.
However, the og:url is supposed to be a _permanent_ ID, by changing it
we might, afaiui, technically violate OpenGraph specs(?). (Though its
real-world consequence may very well be near non-existent.)
This leaves just approach 1, which this commit implements.
Albeit it too is not without nits to pick, as it leaves the metadata
builders with an inconsistent interface.
Additionally, this will resolve the subotpimal Discord previews for
content-less image posts reported in #664.
Discord already prefers OpenGraph metadata, so it’s mostly unaffected.
However, it appears when encountering an explicitly empty OpenGraph
description and a non-empty Twitter description, it replaces just the
empty field with its Twitter counterpart, resulting in the user’s bio
slipping into the preview.
Secondly, regardless of any OpenGraph tags, Discord uses twitter:card to
decide how prominently images should be, but due to the bug the card
type was stuck as "summary", forcing images to always remain small.
Root cause identified by: twpol
Fixes: https://akkoma.dev/AkkomaGang/akkoma/issues/644
Fixes: https://akkoma.dev/AkkomaGang/akkoma/issues/664
Currently our own frontend doesn’t show backgrounds of other users, this
property is already publicly readable via REST API and likely was always
intended to be shown and federated.
Recently Sharkey added support for profile backgrounds and
immediately made them federate and be displayed to others.
We use the same AP field as Sharkey here which should make
it interoperable both ways out-of-the-box.
Ref.: 4e64397635
