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Intent to migrate the permissions database to use origins instead of host names

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Ehsan Akhgari

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Jun 30, 2015, 2:59:38 PM6/30/15
to dev-pl...@lists.mozilla.org, Michael Layzell
Historically our permissions database has used host names as part of the
permission entry, which means that if we stored a permission for
http://example.com, it would also apply to https://example.com (and
http://example.com:8080 for that matter). This is undesirable specially
once you note that this potentially makes us store permissions for MITMed
connections and later on use them even for secure origins.

Michael has been working on fixing this over in bug 1165263. We expect to
land this change within the Firefox 42 timeframe. Here is the details of
the changes we are planning to make:

1. Instead of storing a host name, appId and isInBrowserElement flag for
each entry, we will store the full origin (including the origin attributes.)
2. Fix up the places where the permission manager APIs expose the notion of
host/appId/isInBrowserElement to the consumers.
3. Drop the "<file>" hack from the permissions manager (bug 817007.)

We're going to use the following algorithm for migrating the existing
permission entries:

* If the entry takes the form of a valid URI (such as entries for file://
URIs), then just insert it directly
* For each host name foo, check to see whether the Places database
includes a visit to that domain or any subdomain.
* For each found entry in the Places database, we inject a permission for
the visited origin, with the appId and isInBrowserElement origin attributes
from the original permission.
* If there are no existing visited entries, inject one permission for
http://foo, and one for https://foo.

The interesting part of how the migration step works is that we have no
good way to know what origins need the permission after the upgrade by just
looking at the host name, so we try to find something in the Places
database that would help answer this question, and at the lack of that, we
assume that the two common origins that can be constructed from the host
name (namely the http and https origins with the default ports) can have
the permission, which is our best guess. This means that in some edge
cases such as the user having a foo.com permission that belongs to an
origin such as http://foo.com:8080 but not having visited foo.com recently
(by default in the last 180 days) we will lose the stored permission. We
hope that these edge cases will happen very rarely in practice.

Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

Cheers,
--
Ehsan

Jonas Sicking

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Jun 30, 2015, 6:05:15 PM6/30/15
to Ehsan Akhgari, Michael Layzell, dev-platform
There are actually one downside with this change.

It means that if a user denies access to https://website.com to use
cookies, then http://website.com will still have full ability to use
cookies since it's a different origin.

For a DENY policy it often makes more sense to deny a whole domain
name, since more often than not the http and https website are run by
the same people.

Whereas for an ACCEPT policy, it very often makes more sense to only
allow a given origin.

The problem stems from that the permission manager doesn't store
policies, but rather stores unformatted data that is then up to the
*reader* to interpret as a policy.

I.e. right now you just call
pm.add(<https://website.com>, "camera", ALLOW);

It is then up to the reader to interpret this as either "camera is
available only for https://website.com" or "camera is available for
https://website.com and any subdomain". This is decided by either
calling testPermission or testExactPermission.

Most developers do not know about this difference and so I have
uncountably many times had to tell people to use testExactPermission
to get desired behavior. Obviously this is extra bad because
testPermission is the function people jump most immediately to due to
its simpler name.

What I think the permission manager really needs to do is to have an API like:

pm.addOriginRule(<https://website.com>, "camera", PROMPT);
pm.addDomainRule("domain.com", "cookies", DENY, INCLUDE_SUBDOMAINS |
OVERRIDE_EXISTING);
pm.testPermission(myprincipal, "geolocation");

/ Jonas
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Martin Thomson

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Jun 30, 2015, 6:55:42 PM6/30/15
to Jonas Sicking, dev-platform, Ehsan Akhgari, Michael Layzell
I wonder, has the subject of double-keying been raised in this
context? It comes up frequently in this context. And when I say
double-keying, I mean forming a key from the tuple of the requesting
principal and the top level browsing context principal (though origin
may suffice).

If there are disruptive changes afoot, then segregating based on what
is shown to the user might be sensible.

Ehsan Akhgari

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Jun 30, 2015, 7:16:37 PM6/30/15
to Jonas Sicking, Michael Layzell, dev-platform
On 2015-06-30 6:04 PM, Jonas Sicking wrote:
> There are actually one downside with this change.
>
> It means that if a user denies access to https://website.com to use
> cookies, then http://website.com will still have full ability to use
> cookies since it's a different origin.

That is a good point.

Are you more worried about importing existing DENY entries, or recording
new ones?

> For a DENY policy it often makes more sense to deny a whole domain
> name, since more often than not the http and https website are run by
> the same people.
>
> Whereas for an ACCEPT policy, it very often makes more sense to only
> allow a given origin.

Unfortunately I can't think of a clean way to support this off the top
of my head. Michael's current patches move us to store an origin field,
potentially with some trailing origin attributes. I can't think of any
way to make DENY work across schemes and port numbers other than
inventing custom catch-all entries for such entries :(

Another complication is how should we treat cross-app origins? Do we
want to treat a DENY entry for one app override all others? If not, do
we want to treat appId/isInBrowserElement specially here? What about
future other origin attributes?

Can you think of a clean way to address this?

> The problem stems from that the permission manager doesn't store
> policies, but rather stores unformatted data that is then up to the
> *reader* to interpret as a policy.

Indeed.

> I.e. right now you just call
> pm.add(<https://website.com>, "camera", ALLOW);
>
> It is then up to the reader to interpret this as either "camera is
> available only for https://website.com" or "camera is available for
> https://website.com and any subdomain". This is decided by either
> calling testPermission or testExactPermission.
>
> Most developers do not know about this difference and so I have
> uncountably many times had to tell people to use testExactPermission
> to get desired behavior. Obviously this is extra bad because
> testPermission is the function people jump most immediately to due to
> its simpler name.
>
> What I think the permission manager really needs to do is to have an API like:
>
> pm.addOriginRule(<https://website.com>, "camera", PROMPT);
> pm.addDomainRule("domain.com", "cookies", DENY, INCLUDE_SUBDOMAINS |
> OVERRIDE_EXISTING);
> pm.testPermission(myprincipal, "geolocation");

I'd really prefer if we addressed this without attempting to make big
changes to the permission manager API, as that is a much bigger project
than what we have been planning to do here and will require the
consumers to be rewritten.

Ehsan Akhgari

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Jun 30, 2015, 7:19:06 PM6/30/15
to Martin Thomson, Jonas Sicking, dev-platform, Michael Layzell
On 2015-06-30 6:55 PM, Martin Thomson wrote:
> I wonder, has the subject of double-keying been raised in this
> context? It comes up frequently in this context. And when I say
> double-keying, I mean forming a key from the tuple of the requesting
> principal and the top level browsing context principal (though origin
> may suffice).

Yes, this was discussed the last time we discussed permissions on this
list, IIRC, and this idea was brought up.

I personally am not sure if that is a sound idea for all permission
types. It's probably the right thing for geolocation, but not for cookies.

This is also another part of the bigger problem here that the permission
manager doesn't store policies.

> If there are disruptive changes afoot, then segregating based on what
> is shown to the user might be sensible.
>
> On Tue, Jun 30, 2015 at 3:04 PM, Jonas Sicking <jo...@sicking.cc> wrote:
>> There are actually one downside with this change.
>>
>> It means that if a user denies access to https://website.com to use
>> cookies, then http://website.com will still have full ability to use
>> cookies since it's a different origin.
>>
>> For a DENY policy it often makes more sense to deny a whole domain
>> name, since more often than not the http and https website are run by
>> the same people.
>>
>> Whereas for an ACCEPT policy, it very often makes more sense to only
>> allow a given origin.
>>
>> The problem stems from that the permission manager doesn't store
>> policies, but rather stores unformatted data that is then up to the
>> *reader* to interpret as a policy.
>>
>> I.e. right now you just call
>> pm.add(<https://website.com>, "camera", ALLOW);
>>
>> It is then up to the reader to interpret this as either "camera is
>> available only for https://website.com" or "camera is available for
>> https://website.com and any subdomain". This is decided by either
>> calling testPermission or testExactPermission.
>>
>> Most developers do not know about this difference and so I have
>> uncountably many times had to tell people to use testExactPermission
>> to get desired behavior. Obviously this is extra bad because
>> testPermission is the function people jump most immediately to due to
>> its simpler name.
>>
>> What I think the permission manager really needs to do is to have an API like:
>>
>> pm.addOriginRule(<https://website.com>, "camera", PROMPT);
>> pm.addDomainRule("domain.com", "cookies", DENY, INCLUDE_SUBDOMAINS |
>> OVERRIDE_EXISTING);
>> pm.testPermission(myprincipal, "geolocation");
>>
>> / Jonas

Martin Thomson

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Jun 30, 2015, 7:29:23 PM6/30/15
to Ehsan Akhgari, dev-platform, Michael Layzell, Jonas Sicking
On Tue, Jun 30, 2015 at 4:18 PM, Ehsan Akhgari <ehsan....@gmail.com> wrote:
> I personally am not sure if that is a sound idea for all permission types.
> It's probably the right thing for geolocation, but not for cookies.

As I understand it, the key for permission manager is a simple string.
Rather than make new APIs and restructure in a way that is perhaps
incompatible with existing users, could you make a set of different
key builders to serve all these ends:

pm.addRule(pm.makeOriginRule(uri), "camera", blah)
pm.addRule(pm.makeDomainRule("example.com", INCLUDE_SUBDOMAINS),
"cookies", DENY)

The plan to migrate to an origin basis is OK without this, of course.

Jonas Sicking

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Jun 30, 2015, 8:50:46 PM6/30/15
to Ehsan Akhgari, Michael Layzell, dev-platform
On Tue, Jun 30, 2015 at 4:16 PM, Ehsan Akhgari <ehsan....@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2015-06-30 6:04 PM, Jonas Sicking wrote:
>>
>> There are actually one downside with this change.
>>
>> It means that if a user denies access to https://website.com to use
>> cookies, then http://website.com will still have full ability to use
>> cookies since it's a different origin.
>
>
> That is a good point.
>
> Are you more worried about importing existing DENY entries, or recording new
> ones?

But I guess.

But I agree I don't see a way to address this without changing the
nsIPermissionManager API.

/ Jonas

>> For a DENY policy it often makes more sense to deny a whole domain
>> name, since more often than not the http and https website are run by
>> the same people.
>>
>> Whereas for an ACCEPT policy, it very often makes more sense to only
>> allow a given origin.
>
>
> Unfortunately I can't think of a clean way to support this off the top of my
> head. Michael's current patches move us to store an origin field,
> potentially with some trailing origin attributes. I can't think of any way
> to make DENY work across schemes and port numbers other than inventing
> custom catch-all entries for such entries :(
>
> Another complication is how should we treat cross-app origins? Do we want
> to treat a DENY entry for one app override all others? If not, do we want
> to treat appId/isInBrowserElement specially here? What about future other
> origin attributes?
>
> Can you think of a clean way to address this?
>
>> The problem stems from that the permission manager doesn't store
>> policies, but rather stores unformatted data that is then up to the
>> *reader* to interpret as a policy.
>
>
> Indeed.
>
>> I.e. right now you just call
>> pm.add(<https://website.com>, "camera", ALLOW);
>>
>> It is then up to the reader to interpret this as either "camera is
>> available only for https://website.com" or "camera is available for
>> https://website.com and any subdomain". This is decided by either
>> calling testPermission or testExactPermission.
>>
>> Most developers do not know about this difference and so I have
>> uncountably many times had to tell people to use testExactPermission
>> to get desired behavior. Obviously this is extra bad because
>> testPermission is the function people jump most immediately to due to
>> its simpler name.
>>
>> What I think the permission manager really needs to do is to have an API
>> like:
>>
>> pm.addOriginRule(<https://website.com>, "camera", PROMPT);
>> pm.addDomainRule("domain.com", "cookies", DENY, INCLUDE_SUBDOMAINS |
>> OVERRIDE_EXISTING);
>> pm.testPermission(myprincipal, "geolocation");
>
>
> I'd really prefer if we addressed this without attempting to make big
> changes to the permission manager API, as that is a much bigger project than
> what we have been planning to do here and will require the consumers to be
> rewritten.
>
>

Jonas Sicking

unread,
Jun 30, 2015, 8:53:42 PM6/30/15
to Martin Thomson, dev-platform, Ehsan Akhgari, Michael Layzell
On Tue, Jun 30, 2015 at 3:55 PM, Martin Thomson <m...@mozilla.com> wrote:
> I wonder, has the subject of double-keying been raised in this
> context? It comes up frequently in this context. And when I say
> double-keying, I mean forming a key from the tuple of the requesting
> principal and the top level browsing context principal (though origin
> may suffice).
>
> If there are disruptive changes afoot, then segregating based on what
> is shown to the user might be sensible.

Bobby Holley has added infrastructure on nsIPrincipal called
"OriginAttributes" which is intended to be an extension hook to allow
things like double keying. As long as we use the 'origin' attribute on
nsIPrincipal, and make sure that all callers pass in an nsIPrincipal
rather than an nsIURI, then we should be able to relatively easy add
double keying in the future.

/ Jonas

Jonas Sicking

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Jun 30, 2015, 8:54:51 PM6/30/15
to Ehsan Akhgari, Michael Layzell, dev-platform
On Tue, Jun 30, 2015 at 5:50 PM, Jonas Sicking <jo...@sicking.cc> wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 30, 2015 at 4:16 PM, Ehsan Akhgari <ehsan....@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 2015-06-30 6:04 PM, Jonas Sicking wrote:
>>>
>>> There are actually one downside with this change.
>>>
>>> It means that if a user denies access to https://website.com to use
>>> cookies, then http://website.com will still have full ability to use
>>> cookies since it's a different origin.
>>
>>
>> That is a good point.
>>
>> Are you more worried about importing existing DENY entries, or recording new
>> ones?
>
> But I guess.
>
> But I agree I don't see a way to address this without changing the
> nsIPermissionManager API.

That should say "Both I guess".

/ Jonas

Michael Layzell

unread,
Jul 1, 2015, 2:55:02 AM7/1/15
to Jonas Sicking, dev-platform, Ehsan Akhgari, Martin Thomson
The patches I am working on already use Bobby Holley's OriginAttributes, in
fact we use the origin attribute on the nsIPrincipal, and only expose an
nsIPrincipal from the API.

Internally, we use the origin attribute for serialization, but to external
consumers of the API, all that is available are APIs for adding and
removing permissions VIA nsIPrincipal, and some convenience methods which
exist for legacy reasons which allow you to add/remove permissions via
nsIURIs, creating NoAppCodebasePrincipals for them. You are right, that if
we decide that double keying is something we want, that it would be
possible to add it to the permission manager by simply modifying
nsIPrincipal's OriginAttributes.

In terms of a mechanism for DENY being treated differently, it would be
possible (albeit very hacky) to always insert DENY entries for URIs with a
host property at http://HOST, and then, during the lookup, also check
http://HOST, and if it is DENY, expose a DENY for the other origin. I don't
really like this solution, as it creates lots of edge cases and other
complications which I'm not sure if we want to expose to API consumers, as
well as making the semantics of permissions diverge from nsIPrincipals,
(the coherence of the new semantics with nsIPrincipal is something I quite
like).

Ehsan Akhgari

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Jul 13, 2015, 2:25:01 PM7/13/15
to Michael Layzell, dev-platform, Martin Thomson, Jonas Sicking
I tried to get some folks internally to look at this, and so far nobody has
said that they oppose landing the changes as is very strongly so unless
there is no strong objections, I am going to ask Michael to submit his work
for landing tomorrow.

Cheers,
Ehsan

On Wed, Jul 1, 2015 at 2:54 AM, Michael Layzell <mic...@thelayzells.com>
wrote:
--
Ehsan
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