Allow to disable sending unneeded user data to the server

[allo-]

When connecting to a server, the client sends personal data that is not needed for the connection, like username, realname of the user (as in /etc/passwd) and hostname of the client machine (sent by the client, not determined using rDNS) which is also logged on the server side depending on the log settings.

It would be nice to have a switch to control how much information is sent. Other information that may not be strictly necessary (but are possibly used to determine compatiblity) would be the used Linux distributions and it seemingly different machine ids.

[totaam]

Great minds think alike! I already had this issue right at the top of my TODO list after editing https://github.com/Xpra-org/xpra/blob/master/docs/Usage/Security.md

So the commit above is just a start. What I want to do is review every bit of data that is being exchanged and decide what to do with it:

• just remove it - which we may be able to do in some cases
• keep it as it is - if we need it for something
• gate it with an environment variable (as per the commit - which is disabled by default for now)
• only expose the information to authenticated users: connections that have an authentication module

I am running with XPRA_FULL_INFO=0 locally for now and not getting any problems - yet? I haven't even looked at the username or client hostname yet.

[allo-]

I am running with XPRA_FULL_INFO=0 locally for now and not getting any problems - yet?

I didn't know this variable. I found the OBFUSCATE variable for debug logs, but it seems only to obfuscate machine info but not user info. Trying to find stuff I returned "" in info.py, but didn't yet find out where the hostname comes from. And in info.py returning empty strings is the fallback for non-posix systems and I have no idea what will happen when empty strings are returned for other information, which may be expected by the server. I guess some may even crash the server-side if one just patches stuff to remove information. On the other hand it would be easy to send a dummy hostname to avoid breaking older server versions.

From the security point of view negotiation what to send could also allow downgrade attacks. Let's say an empty hostname is sent when the server is newer than version X, then a malicious server could pretend to be an older version (or the user could just install some older version) to get more client information.

[totaam]

I didn't know this variable.

It was just added in the commit above.

I guess some may even crash the server-side if one just patches stuff to remove information

No, that's extremely unlikely. The worst that can happen is that the server may reject the connection if it cannot proceed without it somehow.

then a malicious server could pretend to be an older version to get more client information

That's not how it is going to work: in all the cases relevant to this ticket, what is going to be exposed will be decided exclusively by the client or server, without knowledge of the peer's version or requirements.

[totaam]

Following the commits above, things are a lot better - though one still needs to run with XPRA_FULL_INFO=0 to see any difference, for now. I am reluctant to make this the new default because a huge number of bug reports would end up being useless to me without this information... I stopped counting the number of times people didn't volunteer some weird bit of information that I ended up digging from the logs.

To see the capabilities exchanged between server and client, run both with: XPRA_LOG_HELLO=1 xpra ..

---

Still TODO:

• username - it is difficult to know when it should be sent to the server in advance, I'm not at all sure that the authentication modules could all handle a username set after the challenge is sent
• audio mixins still need trimming down

[totaam]

Now with fine grained filtering: 2a5e3685c4050612b9209873139142dec2acfe73

This will do.

[allo-]

What about adding a commandline/config option for this?

[totaam]

What about adding a commandline/config option for this?

Not at present. There are too many options as it is! Feel free to submit a PR though. Including man page updates, command line, etc...

[allo-]

It seems that the username is still transmitted.

Hand schake complete; enabling connection
(...)
PyGTK version 4
   as 'USERNAME'
setting key repeat rate (...)

where USERNAME is the username on the client PC. The log fragment looks like a line before was removed, but the actual line containing the username is still present (and obviously the client transmitted the username).

I'm using XPRA_FULL_INFO=0 xpra (...) on the command line of the client.

[totaam]

The username is used for authentication purposes.

[allo-]

Can it be disabled when the authentication is done via ssh? The server could reject connections that do not provide a username if an additional method is configured.

I would even assume it would be more useful to use the remote-username, like

client-user@client-host$ ssh remote-user@remote-host

tries to authenticate as remote-user and not as client-user.

[allo-]

xpra attach --ssh=/usr/bin/ssh ssh:remote-user@remote-host actually fixes the issue. I wonder if it is a bug altogether to send the local username when using ssh (with a remote username configured in .ssh/config).

[allo-]

I think the bug is the following:

• xpra uses by default a python ssh implementation
• using --ssh=/path/to/ssh one can use the system ssh, which allows more advanced ssh configurations (ssh-keys, configured usernames, ciphers, etc.)
• using --ssh can change the login username (to one configured in .ssh/config), but xpra does not know that the external program is using another username and sets the username from the ssh:user@host part or as fallback the local user as username variable.

I wonder if the effective username on the remote host can't be determined after the ssh login, no matter if it was using the python implementation or a system ssh program.

[totaam]

which allows more advanced ssh configurations (ssh-keys, configured usernames, ciphers, etc.)

All of those are also available with paramiko.

[allo-]

I think I started to use system ssh, when I had to connect with a rather complex setup using a jumphost for a network that doesn't have direct access. I am not sure if paramiko supports that.

Anyway, when using --ssh, the xpra server doesn't see the correct username when USER remoteuser is configured in the .ssh/config file, which could also affect other authentication methods (and possibly prevent a login?).

I wonder if a ssh connection should transmit a username at all or rely on reading the effective username from the remote shell instead of having the client transmit what it thinks what the username is. After all, my client managed to send another username than the remote host actually uses. I think it is probably not a security issue and may only prevent logins but not allow unauthenticated logins, but still the server trusts the client to submit a correct username when the client may login using one name and transmit another name.

What can happen is that the client causes a wrong log entry.

• Create a local user "alice"
• Create a .ssh/config containing User bob for her (having the credentials to login as remote user bob)
• run as user alice xpra --ssh=/usr/bin/ssh ssh:remotehost to login as bob
• The log contains New unix-domain connection received (...) as 'alice' even when the remote host does not have a user alice.

(By patching the client one can probably skip the step to create a local user. This configuration is just how it happened accidentally on my machine)

[totaam]

This ticket is closed and will not be worked on, please file a separate ticket and make sure you understand what the log messages mean.