Chrome blocking some downloads when the external URL for a resource is provided in HTTP

[AlainVagner]

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Chrome blocks the downloads of some resources. These resources are external and their URL is in HTTP and not HTTPS.

Detailed Description

More details about the change in Chrome here: https://blog.chromium.org/2020/02/protecting-users-from-insecure.html

This happens only for resources which should be downloaded by the browser (if the resource is a web page, e.g. for a documentation, the problem does not happen)

How to reproduce

You can for example check this dataset in Chrome: https://data.public.lu/en/datasets/57068838a30b1b33caf65976/

If you click on the download button on the first resource (in ods format), Chrome will block the download with the following error in the console: Mixed Content: The site at 'https://data.public.lu/' was loaded over a secure connection, but the file at 'https://elections.public.lu/opendata/referendum/2015/referendum-2015-ods.ods' was redirected through an insecure connection. This file should be served over HTTPS. This download has been blocked. See https://blog.chromium.org/2020/02/protecting-users-from-insecure.html for more details.

If we change the URL by replacing http by https, the issue is fixed.

The same problem happens also with our udata 4 instance.

Context

Some users are complaining because they cannot download some files on our udata instance. We still have lots of old datasets with external resources in HTTP, and nothing prevent data producers to add new resources with HTTP urls.

Possible Implementation

• Could it be possible to have a warning in the admin when someone creates a new resource and inputs an URL starting with HTTP?
• Another option would be to try to upgrade automatically links from http to https to avoid this issue. But this approach does not solve the issue in 100% of the cases.
• Another workaround would be to have the download link based on the source URL instead of the stable URL.

Your Environment

• Browser Name and version: Chrome 104
• Operating System and version (desktop or mobile): Windows 10

[maudetes]

Thank you for this detailed issue.

I see that we have the same issue on data.gouv.fr, ex: https://www.data.gouv.fr/fr/datasets/liste-des-points-de-recharge-de-la-carte-pastel/.

Some inputs on this issue and the possible implementation:

• The solution to validate the url in the admin may be the best. There is the URLS_ALLOWED_SCHEMES setting that you can override.

• Concerning the existing datasets, I don't think we can find a perfect solution. We could migrate http url or add upgrade-insecure-requests header, but some urls would fail (it is the case for this referendum example).

• I think using the based source URL doesn't fix the issue, since the error still occur when clicking on the source URL directly.

Let me know if this is clear enough for you.

[AlainVagner]

@maudetes thanks for your answer. We will check the URLS_ALLOWED_SCHEMES setting. In the mean time, we have developed a script available in this repo, to find all URLs possibly impacted by this issue: https://github.com/opendatalu/udata-fetching-scripts

[maudetes]

Thank you for the script! I'd be interested to know how you've dealt with the http resources found. Did you plan to contact the producers or check if upgrading to https would return the same content for example?

[AlainVagner]

We have tried for ourselves to upgrade the urls to https, whenever it was possible, we just did the change ourselves. For the non-upgradable ones, we have contacted the producers. We did the check manually, because the list was quite short. Would it have been bigger, we may have scripted the check.

[AlainVagner]

We have tried removing http from the URL_ALLOWED_SCHEMES setting and it is working. The error message is however a bit terse. It would be helpful to precise what's wrong with this URL and help people fix the issue, e.g. give the list of authorised protocols in the error message. This is also mandatory for the digital accessibility (cf criterion 11.11 of the RGAA)

[maudetes]

It would be helpful to precise what's wrong with this URL and help people fix the issue, e.g. give the list of authorised protocols in the error message.

Indeed! We actually have a proper error message with the validation error reason, that is replaced with this Invalid URL (with localization) here: https://github.com/opendatateam/udata/blob/63f78489f5cb7011eb99bd20483785e3465ca7ee/udata/forms/fields.py#L141 We could return the full validation error instead (they aren't localized though).

[AlainVagner]

It would make sense. Could the internationalization be done directly in uris.py? https://github.com/opendatateam/udata/blob/63f78489f5cb7011eb99bd20483785e3465ca7ee/udata/uris.py

The message "Invalid URL" is not false, but not precise enough. It could be kept, and we could extend the error message with some extra informations.

So the error message coming from the validator would be: "Invalid scheme http". I think it would be good to clarify what the authorised schemes are. For example: 'Invalid URL: invalid scheme "http". The authorised schemes in an URL are: "https", "ftp", "ftps"'.
Does it seam feasible?

[maudetes]

Seems feasible indeed! We can use _('Invalid URL: %(reason)s', reason=reason) patterns to build the localized error string. We won't be able to take this ticket in the current sprint iteration however. You are welcome if you want to give it a shot and open a PR.

Let us know if you try it out, else we can plan this later to pick it for future sprint iterations.

[AlainVagner]

Here is a draft PR which has not been tested yet (I have not been able to install the development environment so far): https://github.com/opendatateam/udata/pull/2768