[Python-Dev] PYTHONHTTPSVERIFY env var (original) (raw)

Nick Coghlan ncoghlan at gmail.com
Mon May 11 12:15:27 CEST 2015

On 11 May 2015 at 19:22, M.-A. Lemburg <mal at egenix.com> wrote:

On 11.05.2015 11:13, Nick Coghlan wrote:

I wouldn't be opposed to seeing that as an upstream Python 2.7.x feature, but agreement amongst redistributors on using a file-based approach is the main outcome I'm looking for. Can't we have both ?

I'd strongly advise against it, as we're deliberately increasing the attack surface area here by providing a potential path to carry out a downgrade attack on the HTTPS certificate verification by forcing it back to the old behaviour.

The main existing environment variable based attack vector would be to manage to run a process with administrative privileges and SSL_CERT_DIR and/or SSL_CERT_FILE pointing to a certificate written to a user or world-writable directory by the attacker. Providing a "don't verify HTTPS" flag at the interpreter level would let an attacker skip the first step of writing the certificate file to disk somewhere, making a system compromise harder to detect. (An especially paranoid SSL implementation would disallow reading certs from locations that allow write access to non-administrative users, but I don't believe OpenSSL is that paranoid)

By contrast, the configuration file shouldn't provide a new attack vector (or simplify any existing attack vector), as if you have the permissions needed to modify the config file, you likely also have the permissions needed to modify the system certificate store, and the latter is a far more interesting attack vector than a downgrade attack solely against Python.

Thus the environment variable based off switch is neither necessary (as an administrator controlled configuration file can do the job), nor sufficient (it can't handle the -E switch), and it represents an increase in the attack surface area relative to a Python implementation without the capability.

I don't think that we can wait for a whole PEP process to run through

Matrix multiplication made it through the PEP process in 8 days. If we do this as a redistributor recommendation rather than attempting to get it into upstream Python 2.7, we could potentially propose you take on the role of BDFL-Delegate and mark it as Accepted as soon as the two of us agree on a common approach.

The reason I think that's a reasonable way forward is because we already know there are folks opposed to making the change upstream. If the PEP just provides recommendations for redistributors that do decide to provide a "global off switch" to revert to the old behaviour, then the perspective of the folks opposed to the feature is respected by the fact that this is a feature some redistributors may choose to add to provide a smoother migration path to more secure default HTTPS handling, rather than something upstream provides by default.

I assume the Debian, Ubuntu and Suse folks won't care, as they have all already decided against backporting the change to their long term support releases where the compatibility break would pose a problem (and I can certainly sympathise with that perspective given the dependency on backporting the PEP 466 SSL changes first, and the work involved in seeking consensus on a smoother migration path from the old default to the new one).

It would be nice to hear from ActiveState, Enthought & Continuum Analytics as well, but if they don't chime in here, I don't see any particular need to go chasing them explicitly.

to fix this regression in 2.7.9.

We made the decision when PEP 476 was accepted that this change turned a silent security failure into a noisy one, rather than being a regression in its own right. PEP 493 isn't about disagreeing with that decision, it's about providing a smoother upgrade path in contexts where letting the security failure remain silent is deemed to be preferred in the near term.

Cheers, Nick.

-- Nick Coghlan | ncoghlan at gmail.com | Brisbane, Australia

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