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<h1 class="page-title">weinre - Security</h1>

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<p>About security for <span class="weinre">weinre</span>: <b>there is none</b>.

<p>Obviously there should be some.  The question is, what do we need to do?

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<h2>Background and potential exposures</h2>

<p>Currently <span class="weinre">weinre</span> uses plain old HTTP - not HTTPS - and provides
no level of authentication for requests.

<p>The primary security exposure with <span class="weinre">weinre</span> is via
the debug server.  

<p>Currently, the server only reads files from the <tt>weinre.jar</tt> file,
and from the <tt>~/.weinre/</tt> directory (for property files).  
The only thing the server writes to is <tt>stdout</tt> and <tt>stderr</tt>.

<p>If you use the default <tt>--boundHost</tt> option value of
<tt>localhost</tt>, then any software on the machine running the debug
server can communicate with the debug server.  This probably isn't a big
deal, since presumably you control the software running on that machine.

<p>If you use a non-default <tt>--boundHost</tt> option value, 
then <b>any software on any machine that can access that specified
host can communicate with the debug server</b>.  This is a much bigger
deal.

<p>The most obvious exposure with using <tt>--boundHost</tt> and
a specific hostname / ip address, is that any debug client or 
debug target that can access that hostname / ip address can access
the server.  For example, a rogue debug client could connect to 
your debug target and fiddle about with it. 

<p>Other exposures include leaving a debug target injection
script line (ie, <tt>&lt;script src="[...]/target/target-script.js"&gt;</tt>)
in your web page, and then that web page connects to a rogue debug
server running at that address.

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<h2>Future Implementation Ideas</h2>

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<li><b>use HTTPS with basic auth</b>

<p>This shouldn't be a big problem with the debug client, but may be a pain in the ass
since basic auth can be a pain in the ass (trying to log out of it).

<p>On the debug target side, this is tougher, since the only HTTP access is done via
XHR.  So, presumably, we will need to tack on the userid/password to XHR requests,
unless the browsers do that for us.  That is, I assume the browsers don't throw up
a password prompt when an XHR returns with an auth-required response code.

<p>Storing userid/passwords on the client isn't going to be much fun.  How do we even
get these from the user?

<p>Note that there is also a 'server discovery' issue we may want to do something
about.  That is, how does the debug target even know the URL of the server?
If we want to allow the user to "enter it from the target", then entering the
userid/password can fit into the same scheme, I guess.  

<p>Will need some light-weight userid/password store for the server, if
we do this.
 
<p>Will need to get the horrifying SSL keystore dance crap with Java
in some kind of usable state.  Should we ship a working, basic self-signed keystore
that we recommend user's replace?
 
<li><b>use HTTPS with OAuth</b>

<p>Been a while, not sure if OAuth even helps with this,
or how hard it would be to integrate support for it.

<p>Same issue with HTTPS and the SSL keystore above.

<li><b>other ideas?</b>

</ul>


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