Re: Git ransom campaign incident report - May 2019
- From
Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
- Date
- May 19, 2019, 05:07 UTC
- Message-ID
- <20190519050724.GA26179@sigill.intra.peff.net>
- In-Reply-To
- <20190517222031.GA17966@sigill.intra.peff.net>
On Fri, May 17, 2019 at 06:20:31PM -0400, Jeff King wrote:
Show 25 quoted lines
> What if we did this: > > 1. Do not ever write the password part of a URL into config. > > 2. When we extract the user/pass out of a URL, put them into the > credential struct, so that when we successfully authenticate, we > trigger storage. This _might_ actually happen already, but we > should definitely confirm it. > > 3. If the user has no credential helper defined, then do one of: > > a. Warn them that the credential was not recorded, but that they > can use "git clone -c credential.helper=store" as a fallback > (but probably worded in a way to recommend using something > stronger if possible). > > This is slightly annoying because following the advice requires > re-cloning. Fixing it up from there is more like: > > git config credential.helper store > git fetch > [interactively input password] > > b. Just use credential-store. Optionally notify them of what > happened (and that they might want to choose a better helper).
So here are patches to do that. Step 2 is indeed how things work already, so nothing was needed there (there are still 3 patches because there was a bit of prep-work ;) ).
I did 3b here: automagically enabling credential-store. I'm still on the fence on whether that's a good idea or not.
I don't have any data on how many victims of this ransom campaign might have been helped by this. But it certainly seems like a decent best practice. I'd hope that _most_ people have moved on to using a credential helper and supplying the initial password interactively these days; this is really just aimed at people who don't know better. So the goal is making them a bit more secure, but also educating them about the other options. Hopefully without breaking any workflows. :)
-Peff
[1/3]: transport_anonymize_url(): support retaining username [2/3]: clone: avoid storing URL passwords in config [3/3]: clone: auto-enable git-credential-store when necessary
builtin/clone.c | 37 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++-- credential.c | 13 +++++++++++++ credential.h | 6 ++++++ t/t5550-http-fetch-dumb.sh | 12 ++++++++++++ transport.c | 21 ++++++++++++++------- transport.h | 11 ++++++++++- 6 files changed, 90 insertions(+), 10 deletions(-)