Re: RFC: "git config -l" should not expose sensitive information

From: Michael Haggerty <mhagger@alum.mit.edu>
Date: Dec 20, 2012, 15:51 UTC
Message-ID: <50D33409.1050309@alum.mit.edu>
In-Reply-To: <20121220150408.GD27211@sigill.intra.peff.net>

On 12/20/2012 04:04 PM, Jeff King wrote:

Show 18 quoted lines

> On Mon, Dec 17, 2012 at 12:35:54PM +0100, Toralf Förster wrote:
>> often the output is requested in help forums - and a
>> "git config -l | wgetpaste" exposes parameters like sendmail.smtppass -
>> so hide those variables in the output (if not explicitly wanted) would
>> makes sense, or ?
> 
> But if we change "git config -l", won't that break all of the
> non-exposing uses that rely on seeing all of the variables (e.g., it is
> perfectly fine for a porcelain to parse "git config -l" rather than
> making several calls to "git config"; IIRC, git-cola does this).
> 
> The problem seems to be that people are giving bad advice to tell people
> to post "git config -l" output without looking at. Maybe we could help
> them with a "git config --share-config" option that dumps all config,
> but sanitizes the output. It would need to have a list of sensitive keys
> (which does not exist yet), and would need to not just mark up things
> like smtppass, but would also need to pull credential information out of
> remote.*.url strings. And maybe more (I haven't thought too long on it).

I think the problem is yet another step earlier: why do we build tools that encourage people to store passwords in plaintext in a configuration file that is by default world-readable?

Michael

-- 
Michael Haggerty
mhagger@alum.mit.edu
http://softwareswirl.blogspot.com/