Re: [OAUTH-WG] client certs and TLS Terminating Reverse Proxies (was Re: I-D Action: draft-ietf-oauth-jwt-introspection-response-08.txt)

[Hans Zandbelt <[e-mail]>]

the way I see this is that stripping and setting the headers must be part
of the implementation of the protocol itself, it should not be something
left to a non-atomic piece of configuration by an administrator; I
implemented it like this in the Apache implementation of Brian's TTRP spec
[1] and have been doing this for the OIDC and OAuth Apache modules that set
headers for backends to consume [2]; and yes, I have made mistakes [3], but
IMHO it should not be a problem to use a well known header and make the
implementer (not the admin) get it right by pointing this out in the spec,
as is done for many other pitfalls

Hans.

[1]
https://github.com/zmartzone/mod_token_binding/blob/master/src/mod_token_binding.c#L481-L483
[2]
https://github.com/zmartzone/mod_auth_openidc/blob/master/src/mod_auth_openidc.c#L164-L175
[3] https://www.cvedetails.com/cve/CVE-2017-6413/

On Thu, Oct 31, 2019 at 11:37 AM Vladimir Dzhuvinov <[e-mail]>
wrote:

> All in all, I am in favor of this being defined in one standard way, in
> addition to secure communication between proxies and backends being
> standardized — but this latter bit really seems like a separate problem.
>
>  — Justin
>
> -1 for devising a well known header
>
> +1 for a simple way to authenticate a reverse proxy with a web server
>
> With a well known name, in a attack this will get probed first. The well
> known header name doesn't guarantee a correct config. And if we have a new
> standard for sec headers that must be stripped automatically from inbound
> HTTP requests, we cannot expect that will get implemented in all reverse
> proxy software overnight.
>
> Because a correct config is not practical as the only line of defense,
> when we implemented mTLS we decided to add a length (>= 32 chars) and
> randomness check to the header config. I saw some concerns that this may
> cause deployment issues. Nobody has complained about that so far.
>
>
> https://connect2id.com/products/server/docs/config/core#op-tls-clientX509CertHeader
>
> Regarding mistyping, this can be an issue, but has little to no effect if
> a long random header gets misstyped (from the inbound strip directive).
> With a well known header this will result in a immediate security hole,
> which can theoretically go unnoticed.
>
> Here is an example Apache httpd config, to illustrate my point:
>
> RequestHeader set Sec-Client-X509-Cert-liede5vaePeeMiYie0xu2jaudauleing ""
> RequestHeader set Sec-Client-X509-Cert-liede5vaePeeMiYie0xu2jaudauleing "%{SSL_CLIENT_CERT}s"
>
> (the first line strips the inbound headers)
>
>
> Vladimir
>
> --
> Vladimir Dzhuvinov
>
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