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Do not serve account actors at all in limited federation mode #14800

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ClearlyClaire
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When an account is fetched without a signature from an allowed instance, return an error.

This isn't really an improvement in security, as the only information that was previously returned was required protocol-level info, and the only personal bit was the existence of the account. The existence of the account can still be checked by issuing a webfinger query, as those are accepted without signatures.

However, this change makes it so that unallowed instances won't create account records on their end when they find a reference to an unknown account.

The previous behavior of rendering a limited list of fields, instead of not rendering the actor at all, was in order to prevent situations in which two instances in Authorized Fetch mode or Limited Federation mode would fail to reach each other because resolving an account would require a signed query… from an account which can only be fetched with a signed query itself. However, this should now be fine as fetching accounts is done by signing on behalf of the special instance actor, which does not require any kind of valid signature to be fetched.

When an account is fetched without a signature from an allowed instance,
return an error.

This isn't really an improvement in security, as the only information that was
previously returned was required protocol-level info, and the only personal bit
was the existence of the account. The existence of the account can still be
checked by issuing a webfinger query, as those are accepted without signatures.

However, this change makes it so that unallowed instances won't create account
records on their end when they find a reference to an unknown account.

The previous behavior of rendering a limited list of fields, instead of not
rendering the actor at all, was in order to prevent situations in which two
instances in Authorized Fetch mode or Limited Federation mode would fail to
reach each other because resolving an account would require a signed query…
from an account which can only be fetched with a signed query itself. However,
this should now be fine as fetching accounts is done by signing on behalf of
the special instance actor, which does not require any kind of valid signature
to be fetched.
@ClearlyClaire ClearlyClaire force-pushed the fixes/authorized-fetch-mode-reject-fetches branch from 61debe3 to df90c4d Compare September 14, 2020 10:34
@Gargron Gargron merged commit cd4ec7c into mastodon:master Sep 14, 2020
thenameisnigel-old pushed a commit to ChatterlyOSE/Chatterly that referenced this pull request Sep 18, 2020
…on#14800)

* Do not serve account actors at all in limited federation mode

When an account is fetched without a signature from an allowed instance,
return an error.

This isn't really an improvement in security, as the only information that was
previously returned was required protocol-level info, and the only personal bit
was the existence of the account. The existence of the account can still be
checked by issuing a webfinger query, as those are accepted without signatures.

However, this change makes it so that unallowed instances won't create account
records on their end when they find a reference to an unknown account.

The previous behavior of rendering a limited list of fields, instead of not
rendering the actor at all, was in order to prevent situations in which two
instances in Authorized Fetch mode or Limited Federation mode would fail to
reach each other because resolving an account would require a signed query…
from an account which can only be fetched with a signed query itself. However,
this should now be fine as fetching accounts is done by signing on behalf of
the special instance actor, which does not require any kind of valid signature
to be fetched.

* Fix tests
Gargron pushed a commit that referenced this pull request Oct 19, 2020
* Do not serve account actors at all in limited federation mode

When an account is fetched without a signature from an allowed instance,
return an error.

This isn't really an improvement in security, as the only information that was
previously returned was required protocol-level info, and the only personal bit
was the existence of the account. The existence of the account can still be
checked by issuing a webfinger query, as those are accepted without signatures.

However, this change makes it so that unallowed instances won't create account
records on their end when they find a reference to an unknown account.

The previous behavior of rendering a limited list of fields, instead of not
rendering the actor at all, was in order to prevent situations in which two
instances in Authorized Fetch mode or Limited Federation mode would fail to
reach each other because resolving an account would require a signed query…
from an account which can only be fetched with a signed query itself. However,
this should now be fine as fetching accounts is done by signing on behalf of
the special instance actor, which does not require any kind of valid signature
to be fetched.

* Fix tests
shouo1987 pushed a commit to CrossGate-Pawoo/mastodon that referenced this pull request Dec 7, 2022
…on#14800)

* Do not serve account actors at all in limited federation mode

When an account is fetched without a signature from an allowed instance,
return an error.

This isn't really an improvement in security, as the only information that was
previously returned was required protocol-level info, and the only personal bit
was the existence of the account. The existence of the account can still be
checked by issuing a webfinger query, as those are accepted without signatures.

However, this change makes it so that unallowed instances won't create account
records on their end when they find a reference to an unknown account.

The previous behavior of rendering a limited list of fields, instead of not
rendering the actor at all, was in order to prevent situations in which two
instances in Authorized Fetch mode or Limited Federation mode would fail to
reach each other because resolving an account would require a signed query…
from an account which can only be fetched with a signed query itself. However,
this should now be fine as fetching accounts is done by signing on behalf of
the special instance actor, which does not require any kind of valid signature
to be fetched.

* Fix tests
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2 participants