PIO Home server security model

[FedericoCeratto]

• PlatformIO Core

Configuration

Operating system: any

PlatformIO Version: any

Description of problem

Initially described in: https://community.platformio.org/t/pio-home-security-issue/12196

When platformio home is run by a user, PIO has unlimited access to the user's home directory.

PIO home on http://127.0.0.1:8008 exposes the home contents:

• to any other local user
• to any (potentially malicious) website that can connect to localhost (e.g. using javascript and websockets)
• to any (potentially malicious) PIO library

Suggested mitigations

On Linux the process can be sandboxed by either:

• Ship a firejail profile and start platformio under firejail
• Run platformio as a system process using systemd sandboxing capabilities
• Implement native sandboxing

The sandboxing is meant to limit which paths the process (and its children) can read and write from.

EDIT: I'm happy to contribute the systemd sandboxing if needed.

[ivankravets]

Thanks for the report. We will generate a secure token on a server side and use it for clients.

[FedericoCeratto]

@ivankravets the token provides a basic form of authentication/authorization but cannot not provide any protection to the user's home directory from a platformio instance that is running untrusted code or has been otherwise compromised.
Can you please reopen the bug report? Thanks.

[ivankravets]

but cannot not provide any protection to the user's home directory from a platformio instance

Have you tried the latest development version? The upcoming PlatformIO IDE 2.1 will use a unique session ID for each session. So, you will not be able to connect to the existing session.

[FedericoCeratto]

Yes, hence my answer. The unique session ID provides only authentication/authorization and is besides the point of sandboxing. PlatformIO downloads and executes a lot of code and tools and communicates with many devices, leading to large attack surface.

[ivankravets]

So, this is a different story. In this case, you can use Docker or similar virtualization platforms and connect your hardware to them.

We agree, we had a security issue with PIO Home but it is now resolved.