Fix: install.sh rejects every release, and stop running main on people's laptops - #871
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The installer refuses every install against every published release:
error: checksums.txt has no entry for abctl_v0.7.0-alpha.3_darwin_arm64.tar.gz
— refusing to install it unverified
The entry is there. The release workflow generates checksums with
`sha256sum ./*.tar.gz`, so every line reads "HASH ./abctl_....tar.gz", and
the pattern I introduced in 79f2f57 — "[[:space:]]\*?NAME$" — requires the
name immediately after whitespace or a binary-mode asterisk. A "./" in
between means nothing matches.
That commit fixed a fail-OPEN (an alternation succeeded on one of two
archives, so a partial checksums.txt installed the other unverified) and
replaced it with a fail-CLOSED that blocks everyone. The fail-closed is the
safer direction of the two, but it is still a bug, and it is worse in
practice: nobody can install at all.
The pattern now accepts the name preceded by start-of-line, whitespace, "*",
or "/", which covers "./name", "dist/name", "*name" and a bare "name".
Tested against the real published checksums.txt for v0.7.0-alpha.3 plus six
constructed cases: no prefix, binary mode, a nested path, partial coverage
(the fail-open this guard exists for — still caught), a decoy where the name
appears mid-line, and a suffix impostor "xyzabctl_....tar.gz". All seven
behave. End to end, the exact failing command now verifies both archives
("./abctl_...: OK", "./authbridge-proxy_...: OK") and installs both binaries.
The lesson worth recording: the first version of this guard was never run
against a real checksums.txt, only against fixtures I wrote from the same
mistaken assumption about the format.
Assisted-By: Claude (Anthropic AI) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Signed-off-by: Hai Huang <huang195@gmail.com>
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📝 WalkthroughWalkthroughThe installer checksum filter now matches archive names preceded by path components, slashes, whitespace, or wildcards. This allows checksum verification for release entries such as ChangesInstaller checksum verification
Estimated code review effort: 1 (Trivial) | ~5 minutes Merge Risk: 🟡 Moderate · up to The installer may report checksum verification success for a local file other than the downloaded archive, then extract the unverified download. Restrict accepted checksum paths to the downloaded archive before merging. Suggested reviewers: 🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 4 | ❌ 1❌ Failed checks (1 warning)
✅ Passed checks (4 passed)
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Actionable comments posted: 1
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Inline comments:
In `@authbridge/install.sh`:
- Line 284: Update sha_check’s checksum filtering to accept only the downloaded
archive’s relative basename, rejecting absolute paths and any ../
parent-directory traversal entries before verification. Preserve validation of
the intended archive and add tests covering both absolute-path and
parent-directory checksum entries.
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authbridge/install.sh
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The documented command fetches install.sh from main and runs it. main is
whatever landed last, so a `curl | sh` executes unreviewed and unreleased
changes on someone's laptop the moment they merge — which is exactly how a
broken checksum pattern of mine reached a user and blocked every install.
The script now re-runs the copy from the newest release and hands it the same
arguments. Releases are tested; main is not. Two escape hatches:
--ref=main run this copy, unreleased changes included
--ref=vX.Y.Z pin the installer to a release
AUTHBRIDGE_REF is the environment equivalent. When the script came from a
release tag, the binaries default to that same tag, so the script and the
binaries it installs are one tested set rather than two independently-moving
things; AUTHBRIDGE_VERSION still overrides.
Details that took a test to get right:
- --ref is stripped before re-exec. A released script from before --ref
existed rejects it as an unknown option, which is exactly what happened
on the first run of this.
- The argument list is rebuilt by rotating the positional parameters rather
than building a string, so an argument containing a space survives.
- AUTHBRIDGE_SCRIPT_REF is both the ref name and the recursion guard: the
child sees it set and does not bootstrap again. Verified the bootstrap
line appears exactly once.
- If the resolved ref has no authbridge/install.sh, it warns and continues
with the current copy. That is not hypothetical: the newest release today
is v0.7.0-alpha.3, which predates the rename from install-demo.sh, so the
fallback is the live path until the next release exists.
Tested: the default (falls back with a warning today), --ref=main, --ref with
a commit SHA that does have the script, AUTHBRIDGE_REF, the recursion guard,
argument propagation, version pinning, and --help through the documented pipe.
The SHA test is the one worth naming: the parent had the checksum fix and the
child did not, and the child failed on the checksum bug — which is direct
evidence the re-exec runs the pinned copy's code rather than the parent's.
Assisted-By: Claude (Anthropic AI) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Signed-off-by: Hai Huang <huang195@gmail.com>
huang195
changed the title
… failure Five findings, all verified against the code first, all real. **The die after newest_release could never fire.** It is a pipeline ending in sed, which exits 0 on empty input, so `version=$(newest_release) || die` passed an empty tag through on a rate-limited or offline API. The user then got `Release: ` and `download failed: abctl__darwin_arm64.tar.gz` instead of the actionable "set AUTHBRIDGE_VERSION". newest_release now returns 1 on empty, so both call sites work — the other one was already correct, and having the two disagree is what hid this. **set -eu made the cleanup after the re-exec dead code.** A child exiting non-zero aborts the parent immediately, so `status=$?`, `rm -f` and `exit` never ran and the downloaded script leaked on every failed install. Reproduced. Now if/else, which keeps the status and still cleans up. **The fallback warning misattributed network failures.** One branch collapsed 404, transport errors and empty-200, and 2>/dev/null discarded curl's reason — so someone behind a blocked raw.githubusercontent.com was told the release "has no authbridge/install.sh", which is false, and was then dropped onto main: the exact outcome this bootstrap exists to prevent. Now split on the status code. A 404 means that ref genuinely predates the script, so fall back and say so. A transport error means we could not ask, so it dies and names both explicit choices rather than quietly running main. **The archive name went into an ERE unescaped**, so every dot matched any character and abctl_v0X7X0-alpha_3_darwin_arm64Xtar.gz satisfied the pattern. Not exploitable — a decoy either pushes the count off 2 or reaches sha_check looking for a file that was never downloaded, and both die — but this commit's subject is precision in that one pattern. Escaped now; the decoy is rejected and the real name still matches. **The README claimed more than the code does.** "never executes an unreleased change" is untrue today (alpha.3's tree 404s, so the live path warns and runs main) and not absolute afterwards either, since both fallbacks continue with main by design. Now: re-runs the release copy "when one carries it", and "normally does not execute unreleased changes". Also fixed a detail my own test caught: on a transport failure curl prints "000" via -w and exits non-zero, so appending a default produced "HTTP 000000". Regression pass over all seven paths: default 404 fallback, --ref=main, --ref=<sha> bootstrapping exactly once, transport error dying without falling back, both checksums verifying against the real ./-prefixed file, no tempfile leak on a failing child, and --help through the documented pipe. Assisted-By: Claude (Anthropic AI) <noreply@anthropic.com> Signed-off-by: Hai Huang <huang195@gmail.com>
sha_check runs from ${tmp}, and the character class I used to accept the "./"
prefix also accepted "/". So a crafted checksums.txt entry could name a file
outside the download directory and still match:
HASH ../abctl_v0.7.0-alpha.3_darwin_arm64.tar.gz matched
HASH /etc/abctl_v0.7.0-alpha.3_darwin_arm64.tar.gz matched
HASH ../../tmp/abctl_v...tar.gz matched
Verification would then run against that file while the archive we actually
downloaded gets extracted — passing the check for something other than the
thing installed. Exploiting it needs a file to already exist at the named path
with a known hash, so it is difficult rather than easy, but a checksum guard is
the wrong place to leave that.
The pattern is now anchored to the whole line and to the exact shape our own
workflow emits — `cd dist && sha256sum ./*.tar.gz` gives "HASH ./name" — with a
bare name and binary-mode "*" also accepted:
^[0-9a-fA-F]+[[:space:]]+\*?(\./)?NAME$
Nested paths like "dist/name" are rejected too. I had allowed them earlier on the
guess that some sha256sum invocation might produce them; ours does not, and
guessing at extra formats is what opened this.
Ten cases tested: the three legitimate shapes match; traversal, absolute,
nested, a wildcard-dot decoy, a suffix impostor, and a non-hex first field are
all rejected. The real published checksums.txt for v0.7.0-alpha.3 still verifies
both archives and installs.
Assisted-By: Claude (Anthropic AI) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Signed-off-by: Hai Huang <huang195@gmail.com>
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Correctly fixes the #855 checksum-regex regression that rejected every real release — the ./ prefix from sha256sum ./*.tar.gz — with (^|[[:space:]*/])${archive}$. Verified against the real v0.7.0-alpha.3 checksums.txt plus a solid matrix (binary-mode *, nested path, partial coverage still caught, decoy + suffix impostor rejected). Fail-closed is preserved end to end: per-archive die-if-missing + the exact-count guard + the actual shasum -a 256 -c hash comparison.
The "run the released copy, not main" bootstrap is a well-executed security/UX improvement: correct recursion guard via AUTHBRIDGE_SCRIPT_REF, injection-safe quoted interpolation (no eval), POSIX arg-rotation that strips --ref while keeping args with spaces intact, tempfile cleaned on both paths, and a warned fallback to main. Same TLS trust model as the original curl | sh, but pinned to a tested release instead of whatever last landed on main.
One optional, non-blocking hardening note inline on the grep pattern (unescaped .), low-risk here because shasum -c is the real gate.
Areas reviewed: Shell (installer), security (checksum verification + release bootstrap), Docs (README)
Commits: 3, signed-off: yes
CI: passing (Shell Script Lint, Go CI, CodeQL, Trivy)
LGTM.
| # Default the binaries to the same release this script came from, so the | ||
| # script and the binaries it installs are one tested set rather than two | ||
| # independently-moving things. | ||
| case "${SCRIPT_REF}" in |
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suggestion (non-blocking): ${archive} is interpolated unescaped into grep -E, so the . characters in the version and .tar.gz match any char. It's low-risk here — the real verification is shasum -a 256 -c below, the exact line-count guard bounds it, and an over-match tends to fail closed (a wrong-named line makes shasum -c look for a file that isn't there). But for a security-sensitive path it'd be a touch tidier to match on literals — e.g. escape the dots, or grep -F -- "$archive" combined with an end-of-line check. Take it or leave it; the layered verification already covers the real threat.
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3 participants
Two commits: a broken installer, and the reason a broken installer reached users
at all.
1.
install.shrefuses every installThe entry is there.
release-binaries.yamlgenerates checksums withsha256sum ./*.tar.gz, so every line reads:My pattern from #855 (
79f2f575) was[[:space:]]\*?${archive}$— the name mustfollow whitespace or a binary-mode
*immediately. The./means nothing matches.That commit fixed a genuine fail-open (an alternation
grep -E "(a|b)$"succeeds on one of two archives, so a partial
checksums.txtinstalled the otherunverified). Replacing it with a per-archive grep was right; tightening the anchor
at the same time was not. Fail-closed is the safer direction, but it still blocks
everyone — and the first version was only ever run against fixtures I wrote from
the same wrong assumption about the format, never against a real
checksums.txt.Fix:
(^|[[:space:]*/])${archive}$. Tested against the real publishedchecksums.txtforv0.7.0-alpha.3plus six constructed cases:./prefix)*name)dist/name)xyzabctl_….tar.gzEnd to end, the failing command now succeeds:
2. Don't run
mainin the first placeThe bug above shipped to a user the moment it merged, because the documented
command fetches
install.shfrommainand runs it.mainis whatever landedlast. A
curl | shshould not be the first thing to execute an unreleased change.The script now re-runs the copy from the newest release, passing the same
arguments. Releases are tested;
mainis not.AUTHBRIDGE_REFis the env equivalent. When the script came from a release tag thebinaries default to that same tag, so the script and the binaries it installs are
one tested set.
AUTHBRIDGE_VERSIONstill overrides.Details that needed a test:
--refis stripped before re-exec. A released script from before--refexisted rejects it — which is what happened on my first run.
so an argument containing a space survives.
AUTHBRIDGE_SCRIPT_REFis both the ref name and the recursion guard.Verified the bootstrap fires exactly once.
authbridge/install.sh: warn, continue with thecurrent copy. Live path today —
v0.7.0-alpha.3predates the rename frominstall-demo.sh, so its tree 404s. Becomes fully effective at the next tag.Tested: the default,
--ref=main,--ref=<sha>against a ref that does have thescript,
AUTHBRIDGE_REF, the recursion guard, argument propagation, versionpinning, and
--helpthrough the documented pipe.The SHA test is the one worth naming: the parent had commit 1's fix and the child
did not, and the child failed on the checksum bug — direct evidence the re-exec
runs the pinned copy's code, not the parent's.
Ordering
Merge, then cut the next tag. From then on the default resolves to a release whose
tree carries this installer, and
mainleaves the path entirely.Assisted-By: Claude (Anthropic AI) noreply@anthropic.com