[Xastir] https server is now operational

[Curt, WE7U]

On Wed, 25 Jun 2014, Tom Hayward wrote:

> On Wed, Jun 25, 2014 at 7:32 AM, Eric H. Christensen
> <eric at christensenplace.us> wrote:
>> Also, it appears that the server supports EXPORT cipher suites.  I'd recommend just supporting HIGH ciphers.
>
> Thinking a little more outside the box, how about supporting null
> cipher, for those users coming from from ham RF networks? By
> supporting HIGH and eNULL, the browser gets to choose. Most browsers
> will choose HIGH, unless the ham has specifically configured their
> browser not to allow encryption.

In principle I'm in favor of the NULL cipher.  I hung out on the OpenSSH list for a year or more trying to get them to put the NULL encryption back in, specifically to support ham networks.  What I got back from the developers was something like:  "Tell your government to not use such stupid rules for radio!" or similar.  In the end all I could do was split off the NULL patches from the High Performance Computing monster patch, and the HPC guy said he would maintain it as a separate patch from now on.  That's SSH though, not SSL, but same principles apply.


> How is this secure compared to plain text http?

> 1) The remote server is authenticated (not currently the case, because
> Curt did not tell us which self-signed cert to expect. Maybe he could
> send a PGP-signed message to let us know what key to expect on the
> server, or get his cert signed by one of the free, trusted CAs like
> StartCom)

Really necessary?  Seriously, it's a Wiki password that's at risk here, and perhaps a few Wiki pages, that can be reconstructed if they're mangled.  If an account gets compromised, let me know and I'll fix things up.

I'm all for security when it's truly necessary, but let's go easy here.  No personal data is on this site, not credit card info, nothing.


> 2) You can turn on SSL client authentication and use it in lieu of
> passwords. There's a MediaWiki extension for this:
> http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:SSL_authentication, and the
> ARRL signs certificates, free (free wold-wide, regardless of
> membership), that can be trusted more than a CAPTCHA.

Again, I wanted a simple way to get to https.  I don't have unlimited time to play with the server, plus would like to get back to doing releases and/or code development.  The ARRL certificates sound wonderful, but there's a bunch of work I'd need to do, plus each ham would have to go through the process to get their own certificate.  I kind'a doubt that will get done just for a wiki login.  The people who would win out are the ones that have already gone through the process for other reasons, like contest logging.

Let's table this discussion for a while.  I need to implement automated backups of the list config, list archives, mysql dump, server configs, and wiki configs.  Right now that's my #1 priority for the server.  Also need to push out another stable Xastir release, whether or not we do the map cleanups that were suggested previously.

Oh yea, and the reverse DNS doesn't work yet so some of the list emails can't go out, to servers that check such.  I've submitted a trouble-ticket to cloudatcost but so far there's been no movement on it.  I would apologize to those that aren't getting the list emails, but they won't get this message either!

-- 
Curt, WE7U.        http://wetnet.net/~we7u
APRS Client Capabilities:  http://wetnet.net/~we7u/aprs_capabilities.html