Re: Webserver CVS (In)Security

From: Andrew Brown (atatatat_private)
Date: Tue Apr 01 2003 - 14:33:35 PST

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    >A lot of people use CVS to manage their web content. It's a great way to
    >keep track of changes, and makes updating and rollbacks a very easy
    >thing to do.
    >
    >..BUT (there's always a but) this can be a _huge_ security risk.
    >
    >When I finally decided to manage my web content with CVS, I noticed
    >something about the directory layout (after running a `cvs up`) of my
    >website; there were a bunch of CVS directories with files in them. I
    >always knew they were there when working with CVS (those files are the
    >way CVS keeps track of versions and what not), but I never paid any mind
    >to them.. until today.
    >
    >I opened up Mozilla and went to my website with a /CVS appended to the
    >URL. Since I have Apache setup to disallow directory listings, I didn't
    >get anything. Then I added /CVS/Entries to the URL. Two words came to
    >mind: Uh-oh. The Entries file gave a complete listing of my webroot. It
    >was like having ls(1) running on my webserver. The Entries file showed
    >all the files and directories people normally wouldn't be able to see or
    >even scan for. It would seem that having the directory listing option
    >disabled in my httpd.conf didn't matter anymore.
    >...
    
    keep two trees.
    
    tree 1 (let's call it /foo/cvs) is a copy of the cvs material with all
    the cvs subdirs and meta-files in it.
    
    tree 2 (let's call it /foo/www) is updated as follows whenever you cvs
    update tree 1, or whatever you do to maintain it.
    
    	% cd /foo/cvs
    	% rsync -CHar --delete . /foo/www
    
    -- 
    |-----< "CODE WARRIOR" >-----|
    codewarriorat_private             * "ah!  i see you have the internet
    twofsonetat_private (Andrew Brown)                that goes *ping*!"
    werdnaat_private       * "information is power -- share the wealth."
    



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