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#6720 new
Sebastian Martinez

Parameter Filter not working

Reported by Sebastian Martinez | April 19th, 2011 @ 01:21 AM

I have a very simple testing app, containing login code only.

On the login action I added a debugger to check if Rails is filtering the parameters as it should.
I did:

(rdb:1) eval env["action_dispatch.parameter_filter"]
[:password, :password, :password_confirmation, /RAW_POST_DATA/]

So it should filter the password. Checking it like this works fine

eval ActionDispatch::Request.new(env).filtered_parameters
{"commit"=>"Sign in", "action"=>"create", "utf8"=>"✓", "authenticity_token"=>"8VJfRG+0RHI2u1Lp0BvbP3ee9023TQFfdkVYmiaI6D4=", "controller"=>"devise/sessions", "user"=>{"remember_me"=>"0", "password"=>"[FILTERED]", "email"=>"user@test.com"}}

The problem is when I do:

eval ActionDispatch::Request.new(env).filtered_env

It shows the entire env that should be filtered, and in several places it is, but I see parts like this:

[...]
"action_dispatch.request.request_parameters"=>{"commit"=>"Sign in", "authenticity_token"=>"8VJfRG+0RHI2u1Lp0BvbP3ee9023TQFfdkVYmiaI6D4=", "utf8"=>"✓", "user"=>{"remember_me"=>"0", "password"=>"user123", "email"=>"user@test.com"}},
"rack.request.form_vars"=>"utf8=%E2%9C%93&authenticity_token=8VJfRG%2B0RHI2u1Lp0BvbP3ee9023TQFfdkVYmiaI6D4%3D&user%5Bemail%5D=user%40test.com&user%5Bpassword%5D=user123&user%5Bremember_me%5D=0&commit=Sign+in"
[...]

As you can see, the password is right there in plain text.
Is this ok? If so, how can I completely filter the password??

Comments and changes to this ticket

  • Neeraj Singh

    Neeraj Singh April 19th, 2011 @ 11:07 PM

    • Importance changed from “” to “Low”

    Which version of Rails you are using? I tested it with one of my apps which is using Rails 3.0.3 and this is what I am getting. Notice that password is filtered.

    (rdb:1) eval ActionDispatch::Request.new(env).filtered_env
    ....
    "rack.request.form_input"=>#<StringIO:0x107ef78a8>, "HTTP_ACCEPT_CHARSET"=>"ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.3", "SERVER_PORT"=>"3000", "action_controller.instance"=>#<SessionsController:0x107e9b2b0 ...>, "rack.session.options"=>{:httponly=>true, :expire_after=>nil, :domain=>nil, :path=>"/", :id=>"92c6cfe0e146cf646c06d13641ec6af8", :secure=>false}, "REQUEST_METHOD"=>"POST", "HTTP_ORIGIN"=>"http://localhost:3000", "rack.request.query_string"=>"", "rack.request.form_hash"=>{"commit"=>"Login", "authenticity_token"=>"NJIXco+zVXb9bYJOb3ethlOOY9Y0vW7skoBZhsPjFYI=", "utf8"=>"\342\234\223", "password"=>"welcome", "email"=>"neeraj.cmu@gmail.com"}, "action_dispatch.request.content_type"=>#<Mime::Type:0x101980880 @synonyms=[], @symbol=:url_encoded_form, @string="application/x-www-form-urlencoded">, "QUERY_STRING"=>"", "rack.input"=>#<StringIO:0x107ef78a8>, "HTTP_CONNECTION"=>"keep-alive", "HTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING"=>"gzip,deflate,sdch", "GATEWAY_INTERFACE"=>"CGI/1.2"}, @_config=#<OrderedHash {}>, @_status=200, @_action_name="create", @lookup_context=#<ActionView::LookupContext:0x107e9adb0 @view_paths=[#<ActionView::FileSystemResolver:0x108be3788 @cached={}, @caching=false, @path="/Users/nsingh/dev/personal/teams99_new/app/views">, #<ActionView::FileSystemResolver:0x108be4778 @cached={}, @caching=false, @path="/Users/nsingh/dev/personal/teams99_new/vendor/ruby/1.8/gems/handy-0.0.15/app/views">, #<ActionView::FileSystemResolver:0x108c0e938 @cached={}, @caching=false, @path="/Users/nsingh/dev/personal/teams99_new/vendor/ruby/1.8/gems/admin_data-1.1.10/app/views">], @details_key=nil, @skip_default_locale=false, @details={:locale=>[:en, :en], :formats=>[:html], :handlers=>[:rhtml, :rxml, :erb, :builder, :haml, :rjs]}, @frozen_formats=false>>, "HTTP_ORIGIN"=>"http://localhost:3000", "GATEWAY_INTERFACE"=>"CGI/1.2", "HTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING"=>"gzip,deflate,sdch", "HTTP_CONNECTION"=>"keep-alive", "rack.input"=>#<StringIO:0x107ef78a8>, "QUERY_STRING"=>"", "action_dispatch.request.content_type"=>#<Mime::Type:0x101980880 @synonyms=[], @symbol=:url_encoded_form, @string="application/x-www-form-urlencoded">, "rack.request.form_hash"=>{"commit"=>"Login", "utf8"=>"\342\234\223", "authenticity_token"=>"NJIXco+zVXb9bYJOb3ethlOOY9Y0vW7skoBZhsPjFYI=", "password"=>"[FILTERED]", "email"=>"neeraj@example.com"}, "rack.request.query_string"=>""}
    
  • Sebastian Martinez

    Sebastian Martinez April 19th, 2011 @ 11:15 PM

    I'm using Rails 3.0.3 too.

    In the response you posted, the password is not filtered in some places but in others it's not.
    The password you used is 'welcome'.
    Check "rack.request.form_hash".
    I am also seeing it without being filtered on "action_dispatch.request.request_parameters" that you omitted.

  • Neeraj Singh

    Neeraj Singh April 20th, 2011 @ 03:46 AM

    I investigated a bit and this is what I found.

    The output looks like this https://gist.github.com/930236

    Look at #8 the key is (action_dispatch.request.parameters)
    and the password is filtered at line #16

    Now look at line #33 the key is same (action_dispatch.request.parameters) . Notice that password is not filtered at line #41.

    Question is why?

    The second key (action_dispatch.request.parameters) has a parent key named (action_dispatch.remote_ip) line #28.

    When rails gets the key and value for this case it looks like this.
    key: action_dispatch.remote_ip

    value : [something] . However notice that the class of this value is not Hash. In this case value.is_a?(Hash) return false since the class of value is ActionDispatch::RemoteIp::RemoteIpGetter.

    The filtering code looks like this

                  if regexps.find { |r| key =~ r }                value = '[FILTERED]'
                  elsif value.is_a?(Hash)
                    value = filter(value)
                  elsif value.is_a?(Array)
                    value = value.map { |v| v.is_a?(Hash) ? filter(v) : v }
                  else ..
    

    Notice that in this case value does not satisfy any of the above cases and hence the value is left as it is and the password value is exposed.

    What's the fix?

    I don't have a good solution. It is not practically possible to look inside all different kinds of objects and replace the value. I can think of a solution where the values are not printed for the classes like the one mentioned above in normal mode. If you are debugging something then in the debug mode full value should be printed.

  • Steve Schwartz

    Steve Schwartz April 20th, 2011 @ 04:44 AM

    I don't know much about the context of the filter code you posted, but I'm assuming it logs the ActionDispatch::RemoteIp::RemoteIpGetter by calling to_s on it. Could something like this work?

    elsif value.respond_to?(:to_s)
      value = value.to_s.gsub!(/(#{key}:\s*)([^\s,$]+)/, "#{$1}#{filter($2)}")
    
  • Neeraj Singh

    Neeraj Singh April 20th, 2011 @ 10:02 AM

    @steve

    to_s is currently not being called on ActionDispatch::RemoteIp::RemoteIpGetter. Rather the value is left intact. In other words value is not being altered at all.

    Secondly after invoking to_s it is hard to be precise about key and value and each class can have its own implementation of to_s.

  • Steve Schwartz

    Steve Schwartz April 26th, 2011 @ 12:57 AM

    @neeraj, I think you misunderstood. I was referring to when ActionDispatch::RemoteIp::RemoteIpGetter is actually getting output (i.e. with print or puts or whatever), at which time the to_s is called on it.

    But yes, the code you had excerpted was from within the ActionDispatch::Http::ParameterFilter class, which happens before the to_s method ever gets called, so that wouldn't be solvable from here. I would imagine a fix for this issue would have to go straight in the filtered_env method itself.

  • Steve Schwartz

    Steve Schwartz April 26th, 2011 @ 12:59 AM

    Oh, and concerning the difficulty in being precise about key/value for each class's own to_s method, yes I agree, but when it comes to filtering sensitive info, something is better than nothing.

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