plone.protect 3.0.4

Security for browser forms

Introduction
============

This package contains utilities that can help to protect parts of Plone
or applications build on top of the Plone framework.


1. Restricting to HTTP POST
===========================

a) Using decorator
------------------

If you only need to allow HTTP POST requests you can use the *PostOnly*
checker::

from plone.protect import PostOnly
from plone.protect import protect

@protect(PostOnly)
def manage_doSomething(self, param, REQUEST=None):
pass

This checker only operators on HTTP requests; other types of requests
are not checked.

b) Passing request to a function validator
------------------------------------------

Simply::

from plone.protect import PostOnly

...
PostOnly(self.context.REQUEST)
...

2. Form authentication (CSRF)
=============================

A common problem in web applications is Cross Site Request Forgery or CSRF.
This is an attack method in which an attacker tricks a browser to do a HTTP
form submit to another site. To do this the attacker needs to know the exact
form parameters. Form authentication is a method to make it impossible for an
attacker to predict those parameters by adding an extra authenticator which
can be verified.

Generating the token
--------------------

To use the form authenticator you first need to insert it into your form.
This can be done using a simple TAL statement inside your form::

<span tal:replace="structure context/@@authenticator/authenticator"/>

this will produce a HTML input element with the authentication information.

Validating the token
--------------------

a) ZCA way
**********

Next you need to add logic somewhere to verify the authenticator. This
can be done using a call to the authenticator view. For example::

authenticator=getMultiAdapter((context, request), name=u"authenticator")
if not authenticator.verify():
raise Unauthorized

b) Using decorator
******************

You can do the same thing more conveniently using the ``protect`` decorator::

from plone.protect import CheckAuthenticator
from plone.protect import protect

@protect(CheckAuthenticator)
def manage_doSomething(self, param, REQUEST=None):
pass

c) Passing request to a function validator
******************************************

Or just::

from plone.protect import CheckAuthenticator

...
CheckAuthenticator(self.context.REQUEST)
...

Headers
-------

You can also pass in the token by using the header `X-CSRF-TOKEN`. This can be
useful for AJAX requests.


Protect decorator
=================

The most common way to use plone.protect is through the ``protect``
decorator. This decorator takes a list of *checkers* as parameters: each
checker will check a specific security aspect of the request. For example::

from plone.protect import protect
from plone.protect import PostOnly

@protect(PostOnly)
def SensitiveMethod(self, REQUEST=None):
# This is only allowed with HTTP POST requests.

This **relies** on the protected method having a parameter called **REQUEST (case sensitive)**.

Customized Form Authentication
-------------------------------

If you'd like use a different authentication token for different forms,
you can provide an extra string to use with the token::

<tal:authenticator tal:define="authenticator context/@@authenticator">
<span tal:replace="structure python: authenticator.authenticator('a-form-related-value')"/>
</tal:authenticator>

To verify::

authenticator=getMultiAdapter((context, request), name=u"authenticator")
if not authenticator.verify('a-form-related-value'):
raise Unauthorized

With the decorator::

from plone.protect import CustomCheckAuthenticator
from plone.protect import protect

@protect(CustomCheckAuthenticator('a-form-related-value'))
def manage_doSomething(self, param, REQUEST=None):
pass


Automatic CSRF Protection
=========================

Since version 3, plone.protect provides automatic CSRF protection. It does
this by automatically including the auth token to all internal forms when
the user requesting the page is logged in.

Additionally, whenever a particular request attempts to write to the ZODB,
it'll check for the existence of a correct auth token.


Allowing write on read programatically
--------------------------------------

Just add an interface to the current request object::

from plone.protect.interfaces import IDisableCSRFProtection
from zope.interface import alsoProvides
alsoProvides(request, IDisableCSRFProtection)

Warning! When you do this, the current request is susceptible to CSRF
exploits so do any required CSRF protection manually.


If you just want to allow an object to be writable on a request...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

You can add the attribute _v_safe_write onto an object to specify that
it is safe to write on read.

myobj._v_safe_write = True


Clickjacking Protection
=======================

plone.protect also provides, by default, clickjacking protection since
version 3.0.

To protect against this attack, plone employs the use of the X-Frame-Options
header. plone.protect will set the X-Frame-Options value to `SAMEORIGIN`.

To customize this value, you can either override it at your proxy server or
you can set the environment variable of `PLONE_X_FRAME_OPTIONS` to whatever
value you'd like plone.protect to set this to.


Disable All Automatic CSRF Protection
=====================================

To disable all automatic CSRF protection, set the environment variable
`PLONE_CSRF_DISABLED` value to `true`.

WARNING! It is very dangerous to do this. Do not do this unless the zeo client
with this setting is not public and you know what you are doing.

Changelog
=========

3.0.4 (2015-05-13)
------------------

- patch locking functions to use _v_safe_write attribute
[vangheem]

- Be able to use _v_safe_write attribute to specify objects are safe to write
[vangheem]


3.0.3 (2015-03-30)
------------------

- handle zope root not having IKeyManager Utility and CRSF protection
not being supported on zope root requests yet
[vangheem]

3.0.2 (2015-03-13)
------------------

- Add ITransform.transformBytes for protect transform to fix compatibility
with plone.app.blocks' ESI-rendering
[atsoukka]


3.0.1 (2014-11-01)
------------------

- auto CSRF protection: check for changes on all the storages
[mamico]

- CSRF test fixed
[mamico]


3.0.0 (2014-04-13)
------------------

- auto-rotate keyrings
[vangheem]

- use specific keyring for protected forms
[vangheem]

- add automatic clickjacking protection(thanks to Manish Bhattacharya)
[vangheem]

- add automatic CSRF protection
[vangheem]


2.0.2 (2012-12-09)
------------------

- Use constant time comparison to verify the authenticator. This is part of the
fix for https://plone.org/products/plone/security/advisories/20121106/23
[davisagli]

- Add MANIFEST.in.
[WouterVH]

- Add ability to customize the token created.
[vangheem]


2.0 - 2010-07-18
----------------

- Update license to BSD following board decision.
http://lists.plone.org/pipermail/membership/2009-August/001038.html
[elro]

2.0a1 - 2009-11-14
------------------

- Removed deprecated AuthenticateForm class and zope.deprecation dependency.
[hannosch]

- Avoid deprecation warning for the sha module in Python 2.6.
[hannosch]

- Specify package dependencies
[hannosch]

1.1 - 2008-06-02
----------------

- Add an optional GenericSetup profile to make it easier to install
plone.protect.
[mj]

1.0 - 2008-04-19
----------------

- The protect decorator had a serious design flaw which broke it. Added
proper tests for it and fixed the problems.
[wichert]

1.0rc1 - 2008-03-28
-------------------

- Rename plone.app.protect to plone.protect: there is nothing Plone-specific
about the functionality in this package and it really should be used outside
of Plone as well.
[wichert]

- Made utils.protect work with Zope >= 2.11.
[stefan]

1.0b1 - March 7, 2008
---------------------

- Refactor the code to offer a generic protect decorator for methods
which takes a list of checkers as options. Add checkers for both the
authenticator verification and HTTP POST-only.
[wichert]

1.0a1 - January 27, 2008
------------------------

- Initial release
[wichert]