comp.lang.ruby

Tanaka Akira

12/12/2005 2:33:00 AM

In article <3665a1a00512111049n6fe237a1i7cefbceb25bf07cf@mail.gmail.com>,
Anatol Pomozov <anatol.pomozov@gmail.com> writes:

> I am investigating problem with Gems and proxy authorization and I have
> question about open-uri code.
> To be precise code from OpenURI.open_loop(uri, options) (Current version
> from CVS)
>
> when :proxy
> opt_proxy = options.fetch(:proxy)
> proxy_user = nil
> proxy_pass = nil
>
> proxy option mostly come from ENV and could contain information for basic
> authorization: username and password. Something like this
> http://anatol:pwd@www.proxy.com:8080/
> and right way is parse this string and put proxy_user to anatol, proxy_pass
> to pwd and proxy_url to http://www.proxy...

Environment variables are not appropriate place to store
passwords since they are visible from other users.

Note that RFC 3986 deprecates "user:password" in the
userinfo field.

| 3.2.1. User Information
|
| The userinfo subcomponent may consist of a user name and, optionally,
| scheme-specific information about how to gain authorization to access
| the resource. The user information, if present, is followed by a
| commercial at-sign ("@") that delimits it from the host.
|
| userinfo = *( unreserved / pct-encoded / sub-delims / ":" )
|
| Use of the format "user:password" in the userinfo field is
| deprecated. Applications should not render as clear text any data
| after the first colon (":") character found within a userinfo
| subcomponent unless the data after the colon is the empty string
| (indicating no password). Applications may choose to ignore or
| reject such data when it is received as part of a reference and
| should reject the storage of such data in unencrypted form. The
| passing of authentication information in clear text has proven to be
| a security risk in almost every case where it has been used.
|
| Applications that render a URI for the sake of user feedback, such as
| in graphical hypertext browsing, should render userinfo in a way that
| is distinguished from the rest of a URI, when feasible. Such
| rendering will assist the user in cases where the userinfo has been
| misleadingly crafted to look like a trusted domain name
| (Section 7.6).
--
Tanaka Akira