Verify login credentials before spending rate-limit budget (closes #150)
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With TRUSTED_PROXIES empty behind the reverse proxy production is
required to run behind, every login POST keyed on the proxy's address
and shared one 5/minute bucket. A stranger sending five POSTs a
minute -- 0.08 requests per second, from anywhere -- kept that bucket
permanently full, and the operator's own correct password was answered
429 indefinitely with no second administrative path.

The login POST no longer has a pre-emptive limiter. The handler
verifies credentials first and spends budget only on a FAILED attempt,
so a correct password is never throttled whatever the counters hold.
Three things follow, and are implemented together because the first is
unsafe without the other two:

- Failures are counted per (client bucket, submitted username), five
  per minute, after which further failures get 429 with a Retry-After.
  A successful login clears the counter, so mistyping and then
  succeeding does not leave the operator throttled.
- Both key sets are capped at 1024 entries. The submitted username is
  attacker-controlled, so past the first cap failures fall back to a
  counter keyed on the client alone, and past both caps a failure is
  answered as throttled without being recorded. Tracked state stays
  under half a megabyte and does not grow with invented usernames.
- Concurrent Argon2id verifications are capped at two, a 128 MB
  ceiling at 64 MB per hash. Every password-hashing endpoint takes a
  slot, including the password-change endpoint, which holds one across
  both its hashes. A request that waits five seconds without a slot is
  answered 503 and no hash runs for it.

An unknown username is verified against a dummy hash instead of
returning early, so a nonexistent account costs the same time as a
real one and the response cannot be used to enumerate usernames.

The password-change limiter is unchanged: RequireAuth runs ahead of
it, so only a request already carrying a valid session reaches its
bucket.

Also adds the missing test for the third bucketKey call site, where
the peer is a trusted proxy but the forwarded chain names no client.
Every existing test of that fallback uses an IPv4 proxy, where
bucketKey is the identity function, so dropping the /64 masking there
left the suite green.

README and the TRUSTED_PROXIES startup warning updated: a shared
bucket now costs precision, not the availability of the admin path.
This commit is contained in:
2026-08-17 22:17:45 +00:00
parent bef9986542
commit fad97445ca
19 changed files with 1612 additions and 129 deletions

View File

@@ -430,10 +430,14 @@ func loadFromEnv() (*Config, error) {
// what is in front of the process, which this code cannot observe:
// with nothing in front, the peer is the client and the limits are
// per-client as intended; behind a reverse proxy the peer is the proxy
// for every request, so all clients share one bucket per limiter. The
// login limiter's bucket is the dangerous one: any remote client can
// keep it full, which denies the only administrative login to everyone
// until the process restarts.
// for every request, so all clients share one bucket per limiter.
//
// The login endpoint no longer spends budget on arrival — it verifies
// credentials first and charges only failures — so a shared bucket
// cannot deny the operator a correct password. What it does collapse
// is the failure counting: one client's wrong passwords throttle
// everyone else's wrong passwords, and the receiver's limits become
// service-wide ceilings.
//
// The warning is deliberately not gated on WEBHOOKER_ENVIRONMENT. That
// variable defaults to dev, so gating on it would silence the warning
@@ -454,11 +458,11 @@ func (c *Config) warnSharedRateLimitBucket(log *slog.Logger) {
"this process that is the client itself and the limits "+
"are per-client as intended. Behind a reverse proxy the "+
"peer is the proxy on every request, so all clients "+
"share one bucket per limit and any remote client can "+
"keep the login limit full, denying the admin login "+
"the only administrative path — until restart. If "+
"anything proxies to this process, set TRUSTED_PROXIES "+
"to its address.",
"share one bucket per limit: the receiver limits become "+
"service-wide ceilings, and one client's failed logins "+
"throttle every other client's failed logins — a "+
"correct password still gets in. If anything proxies to "+
"this process, set TRUSTED_PROXIES to its address.",
"environment", c.Environment,
"trustedProxies", len(c.TrustedProxies),
)

View File

@@ -629,8 +629,9 @@ func testTrustedProxiesSuccess(
// TestSharedRateLimitBucketWarning covers the startup warning that
// tells an operator a deployment behind a reverse proxy shares one
// rate-limit bucket between every client, which makes the admin login
// remotely deniable. It must fire whenever TRUSTED_PROXIES is empty,
// rate-limit bucket between every client, which turns the receiver
// limits into service-wide ceilings and collapses login failure
// counting. It must fire whenever TRUSTED_PROXIES is empty,
// in any environment: WEBHOOKER_ENVIRONMENT defaults to dev, so gating
// on it would silence the warning for exactly the operator who never
// configured the deployment. It stays quiet once proxies are named.
@@ -707,7 +708,15 @@ func TestSharedRateLimitBucketWarning(t *testing.T) {
assert.Contains(t, logged, `"level":"WARN"`)
assert.Contains(t, logged, "TRUSTED_PROXIES")
assert.Contains(t, logged, "share one bucket")
assert.Contains(t, logged, "denying the admin login")
assert.Contains(
t, logged, "throttle every other client's failed logins",
)
// The warning must not claim a lockout the login
// endpoint no longer permits: credentials are verified
// before any budget is spent.
assert.Contains(
t, logged, "a correct password still gets in",
)
// The text must stay accurate for a developer with
// nothing in front of the process, where an empty
// list costs nothing.