Verify login credentials before spending rate-limit budget (closes #150)
All checks were successful
check / check (push) Successful in 2m54s

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

@@ -2,6 +2,7 @@ package handlers
import (
"net/http"
"strconv"
"sneak.berlin/go/webhooker/internal/database"
)
@@ -93,6 +94,16 @@ func (h *Handlers) renderLoginError(
// authenticateUser looks up and verifies a user's credentials.
// On failure it writes an HTTP response and returns an error.
//
// The credential check runs BEFORE any rate-limit budget is
// consulted, and only a failed check spends budget. That is what
// keeps the single administrative path reachable: behind the reverse
// proxy this deployment requires, with TRUSTED_PROXIES unset, every
// client shares one bucket, so a limiter spent on arrival lets any
// stranger deny the operator's own correct password indefinitely.
//
// Verifying first means every login POST costs an Argon2id hash, so
// the work is taken under a bounded number of verification slots.
func (h *Handlers) authenticateUser(
w http.ResponseWriter,
r *http.Request,
@@ -100,16 +111,37 @@ func (h *Handlers) authenticateUser(
) (database.User, error) {
var user database.User
release, ok := h.mw.BeginPasswordVerification(r.Context())
if !ok {
h.log.Warn(
"password verification capacity exhausted",
"path", r.URL.Path,
)
h.renderLoginError(
w, r,
"The server is busy verifying credentials. "+
"Please try again.",
http.StatusServiceUnavailable,
)
return user, errVerificationBusy
}
defer release()
err := h.db.DB().Where(
"username = ?", username,
).First(&user).Error
if err != nil {
// A username that does not exist is charged the same work
// as one that does. Skipping the hash here would answer in
// microseconds where a real account takes tens of
// milliseconds, handing every client a username oracle.
h.dummyVerifications.Add(1)
database.VerifyDummyPassword(password)
h.log.Debug("user not found", "username", username)
h.renderLoginError(
w, r,
"Invalid username or password",
http.StatusUnauthorized,
)
h.rejectLogin(w, r, username)
return user, err
}
@@ -127,16 +159,49 @@ func (h *Handlers) authenticateUser(
if !valid {
h.log.Debug("invalid password", "username", username)
h.rejectLogin(w, r, username)
return user, errInvalidPassword
}
// The password was correct, so forgive whatever failures this
// client accumulated: an operator who mistypes a few times and
// then gets it right must not stay throttled afterwards.
h.mw.ForgiveLoginFailures(r, username)
return user, nil
}
// rejectLogin counts one failed credential verification and answers
// it: 401 while this client still has failure budget against the
// submitted username, 429 with a Retry-After once it is spent.
//
// The 429 throttles wrong passwords only. A correct one never
// reaches here, so no amount of failure — from this client or any
// other sharing its bucket — can keep the operator out.
func (h *Handlers) rejectLogin(
w http.ResponseWriter,
r *http.Request,
username string,
) {
if !h.mw.RecordLoginFailure(r, username) {
h.renderLoginError(
w, r,
"Invalid username or password",
http.StatusUnauthorized,
)
return user, errInvalidPassword
return
}
return user, nil
w.Header().Set("Retry-After", strconv.Itoa(int(
h.mw.LoginFailureInterval().Seconds(),
)))
h.renderLoginError(
w, r,
"Too many failed login attempts. Please try again later.",
http.StatusTooManyRequests,
)
}
// createAuthenticatedSession regenerates the session and stores