Trust proxy headers by hop count, and log every credential event
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Operator, before exposing the instance: *"I'd expect that we should have a proxy
hops setting for how many proxy hops we should trust a shared real-ip at… and is
there any session logging."* Neither existed, and the first one was a real hole.

**The address was forgeable.** `client_address()` read the LEFTMOST
`X-Forwarded-For` entry — nominally "the original client", and precisely the one a
caller controls, because anything they send arrives before what proxies append. So
`curl -H "X-Forwarded-For: 1.2.3.4"`, rotated per request, minted a fresh
rate-limit bucket every time.

Concretely: stuffing ONE account stayed limited (the account key is unforgeable
and that is why it exists), but spraying MANY accounts from one source was not —
each account got its own budget, and the per-address cap meant to bound the total
was defeated by a header. On a LAN that is nothing. It is not nothing on a public
host.

Now it counts in from the RIGHT by `THOUGHTSYNC_TRUSTED_PROXY_HOPS`, default 1.
Each hop appends what it saw, so the rightmost entries are the ones our own
infrastructure wrote and a forged prefix lands to the left of them where it can
never be selected — proven for the honest, forged, padded, CDN and
shorter-than-configured cases. 0 ignores the header entirely; 2 is Cloudflare in
front of a proxy. Too high is the dangerous direction, so a header shorter than
configured falls back to the socket address rather than reaching further left.

`X-Forwarded-Proto` had the same bug and now shares the same rule. Both live in a
new `proxy.py` rather than being written twice — two places holding one decision
is how issue 2183 happened, and this is the same decision.

Env rather than the Settings UI, against rule 25's usual pull: it is deployment
topology rather than preference, and the limiter consults it BEFORE opening a
database connection, which is the entire point of checking a throttle before doing
expensive work. Easy to move if that reads wrong.

**And there was no logging at all** — `auth.py` had no logger, and the only record
of anything was `device_tokens.last_used_at`. Sign-ins, failures, throttle trips,
new accounts and device-token issuance now all log, with the attempted email and
the trusted address. Deliberately including the email: it is the operator's own
server, and "somebody failed a login" without saying against which account is not
actionable.

`basicConfig` at INFO in `create_app`, because hypercorn configures its own loggers
and leaves the root at WARNING — without it every line above would have gone
nowhere, which is a worse failure than not writing them.

This is the app log, not an audit table. Not queryable, not retained past log
rotation. The table is task 2939; this is what makes the next few days observable.
This commit is contained in:
2026-08-23 15:12:14 -04:00
parent 2141a0ac45
commit a85c53ba2c
9 changed files with 267 additions and 56 deletions
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"""The proxy trust boundary.
The whole security property is "a caller cannot forge their own address", and it rests
on counting in from the RIGHT of the header rather than the left. These are the cases
that tell the two apart — pure functions, no request context, no database.
"""
from thoughtsync.config import Config
from thoughtsync.proxy import forwarded_for, trusted_entry
PEER = "10.0.0.1" # the socket address: our own proxy, or the caller when unproxied
def test_default_is_one_hop():
# One reverse proxy terminating TLS — this deployment, and the only shape that is
# safe to assume. A wrong default here is a silent security bug, not a preference.
assert Config.trusted_proxy_hops() == 1
def test_no_proxy_ignores_the_header_entirely():
# hops=0 says nothing in front of us appends anything, so the header can only be
# something a caller invented.
assert forwarded_for("1.2.3.4", PEER, 0) == PEER
def test_one_hop_reads_what_our_proxy_wrote():
assert forwarded_for("203.0.113.7", PEER, 1) == "203.0.113.7"
def test_a_forged_prefix_is_never_selected():
# THE test. A caller sends `X-Forwarded-For: 1.2.3.4`; our proxy appends the
# address it actually saw. Reading from the left would hand the caller a fresh
# rate-limit bucket for every value they invent.
assert forwarded_for("1.2.3.4, 203.0.113.7", PEER, 1) == "203.0.113.7"
# …and padding it doesn't help either.
assert forwarded_for("a, b, c, d, 203.0.113.7", PEER, 1) == "203.0.113.7"
def test_two_hops_sees_past_a_cdn():
# Cloudflare appended the real client; our proxy appended Cloudflare.
assert forwarded_for("203.0.113.7, 172.16.0.5", PEER, 2) == "203.0.113.7"
assert forwarded_for("1.2.3.4, 203.0.113.7, 172.16.0.5", PEER, 2) == "203.0.113.7"
def test_a_short_header_falls_back_rather_than_reaching_left():
# Fewer proxies than configured. Reaching further left would start believing
# entries no proxy of ours wrote, so the safe direction is the socket address —
# at worst several callers share one bucket.
assert forwarded_for("203.0.113.7", PEER, 2) == PEER
assert forwarded_for("", PEER, 1) == PEER
def test_malformed_headers_do_not_crash_or_leak_empties():
assert forwarded_for(",,,", PEER, 1) == PEER
assert forwarded_for(" , 203.0.113.7 , ", PEER, 1) == "203.0.113.7"
def test_the_key_is_length_bounded():
# It becomes a dict key in the limiter; an unbounded header must not become an
# unbounded allocation.
assert len(forwarded_for("x" * 5000, PEER, 1)) <= 64
def test_trusted_entry_reports_absence_rather_than_guessing():
# `is_https` needs to tell "no trusted entry" apart from "an entry saying http",
# which is why this returns None rather than a default.
assert trusted_entry("", 1) is None
assert trusted_entry("https", 0) is None
assert trusted_entry("http, https", 1) == "https"