296270 - Default user agent on AIX contains machine information

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Core :: Networking: HTTP, defect)

Description

[Philip K. Warren]

On AIX, the default user agent is constructed in the following manner:

   struct utsname name;

   int ret = uname(&name);
   if (ret >= 0) {
       nsCString buf;
       buf =  (char*)name.sysname;
       buf += ' ';
       buf += (char*)name.machine;
       mOscpu.Assign(buf);
   }

On AIX, the values in the utsname structure are different than on other Unix
platforms. For example, these are the contents of the uname array on AIX:

$ ./aix-uname
uname.sysname:  AIX
uname.nodename: ut
uname.release:  1
uname.version:  5
uname.machine:  000D214D4C00

The unfortunate problem with this bug, is that the default user agent on AIX
platforms is set to a value which can be unique to the machine, which presents a
possible privacy issue. I propose that this be changed on AIX to be:

buf = uname.sysname;
buf += ' ';
buf += uname.version;
buf += '.';
buf += uname.release;

I will add a patch to this bug which makes this change.

Comment 1

[Philip K. Warren]

Attachment: Patch v1

Comment 2

[Philip K. Warren]

http://lxr.mozilla.org/classic/source/cmd/xfe/mozilla.c#1992 contains similar
logic from the classic Mozilla source code.

Comment 3

[Mike Kaply [:mkaply]]

Comment on attachment 185062 [details] [diff] [review]
Patch v1

r=mkaply with a comment that says why.

Comment 4

[Christian :Biesinger (don't email me, ping me on IRC)]

are the casts needed, btw?

(and, does this really need to be security sensitive?)

Comment 5

[Darin Fisher]

I think the casts are there for historical reasons.  There may be some platforms
that return "unsigned char" maybe?

Comment 6

[Daniel Veditz [:dveditz]]

Does this need to be marked security sensitive? It's a minor privacy issue, not
an exploit.

Comment 7

[Philip K. Warren]

Fixed on trunk.

Checking in nsHttpHandler.cpp;
/cvsroot/mozilla/netwerk/protocol/http/src/nsHttpHandler.cpp,v  <-- 
nsHttpHandler.cpp
new revision: 1.112; previous revision: 1.111
done

Comment 8

[Philip K. Warren]

Fixed on 1.7 branch.

Checking in nsHttpHandler.cpp;
/cvsroot/mozilla/netwerk/protocol/http/src/nsHttpHandler.cpp,v  <-- 
nsHttpHandler.cpp
new revision: 1.94.2.4; previous revision: 1.94.2.3
done

Comment 9

[Philip K. Warren]

Fixed on aviary branch.

Checking in nsHttpHandler.cpp;
/cvsroot/mozilla/netwerk/protocol/http/src/nsHttpHandler.cpp,v  <-- 
nsHttpHandler.cpp
new revision: 1.94.2.1.2.3.2.1; previous revision: 1.94.2.1.2.3
done

Comment 10

[Philip K. Warren]

Verified fix in a trunk build from today.