[Web-SIG] Developer authentication spec

[Aaron Watters]

I like the general idea of a dev-auth spec.
Of course as you know developer mode is
extremely dangerous.

I would prefer that the spec made getting
into developer mode more difficult so that
people who don't know what they are doing
have to jump through a couple hoops before
they hang themselves.  Just shoving

   env['x-wsgiorg.developer_user'] = 'xxx'

should not be enough to enable dev mode, and
as I read the spec this might be enough.

For example the environment value could be
required to be an instance of wsgi.DeveloperUser(name)
(or whatever) instead of a string
so that some bit of Python at
least is forced to import the right module
and initialize an object before developer
mode will work.  This will probably be harder to
do accidentally from a config file.

Alternatively, the spec could say something
explicit about the 'client' and the 'server' having
a shared secret -- maybe by requiring the
client to send a timestamp hashed using
a password or something.

Any level of safeguard to make it harder for the
ignorant innocent bystander sysadmin 
to shoot himself in the foot might be nice.

I'm particularly concerned because as it stands
the spec might allow a WHIFF "remote procedure call"
to get itself into developer mode automatically,
with no password required,
unless I add something explicit to prevent it.

Just my 2p.  -- Aaron Watters

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http://aaron.oirt.rutgers.edu/myapp/docs/W1200_1400.stdMiddleware