Hi,

From: Johan Corveleyn [mailto:jcor...@gmail.com]
> > That's such an easy way to make a malicious client explode the
> > repository size. And ... there's realy no reason to complicate. The
> > server's storage layer can cheaply do all the necessary checks without
> > having to believe the client, and without adding yet another
> > (dangerous!) config knob.
> 
> Yes, well in any case allowing this by server-side inspection will also open
> up possibilities for blowing up the repository by a malicious client.

A malicious user can always "explode" the server by just uploading/overwriting 
huge random files. Using svnmucc and a unix pipe, he doesn't even need a local 
file or working copy for that.

Thus, I think listening to a client hint in general will not open a completely 
new security hole. SVN repositories are a kind of data storage, and we cannot 
prevent users from abusing it by storing data...

> In fact, making it coupled with "client also non-deltifies" forces the client
> to also send those huge files over the wire, making it a little bit more
> difficult to DoS the server by blowing it up. If the client can still deltify
> (only sending a few bytes), but trick the server into storing those as full-
> texts, the attack can be more powerful I guess.

Yes, I think allowing deltification for the client while storing non-deltified 
on the server amplifies the possible attack, so we should be careful.

Could the server use the already pre-deltified and -compressed representation 
coming from the client, without compressing and re-deltifying itself (but still 
verifying it, of course).

On the other hand, I'd also hesitate to automatically skip deltification and 
compression just because the client delivers uncompressed or non-deltified 
content. This will effectively disable deltification and compression for 
svnmucc, DAV-autoversioning and maybe some other use cases.


Best regards

Markus Schaber

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