So is there a cleaner/saner version of libapreq2 or is the 2012 version better ?
On Sun, Feb 18, 2024, 12:58 PM Joe Schaefer <j...@sunstarsys.com> wrote: > For the past 25 years, I have been the lead developer of the libapreq2 > subproject within the Apache HTTPd Server Parent Project. The original idea > of libapreq as a safe/performant HTML form and Cookie parsing library came > out of a collaboration between Lincoln Stein and Doug MacEachern in the > late 90s. > > It was my vision back then to transform the library into a generic, > non-Perl related C library that would support language bindings from other > programming languages, which is why I pushed for the project to be homes > under the HTTPd umbrella instead of the Apache-Perl project. > > While this vision was wildly successful, with language bindings available > for several languages like Perl, TCL, R, etc, ever since about 2010 its > proven tragic for the existing user community consisting of all of them, > not just Perl. > > What happened? Philip Gollucci, a Perl/FreeBSD olleague of mine at the > time, started agitating that we promote the project to be released from > inside the HTTPd server itself. What Philip didn’t know very well back then > was how utterly vapid and territorial that team had become, which would > have meant having to collaborate with them directly on user-facing > decisions about the code base. > > In 2012, Philip got what he wanted and I stopped resisting, so he forked > the existing project and copied the C library components into HTTPd core. > > In 2016 I resigned from the Foundation en masse. You can guess the reasons. > > In 2020 or so, Google’s Security Team took advantage of an alpha release > of httpd 2.5 by fuzzing its 8 year old copy of apreq. It found a few > hotspots that needed repair. > > Instead of having the courtesy of reaching out to me, or anyone else > involved in development of apreq, a junior engineer on the HTTPd team went > about the business of “bug fixing” the vulnerabilities Google found. You > can see a record of his trial and error work in every release since then. > > But the coup de grace was the 2022 release of 2.17, wherein the rookie > developer purposely introduced a fatal bug into the codebase, breaking a > fifteen year old regression test. > > If you are wondering how something with a broken regression test winds up > on CPAN, you’ll have to look into how RELENG is done in the server project. > > Long story short, they commented out the test and shipped it anyway, and > called it a Security Release that fixed a vulnerability every prior release > was susceptible to. > > Why do I care now? Because I’m the sucker users reach out to for answers > as a known subject matter expert. > > This sucks, but I’m sorry to tell you that my days wearing the Superman > cape at Apache ended 8 years ago. > > -- > Joe Schaefer, Ph.D. > <https://sunstarsys.com/orion/features> > Orion - The Enterprise Jamstack Wiki > <https://sunstarsys.com/orion/features> > <j...@sunstarsys.com> > 954.253.3732 <//954.253.3732> > > >
