doc/security
author Paul Crowley <paul@lshift.net>
Sun, 08 Mar 2009 15:13:02 +0000
changeset 91 69dd70e1d844
parent 83 86ec1268d306
child 104 d9665b290636
permissions -rw-r--r--
Don't try to create user if we're installing outside /

SECURITY OF MERCURIAL-SERVER

mercurial-server relies entirely on sshd to grant access to remote users. As a
result, it runs no daemons, installs no setuid programs, and no part of it
runs as root except the install process: all programs run as the user hg. And
any attack on mercurial-server can only be started if the Bad Guys already
have a public key in ~hg/.ssh/authorized_keys, otherwise sshd will bar the
way. No matter what command the user tries to run on the remote system via
ssh, mercurial-server is run. 

It parses the command line the user asked for, and interprets and runs the
corresponding hg operation itself if access is allowed, so users can only read
and add to history within repositories; they cannot run any other hg command.
In addition, every push and pull is logged with a datestamp, changeset ID and
the key that performed the operation.

However, while the first paragraph holds no matter what bugs mercurial-server
contains, the second depends on the relevant code being correct; though the
entire codebase is currently only about twice as long as this README,
mercurial-server is a fairly new program and may harbour bugs. Backups are
essential!