Hi,
I have a setup with me where I’m using nginx to talk to a redirector
(embedded perl script) which redirects IMAP/POP communication to the
appropriate IMAP/POP server based on a simple DB query that says “this
user’s emails are on that IMAP server”.
I’m not doing any authentication at this level since according to
this[1] request-timeline diagram, the authentication request/response
is done again with the actual IMAP server anyway.
When my IMAP client is trying to authenticate with legitimate username
and password, nginx - as expected according to the diagram - delegates
the “. login username@domain password” to the real IMAP server whose
“. OK” is relayed back to the IMAP client by nginx.
The problem I’m facing right now is when I provide the wrong password,
IMAP server returns AUTHENTICATIONFAILED, but nginx thinks it’s an
invalid response and cuts off the session with the IMAP client.
In nginx error log:
2010/03/23 14:43:53 [info] 12550#0: 29 upstream sent invalid response: " BAD internal server error" while reading response from upstream, client: xx.xx.xx.xx, server: 0.0.0.0:143, login: “username@domain”, upstream: yy.yy.yy.yy:143
an example telnet session:
[root@nginx ~]# telnet localhost 143
Trying 127.0.0.1…
Connected to 127.0.0.1.
Escape character is ‘^]’.
- login username@domain wrongpassword
- BAD internal server error
Connection closed by foreign host.
[root@nginx ~]#
The behaviour I expect is:
[root@nginx ~]# telnet localhost 143
Trying 127.0.0.1…
Connected to 127.0.0.1.
Escape character is ‘^]’.
- OK [CAPABILITY IMAP4rev1 LITERAL+ SASL-IR LOGIN-REFERRALS ID ENABLE
AUTH=PLAIN AUTH=LOGIN] Dovecot ready.
- login username@domain wrongpassword
- NO [AUTHENTICATIONFAILED] Authentication failed.
<telnet session doesn’t close>
How do I go about configuring nginx to support this?
‘proxy_pass_error_message on’ didn’t help.
Where exactly do I look in the source to make the appropriate changes?
Thanks!
-Naresh.
Hello!
On Wed, Mar 24, 2010 at 12:45:13PM +0530, Naresh V wrote:
the “. login username@domain password” to the real IMAP server whose
“. OK” is relayed back to the IMAP client by nginx.
The problem I’m facing right now is when I provide the wrong password,
IMAP server returns AUTHENTICATIONFAILED, but nginx thinks it’s an
invalid response and cuts off the session with the IMAP client.
In nginx error log:
2010/03/23 14:43:53 [info] 12550#0: 29 upstream sent invalid response: " BAD internal server error" while reading response from upstream, client: xx.xx.xx.xx, server: 0.0.0.0:143, login: “username@domain”, upstream: yy.yy.yy.yy:143
Well, you didn’t check password as auth_http was expected to do,
and this resulted in nginx complaining about internal error.
Looks like expected behaviour for me.
[root@nginx ~]#
- NO [AUTHENTICATIONFAILED] Authentication failed.
<telnet session doesn’t close>
How do I go about configuring nginx to support this?
‘proxy_pass_error_message on’ didn’t help.
Where exactly do I look in the source to make the appropriate changes?
In the scenario you suggest nginx does 2 “internal requests” to
authenticate user: the one to find out it’s backend and one to
check it’s password. As username client will use after failed
authentication isn’t known it has to close backend connection
anyway on failed authentication.
Moreover, in this mode it would be trivial to find out valid
usernames via timing attack (even if you make sure that messages
returned by auth_http and backend match).
Not even talking about the fact that in this scenario you won’t be
able to use CRAM-MD5/APOP authentication at all.
I believe checking password in auth_http is fairy trivial and this
is what should be done instead of an attempt to change the way how
it works.
Maxim D.
On 24 March 2010 15:38, Maxim D. [email protected] wrote:
is done again with the actual IMAP server anyway.
2010/03/23 14:43:53 [info] 12550#0: 29 upstream sent invalid response: " BAD internal server error" while reading response from upstream, client: xx.xx.xx.xx, server: 0.0.0.0:143, login: “username@domain”, upstream: yy.yy.yy.yy:143
Well, you didn’t check password as auth_http was expected to do,
and this resulted in nginx complaining about internal error.
Looks like expected behaviour for me.
True. It was my mistake. I should’ve checked everything again. The
“which IMAP server should this user be redirected to” check was
failing because, unbeknownst to me, the DB where this query was
running was modified (which I wasn’t aware of and wasn’t expecting).
Previously, I was getting:
2010/03/24 10:26:03 [info] 13356#0: *14 upstream sent invalid
response: “NO [AUTHENTICATIONFAILED] Authentication failed.”
while reading response from upstream, client: xx.xx.xx.xx, server:
0.0.0.0:143, login: “user@domain”, ups
tream: yy.yy.yy.yy:143
[root@nginx ~]#
- NO [AUTHENTICATIONFAILED] Authentication failed.
anyway on failed authentication.
Yep, with the present architecture I think that’s to be expected.
(
)
Moreover, in this mode it would be trivial to find out valid
usernames via timing attack (even if you make sure that messages
returned by auth_http and backend match).
True. Also, this way nginx wouldn’t hold open connections for too long
if this is the redirect imap-proxy for many backend imapds.
The telnet session with nginx closes on providing the wrong password
after passing the right error message to me. Which seems like a good
thing.
Not even talking about the fact that in this scenario you won’t be
able to use CRAM-MD5/APOP authentication at all.
I believe checking password in auth_http is fairy trivial and this
is what should be done instead of an attempt to change the way how
it works.
Since this problem I came here with is solved for now, I’ll stick to
not doing any authentication at all at the nginx level for now.
Thanks a lot!
-Naresh