====== HomeCtrl: a touch of security ======
{{tag>dev iot raspberry}}
In our [[blog:2020:0630_homectrl_project|previous article]] we discussed the initial construction of the HomeCtrl project. The result of that is that currently, anyone sending a post request to the correct URL mentioned in that other article could basically trigger the opening of our entrance gate. [**OOooopss...**]
Clearly, from a security perspective, that is not so good ;-) So I was thinking we could try to do something about it here...
====== ======
===== Sending a user and password as part of the post data =====
In fact, there is no reason to make this too complex: what we really want is to be able to identify who is sending the request to activate the entrance gate. To achieve this result it would be enough to send a user name and password as part of the post request data, and compare those elements with an array we keep inside the server process.
=> Nothing too fancy, no need for a database or anything like that here. Let's give this a try and see how it works!
As an authentication scheme I will (for now) simply concatenate a user name with its password. Since this POST data is sent over https, this will be secured already. As a result, now I need this kind of request, otherwise the authentication will fail: curl -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{"device": "entrance", "action":"trigger", "auth":"manu_5678"}' -X POST https://api.nervtech.org/homectrl/trigger
[Side note lol] To check how long a process has been running on linux, one can first retrieve the **process ID** and then use the command **ls -ld /proc/** to find out when the process was started.
* Adding a new page to enter the user credentials on the ionic app: nv_cmd
ionic generate page login
* To store our username/password locally on the user device, we can use the [[https://ionicframework.com/docs/angular/storage|ionic storage component]]
* So we install the ionic storage package: npm install --save @ionic/storage
* Then we inject the module in the app root module: @NgModule({
declarations: [AppComponent],
entryComponents: [],
imports: [BrowserModule, HttpClientModule, IonicModule.forRoot(), IonicStorageModule.forRoot(), AppRoutingModule],
providers: [
StatusBar,
SplashScreen,
{ provide: RouteReuseStrategy, useClass: IonicRouteStrategy }
],
bootstrap: [AppComponent]
})
* And then we use it on our login page to save/restore the user provided values: import { Component, OnInit } from '@angular/core';
import { Router } from '@angular/router';
import { Storage } from '@ionic/storage';
@Component({
selector: 'app-login',
templateUrl: './login.page.html',
styleUrls: ['./login.page.scss'],
})
export class LoginPage implements OnInit {
protected username: string = "";
protected password: string = "";
constructor(public router: Router, private sto: Storage) { }
public gotoHome()
{
this.router.navigate(['/home'])
}
public onUsernameUpdated(val)
{
// console.log("Username updated to: '"+val+"'")
this.username = val
this.sto.set("username", val)
}
public onPasswordUpdated(val)
{
// console.log("Password updated to: '"+val+"'")
this.password = val
this.sto.set("password", val)
}
ngOnInit() {
// Assign the saved username and password:
this.sto.get('username').then((val) => {
// console.log("Using saved username: "+val)
this.username = val
});
this.sto.get('password').then((val) => {
// console.log("Using saved password: "+val)
this.password = val
});
}
}
* Finally, I will now also use the stored username/password values when sending an activation request from the home page: public activateEntranceGate()
{
console.log("Requesting entrance gate activation...");
if (this.toast != null) {
this.toast.dismiss();
this.toast = null;
}
this.requestSent = true;
// When about to send a request we should retrieve the saved username and password:
let username:string = "";
let password:string = "";
this.sto.get("username")
.then((val) => {
username = val
return this.sto.get("password")
})
.then((val) => {
password = val
// let addr = "http://192.168.1.2/trigger"
let addr = "https://api.nervtech.org/homectrl/trigger"
let body = {device: 'entrance',
action: 'trigger',
auth: username+"_"+password}
this.http.post(addr, body).subscribe(data => {
console.log("Received reply: "+JSON.stringify(data))
this.requestSent = false;
if(data['status'] == 'OK') {
this.presentToast("Gate activated successfully.", "success");
}
else {
this.presentToast(data['message'], "warning");
}
})
})
}
=> And after rebuilding/re-installing the android application, this seems to work just fine: I can enter my credentials on the login page, and they are used as expected on the home page. If I close and restart the app, then the previously entered values are retrieved from [some form of] local storage, so we don't have to enter them again. All good!
===== Handling authentication data on the server side =====
On the server side, I also added a couple of helper functions in the main script: def printMsg(msg):
print(msg, file=sys.stderr)
def readConfigFile():
cfgFile=os.path.join(dirname, "homectrl.json")
printMsg("Reading config file: %s" % cfgFile)
with open(cfgFile) as json_file:
data = json.load(json_file)
return data
def getAuthenticatedUser(cfg, auth):
users = cfg['users']
for uname in users.keys():
if auth == "%s_%s" % (uname, users[uname]):
return uname
return None
And then, I use those functions to check if the activation requests I reveice are from properly authenticated users: @app.route("/trigger", methods = ['POST'])
def on_trigger():
if request.method == 'POST':
# data = request.form # a multidict containing POST data
data = request.json
printMsg("Received post data: %s" % data)
dev = data.get('device')
act = data.get('action')
auth = data.get('auth')
# Here we should also read the json config file:
cfg = readConfigFile()
# check if we have one authentization code corresponding to the provided auth:
user = getAuthenticatedUser(cfg, auth)
if user == None:
printMsg("Cannot authenticate user with auth: %s" % auth)
return jsonify(status = "Error", message = "Cannot authenticate user.")
# dev = data['device']
# act = data['action']
if dev == 'entrance' and act == "trigger":
now = datetime.now()
printMsg('%s: Entrance gate activation requested by %s' % (now, user))
triggerGate()
return jsonify(status = "OK")
else:
return jsonify(status = "Error", message = "Invalid device/action: dev=%s, act=%s" % (dev, act))
else:
printMsg("not supported request method: %s" % request.method)
return jsonify(status = "Error", message = "Invalid request method %s" % request.method)
The very nice thing here is that the user credentials are just stored in a JSON file, with for instance the following content: {
"users": {
"flo": "1234",
"manu": "5678"
}
}
And that file is re-read for each request we receive. So from there, it will be very easy to add/remove users dynamically since I have a direct access to that file with my samba shared folder ;-).
Of course this means we are not handling any kind of "real password" here since I will be the one defining them for each user, but hey, we really don't need more than that, and I definitely want to know who has the right to open my home entrance gate at any time anyway.