puppetlabs / puppetlabs/puppetserver-ca-cli
Race condition with `ca clean`
Nobody has claimed this yet.
- Dominant language
- Ruby
- Stars
- 4
- Forks
- 25
- Avg merge
- 41m
- Merged PRs (30d)
- 1
Description
Describe the Bug
We managed to accidentally delete an un-revoked certificate, because puppetserver ca clean is not atomic. As a result, we ended up with a valid certificate that can no longer be revoked and is not listed by puppetserver ca list.
How it probably happened (according to a user report and backed by logs):
- A call to
puppetserver ca cleanshould revoke and delete a certificate. The revoke-call succeeded, but for some unknown reason the delete-call was delayed for a full 51 seconds. I have no idea why or how or where it got stuck, but it happened. - While this delete-call was still pending, the user got impatient, called
puppetserver ca cleanagain (successful this time), re-ran ssl-bootstrap on the host, calledpuppetserver ca signand moved on. - Now the delete-call from the first
puppetserver ca cleaninvocation came through and deleted the newly signed certificate without revoking it first.
Expected Behavior
A puppetserver ca clean call should not delete certificates it did not revoke. It should probably use the /puppet-ca/v1/clean API instead of issuing separate revoke and delete calls, as suggested by the API docs.
Contributor guide
First steps
- Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
- Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
- Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
- Open a pull request that references the issue number.
Research direction
Start at the puppetserver ca clean command and trace how it performs the separate revoke and delete calls. Compare that flow with the /puppet-ca/v1/clean API and its certificate-cleaning documentation. Done means the command cannot delete a certificate it did not revoke, including when concurrent clean, bootstrap, and sign calls overlap.
Written by the indexing model from the issue text.
Assessment
- Tech stack
- ruby
- Domain
- api, cli, security
- Issue type
- Bug
- Difficulty
- 4/5
- Estimated time
- 3-5 days
- Activity status
- Stale
- Clarity
- Mostly clear
- Newbie friendliness
- 42/100