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Base class whitelist configuration ignored in OAuthenticator

High severity GitHub Reviewed Published Nov 30, 2020 in jupyterhub/oauthenticator • Updated Jan 9, 2023

Package

pip oauthenticator (pip)

Affected versions

>= 0.12.0, < 0.12.2

Patched versions

0.12.2

Description

Impact

What goes wrong?

The deprecated (in jupyterhub 1.2) configuration Authenticator.whitelist, which should be transparently mapped to Authenticator.allowed_users with a warning, is instead ignored by OAuthenticator classes, resulting in the same behavior as if this configuration has not been set. If this is the only mechanism of authorization restriction (i.e. no group or team restrictions in configuration) then all authenticated users will be allowed. Provider-based restrictions, including deprecated values such as GitHubOAuthenticator.org_whitelist are not affected.

Who is impacted?

All users of OAuthenticator 0.12.0 and 0.12.1 with JupyterHub 1.2 (JupyterHub Helm chart 0.10.0-0.10.5) who use the admin.whitelist.users configuration in the jupyterhub helm chart or the c.Authenticator.whitelist configuration directly. Users of other deprecated configuration, e.g. c.GitHubOAuthenticator.team_whitelist are not affected.

If you see a log line like this and expect a specific list of allowed usernames:

[I 2020-11-27 16:51:54.528 JupyterHub app:1717] Not using allowed_users. Any authenticated user will be allowed.

you are likely affected.

Patches

  • Replacing deprecated c.Authenticator.whitelist = ... with c.Authenticator.allowed_users = ... avoids the issue.
  • Update oauthenticator to 0.12.2
  • Update jupyterhub helm chart to 0.10.6

If any users have been authorized during this time who should not have been, they must be deleted via the API or admin interface, per the documentation.

Workarounds

Replacing c.Authenticator.whitelist = ... with c.Authenticator.allowed_users = ... avoids the issue.

In the jupyterhub helm chart prior to 0.10.6, this can be done via hub.extraConfig:

auth:
  allowedUsers:
  - user1
  - user2

hub:
  extraConfig:
    allowedUsers: |
        # set new field not exposed in helm chart < 0.10.6
        set_config_if_not_none(c.Authenticator, "allowed_users", "auth.allowedUsers")

For more information

If you have any questions or comments about this advisory:

References

@minrk minrk published to jupyterhub/oauthenticator Nov 30, 2020
Reviewed Dec 1, 2020
Published to the GitHub Advisory Database Dec 1, 2020
Last updated Jan 9, 2023

Severity

High

Weaknesses

CVE ID

CVE-2020-26250

GHSA ID

GHSA-384w-5v3f-q499

Source code

No known source code
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