Changeset 11052785 in trunk

Timestamp:

2015-06-11T20:33:47Z (10 years ago)

Author:

Daira Hopwood <daira@…>

Branches:

master

Children:

f26423c

Parents:

66178f01

git-author:

Daira Hopwood <daira@…> (2015-06-11 20:33:09)

git-committer:

Daira Hopwood <daira@…> (2015-06-11 20:33:47)

Message:

Finish user-interface.rst. fixes ticket:2443

Signed-off-by: Daira Hopwood <daira@…>

File:

• docs/proposed/magic-folder/user-interface-design.rst (modified) (2 diffs)

docs/proposed/magic-folder/user-interface-design.rst ¶

@@ -5 +5 @@
 -----
 
-In this Objective we will write the design document for how users can conveniently
-and securely indicate which folders on some devices should be magically linked to
-which folders on other devices.
+In this Objective we will design a user interface to allow users to conveniently
+and securely indicate which folders on some devices should be "magically" linked
+to which folders on other devices.
 
 This is a critical usability and security issue for which there is no known perfect
-solution, but which will hopefully be amenable to a "good enough" trade-off solution.
+solution, but which we believe is amenable to a "good enough" trade-off solution.
 This document explains the design and justifies its trade-offs in terms of security,
 usability, and time-to-market.
@@ -18 +18 @@
 
 .. _otf-magic-folder-objective6: https://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/query?status=!closed&keywords=~otf-magic-folder-objective6
+
+Glossary
+''''''''
+
+Object: a file or directory
+
+DMD: distributed mutable directory
+
+Folder: an abstract directory that is synchronized between clients.
+(A folder is not the same as the directory corresponding to it on
+any particular client, nor is it the same as a DMD.)
+
+Collective: the set of clients subscribed to a given Magic Folder.
+
+Diminishing: the process of deriving, from an existing capability,
+another capability that gives less authority (for example, deriving a
+read cap from a read/write cap).
+
+
+Design Constraints
+------------------
+
+The design of the Tahoe-side representation of a Magic Folder, and the polling
+mechanism that the Magic Folder clients will use to detect remote changes was
+discussed in `<remote-to-local-sync.rst>`_, and we will not revisit that here.
+The assumption made by that design was that each client would be configured with
+the following information:
+
+* a write cap to its own *client DMD*.
+* a read cap to a *collective directory*.
+
+The collective directory contains links to each client DMD named by the
+corresponding client's nickname.
+
+This design was chosen to allow straightforward addition of clients without
+requiring each existing client to change its configuration.
+
+Note that each client in a Magic Folder collective has the authority to add,
+modify or delete any object within the Magic Folder. It is also able to control
+to some extent whether its writes will be treated by another client as overwrites
+or as conflicts. However, there is still a reliability benefit to preventing a
+client from accidentally modifying another client's DMD, or from accidentally
+modifying the collective directory in a way that would lose data. This motivates
+ensuring that each client only has access to the caps above, rather than, say,
+every client having a write cap to the collective directory.
+
+Another important design constraint is that we cannot violate the
+`write coordination directive`_; that is, we cannot write to the same mutable
+directory from multiple clients, even during the setup phase when adding a
+client.
+
+.. _`write coordination directive`: ../../write_coordination.rst
+
+Within these constraints, for usability we want to minimize the number of steps
+required to configure a Magic Folder collective.
+
+
+Proposed Design
+---------------
+
+Three ``tahoe`` subcommands are added::
+
+  tahoe magic-folder create MAGIC: [MY_NICKNAME LOCAL_DIR]
+
+    Create an empty Magic Folder. The MAGIC: local alias is set
+    to a write cap which can be used to refer to this Magic Folder
+    in future ``tahoe magic-folder invite`` commands.
+
+    If MY_NICKNAME and LOCAL_DIR are given, the current client
+    immediately joins the newly created Magic Folder with that
+    nickname and local directory.
+
+
+  tahoe magic-folder invite MAGIC: THEIR_NICKNAME
+
+    Print an "invitation" that can be used to invite another
+    client to join a Magic Folder, with the given nickname.
+
+    The invitation must be sent to the user of the other client
+    over a secure channel (e.g. PGP email, OTR, or ssh).
+
+    This command will normally be run by the same client that
+    created the Magic Folder. However, it may be run by a
+    different client if the ``MAGIC:`` alias is copied to
+    the ``private/aliases`` file of that other client, or if
+    ``MAGIC:`` is replaced by the write cap to which it points.
+
+
+  tahoe magic-folder join INVITATION LOCAL_DIR
+
+    Accept an invitation created by ``tahoe magic-folder invite``.
+    The current client joins the specified Magic Folder, which will
+    appear in the local filesystem at the given directory.
+
+
+There are no commands to remove a client or to revoke an
+invitation, although those are possible features that could
+be added in future. (When removing a client, it is necessary
+to copy each file it added to some other client's DMD, if it
+is the most recent version of that file.)
+
+
+Implementation
+''''''''''''''
+
+For "``tahoe magic-folder create MAGIC: [MY_NICKNAME LOCAL_DIR]``" :
+
+1. Run "``tahoe create-alias MAGIC:``".
+2. If ``MY_NICKNAME`` and ``LOCAL_DIR`` are given, do the equivalent of::
+
+     INVITATION=`tahoe invite-magic-folder MAGIC: MY_NICKNAME`
+     tahoe join-magic-folder INVITATION LOCAL_DIR
+
+
+For "``tahoe magic-folder invite COLLECTIVE_WRITECAP NICKNAME``" :
+
+(``COLLECTIVE_WRITECAP`` can, as a special case, be an alias such as ``MAGIC:``.)
+
+1. Create an empty client DMD. Let its write URI be ``CLIENT_WRITECAP``.
+2. Diminish ``CLIENT_WRITECAP`` to ``CLIENT_READCAP``, and
+   diminish ``COLLECTIVE_WRITECAP`` to ``COLLECTIVE_READCAP``.
+3. Run "``tahoe ln CLIENT_READCAP COLLECTIVE_WRITECAP/NICKNAME``".
+4. Print "``COLLECTIVE_READCAP|CLIENT_WRITECAP``" as the invitation,
+   accompanied by instructions on how to accept the invitation and
+   the need to send it over a secure channel.
+
+
+For "``tahoe magic-folder join INVITATION LOCAL_DIR``" :
+
+1. Parse ``INVITATION`` as ``COLLECTIVE_READCAP|CLIENT_WRITECAP``.
+2. Write ``CLIENT_WRITECAP`` to the file ``magic_folder_dircap``
+   under the client's ``private`` directory.
+3. Write ``COLLECTIVE_READCAP`` to the file ``collective_dircap``
+   under the client's ``private`` directory.
+4. Edit the client's ``tahoe.cfg`` to set
+   ``[magic_folder] enabled = True`` and
+   ``[magic_folder] local.directory = LOCAL_DIR``.
+
+
+Discussion
+----------
+
+The proposed design has a minor violation of the
+`Principle of Least Authority`_ in order to reduce the number
+of steps needed. The invoker of "``tahoe magic-folder invite``"
+creates the client DMD on behalf of the invited client, and
+could retain its write cap (which is part of the invitation).
+
+.. _`Principle of Least Authority`: http://www.eros-os.org/papers/secnotsep.pdf
+
+A possible alternative design would be for the invited client
+to create its own client DMD, and send it back to the inviter
+to be linked into the collective directory. However this would
+require another secure communication and another command
+invocation per client. Given that, as mentioned earlier, each
+client in a Magic Folder collective already has the authority
+to add, modify or delete any object within the Magic Folder,
+we considered the potential security/reliability improvement
+here not to be worth the loss of usability.
+
+We also considered a design where each client had write access
+to the collective directory. This would arguably be a more
+serious violation of the Principle of Least Authority than the
+one above (because all clients would have excess authority rather
+than just the inviter). In any case, it was not clear how to make
+such a design satisfy the `write coordination directive`_,
+because the collective directory would have needed to be written
+to by multiple clients.
+
+The reliance on a secure channel to send the invitation to its
+intended recipient is not ideal, since it may involve additional
+software such as clients for PGP, OTR, ssh etc. However, we believe
+that this complexity is necessary rather than incidental, because
+there must be some way to distinguish the intended recipient from
+potential attackers who would try to become members of the Magic
+Folder collective without authorization. By making use of existing
+channels that have likely already been set up by security-conscious
+users, we avoid reinventing the wheel or imposing substantial extra
+implementation costs.
+
+The length of an invitation will be approximately the combined
+length of a Tahoe-LAFS read cap and write cap. This is several
+lines long, but still short enough to be cut-and-pasted successfully
+if care is taken. Errors in copying the invitation can be detected
+since Tahoe-LAFS cap URIs are self-authenticating.
+
+The implementation of the ``tahoe`` subcommands is straightforward
+and raises no further difficult design issues.