#1009330 HTTPS error in watch file

Package:
pv
Source:
pv
Description:
Shell pipeline element to meter data passing through
Submitter:
Bjarni Ingi Gislason
Date:
2022-05-30 14:18:06 UTC
Severity:
normal
#1009330#5
Date:
2022-04-11 19:16:41 UTC
From:
To:
Dear Maintainer,

  The version of package "pv" is out of date.

  The watch file has a wrong website to search, should be
.../programs/sources/pv...

  The search for the VCS repository has a wrong website.

#1009330#10
Date:
2022-04-12 00:31:45 UTC
From:
To:
You are correct in stating that (a) the package is out of date and (b)
the watch file fails to find the new release...

... but that's not the reason. The reason is the website uses an antique
diffie-hellman key:

anarcat@angela:pkg-pv$ uscan
uscan warn: In watchfile debian/watch, reading webpage
https://www.ivarch.com/programs/pv.shtml failed: 500 Can't connect to www.ivarch.com:443 (SSL connect attempt failed error:141A318A:SSL routines:tls_process_ske_dhe:dh key too small)

Paradoxically, disabling security on that one (ie. using HTTP) fixes the
problem. I'll warn upstream and carry on with updating to the latest for
now.

Thanks for the heads up!

#1009330#15
Date:
2022-04-12 00:41:37 UTC
From:
To:
Hi Andrew,

Here is some news from the Debian package! :) I know you sometimes
follow the updates in the bugtracker so I am sorry if this is a
duplicate for you, but I wanted to let you know that our "new upstream
release" scanner has failed to find the latest and greatest pv recently.

That was filed as bug 1009330 in Debian (a copy of which follows). I
tracked down the problem to an HTTPS configuration. Both curl and Perl's
LWP fail to download the homepage to parse for new releases:

$ curl -I https://www.ivarch.com/programs/pv.shtml
curl: (35) error:141A318A:SSL routines:tls_process_ske_dhe:dh key too small

LWP is used by uscan, the software which powers this scanner, and makes
this impossible to use.

I strongly recommend updating the diffie-hellman key in your web browser
configuration.

Failing that, I have managed to download the package over cleartext
(plain HTTP!) but I would rather avoid that if possible (although the
OpenPGP signature checks out, so the risk is small there).

Another option I considered would be to parse the GitHub releases
instead, but since the tar.gz you provide is different from the one
generated from the git-archive command, this is quite error-prone...

Thank you for maintaining pv! :)

a.

#1009330#20
Date:
2022-04-12 00:45:06 UTC
From:
To:
clone 1009330 -1 -2
retitle -1 HTTPS error in watch file
severity -1 normal

making a new bug for the outdated release, which i'll close soon with an
upload (whoohoo!)

#1009330#33
Date:
2022-05-30 14:15:59 UTC
From:
To:
close 1009330
thanks

Upstream has since then fixed this issue by turning off DH/EDH key
exchange (rather unfortunately), but at least it will be HTTPS instead
of HTTP. Better than nothing I guess.

Hopefully upstream (in CC) will be able to update that server to re-enable
ephemeral key exchange (and perfect-forward secrecy), but I don't think
that's something that should be tracked in the Debian BTS.

a.

PS: Andrew, if you want to validate your HTTPS configuration, you can
try:

https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=www.ivarch.com&latest

You have a "B" rating there. The most significant issues are:

 * RC4, TLS 1.0 and 1.1 still offered
 * no forward-secrecy

Mozilla also has a test site here:

https://observatory.mozilla.org/analyze/www.ivarch.com

... where the site has an "F" score. It includes more stuff than just
TLS though, so you may not want to go down that path. They have a
configuration file generator you can use though:

https://ssl-config.mozilla.org/

A similar, command-line project is testssl.sh:

https://testssl.sh/

I attach the output of the latter here.