I assume this is for the new whitelist plugin as opposed to the legacy whitelist plugin which will continue to use the current <access> tags.
Another alternative, but not necessarily better, would be to default the new whitelist plugin to a 'wildcard' network request list until the user adds any entries. When they add an entry the default wildcard entry is replaced. Leo -----Original Message----- From: Shazron [mailto:shaz...@gmail.com] Sent: Monday, July 20, 2015 3:45 PM To: dev@cordova.apache.org Subject: Re: [iOS] proposed major whitelist change 1. "If a user is using CSP can we tell them to specify a single '*' entry for the network request whitelist (a.k.a. <access> tags)?" We could. But comes back to my point, why recommend *two* ways, it's just confusing -- especially if we recommend CSP and require an <access> wildcard. What I'm proposing is a permanent, unchangeable access wildcard effectively. 2. "If they are not using CSP, in spite of our recommendation, do the <access> tags provide an alternative, though inferior solution?" Yes, <access> is definitely inferior. On Mon, Jul 20, 2015 at 3:36 PM, Treggiari, Leo <leo.treggi...@intel.com> wrote: > I'm not certain that this makes sense, but anyway... > > If a user is using CSP can we tell them to specify a single '*' entry for > the network request whitelist (a.k.a. <access> tags)? > If they are not using CSP, in spite of our recommendation, do the > <access> tags provide an alternative, though inferior solution? > > And, is this different for the Android platform which already supports the > new whitelist plugin? > > Thanks, > Leo > > -----Original Message----- > From: Shazron [mailto:shaz...@gmail.com] > Sent: Monday, July 20, 2015 3:24 PM > To: dev@cordova.apache.org > Subject: [iOS] proposed major whitelist change > > https://github.com/apache/cordova-plugin-whitelist > > Previously, the initial implementation for the plugin for iOS didn't > support the <access> tag, but that proved problematic since not supporting > it meant all *native* code network connections were effectively > blacklisted. > > I added the support back in, but this will end up confusing the user even > more. Right now we are recommending that the user support CSP, but that > only works in the context of the WebView (whether UIWebView or WKWebView) - > ie xhr, images, etc. > > If the user specified a CSP src for access to a domain in their .html, but > did not specify an <access> tag for that domain, the connection will fail > (since the native code whitelist filters all network connections). So this > in effect doubles the number of declarations needed -- a CSP policy needs > to have its mirror in the <access> tag. You can see where this can get > confusing. > > We could have a dynamic CSP parser in native code to dynamically "generate" > access tags but that will add on more complexity (but this would be best > workaround). > > I propose that we get rid of the native code whitelist (effectively > allowing all connections) and rely on CSP only. I'm not sure that having a > native code whitelist can really be truly secure, with the dynamic nature > of Objective-C this is just a façade anyway. > > In any case, native code whitelisting will only work on UIWebView, there is > no way our current whitelisting system will work on WKWebView at all -- > more fodder for us to abandon our whitelisting system. > > The whitelisting should really be handled lower level by the system, and > indeed this is coming in iOS 9 with Application Transport Security (ATS): > > https://developer.apple.com/library/prerelease/ios/technotes/App-Transport-Security-Technote/index.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40016240 > > The ATS whitelisting is through new tags in Info.plist, and we will have to > map our existing whitelist tags to ATS when the time comes. >
