Before this change, every peer-push HMAC was derived from the single
fleet-shared MESH_PEER_PUSH_SECRET. The receiver could prove "this
request was signed by someone who knows the fleet secret" but it could
NOT prove which peer signed it. Any peer that knew the global secret
could compute the expected HMAC for any other peer URL and forge a
push pretending to be that peer.
Fix: introduce MESH_PEER_SECRETS, an optional comma-separated
url=secret map. When a peer URL appears in the map, only the listed
per-peer secret is accepted for it -- the global secret is ignored for
that specific URL. Peer A no longer knows peer B's secret, so peer A
cannot forge a push claiming to be peer B.
The new helper resolve_peer_key_for_url() in mesh_crypto.py wraps the
lookup and is called from every existing peer-push call site:
- backend/auth.py:_verify_peer_push_hmac (receiver)
- backend/main.py:_http_peer_push_loop (Infonet event push)
- backend/main.py:_http_gate_pull_loop (gate event pull)
- backend/main.py:_http_gate_push_loop (gate event push)
- backend/services/mesh/mesh_router.py (two transports, push)
- backend/services/mesh/mesh_hashchain.py (gate wire ref key)
- backend/services/mesh/mesh_wormhole_prekey.py (peer prekey lookup)
Zero hostility, by design:
- Single-peer installs leave MESH_PEER_SECRETS empty -> resolver falls
back to MESH_PEER_PUSH_SECRET -> behavior is byte-for-byte unchanged.
- Multi-peer installs that haven't migrated yet behave exactly as
before.
- Multi-peer installs that DO migrate set MESH_PEER_SECRETS on both
ends of each peering and immediately close the impersonation surface
for those URLs. Migration is incremental: unlisted peers keep using
the global secret.
Tests in backend/tests/test_per_peer_secret_resolver.py:
- env parsing (default, override, whitespace, malformed entries, cache)
- precedence: per-peer beats global
- migration window: unlisted peer falls back to global
- IMPERSONATION REFUSAL: peer A with global-secret-only cannot forge
HMAC for peer B that has a per-peer secret configured
- IMPERSONATION REFUSAL: peer A with its OWN per-peer secret cannot
forge HMAC for peer B
- positive control: legitimate peer B request verifies
- zero-behavior-change: single-peer install produces the same key bytes
as before the change
Credit: tg12 (external security audit, P1/High/High confidence)
Shadowbroker