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[Security] Use new IS_* attributes in the expression language functions #35854

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Merged
merged 1 commit into from
Feb 25, 2020

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wouterj
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@wouterj wouterj commented Feb 24, 2020

Q A
Branch? master
Bug fix? no
New feature? no
Deprecations? no
Tickets n/a
License MIT
Doc PR n/a

#31189 has been merged which introduces some new attributes (IS_ANONYMOUS & friends). We can now modify the code behind the is_*() expression language functions to use these new attributes. This avoids any possibility of having them out of sync.

In case you - just like me - are interested why isGranted("IS_AUTHENTICATED_FULLY") wasn't used before: These functions were implemented without auth_checker being available. The auth checker variable was introduced in 4.2 by #27305, so now we can use this.

@wouterj wouterj changed the title Use new IS_* attributes in the expression language functions [Security] Use new IS_* attributes in the expression language functions Feb 24, 2020
@wouterj wouterj marked this pull request as ready for review February 25, 2020 11:54
@wouterj wouterj requested a review from chalasr February 25, 2020 11:54
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👍

@chalasr chalasr added this to the next milestone Feb 25, 2020
@fabpot
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fabpot commented Feb 25, 2020

Thank you @wouterj.

@fabpot fabpot merged commit a4c0bfa into symfony:master Feb 25, 2020
fabpot added a commit that referenced this pull request May 3, 2020
…m (wouterj)

This PR was merged into the 5.1-dev branch.

Discussion
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[Security] Removed anonymous in the new security system

| Q             | A
| ------------- | ---
| Branch?       | master
| Bug fix?      | no
| New feature?  | yes
| Deprecations? | no
| Tickets       | -
| License       | MIT
| Doc PR        | tbd

This was one of the "Future considerations" of #33558:

> Drop the AnonymousToken and AnonymousAuthenticator: Anonymous authentication has never made much sense and complicates things (e.g. the user can be a string). For access control, an anonymous user has the same meaning as an un-authenticated one (null). This require changes in the AccessListener and AuthorizationChecker and probably also a new Security attribute (to replace IS_AUTHENTICATED_ANONYMOUSLY). Related issues: #34909, #30609

This new experimental system is probably a once-in-a-lifetime change to make this change. @weaverryan and I have had some brainstorming about this. Some reasons why we think it makes 100% sense to do this change:

* From a Security perspective, **a user that is not authenticated is similar to an "unknown" user**: They both have no rights at all.
* **The higher level consequences of the AnonymousToken are confusing and inconsistent**:
  * It's hard to explain people new to Symfony Security that not being logged in still means you're authenticated within the Symfony app
  * To counter this, some higher level APIs explicitly mark anonymous tokens as not being authenticated, see e.g. the [`is_authenticated()` expression language function](https://github.com/symfony/symfony/blob/master/src/Symfony/Component/Security/Core/Authorization/ExpressionLanguageProvider.php#L33-L37)
  * The anonymous authentication resulted in the `IS_AUTHENTICATED` security attribute being removed from #35854, as there was no clear consensus on what its meaning should be
* **Spring Security, which is where this originated from, makes Anonymous a very special case**:

  > Finally, there is an AnonymousAuthenticationFilter, which is chained after the normal authentication mechanisms and automatically adds an AnonymousAuthenticationToken to the SecurityContextHolder if there is no existing Authentication held there.
  >
  > Note that there is no real conceptual difference between a user who is “anonymously authenticated” and an unauthenticated user. Spring Security's anonymous authentication just gives you a more convenient way to configure your access-control attributes. Calls to servlet API calls such as getCallerPrincipal, for example, will still return null even though there is actually an anonymous authentication object in the SecurityContextHolder.
* Symfony uses AnonymousToken much more than "just for convience in access-control attributes". **Removing anonymous tokens allows us to move towards only allowing `UserInterface` users**: #34909

---

Removing anonymous tokens do have an impact on `AccessListener` and `AuthorizationChecker`. These currently throw an exception if there is no token in the storage, instead of treating them like "unknown users" (i.e. no roles). See #30609 on a RFC about removing this exception. We can also see e.g. the [Twig `is_granted()` function explicitly catching this exception](https://github.com/symfony/symfony/blob/master/src/Symfony/Bridge/Twig/Extension/SecurityExtension.php#L37-L52).

* **To make the changes in `AccessListener` and `AuthorizationChecker` BC, a flag has been added - default enabled - to throw an exception when no token is present** (which is automatically disabled when the new system is used). In Symfony 5.4 (or whenever the new system is no longer experimental), we can deprecate this flag and in 6.0 we can never throw the exception anymore.
* **`anonymous: lazy` has been deprecated in favor of `{ anonymous: true, lazy: true }`** This fixes the dependency on `AnonymousFactory` from the `SecurityExtension` and allows removing the `anonymous` option.
* **Introduced `PUBLIC_ACCESS` Security attribute** as alternative of `IS_AUTHENTICATED_ANONYMOUSLY`. Both work in the new system, the latter only triggers a deprecation notice (but may be usefull to allow switching back and forth between old and new system).

cc @javiereguiluz you might be interested, as I recently talked with you about this topic

Commits
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ac84a6c Removed AnonymousToken from the authenticator system
@nicolas-grekas nicolas-grekas modified the milestones: next, 5.1 May 4, 2020
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5 participants