When doing multi-part formposts, libcurl used a pseudo-random value that
was seeded with time(). This turns out to be bad for users who formpost
data that is provided with users who then can guess how the boundary
string will look like and then they can forge a different formpost part
and trick the receiver.
My advice to such implementors is (still even after this change) to not
rely on the boundary strings being cryptographically strong. Fix your
code and logic to not depend on them that much!
I moved the Curl_rand() function into the sslgen.c source file now to be
able to take advantage of the SSL library's random function if it
provides one. If not, try to use the RANDOM_FILE for seeding and as a
last resort keep the old logic, just modified to also add microseconds
which makes it harder to properly guess the exact seed.
The formboundary() function in formdata.c is now using 64 bit entropy
for the boundary and therefore the string of dashes was reduced by 4
letters and there are 16 hex digits following it. The total length is
thus still the same.
Bug: http://curl.haxx.se/bug/view.cgi?id=1251
Reported-by: "Floris"
HTTP Pipelining with libcurl
============================
Background
Since pipelining implies that one or more requests are sent to a server before
the previous response(s) have been received, we only support it for multi
interface use.
Considerations
When using the multi interface, you create one easy handle for each transfer.
Bascially any number of handles can be created, added and used with the multi
interface - simultaneously. It is an interface designed to allow many
simultaneous transfers while still using a single thread. Pipelining does not
change any of these details.
API
We've added a new option to curl_multi_setopt() called CURLMOPT_PIPELINING
that enables "attempted pipelining" and then all easy handles used on that
handle will attempt to use an existing pipeline.
Details
- A pipeline is only created if a previous connection exists to the same IP
address that the new request is being made to use.
- Pipelines are only supported for HTTP(S) as no other currently supported
protocol has features resemembling this, but we still name this feature
plain 'pipelining' to possibly one day support it for other protocols as
well.
- HTTP Pipelining is for GET and HEAD requests only.
- When a pipeline is in use, we must take precautions so that when used easy
handles (i.e those who still wait for a response) are removed from the multi
handle, we must deal with the outstanding response nicely.
- Explicitly asking for pipelining handle X and handle Y won't be supported.
It isn't easy for an app to do this association. The lib should probably
still resolve the second one properly to make sure that they actually _can_
be considered for pipelining. Also, asking for explicit pipelining on handle
X may be tricky when handle X get a closed connection.