[ZOOKEEPER-3197] Improve documentation in ZooKeeperServer.superSecret

• Type: Task
• Status: Closed
• Priority: Trivial
• Resolution: Fixed
• Fix Version/s: 3.6.0, 3.5.5
• Labels: pull-request-available
• Assignee: Unassigned
• Reporter: Colm O hEigeartaigh
• Created: 22/Nov/18 16:18
• Updated: 20/May/19 17:50
• Resolved: 07/Jan/19 14:34

Description

A security scan flagged the use of a hard-coded secret (ZooKeeperServer.superSecret) in conjunction with a java Random instance to generate a password:

byte[] generatePasswd(long id)

{             Random r = new Random(id ^ superSecret);             byte p[] = new byte[16];             r.nextBytes(p);             return p;     }

superSecret has the following javadoc:

 /**
   * This is the secret that we use to generate passwords, for the moment it
   * is more of a sanity check.
   */

It is unclear from this comment and looking at the code why it is not a security risk. It would be good to update the javadoc along the lines of "Using a hard-coded secret with Random to generate a password is not a security risk because the resulting passwords are used for X, Y, Z and not for authentication etc" or something would be very helpful for anyone else looking at the code.

Issue Links

• links to: GitHub Pull Request #752