[jira] [Commented] (ACCUMULO-4617) Remove ShellServlet

["Christopher Tubbs (JIRA)" <ji...@apache.org>]

    [ https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/ACCUMULO-4617?page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:comment-tabpanel&focusedCommentId=15950127#comment-15950127 ] 

Christopher Tubbs commented on ACCUMULO-4617:
---------------------------------------------

Description Edit: s/feather/feature/
Wow, tired.

> Remove ShellServlet
> -------------------
>
>                 Key: ACCUMULO-4617
>                 URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/ACCUMULO-4617
>             Project: Accumulo
>          Issue Type: Sub-task
>          Components: monitor
>            Reporter: Christopher Tubbs
>             Fix For: 2.0.0
>
>
> ShellServlet is an obscure older feature in Accumulo's monitor which provides a shell-like interface in the browser. I say shell-like, because it never quite behaved the same as in a real terminal.
> For security, this feature was never activated unless a user took the time to set up X.509 certificates for trust and ran the monitor over HTTPS.
> I think we should remove this feature in 2.0.0. Here are some of my reasons:
> # The feature is relatively obscure, with no out-of-box presence in the monitor.
> # The code is complex and difficult to maintain or migrate to the templating strategies currently being developed by [~lstav] for the rest of ACCUMULO-3005.
> # It has limited utility (a real shell is better).
> # Users have many options for browser-based terminal emulators, ssh-clients, and more.
> # It does not support Kerberos and other kinds of authentication that a real shell offers.
> # There are a fair amount of security-related issues that can arise from this code, and it is probably not worth it to maintain over time, if it's not used frequently (protection against session-hijacking and CSRF token attacks, TLS/SSL downgrade attacks, and more). It's probably not worth exposing Accumulo user credentials to any browser.



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