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

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

Christopher Tubbs created ACCUMULO-4617:
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             Summary: 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 feather 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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