Friday, February 18, 2011

Apache SOLR ~ a talented yet careless server

SOLR... what it is?
link: http://wiki.apache.org/solr/FAQ#What_is_Solr.3F
in short... it's an enterprise class search server

SOLR Security Consideration... are clearly stated
link: http://wiki.apache.org/solr/SolrSecurity


[] Solr does not concern itself with security either at the document level or the communication level.


[] It strongly recommends that the application server containing Solr be firewalled such that the only clients with access to Solr are your own


[] Default installation of Solr allows any client with access to it to add, update, and delete documents (and of course search/read too), including access to the Solr configuration and schema files and the administrative user interface.


[] Even if firewalled, it might be vulnerable to CSRF because Solr's basic behavior is to receive updates and deletes via HTTP...
So if you restricted Solr's /update handler to accept connections from approved hosts/clients... then also approved clients can be tricked to open another page with malicious script while they are authenticated at Solr.


[] Basic technique to mitigate this risk is to configure Servlet Container to server speicifc IPs or with HTTP-Authentication.


[] Solr doesn't aim to for Document Level Security, recommended way is through Apache Lucene Connector Framework.

SOLR is a very capable search server, but if you need to use it... be sure to make it unreachable.