Re: GUPnP and Zones

[Jussi Kukkonen <jussi kukkonen intel com>]

On 24 April 2013 18:54, Mark Ryan <mark d ryan linux intel com> wrote:
> > For the first two cases adding another layer of UI (outside the apps
> > control) seems wrong, and I wouldn't be surprised if app developers
> > would be annoyed about that. I don't have specific ideas about how to
> > solve this but I think the apps should have fairly strong control over
> > this.
>
> I agree with this and this case is covered to some extent by the proposal in
> my original email.  The idea would be to
>
> a) use zone information, where available, to provide a safe set of defaults
> for UPnP clients and servers
>
> b) add a new API to GUPnP to allow clients ( UPnP control points and servers
> ) to override these defaults.
>
> So ultimately, the applications would retain control.

Oh, now I get it, you did cover that. I got confused by the later
"could be overridden by a compile time option" but that was actually
somewhat unrelated.

> Of course, if we implemented this feature, we would change the default
> behaviour (i.e. to share everything on all networks) of existing GUPnP
> clients where zone information is available.  But giving the security risks
> maybe this isn't such a bad thing.  If clients wanted to revert to the old
> behaviour, they would need to update their code to use the new API.

I don't think it would be bad if the default stayed as it is: apps
would have to enable the whitelisting functionality explicitly instead
of it being the default -- I think this is what most apps will want
anyway.
At the very least we should make sure this does break the API if we
change the default: otherwise apps will just silently stop working
when distros upgrade gupnp.

> There is of course a caveat for dLeyna clients here.  Apps that used the
> dLeyna components would share the same set of settings for accessing
> networks.

I assume you don't mean the gupnp whitelists would be per-application,
but are talking about the case where one dleyna-app decides that it
really wants to see all the mediaservers regardless of whitelists, and
as a result all the dleyna-using apps end up seeing them? This sounds
fine to me.

- Jussi