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The git-annex assistant uses XMPP to communicate between peers that
cannot directly talk to one-another. A typical scenario is two users
who share a repository, that is stored in the [[cloud]].
### TODO
* Prevent idle disconnection. Probably means sending or receiving pings,
but would prefer to avoid eg pinging every 60 seconds as some clients do.
* XMPP pairing
* git pushes over XMPP (needed for pairing, but also awesome on their own)
## design goals
1. Avoid user-visible messages. dvcs-autosync uses XMPP similarly, but
sends user-visible messages. Avoiding user-visible messages lets
the user configure git-annex to use his existing XMPP account
(eg, Google Talk).
2. Send notifications to buddies. dvcs-autosync sends only self-messages,
but that requires every node have the same XMPP account configured.
git-annex should support that mode, but it should also send notifications
to a user's buddies. (This will also allow for using XMPP for pairing
in the future.)
3. Don't make account appear active. Just because git-annex is being an XMPP
client, it doesn't mean that it wants to get chat messages, or make the
user appear active when he's not using his chat program.
## protocol
To avoid relying on XMPP extensions, git-annex communicates
using presence messages (which always mark it as extended away),
and chat messages (with empty body tags, so clients don't display them).
To these messages, it adds its own tag as
[extended content](http://xmpp.org/rfcs/rfc6121.html#presence-extended).
The xml namespace is "git-annex" (not an URL because I hate wasting bandwidth).
To indicate it's pushed changes to a git repo with a given UUID,
a message that should be sent to all buddies and other clients using the account
(no explicit pairing needed), a client uses a broadcast presence message with:
<git-annex xmlns='git-annex' push="uuid[,uuid...]" />
Multiple UUIDs can be listed when multiple clients were pushed. If the
git repo does not have a git-annex UUID, an empty string is used.
For pairing, a chat message is sent, also using the git-annex tag:
<git-annex xmlns='git-annex' pairing="PairReq uuid" />
### security
Data git-annex sends over XMPP will be visible to the XMPP
account's buddies, to the XMPP server, and quite likely to other interested
parties. So it's important to consider the security exposure of using it.
Even if git-annex sends only a single bit notification, this lets attackers
know when the user is active and changing files. Although the assistant's other
syncing activities can somewhat mask this.
As soon as git-annex does anything unlike any other client, an attacker can
see how many clients are connected for a user, and fingerprint the ones
running git-annex, and determine how many clients are running git-annex.
If git-annex sent the UUID of the remote it pushed to, this would let
attackers determine how many different remotes are being used,
and map some of the connections between clients and remotes.
An attacker could replay push notification messages, reusing UUIDs it's
observed. This would make clients pull repeatedly, perhaps as a DOS.
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