client_ip() read the first element of X-Forwarded-For, which is correct only if
the proxy replaces the header. Caddy appends the peer address to whatever the
client sent, so element 0 was whatever the caller claimed: rotating a fake value
per request minted a fresh identity every time and walked straight through the
login and registration throttles (B-33) and the SSE per-IP subscriber cap
(B-38). Only the per-username login bucket, which doesn't key on the IP, still
bit.
Both halves of the audit's fix, since they hold independently:
- the Caddyfile overwrites the header with `header_up X-Forwarded-For
{remote_host}`, so what reaches the app is the actual peer and nothing else.
This is the one that makes the app's assumption true at the source.
- client_ip() reads the *last* hop rather than the first — the element written
by the hop closest to us, i.e. by our own proxy. Exactly one trusted proxy
sits in front of the app (`app` is only `expose`d on the compose network,
never published to the host), so that element is the real peer.
An empty or comma-only header now falls back to request.client.host instead of
returning "", which was its own shared-bucket evasion.
Regression tests both sides: two requests spoofing different prefixes must key
to the same IP, and the Caddyfile must keep the header_up directive (checked by
`caddy validate`).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
davideandClaude Opus 5
907e32e9e0