Technology

59377 readers

5554 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each another!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

213

Data from deleted GitHub repos may not really be deleted (www.theregister.com)

submitted 3 months ago by lemmee_in@lemm.ee to c/technology@lemmy.world

28 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Researchers at Truffle Security have found, or arguably rediscovered, that data from deleted GitHub repositories (public or private) and from deleted copies (forks) of repositories isn't necessarily deleted.

Joe Leon, a security researcher with the outfit, said in an advisory on Wednesday that being able to access deleted repo data – such as APIs keys – represents a security risk. And he proposed a new term to describe the alleged vulnerability: Cross Fork Object Reference (CFOR).

"A CFOR vulnerability occurs when one repository fork can access sensitive data from another fork (including data from private and deleted forks)," Leon explained.

For example, the firm showed how one can fork a repository, commit data to it, delete the fork, and then access the supposedly deleted commit data via the original repository.

The researchers also created a repo, forked it, and showed how data not synced with the fork continues to be accessible through the fork after the original repo is deleted. You can watch that particular demo.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] best_username_ever@sh.itjust.works 7 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Forks do not exist in git. It's a GitHub feature, and a massive blunder at the same time.

[–] Mubelotix@jlai.lu 5 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Yes they exist. It's called a clone

[–] arcuru@lemmy.world 7 points 3 months ago (1 children)

The article is specifically about how GitHub forks are not the same as a git clone. A clone isn’t accessible from the upstream without the upstream pulling the changes, but this vulnerability points out that a fork on GitHub is accessible from the upstream without a pull, even if the fork is private.

It’s because GitHub under the hood doesn’t actually do a real clone so that they can save on disk usage.

[–] Mubelotix@jlai.lu 0 points 3 months ago

You actually can't turn a fork private on github

[–] best_username_ever@sh.itjust.works 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

How can such a wrong answer get so many points? Clones and forge forks are unrelated. First, GitHub or GitLab cannot and could not link clones together without analyzing the remotes of each clone.

FFS it's a tech community...

[–] Mubelotix@jlai.lu -3 points 3 months ago

Because you are the one being wrong. Github and others only provide a nice interface around clones. That's all there is, and it doesn't matter much