fix(security): take the dashboard cookie Secure flag off the broker TLS setting - #58
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HectorIFC merged 2 commits intoAug 28, 2026
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…LS setting Closes #50. secure_cookie_flag/0 decided whether to mark the dashboard session cookie Secure by reading :enable_tls, which describes a different listener. Malachi.Dashboard listens with :gen_tcp.listen and has no TLS path anywhere in the module, so the flag answered a question about the broker on 4040 and was applied to a cookie issued on 4041, which is always plain HTTP. It is not conditional on an operator turning something on, which is worse than the issue recorded. Resolving the config confirms it: with CONFIG_ENV=prod, require_tls is true unless explicitly disabled and enable_tls follows it, so every production build marked the cookie Secure over plain HTTP. A browser refuses to store a Secure cookie from a non-trustworthy origin, so login failed in silence: the form posts, the server answers 200, nothing happens. Only localhost and 127.0.0.1 escaped it, being origins browsers treat as trustworthy, which is why the composes that bind 4041 to loopback never showed it. The flag now comes from MALACHI_DASHBOARD_SECURE_COOKIE, off by default, joining the seven other dashboard_* settings that already read MALACHI_DASHBOARD_*. Off matches the transport the listener actually serves; behind a TLS-terminating proxy, which is the only shape where the dashboard is reached over HTTPS, the answer is constant and the operator states it once. Deriving it from X-Forwarded-Proto was the other candidate and was rejected on cost. It needs the same one new setting, to gate when the header may be trusted, and in exchange accepts a client-controlled input into a security decision. Nothing in this repository trusts a proxy header today: client_ip comes from :inet.peername/1. Per-request derivation buys nothing when the answer never varies. Read this part before deploying. Today the cookie is Secure by accident in production, so anyone already running behind a TLS proxy has a login that works and a cookie that is protected. Defaulting to false fixes the broken majority and silently downgrades them. There is no default that is right for both, so the choice is to match the real transport and make the change loud: the boot log now states which policy is in effect, and the Docker guide says outright that a proxied deployment which worked before now needs the variable set. The other half of the issue was that the failure is silent, and it stays silent unless the new setting is also wrong. A login now warns when X-Forwarded-Proto is present and contradicts the policy, in both directions. The header is read to report and never to decide, which is why this needs no trusted-proxy gate; a missing header stays quiet, because a proxy that forwards nothing is ordinary and warning on it would make the warning worth ignoring. The flag had no test at all, which is how it drifted. The new ones set enable_tls to the opposite of the expected outcome in every case, so they fail if the broker setting ever creeps back in, and they cover the cookie-clearing redirect too, since it shares the same function precisely so the two cannot disagree. Five of the six failed before the change. They bind the socket with a match rather than a case, unlike the login test above them, which passes quietly when the connection fails. Verified from outside as well as in: against a dev server, login returns the cookie without Secure by default and with it under MALACHI_DASHBOARD_SECURE_COOKIE=true, the boot line reports each state, and a request carrying X-Forwarded-Proto: http against a Secure policy produces the warning while https produces nothing. Suite is 1231 tests and 0 failures including the multinode tag; credo --strict, dialyzer, the docs build and the Sobelow gate are clean.
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HectorIFC
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August 28, 2026 04:46
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Warning Review limit reachedNext included review available in 15 minutes. View limit detailsLimit details: You’ve used the included review currently available. You've used all free OSS reviews for now. Wait for the free limit to reset to keep reviewing this public repository. Review configuration: ⚙️ Run configurationConfiguration used: Organization UI Review profile: CHILL Plan: Pro Plus Run ID: 📒 Files selected for processing (3)
📝 WalkthroughWalkthroughThe dashboard now uses ChangesDashboard cookie policy
Estimated code review effort: 3 (Moderate) | ~20 minutes Merge Risk: 🟡 Moderate · up to The PR separates dashboard cookie security from broker TLS, but the new setting defaults to disabled. Existing HTTPS-proxied deployments must explicitly enable it or privileged session cookies may lose transport protection, so merge requires clear owner acceptance of the rollout risk and configuration follow-up. Sequence Diagram(s)sequenceDiagram
participant Browser
participant Dashboard
participant RuntimeConfig
Browser->>Dashboard: POST /login with request headers
Dashboard->>RuntimeConfig: Read dashboard_secure_cookie
RuntimeConfig-->>Dashboard: Return cookie policy
Dashboard-->>Browser: Redirect with policy-specific Set-Cookie response
🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 3 | ❌ 2❌ Failed checks (2 warnings)
✅ Passed checks (3 passed)
Full details: Docstring CoverageExplanation Docstring coverage is 0.00% which is insufficient. The required threshold is 80.00%. Docstring coverage is scoped to functions touched by this diff. Analyzed 1 functions across 4 files. (2 skipped: 2 unsupported.) Full details: Description checkExplanation The description includes the required headings and marks the change as a patch, but the main description and testing steps are empty. The checklist also does not reflect the documented and tested changes. ✨ Finishing Touches 💡 2📝 Generate docstrings 💡
🛠️ Fix failing CI checks 💡
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In `@lib/malachi/i18n.ex`:
- Around line 134-162: Update the Brazilian Portuguese strings in the dashboard
cookie messages, including the entries dashboard_cookie_secure,
dashboard_cookie_secure_over_plain, and dashboard_cookie_plain_over_https, to
use correct diacritics for user-facing words such as sessão, pressupõe, alcança,
requisição, and não. Leave the English translations and message meaning
unchanged.
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… messages Two follow-ups to the previous commit, both mine to have avoided. The CI test job failed on mix format --check-formatted, which my verification routine did not run. Two files were unformatted: a blank line missing after the boot-time policy log in dashboard.ex, and a call that fits on one line in dashboard_security_test.exs. The four new pt_BR strings in the i18n catalogue were written without diacritics: sessao, pressupoe, alcanca, requisicao, nao. That is inconsistent with the catalogue itself, where 38 of the 69 pt_BR strings are accented, and these are user-facing log lines rather than code, so they get the standard forms. The ASCII habit belongs to commit messages and comments, not here. Suite is 1231 tests and 0 failures including the multinode tag, confirmed over three consecutive runs. format, credo --strict, dialyzer, the docs build and the Sobelow gate are clean. Worth recording for anyone reading the previous commit's verification claims: three timing-sensitive tests failed intermittently while checking this, and none of them were caused by the change. The machine was carrying a load average of 130 on eight cores, from sixteen orphaned shell processes left running for over seven hours by an earlier attempt in this session to reproduce the flake in issue #56 under artificial load. They are gone, and the suite is stable without them. My earlier attribution of one of those failures to a dev server was wrong; this was the cause.
HectorIFC
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August 28, 2026 06:02
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📝 Description
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patch,minorormajoron the PR[major],[minor]in the titlepatch(0.0.1)Summary by CodeRabbit
New Features
MALACHI_DASHBOARD_SECURE_COOKIE.Bug Fixes
Documentation
Tests