victoria-metrics: constant-time comparison of credentials like authkeys and basic auth credentials (#6423)

Changes for constant-time comparison of credentials like authkeys and
basic auth credentials.

See: https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/issues/6392

---------

Signed-off-by: Syed Nihal <syed.nihal@nokia.com>

docs/CHANGELOG.md

@@ -32,6 +32,7 @@ See also [LTS releases](https://docs.victoriametrics.com/lts-releases/).
 
 **Update note 1: the `--vm-disable-progress-bar` command-line flag at `vmctl` was deprecated. Use `--disable-progress-bar` instead.**
 
+* FEATURE: all VictoriaMetrics components: use constant-time comparison for comparing HTTP basic auth credentials and auth keys. This should prevent timing attacks when comparing these credentials. See [this issue](https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/issues/6392) for details. Thanks to @wasim-nihal for [the pull request](https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/pull/6423).
 * FEATURE: [alerts-vmagent](https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/blob/master/deployment/docker/alerts-vmagent.yml): add new alerting rules `StreamAggrFlushTimeout` and `StreamAggrDedupFlushTimeout` to notify about issues during stream aggregation.
 * FEATURE: [dashboards/vmagent](https://grafana.com/grafana/dashboards/12683): add row `Streaming aggregation` with panels related to [streaming aggregation](https://docs.victoriametrics.com/stream-aggregation/) process.
 * FEATURE: [vmauth](https://docs.victoriametrics.com/vmauth/): add `idleConnTimeout` flag set to 50s by default. It should reduce the probability of `broken pipe` or `connection reset by peer` errors in vmauth logs.

lib/httpserver/httpserver.go

@@ -2,6 +2,7 @@ package httpserver
 
 import (
 	"context"
+	"crypto/subtle"
 	"crypto/tls"
 	_ "embed"
 	"errors"
@@ -442,7 +443,7 @@ func CheckAuthFlag(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request, flagValue string, fla
 	if flagValue == "" {
 		return CheckBasicAuth(w, r)
 	}
-	if r.FormValue("authKey") != flagValue {
+	if !constantTimeEqual(r.FormValue("authKey"), flagValue) {
 		authKeyRequestErrors.Inc()
 		http.Error(w, fmt.Sprintf("The provided authKey doesn't match -%s", flagName), http.StatusUnauthorized)
 		return false
@@ -459,7 +460,7 @@ func CheckBasicAuth(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) bool {
 	}
 	username, password, ok := r.BasicAuth()
 	if ok {
-		if username == *httpAuthUsername && password == httpAuthPassword.Get() {
+		if constantTimeEqual(username, *httpAuthUsername) && constantTimeEqual(password, httpAuthPassword.Get()) {
 			return true
 		}
 		authBasicRequestErrors.Inc()
@@ -712,3 +713,16 @@ func LogError(req *http.Request, errStr string) {
 	remoteAddr := GetQuotedRemoteAddr(req)
 	logger.Errorf("uri: %s, remote address: %q: %s", uri, remoteAddr, errStr)
 }
+
+// constantTimeEqual compares two strings in constant-time.
+//
+// It returns true if they are equal, else it returns false.
+func constantTimeEqual(s1, s2 string) bool {
+	a := []byte(s1)
+	b := []byte(s2)
+	// check length explicitly because ConstantTimeCompare doesn't spend time on comparing length
+	if subtle.ConstantTimeEq(int32(len(a)), int32(len(b))) == 0 {
+		return false
+	}
+	return subtle.ConstantTimeCompare(a, b) == 1
+}