Reach the server by address when its name will not resolve

A measurement tool that cannot report from a broken network is useless
exactly when it matters, and a wedged resolver is one of the faults this
app is built to find — it should not also be the thing that stops the
finding being delivered. The profile already carries the server's
addresses; they are now kept and used when the name fails.

Safe because the pin is the trust and the name is not part of it: the
server presents the same certificate however it was reached, and a wrong
address fails the pin like anything else. Only the primaries are cached —
the alternate pair exists for NAT behaviour discovery and does not carry
the control plane, so falling back to one would fail for a second,
unrelated reason.

Substituted only when the name genuinely does not resolve, and only after
checking the candidate answers on the port: on a v4-only network a v6
address would otherwise be chosen and fail slowly, which is the wrong
answer delivered late.

The server had to meet it halfway. Sharing 443 by SNI meant a client
arriving by IP sent no server name and got the Let's Encrypt certificate,
failing the pin. A numeric host — or no SNI at all — now selects the
pinned certificate and routes to the control plane. That is sound because
the admin UI is only ever reached by name: browsers always send SNI, and
nobody bookmarks an IP for a site with a CA-issued certificate.

Verified against fmr: by IP on both families the served pin is the
control one and /v1/profile answers 401, while fmr.echo-lot.app still
serves the Let's Encrypt certificate and the admin UI.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
This commit is contained in:
mrambossek
2026-08-02 10:03:14 +02:00
co-authored by Claude Opus 5
parent d65dbbc75a
commit 2ed4d1f478
5 changed files with 98 additions and 9 deletions
@@ -35,13 +35,57 @@ class ControlClient(
private val controlUrl: String,
pins: Set<String>,
private val appVersion: String = "",
/**
* Addresses to fall back to when the server's name will not resolve, learned from its profile.
*
* A measurement tool that cannot report from a broken network is useless exactly when it
* matters, and a wedged resolver is one of the faults it is built to find — it should not also
* be the thing that stops the finding being delivered.
*
* Safe because the pin is the trust and the name is not part of it: the server presents the
* same certificate whether it was reached by name or by address, and a wrong address fails the
* pin like anything else would.
*/
private val fallbackAddrs: List<String> = emptyList(),
) {
private val json = Json { ignoreUnknownKeys = true }
private val socketFactory = Pinning.sslContext(pins).socketFactory
/**
* The base URL to use, substituting a cached address only when the name genuinely fails.
*
* Resolved once per client and only on failure, so a working network pays nothing and never
* silently drifts onto an address that may be stale.
*/
private val base: String by lazy { resolveBase() }
private fun resolveBase(): String {
if (fallbackAddrs.isEmpty()) return controlUrl
val uri = runCatching { java.net.URI(controlUrl) }.getOrNull() ?: return controlUrl
val host = uri.host ?: return controlUrl
if (runCatching { java.net.InetAddress.getByName(host) }.isSuccess) return controlUrl
val port = if (uri.port > 0) uri.port else 443
for (ip in fallbackAddrs) {
// Checked rather than assumed: on a v4-only network a v6 address would otherwise be
// chosen and fail slowly, which is the wrong answer delivered late.
val reachable = runCatching {
java.net.Socket().use { sock ->
sock.connect(java.net.InetSocketAddress(ip, port), 4000)
true
}
}.getOrDefault(false)
if (reachable) {
val literal = if (ip.contains(':')) "[$ip]" else ip
return uri.scheme + "://" + literal + ":" + port
}
}
return controlUrl
}
private fun open(path: String, method: String, credential: String?): HttpsURLConnection {
val conn = URL(controlUrl.trimEnd('/') + path).openConnection() as HttpsURLConnection
val conn = URL(base.trimEnd('/') + path).openConnection() as HttpsURLConnection
conn.sslSocketFactory = socketFactory
conn.setHostnameVerifier { _, _ -> true } // pin is the trust, not the name
conn.requestMethod = method