Release 2.7.7

ericteubert · June 14, 2018, 12:24pm

Update 2.7.5 changed the way download tracking works to comply with GDPR. We tried the radical approach and anonymized IPs. As it turns out, this is not viable. Download numbers are skewed by this change and often much lower than they realistically should be. If you saw a drop in downloads since updating to 2.7.5 or 2.7.6, this is the reason.

The good news is that this update changes download tracking again and new download numbers should get back to normal. The bad news is that the data since the GDPR update cannot be fixed/restored because it’s missing data granularity – which was the point of the change; just not anitcipating the effect on the actual download numbers.

So what’s the new tracking approach?

Podlove Publisher now stores the request_id again just like before the update: a hash based on the actual IP address and the user agent. What’s new is that now once a day, all request_ids older than 24 hours are salted again, making it impossible to restore IPs from them. This 24 hour window is enough to determine download numbers exactly as before the GDPR update.

To be clear, IPs are never stored in plain text. But since IPs could be restored by brute force attack from the temporary unsalted request_id hashes, they have to be treated like plain IPs. The text snippet for your privacy page has been updated in the docs and you should update it on your site: https://docs.podlove.org/podlove-publisher/guides/dsgvo-gdpr.html

ericteubert · June 14, 2018, 2:16pm

There is an issue in the WordPress plugin directory with this release. If you want to, you can install it manually via https://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/podlove-podcasting-plugin-for-wordpress.zip

Raumwelle · June 14, 2018, 4:50pm

die beta tester werden auch mit einen update bedacht???

Joey · June 14, 2018, 7:54pm

Da wir es direkt erhalten könnten, wären wir zudem nicht von dem WordPress Auslieferungsproblem betroffen.

Ich glaub das kommt bald.

ericteubert · June 14, 2018, 8:41pm

Grundsätzlich ginge das für die Beta einfacher, gibt dort aber eine andere Hürde. Bin jetzt auch ein paar Tage unterwegs, daher hier der Quickfix zum “selber basteln”:

github.com

podlove/podlove-publisher/blob/release-2-8-0/includes/downloads.php#L64


		if (method_exists($ip, 'as_IPv6_address')) {
			$ip = $ip->as_IPv6_address();
		}
		$ip_string = $ip->format(IP\Address::FORMAT_COMPACT);
	} catch (\InvalidArgumentException $e) {
		\Podlove\Log::get()->addWarning( 'Could not use IP "' . $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'] . '"' . $e->getMessage() );
	}


	// Generate a hash from IP address and UserAgent so we can identify
	// identical requests without storing an IP address.
	$truncated_ip = IpAnonymizer::anonymizeIp($ip_string);
	if (function_exists('openssl_digest')) {
		$intent->request_id = openssl_digest($truncated_ip . $ua_string, 'sha256');
	} else {
		$intent->request_id = sha1($truncated_ip . $ua_string);
	}
	
	if (Geo_Ip::is_enabled()) {
		$intent = $intent->add_geo_data($ip_string);
	}

Zeile

$truncated_ip = IpAnonymizer::anonymizeIp($ip_string);

ändern in

$truncated_ip = $ip_string;

Dann trackt es wieder korrekt.

Raumwelle · June 15, 2018, 9:12am

erledigt…

bin jetzt voll der hacker

markusk · June 18, 2018, 10:10am

WordPress or whoever fixed it since (at least) yesterday.