[HN Gopher] Tesla.com/.gitignore
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Tesla.com/.gitignore
        
       Author : nateb2022
       Score  : 332 points
       Date   : 2022-11-25 19:26 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.tesla.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.tesla.com)
        
       | djegod wrote:
       | Ask myself what other files will be exposed?
        
       | mlindner wrote:
       | I think a lot of people in here are overreacting a bit. This is
       | an interesting curiosity that doesn't really have any baring on
       | any of Tesla's internal software.
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | jbverschoor wrote:
       | So basically you run an endless script to fetch
       | https://www.tesla.com/sites/default/settings.php and hope that
       | some day there will be a minor nginx config error which lets you
       | download the php source instead of executing it.
       | 
       | This will happen some day, so invest 5 bucks per month to exploit
       | Tesla at a certain point, so maybe you can be first in line for
       | the Cybertruck :-)
        
         | TechBro8615 wrote:
         | This comment transported me back to 2010 or thereabouts when
         | this happened to Facebook. I remember being surprised at the
         | simplicity of the code and making a lot of jokes about "build a
         | facebook clone" ads on freelance websites.
        
         | rvnx wrote:
         | This seems to be a too sophisticated attack, sometimes
         | simplicity is better: https://samcurry.net/cracking-my-
         | windshield-and-earning-1000...
        
           | j-bos wrote:
           | Great read
        
         | grumple wrote:
         | Pretty sure every site on IPv4 gets probed multiple times a day
         | for common config leaks and other misconfigurations. Happens to
         | all of mine.
        
           | jbverschoor wrote:
           | Yeah, but if a gitignore tells you where to look for, and it
           | isn't even blocked by a WAF / rule, it makes an interesting
           | target, esp. one of the largest companies out there.
           | 
           | You shouldn't even be able to execute settings.php
        
             | TechBro8615 wrote:
             | It's a good sign there might be an exploitable file upload
             | vulnerability, if you can find an endpoint that uploads
             | files to a directory that's served by Apache with the same
             | configurarion as the directory of the executable
             | settings.php
        
         | retrocryptid wrote:
         | Except that you'll find that error long before the cybertruck
         | ships. Heck, you'll probably see the rebirth of NFTs and BTC
         | over US$40000 before the cybertruck ships.
        
       | KevinBenSmith wrote:
       | Can't access it...
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | jjgreen wrote:
         | # Ignore configuration files that may contain sensitive
         | information.         sites/*/settings*.php                  #
         | Ignore paths that contain user-generated content.
         | sites/*/files         sites/*/private
        
           | [deleted]
        
           | codetrotter wrote:
           | Archived copy for reference https://archive.ph/C6qJ4
        
       | datalopers wrote:
       | They've got something a bit more fucked up than just an exposed
       | .gitignore                   $ curl -si https://www.tesla.com/ |
       | grep generator         x-generator: Drupal 9
       | (https://www.drupal.org)              $ curl -si
       | https://www.tesla.com/authorize.php | grep generator
       | x-generator: Drupal 7 (http://drupal.org)
       | 
       | So they have at least two versions running at the same time. The
       | /authorize.php [1] uri also yields a 500 (instead of a 403 like
       | most of the other resources), which implies Apache is most likely
       | passing the request off to PHP and the script has a fatal or
       | unhandled error.
       | 
       | The webroot appears to be a Drupal 7.x installation and Apache is
       | serving that content directly (e.g.
       | https://www.tesla.com/MAINTAINERS.txt same as [2]) and trying to
       | run some of it (authorize.php), while happy-path requests are
       | being reverse-proxied to a Drupal 9.x installation.
       | 
       | [1] https://github.com/drupal/drupal/blob/7.x/authorize.php
       | 
       | [2] https://github.com/drupal/drupal/blob/7.x/MAINTAINERS.txt
        
         | deathanatos wrote:
         | My knee-jerk reaction is that this looks like a marketing/eng
         | split, or even just marketing/marketing. The main "corp"
         | website of every org I've ever worked for is managed by
         | marketing, not by engineering, and it usually shows in the
         | quality. Usually drives someone in engineering (like me)
         | slightly crazy, but honestly there are a million other larger
         | fish driving me more crazy.
         | 
         | IME they're almost always completely separated from the "real"
         | systems that engineers are working on / managing. A compromise
         | wouldn't go far, in the backend. Something like XSS would be
         | worse.
         | 
         | Always seems to come from some push to "running a website isn't
         | our 'core focus' so we should vendor that" ... or something.
         | I've also encountered immense push-back on eng-managed corp
         | websites: all those pesky best practices get in the way of just
         | shoveling "content" (i.e., PR) out. And so it ends up separated
         | from eng.
        
         | ec109685 wrote:
         | They likely have layer 7 load balancing sending different paths
         | to different servers.
        
           | diamondo25 wrote:
           | Guess Elon should go and reduce some Tesla services like he
           | did with Twitter. Having different major versions of software
           | running must take up a lot of maintenance...
        
             | koonsolo wrote:
             | Maybe he should bring in some Twitter developers to review
             | the code at Tesla.
        
               | keyle wrote:
               | I usually don't engage in silly comments but this made me
               | belly laugh loud, ta.
        
               | hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
               | I believe this is the whole point of this submission.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | frereubu wrote:
         | "Support migration from existing Drupal 7 to the new Drupal 9
         | site"
         | 
         | https://www.tesla.com/careers/search/job/sr-software-enginee...
        
           | justinjlynn wrote:
           | _polite chuckling_
        
         | hackGAWDpremium wrote:
         | Drupalgeddon 7 exploit. Infinitesimal chance it's a vulnerable
         | version. Unless we live in a sitcom simulation
        
         | dhritzkiv wrote:
         | FWIW, a 500 doesn't imply the server is crashing. More likely
         | just throwing a generic error, e.g. unexpected input -probably
         | because it's expecting some form/data parameters- and failing
         | the request early. It'd more correct to return a 400 in this
         | case, but the /authorize.php endpoint may only be used by
         | tesla.com frontend, so they don't care if it's used in
         | unexpected ways.
        
           | anamexis wrote:
           | What's the distinction between the server crashing and the
           | server throwing an error?
        
             | dhritzkiv wrote:
             | Usually, a server throwing an error would mean that it is
             | aware there was an unexpected state, and is itself
             | consciously not fulfilling the request by returning a 500
             | error, for example. It remains available to handle the next
             | incoming request.
             | 
             | A server crashing implies that the server program or
             | process itself has terminated, and is not able to handle
             | further requests. This usually manifests as a 503 error by
             | an upstream proxy server (nginx/apache/CDN/etc.).
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | sam_lowry_ wrote:
        
       | bri3d wrote:
       | Not to defend the Twitter situation, which is foolhardy by almost
       | any measure, but it's extremely uncommon for any company's main
       | landing page to relate in any way to their software engineering
       | team.
       | 
       | Usually these marketing sites are running a CMS (this one looks
       | like Drupal) which is owned and operated by either an internal
       | team who report to the CIO / IT department (vs the
       | Product/Engineering group) or a totally external third-party
       | marketing firm.
       | 
       | As long as the "real" product uses different subdomains,
       | certificates, proper HSTS, cross-origin protection, and secure
       | cookies (a tall order, yes, but something that would be an issue
       | no matter what the marketing site is doing), security issues in
       | the "marketing" site aren't as bad. Of course a marketing site
       | takeover is still worrying, as it's a prime entry point for
       | spearphishing and horizontal movement through social engineering,
       | but these usually aren't the same engineers or security team at
       | all.
        
         | cmeacham98 wrote:
         | Nobody (sane) is saying this is a security vulnerability or the
         | like (especially as it seems to be a default Drupal gitignore).
         | It's just a funny mistake from a "software first" company.
        
           | shudza wrote:
           | So what is gonna be your opinion when it gets fixed?
        
             | cmeacham98 wrote:
             | "It used to be a funny mistake by Tesla but now it's
             | fixed"?
             | 
             | What are you expecting here?
        
           | mlindner wrote:
           | There's several people in the comments saying exactly that
           | kind of thing in this thread including people asking if it
           | leads to vehicle code exploits.
        
             | cmeacham98 wrote:
             | I never claimed everybody on HN was sane /shrug
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | ackatz wrote:
       | Getting 403 Forbidden now
        
       | Hormold wrote:
       | Check this: https://cdn-design.tesla.com/tds-fonts/
       | 
       | Saved version:
       | 
       | TypeError: Cannot read property '0' of null                   at
       | forceFontAssetSource
       | (/app/routes/middleware/moduleVersion.js:89:32)         at
       | Layer.handle [as handle_request]
       | (/app/node_modules/@tesla/design-system-
       | tools/node_modules/express/lib/router/layer.js:95:5)         at
       | trim_prefix (/app/node_modules/@tesla/design-system-
       | tools/node_modules/express/lib/router/index.js:317:13)         at
       | /app/node_modules/@tesla/design-system-
       | tools/node_modules/express/lib/router/index.js:284:7         at
       | Function.process_params (/app/node_modules/@tesla/design-system-
       | tools/node_modules/express/lib/router/index.js:335:12)         at
       | next (/app/node_modules/@tesla/design-system-
       | tools/node_modules/express/lib/router/index.js:275:10)         at
       | cors (/app/node_modules/cors/lib/index.js:188:7)         at
       | /app/node_modules/cors/lib/index.js:224:17         at
       | originCallback (/app/node_modules/cors/lib/index.js:214:15)
       | at /app/node_modules/cors/lib/index.js:219:13
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | ericmcer wrote:
       | A companies marketing website and their actual products have
       | little in common. I would be surprised if any engineers even work
       | on the marketing website and blown away if it is co-located with
       | something sensitive.
        
       | behnamoh wrote:
       | Can someone explain why this is leaky and how it can be exploited
       | by malicious actors?
        
         | mlindner wrote:
         | It's not really leaky and can't be exploited by anyone. It's an
         | interesting curiosity at best.
        
         | bobthepanda wrote:
         | The gitignore explicitly called out where the sensitive
         | settings file is, so presumably that makes it a lot easier to
         | figure out where to start injecting bad code
        
           | Alupis wrote:
           | Sure, but this appears like some very standard directories
           | for popular website CMS platforms like Drupal.
           | 
           | So, not very surprising and probably doesn't really tip
           | anyone towards anything particularly special.
        
         | m00x wrote:
         | It's probably caused by an incorrect nginx configuration, which
         | means other static files may be exposed.
         | 
         | Otherwise, it's not much of a leak.
        
         | rvnx wrote:
         | This shows that the teams in charge of code deployment have
         | relatively weak quality control.
         | 
         | In practice, it means that if the gitignore file is leaked,
         | that there is a substantial risk that they accidentally leak
         | the .git folder someday.
         | 
         | The .git folder indirectly contains downloadable copies of the
         | source-code of the website, which could very likely lead to
         | credentials leak or compromised services.
         | 
         | Your life can depend on Tesla.com services.
         | 
         | Even if you are the pedestrian side.
        
           | extheat wrote:
           | What makes you think that there is some "substantial risk"?
           | You seem to be mixing together git repos and site deployment
           | rules. I don't see the big deal here with some CMS leftovers
           | being deployed, but yes from a perspective of correctness
           | this is not something that needs to be deployed.
        
           | drexlspivey wrote:
           | So basically everyone's life is at risk because the
           | .gitignore got leaked. That sounds reasonable.
        
           | bpodgursky wrote:
           | I'd be pretty surprised if the marketing / landing site was
           | remotely connected to the user portal. Most companies have a
           | marketing-friendly CMS for public content, disconnected from
           | the actual customer-facing portal.
        
             | rvnx wrote:
             | Tesla.com seems to be more than marketing, at least
             | customers can sign-in there to do cars operations,.
             | 
             | If you can grab credentials from there you can do quite
             | some things already.
             | 
             | See https://www.teslaapi.io/authentication/oauth (and this
             | is in the case you don't trick an employee).
             | 
             | But I agree, that normally at some point they would catch
             | it.
        
           | mlindner wrote:
           | > This shows that the teams in charge of _website_ code
           | deployment have relatively weak quality control.
           | 
           | FTFY. Little of Tesla's software is whatever they're using on
           | the website. That'd be like judging Apple OS software by
           | their website source.
        
             | rvnx wrote:
             | This is customer control panel, which directly leads to car
             | APIs behind that are using the same credentials.
             | 
             | On the same domain there is also the Tesla SSO.
             | 
             | It would be bad if this gets compromised as there would be
             | direct impact in the physical world, not just a static
             | landing somewhere.
        
         | anonym29 wrote:
         | It's leaky because it's globally accessible and provides
         | information that isn't otherwise readily apparent.
         | 
         | There is no guarantee that an exposed .gitignore (or other
         | exposed files, like .htaccess, robots.txt, etc) will be
         | exploitable, but they aid in the discovery process and may help
         | adversaries uncover exploitable vulnerabilities they might have
         | otherwise missed.
         | 
         | At the extreme, I've seen paths of backups of the production
         | database listed in a publicly readable .gitignore, and that
         | database backup was publicly accessible, too.
         | 
         | Most of the time, nothing sensitive is revealed, but defense in
         | depth suggests it's better to not upload files like these to
         | your web server unless they're being used by the webserver
         | (like .htaccess) or crawlers (like robots.txt), and if you do,
         | they ought to not be publicly readable (unless intended, like
         | robots.txt), but even then, you'd want to make sure nothing
         | sensitive is in any file like that which is publicly readable.
         | Even if there's nothing sensitive in them now, there's no
         | guarantee that nothing sensitive will ever be added.
        
           | oceanplexian wrote:
           | I'm gonna give my counter take. Information disclosure is
           | something that the DevSecOps(tm) crowd spends a
           | disproportionate amount of time on for little benefit. The
           | number of security professionals who don't know how to code,
           | but learned Nessus or CrowdStrike and criticize others is too
           | damn high.
           | 
           | I had to work with a security team in a FAANG for several
           | years. They were so high and mighty with their low sev
           | vulnerabilities, but they never improved security, and
           | refused to acknowledge recommendations from the engineers
           | working on systems that needed to be rearchitected due to a
           | fundamental problems with networking, security boundaries,
           | root of trust, etc. Unsurprisingly, their "automated scanner"
           | failed to catch something a SRE would have spotted in 5
           | minutes, and the place got owned in a very public and
           | humiliating way.
           | 
           | When I see things like this it brings back memories of that
           | security culture. Frankly I think Infosec is deeply broken
           | and gawking over a wild .gitignore is a perfect example of
           | that.
        
             | Fnoord wrote:
             | There's no need to minimize or explode this; We need to put
             | this into proportion. An information leak by itself is
             | nothing, but it must be reported and taken seriously (by
             | default, it should be fixed).
             | 
             | I'm not disappointed this happens at tesla.com; I expect as
             | much. But to many people, this is a top-notch brand. You
             | don't expect this on google.com or nsa.gov or fbi.gov
             | either, do you?
        
             | acdha wrote:
             | I work in .gov so I have a lot of experience with that kind
             | of security "engineer" but I'd take a more moderate
             | position. This stuff is super-easy to resolve so you should
             | spend a couple of minutes closing it and then focus on more
             | complex things, with the reason being that when something
             | like log4j happens you aren't making it so easy for
             | attackers to know whether you're vulnerable - passively
             | telling them makes it easier to avoid things like WAF
             | blocking rules which will block IPs which actively prove.
        
             | anonym29 wrote:
             | I'm a professional red teamer at a FAANG company, for
             | reference. There are plenty of times where I find several
             | low severity vulnerabilities, none of which are exploitable
             | alone, but which can be chained together to produce a
             | functional exploit with real impact.
             | 
             | There's no guarantee any of your testers will find every
             | issue, and there's no guarantee that a seemingly innocuous
             | finding can't have a greater impact than might readily be
             | apparent.
             | 
             | That said, there are a ton of charlatans in security
             | exactly like you describe - folks who can't read code (let
             | alone write it) who just know how to click "scan" on their
             | GUI tools and export the report to a PDF. A lot orgs have a
             | QA-level team running those automated scans, which get
             | passed on to a penetration testing team, who have more
             | experience, but a limited time window for testing, and then
             | finally on to red teams, who, along with some appsec /
             | product security folks who are embedded directly on product
             | teams, tend to have the most expertise, and the most time
             | to really dive deeply into a service or application.
             | 
             | Also, keep in mind that those gawking over this probably
             | aren't security folks, and the competent security folks
             | here may not be gawking at the file itself (or others) -
             | just taking part in the discussion.
        
             | shudza wrote:
             | It's not an arbitrary thing, and any kind of vulnerability
             | (including this one) is potentially a step in a chained
             | exploit. I wouldn't be suprised if we see a hack before
             | Tesla fixes this. And yes, they will fix it because it's a
             | security issue.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | kadoban wrote:
         | It's a bit of an information leak, but probably not a
         | particularly serious one. It just gives some information about
         | what tech stack they're using, which isn't really public but
         | also not that hard to find out, and maybe a bit about where an
         | attacker would want to look for other sensitive stuff. Pretty
         | minor really, on its own.
         | 
         | It is a bit embarrassing because most web servers (and
         | deployment setups) shouldn't be publishing/serving dot files
         | anyway (files with names beginning with dot). But it's not
         | necessarily a problem as long as they have some protection to
         | avoid the _really_ sensitive stuff leaking, it's just kind of
         | funny.
        
       | tomjakubowski wrote:
       | Interesting, the exclude file (actually, everything under
       | .git/info) 403s, while .git/index is a 404.
       | 
       | - https://www.tesla.com/.git/info/exclude
       | 
       | - https://www.tesla.com/.git/index
       | 
       | README.txt 403s too. https://www.tesla.com/README.txt
       | 
       | edit: just going to add files I've found here:
       | 
       | - https://www.tesla.com/.editorconfig
       | 
       | - https://www.tesla.com/profiles/README.txt
        
         | retrocryptid wrote:
         | _sigh_
        
         | TechTechTech wrote:
         | https://cdn-design.tesla.com/.git/ this url says 'No.'
        
       | sschueller wrote:
       | At least https://www.tesla.com/.git/config is not accessible but
       | still. This should never happen to a company that considers
       | itself a software company first and a car company second.
        
         | tomjakubowski wrote:
         | One place I worked for exposed .git on a PHP site to the world.
         | Infra was ho-hum about the report until they got a PoC which
         | cloned the repo.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | v0idzer0 wrote:
       | It's not leaky at all.
        
       | newbieuser wrote:
       | universal galactic extreme programming requires it
        
       | nr2x wrote:
       | Good thing these are the people who helped fire Twitter's
       | security team. Sure that's going to work out great.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | revskill wrote:
       | So, should we just add .gitignore to .gitignore and problem
       | solved ?
        
         | agumonkey wrote:
         | the classic https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31420268
         | 
         | > Git ignores .gitignore with .gitignore in .gitignore
        
         | alvis wrote:
         | No. You never checkout a site directly from git to begin with.
         | You don't let other people know what files are ignored from git
         | doesn't mean people cannot access them. :/
        
           | teknopaul wrote:
           | Nonsense.
           | 
           | Everyone uses git for source control, of course you check out
           | a site with git.
           | 
           | All you are telling people with a .gitingore is what is _not_
           | available.
           | 
           | It means exactly that people can not access them if your site
           | is a checkout, because they aren't there.
        
             | NateEag wrote:
             | Many of us have a build process that converts the contents
             | of a checkout into a deployable site (a.k.a. "build
             | artifact").
             | 
             | The build process can trivially skip .gitignore files (and
             | all other files that are strictly for dev environments).
             | 
             | You then deploy the build artifact to production, with
             | exactly the set of files which ought to be there.
        
               | noselasd wrote:
               | There's cases where you don't need a build process for a
               | site.
        
         | manojlds wrote:
         | .gitignore to Dockerignore
         | 
         | (Partly joking)
        
         | kadoban wrote:
         | You're joking of course, but that likely won't do anything
         | useful.
         | 
         | If it's tracked, then ignore has no effect. If it's not
         | tracked, then you might as well use .git/info/excludes which is
         | pretty much the same thing but not tracked, or you can use a
         | global excludes file, like ~/.gitignore is common (you have to
         | configure git to point at it, iirc).
         | 
         | It _could_ make sense to ignore the .gitignore if some other
         | tool is parsing and using that file, but that pattern
         | is...troublesome so I hope not.
        
           | vbezhenar wrote:
           | ~/.config/git/ignore
        
             | kadoban wrote:
             | Hm, did not know that had a default, thanks.
        
       | alvis wrote:
       | There is a `cron.php` lol
        
         | MH15 wrote:
         | behind auth as of 4pm ET though
        
       | sassy_quat wrote:
       | Hilariously most people are unable to program in a secure
       | fashion. https://www.zdnet.com/article/over-100000-github-repos-
       | have-...
       | 
       | News about Tesla's security seems vaguely wanting, I do not know
       | what this .gitignore file is about, but it is quite alarming
       | enough to draw conclusions from.
        
       | athesyn wrote:
       | It's just their landing page, but still embarrassing nonetheless.
        
       | kalium-xyz wrote:
       | My dear American friends. What if this is a psyop from tesla
       | marketing to get your attention?
        
         | noncoml wrote:
         | "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately
         | explained by stupidity"
        
         | paulryanrogers wrote:
         | Very well could be a honeypot. Though neglect and accretion is
         | more likely
        
         | dopeboy wrote:
         | Along with the acquisition of Twitter.
        
       | ashirviskas wrote:
       | So Tesla is free software: https://www.tesla.com/LICENSE.txt
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | hankchinaski wrote:
       | I like the simplicity and pragmatism of using drupal. I wouldn't
       | work with it myself but it was probably the cheapest/fastest way
       | to get a similar site up and running
        
       | soheil wrote:
       | > sites/ _/ settings_.php
       | 
       | Yes PHP is still relevant!
        
         | dpcan wrote:
         | Yeah. WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, Laravel, vanilla php. Together
         | they power almost 45-50% of the web. So PHP is still extremely
         | relevant. The most relevant you might be able to say.
        
       | dergachev wrote:
       | Drupal
        
         | snapetom wrote:
         | There was a posting just this week on a job site for a "Sr.
         | Software Engineer, Backend Drupal" at Tesla. Putting together
         | pieces like a leaked .gitignore file, job postings, etc. is
         | social engineering in action.
        
           | [deleted]
        
           | viraptor wrote:
           | That's not social engineering. You're not convincing anyone
           | to do anything or share anything with you. This is OSINT.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | arcturus17 wrote:
         | Does this not come as a surprise to anyone?
         | 
         | I'd have figured that they would have rolled out their own
         | custom headless CMS or something really complex. I mean, not
         | that it doesn't make sense for them to use a bog-standard CMS
         | tool, but my biases (halo effect?) would have made me think
         | that they use something more more unique.
        
           | rabuse wrote:
           | Why over-engineer something that just doesn't bring much
           | value to their company?
        
           | ElijahLynn wrote:
           | Drupal is pretty powerful and there is a large talent pool
           | for it, so it can probably handle all their CMS needs just
           | fine. And that would be smart not to roll their own.
        
       | RobertWHurst wrote:
       | You all are cringe. Anyone working in tech knows that most
       | marketing sites are made by third parties, likely some WordPress
       | shop. The hatred for Elon on this site is ridiculous.
        
         | misiti3780 wrote:
         | it's very weird. someone responded once that hacker news is a
         | bunch of smart dorks that are basically jealous because they
         | have not achieved anywhere near as much as elon has. i think
         | there is some truth to this.
        
       | akomtu wrote:
        
       | elleven wrote:
       | https://www.tesla.com/LICENSE.txt Tesla opensource confirmed?
        
       | antman wrote:
       | I think this site's code repository needs to be reviewed. Maybe
       | should call some twitter engineers
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | alvis wrote:
       | One of the best technology companies (let's assume it's) cannot
       | maintain its site with modern technology. How can I trust them?
        
         | hutzlibu wrote:
         | I do not trust Tesla because of the apparent instability of its
         | owner, but not because its website does not use the most
         | bleeding edge web technology. The website works and I see no
         | information of any security flaws. This is what matters.
        
       | dingosity wrote:
       | The reason people think this is bad form is it indicates the site
       | operators did something they did not need to do. It is an
       | artifact of carelessness at best or misunderstanding of how their
       | web server software works at worst. You do not need to serve a
       | .gitignore file for a site to perform its basic function. But the
       | obverse is also true. Serving .gitignore does not detract from
       | the function of the site.
       | 
       | But among people who do this kind of thing for a living, there's
       | a belief that every action you take (like copy a .gitignore file
       | to the directory from which static files are served) should have
       | an intent which can be traced to a specific requirement.
       | 
       | It's crazy to believe some product manager sat down and put
       | "serve up a .gitignore file" in their PRD. Some people are
       | therefore taking the existence of the .gitignore file in Tesla's
       | public webspace to demonstrate a lack of care when it comes to
       | matching requirements with behaviour.
       | 
       | But as people have pointed out, maybe this isn't a Tesla failing
       | as much as it is a failing for one of their providers. And sure,
       | on the list of failures, this is pretty minor. And if you can
       | find a web host that ties behaviour to explicit requirements, I
       | would _LOVE_ to hear about it. Web hosting is a low margin
       | business which doesn 't pay premiums for detail oriented staff.
       | To be sure, there are some AMAZING people working for web hosting
       | outfits, but my point is they are working at web hosting firms in
       | spite of their technical capabilities, not because of them.
       | 
       | To say Tesla is a crap-fest because they left a .gitignore in
       | their public web-space is laughable. Tesla is a crap-fest because
       | their stock is in the toilet, they often blow past promised
       | delivery dates (cybertruck, anyone?) and are extracting cash from
       | the rubes who believe "full self driving" means your car will
       | drive itself in more than the most contrived of contexts.
       | 
       | Elon Musk is not an idiot because you can read a .gitignore from
       | tesla.com. Having done business w/ Mr. Musk, I can assure you he
       | is not an idiot. But he's also did not impress me as the super-
       | genius many seem to make him out to be. He is not playing 4D
       | chess. He's a reasonably intelligent guy who won the lottery
       | (rich parents, older brother who cut him in for a percentage, met
       | the right people just as the USG wanted to buy more launch
       | capability and state and federal governments subsidizing electric
       | cars.) If anything, he's uncanny in his ability to identify
       | opportunity. Maybe that's even better than the Sili Valley execs
       | whose skills extend to being white, pretty and GSB educated. (If
       | you downvote me, please downvote me for the slight on the Haas
       | School this last comment was intended to be.)
       | 
       | To recap... serving a .gitignore in your public web-space doesn't
       | mean you're a dolt. It also means you're probably taking less
       | care than you could. But maybe we don't need to take such care on
       | a static web-site. But it does make me wistful for the days when
       | competence was more obviously exhibited.
       | 
       | Elon Musk is considered a jerk because of his behaviour, not
       | because someone in one of his companies left tesla.com/.gitignore
       | in the public web-space. Tesla is not god's gift to American
       | industry. It _is_ a bit of a goose up the backside of entrenched
       | incumbents, and for that I will always have a soft spot for it.
       | Except for the bits where they seem to be a lightning rod for
       | controversy which always seem to be unforced errors.
       | 
       | Good Day To You, Sir!
        
         | retrocryptid wrote:
         | John Steven has a quote I quite like: "QA is making sure your
         | software does what it's supposed to. Security is making sure
         | your software _only_ does what it 's supposed to."
         | 
         | I think this is the lens the OP wanted readers to view this
         | post through.
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | formerly_proven wrote:
        
         | jstx1 wrote:
         | Maybe the other way around - his ignore file has "Tesla" in it?
        
       | jamesy0ung wrote:
       | Getting a 403 Forbidden error.
        
       | jongjong wrote:
        
       | outside1234 wrote:
       | "Hardcore Engineering"
        
         | x86x87 wrote:
         | all the engineers that have not modified at least 50 lines in
         | the .gitignore file in the last 60 days have been not
         | terminated
        
         | rsynnott wrote:
         | I mean, in fairness, if you're not getting enough rest (which
         | seems to be what "hardcore engineering" means) then maybe
         | you're more likely to screw up the nginx config.
        
       | anonym29 wrote:
       | If you think .gitignore leaks too much info, you're going to love
       | https://www.tesla.com/robots.txt
        
         | AtNightWeCode wrote:
         | Wow, top score for uniqueness, in the field of being stupid...
        
         | jongjong wrote:
         | If that's all the dirt that thousands of vengeful fired Twitter
         | ex-employees could find, then Tesla must have excellent
         | security.
        
           | bakugo wrote:
           | Yeah this screams complete and utter desperation. Like, I get
           | that hating Elon is what all the cool kids at school are
           | doing this month but do we really need this immature garbage
           | on the front page of HN all day?
        
             | extheat wrote:
             | Yep, it seems like most of the posters here in this thread
             | don't do much software engineering from the looks of it. Or
             | are being purposely obtuse here. There is no security
             | vulnerability here in any of the links we've seen so far
             | minus some unnecessarily deployed boilerplate. The
             | gitignore file is not the same file your deployment tool
             | uses when publishing a website. If there's an API endpoint
             | that is public opposed to some static asset, that would be
             | a problem. Nothing we've seen here indicates that.
        
             | bfgoodrich wrote:
        
           | Hamuko wrote:
           | Well, I'd personally at least find some hilarity in being a
           | Twitter engineer fired by one of those 10x Tesla engineers
           | while they're publishing their .gitignore files via HTTPS
           | (which probably means that their Nginx configuration is
           | fucked).
        
             | [deleted]
        
             | jongjong wrote:
             | It's barely a vulnerability. Many open source projects have
             | theirs public. It might be a problem if the company's
             | system was terrible and relied on security through
             | obscurity; but maybe they don't care. The engineers who
             | think it's a big deal may have tunnel vision. That can
             | happen if you spend years in a very narrow area.
        
               | sofixa wrote:
               | It's standard practice not to serve any hidden files
               | (starting with .) over HTTP. The fact that .gitignore is
               | served can indicate they don't block .paths, so lots of
               | other things could slip through (.aws for instance).
        
               | naniwaduni wrote:
               | Is that a standard now? Who's going to tell the guys
               | using .well-known?
        
               | sofixa wrote:
               | It has always been standard, it was the #1 thing to do
               | when setting up Apache back when Apache was the standard
               | and nginx was still this obscure Russian porn web server.
               | 
               | .well-known is much more recent and an exception. Can you
               | think of any other .file or .folder which is wise to be
               | exposed publicly?
        
             | prepend wrote:
             | This is not an issue and just means that their wwwroot
             | probably comes from a repo. Anyone who judges an engineer
             | who made this decision poorly is silly.
             | 
             | I'd say it's closer to good thing than bad thing due to
             | simplicity.
        
         | soneil wrote:
         | The start/stop at the bottom makes that look like it's come
         | canned with a CMS and they've just tacked on what they needed
         | to. It's 90% boilerplate.
        
           | Neil44 wrote:
           | And the bumph at the top - crawlers run by Yahoo! and Google
           | - lol
        
             | judge2020 wrote:
             | It's the default drupal robots.txt it seems.
             | https://api.drupal.org/api/drupal/robots.txt/5.x
        
           | chx wrote:
           | It's hardly a secret tesla.com is Drupal -- both that
           | gitignore and the robots.txt shouts it quite loudly, to be
           | fair. One of the larger Drupal agencies, Lullabot includes
           | them in their clients list: https://www.lullabot.com/our-work
           | and they are looking for a sr backend Drupal engineer
           | https://www.tesla.com/careers/search/job/sr-software-
           | enginee... which I would take if the company were not lead by
           | Musk.
        
             | ughitsaaron wrote:
             | More to that point, see
             | https://www.tesla.com/MAINTAINERS.txt
        
               | ughitsaaron wrote:
               | You can compare it to the current version of the same
               | file in the most recent Drupal release https://github.com
               | /drupal/drupal/blob/9.5.x/core/MAINTAINERS...
        
               | stefan_ wrote:
               | Is this a normal Drupal practice? You just deploy the Git
               | repo?
        
               | extheat wrote:
               | Do you deploy confidential information into the repo ?
               | That would be the root problem.
        
               | mynameisvlad wrote:
               | Things don't have to be confidential to be an issue.
               | Leaking the actual maintainer's names (as opposed to the
               | Drupal list), for instance, would not necessarily be
               | considered confidential, but still an issue if it showed
               | up.
        
               | chrismeller wrote:
               | I think, generally speaking, it's a PHP standard practice
               | and more broadly a scripting language practice, though it
               | doesn't really apply to Node.
               | 
               | No pre-compiling is required, so you just ship the files.
               | Especially true for anything that offers an Apache module
               | (like mod_php).
        
               | remram wrote:
               | Ship the files sure, ship the top-level folder not
               | really. Most sites will have a "public" subfolder or
               | equivalent, so the READMEs, scripts, sources etc don't
               | get served. Either way, a professional would remove those
               | files or block them at the HTTP server level.
        
               | chrismeller wrote:
               | Ehhh, I don't know if I agree that most will have
               | anything.
        
             | capableweb wrote:
             | Not to mention a lot of the subsequent requests when
             | loading https://www.tesla.com/ contains the HTTP
             | header+value "x-generator: Drupal 9
             | (https://www.drupal.org)"
             | 
             | So yeah, not exactly a secret.
        
               | andirk wrote:
               | And for the lay man: https://builtwith.com/tesla.com .
               | 
               | Haven't seen Drupal in the wild for years. Good on them!
        
               | [deleted]
        
               | capableweb wrote:
               | Probably you have, lots of websites still using Drupal,
               | heavily customised of course. Search for "websites made
               | with Drupal" and have your jaw dropped, as probably a
               | website or two you visited recently will show up :)
        
         | marginalia_nu wrote:
         | Did an inventory based on my crawler data a while back.
         | 
         | Relatively common to find sensitive or embarassing links
         | singled out in robots.txt
         | 
         | Especially in old large organizations, like universities.
        
         | m00x wrote:
         | Really doesn't leak much, and robot.txt is supposed to be
         | accessible from the internet.
        
           | anonym29 wrote:
           | Yes, it's meant to be public, but you need not disclose all
           | of what is contained inside of it. I've been on many pentests
           | where paths provided by robots.txt, that I wouldn't have
           | obtained any other way, led to exploitable vulnerabilities.
           | 
           | For some reason, a considerable number of people don't seem
           | to think twice about adding sensitive paths to robots.
        
             | teknopaul wrote:
             | Not the case here tho is it
        
               | anonym29 wrote:
               | Well, we don't really know. Maybe there's some easy-to-
               | guess text file in /misc/ that contains a password for
               | something. We don't know what we don't know. We do know
               | that there's considerably more information exposed here
               | than zero - the question is whether any of that
               | information could lead to sensitive information, not
               | whether or not it constitutes sensitive information by
               | itself.
        
               | belltaco wrote:
               | How does someone on pentests not know it's the default
               | robots.txt that comes with Drupal and hence does not leak
               | anything except that it's Drupal?
        
               | anonym29 wrote:
               | Comparing it to Drupal's default robots.txt
        
             | slim wrote:
             | that's defense in depth, right ? /s
             | 
             | also sometimes what's in robots.txt becomes invisible to
             | the corporation as well and abviously bugs creep in
        
             | cuteboy19 wrote:
             | I would rather that the paths be secure themselves.
             | Security by obscurity is not a good idea. Anyways there are
             | not that combinations of paths even when you consider all
             | the different cms defaults
        
               | anonym29 wrote:
               | You're correct that the resources themselves should be
               | secured and that security through obscurity is a bad
               | practice (and an oxymoron, as obscurity doesn't actually
               | provide security).
               | 
               | That said, avoiding security through obscurity doesn't
               | preclude you from giving away less information than is
               | being given away here, nor does it make the act of
               | removing that information entirely pointless. While this
               | isn't the only way that the Drupal version can be
               | identified, it is one, and there's no guarantee your
               | adversary will find it via other avenues. Also keep in
               | mind that with absolutely nothing changing on Tesla's
               | end, this may go from secure to vulnerable, should, for
               | instance, a remotely exploitable vulnerability in the
               | running version of Drupal be discovered and published in
               | the future.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | AtNightWeCode wrote:
         | LOL, why, just wow.
        
         | threatripper wrote:
         | This looks like a default file from a Drupal installation:
         | https://api.drupal.org/api/drupal/robots.txt/7.x
        
         | slaymaker1907 wrote:
         | Apparently Tesla is FOSS, see https://www.Tesla.com.
        
           | Ptchd wrote:
           | Where can I get the FSD (Fake Self Driving) source code?
        
             | anonym29 wrote:
             | edited to hide my horrific lack of HN text formatting
             | skills
        
               | abdusco wrote:
               | you forgot to                   from autopilot import *
        
               | [deleted]
        
             | ChrisClark wrote:
             | What makes it fake? Just today my car drove me from my
             | house to the grocery store with no intervention.
        
               | mynameisvlad wrote:
               | Cool, meanwhile my car feels like it's an unstable
               | toddler whenever FSD has to turn. It feels like if I
               | don't intervene, I'll crash.
               | 
               | It's _far_ from  "full" self driving.
        
               | Ptchd wrote:
               | Is that a route that you do often and it happened to have
               | no unpredictable events today?
        
       | 1attice wrote:
       | A leaked .gitignore means the company needs to be taken over, 75%
       | of its workers fired, and its debt tripled.
       | 
       | I want everyone to work extremely hardcore on a breakthrough
       | Tesla 2.0
        
         | jerkstate wrote:
         | if only someone would offer to take it private for 3x its
         | value!
        
           | sylware wrote:
           | you forgot 1 figure: 30x
        
           | eastbound wrote:
           | I wonder whether he's just taking revenge upon the employees
           | for mocking him buying it for 3x its revenue. "SEC wants me
           | to buy it whole because I have 9%? Employees and board are
           | happy to force my hand? Ok."
           | 
           | Being suicidal and ready to lose everything to make a point,
           | is probably another facet of the same character trait.
        
           | ignoramous wrote:
           | Time for a TeslaDAO. The cryptonomics are in the favour of us
           | plebs, and I reckon we'd meme up a100z billions in no time.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | edgyquant wrote:
         | This is not Reddit, please don't treat it as such
        
           | DoctorOW wrote:
           | I think it's okay to criticize a company on Hacker News even
           | if the leadership is particularly popular here.
        
             | rvnx wrote:
        
               | [deleted]
        
               | nr2x wrote:
               | yes, but *which* verification? original flavor? scammer's
               | friend? or simp badge?
        
               | rvnx wrote:
               | 80 USD / month to verify that you have a bank card with
               | active money.
               | 
               | 2500 USD / month to verify your organisation existence.
               | 
               | Verified users can be added to an organisation and get a
               | special organisation-badge.
               | 
               | Also, everybody should have the right to pay:
               | 
               | Communists and anti-capitalists are going to be unbanned
               | from Hacker News.
               | 
               | Vox Populi, Vox Dei.
        
               | nr2x wrote:
               | Use the full quote.
               | 
               | Nec audiendi qui solent dicere, Vox populi, vox Dei, quum
               | tumultuositas vulgi semper insaniae proxima sit.
               | 
               | And those people should not be listened to who keep
               | saying the voice of the people is the voice of God, since
               | the riotousness of the crowd is always very close to
               | madness.
        
               | Zigurd wrote:
               | We seem to have bottomed-out reply depth, but, to answer
               | if there are other examples, the commonly misquoted "the
               | proof is in the pudding" is the opposite of the correct
               | one: "The proof _of_ the pudding is _in the eating._ "
        
               | nr2x wrote:
               | My favorite "a few bad apples" is not a problem, which
               | leaves out the second half: "ruin the bunch".
               | 
               | Especially when applied to police - the fact that the
               | "boys in blue" turn a blind eye to the bad apples is what
               | ruins the bunch. It's unintentionally accurate.
        
               | ben_w wrote:
               | Huh. Is there a name for when a widely quoted sentence
               | fragment is used for the rhetorical opposite of the full
               | original sentence? I feel like I've seen this happen
               | before, but I can't place where.
               | 
               | (Also, my favourite Latin to quote at anyone who quotes
               | Latin: quin tu istanc orationem hinc veterem atque
               | antiquam amoves?)
        
               | rsynnott wrote:
               | I'm almost certain that TVTropes has a trope for the more
               | general case of quote use without considering the
               | context, but I can't find it now.
               | 
               | My favourite is "neither a lender nor a borrower be",
               | which gets trotted out as sage advice. It's a quote from
               | Polonius in Hamlet, who is depicted as being an idiot.
        
               | denton-scratch wrote:
               | That full quote seems remarkably apposite, in the Twitter
               | context. The fragment Musk quoted seems to mean the
               | opposite, taken in isolation.
        
               | nr2x wrote:
               | It's almost as if he's a world-class grifter who
               | continually lies and whose entire net worth is predicated
               | on keeping up an illusion of his own competence. The dude
               | doesn't even have a physics degree, it's pure bullshit.
        
             | pvg wrote:
             | Criticizing is fine, musty tropes less so.
        
               | 1attice wrote:
               | *musky, but ok
        
           | fortyseven wrote:
           | Relax, Francis.
        
           | preommr wrote:
           | Agreed, what would HN be without it's pretension at being
           | above plebs and their "humour".
        
             | kulahan wrote:
             | I come here to get away from the Reddit crowd. The last
             | thing I want to see is for this site to turn into... _that_
             | dumpster fire. It 's not about being above anyone, it's
             | about setting a tone for a community.
        
           | nr2x wrote:
           | not edgy enough for you?
        
       | fnordpiglet wrote:
       | It's ok. Elon code reviewed it.
        
         | kobalsky wrote:
         | this isn't reddit
        
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