[ic] security (order number, failure to update)

[cfm@maine.com]

On Fri, Jan 26, 2001 at 12:09:48AM -0500, Mike Heins wrote:
> Quoting cfm@maine.com (cfm@maine.com):
> > On Thu, Jan 25, 2001 at 09:15:39PM -0700, John Beima wrote:
> > > It appears if MiniVend is not able to create an account in the UserDB, my guess 
> > > would be there are two orders going through at the same time trying to 
> > > auto-create the same account name, since it is an incrementing number, the 
> > > second one fails, and instead of an error generating, recieves the user info 
> > > from the last logged in client, or the other user creation that it collided 
> > > with.
> > 
...
> > Failure to successfully update a counter should fail the 
> > transaction, even kill the catalog.
> > 
> > We're going to <ahem>solve</ahem> it by using unique enterprise 
> > keys/counter for order numbers.  And we are setting up our catalogs
> > to die on non-unique order numbers.  No doubt it will work just 
> > fine when everything is working.   Minivend needs a way to 
> > sequence order numbers independantly for multiple instances of
> > the same catalog on independant machines, some of which may go
> > offline but still take orders.  (eg POS/callcenter on localnet)
> > The vanilla OrderCounter++ is not enough.
> > 
> > It's getting to the point where the machine issuing unique numbers is
> > more mission critical than our kerberos server.  yeesh.
> 
> In recent Interchange (and maybe Minivend 4) all you have to do is
> 
> 	[perl]
> 		$Session->{mv_order_number} = your_unique_number();
> 	[/perl]
> 
> It will bypass OrderCounter at that point, and use yours. Then it
> is on your head. 8-)

Yes, we're using that but have not thought it through all the way.  We're
grabbing an order number from our key generator, inserting the order 
into the order table and order_items table, and then verifying that
we read back the same record.  On failure the idea was to send an 
op-header redirect; that didn't work too well on the **report** page. :->
Fixed that.

Still, if the system can't generate proper numbers and clean data what
should it do?  Shut down gracefully?

cfm

-- 

Christopher F. Miller, Publisher                             cfm@maine.com
MaineStreet Communications, Inc         208 Portland Road, Gray, ME  04039
1.207.657.5078                                       http://www.maine.com/
Content management, electronic commerce, internet integration, Debian linux