Embargo and Access Control

The embargo system allows for date-based rules to block access to captures based on their capture dates.

The access controls system provides additional URL-based rules to allow, block or exclude access to specific URL prefixes or exact URLs.

The embargo and access control rules are configured per collection.

Embargo Settings

The embargo system allows restricting access to all URLs within a collection based on the timestamp of each URL. Access to these resources is ‘embargoed’ until the date range is adjusted or the time interval passes.

The embargo can be used to disallow access to captures based on following criteria: - Captures before an exact date - Captures after an exact date - Captures newer than a time interval - Captures older than a time interval

Embargo Before/After Exact Date

To block access to all captures before or after a specific date, use the before or after embargo blocks with a specific timestamp.

For example, the following blocks access to all URLs captured before 2020-12-26 in the collection embargo-before:

embargo-before:
    index_paths: ...
    archive_paths: ...
    embargo:
        before: '20201226'

The following blocks access to all URLs captured on or after 2020-12-26 in collection embargo-after:

embargo-after:
    index_paths: ...
    archive_paths: ...
    embargo:
        after: '20201226'

Embargo By Time Interval

The embargo can also be set for a relative time interval, consisting of years, months, weeks and/or days.

For example, the following blocks access to all URLs newer than 1 year:

embargo-newer:
    ...
    embargo:
        newer:
          years: 1

The following blocks access to all URLs older than 1 year, 2 months, 3 weeks and 4 days:

embargo-older:
    ...
    embargo:
        older:
          years: 1
          months: 2
          weeks: 3
          days: 4

Any combination of years, months, weeks and days can be used (as long as at least one is provided) for the newer or older embargo settings.

Access Control Settings

Access Control Files (.aclj)

URL-based access controls are set in one or more access control JSON files (.aclj), sorted in reverse alphabetical order. To determine the best match, a binary search is used (similar to CDXJ) lookup and then the best match is found forward.

An .aclj file may look as follows:

org,httpbin)/anything/something - {"access": "allow", "url": "http://httpbin.org/anything/something"}
org,httpbin)/anything - {"access": "exclude", "url": "http://httpbin.org/anything"}
org,httpbin)/ - {"access": "block", "url": "httpbin.org/"}
com, - {"access": "allow", "url": "com,"}

Each JSON entry contains an access field and the original url field that was used to convert to the SURT (if any).

The JSON entry may also contain a user field, as explained below.

The prefix consists of a SURT key and a - (currently reserved for a timestamp/date range field to be added later)

Given these rules, a user would: * be allowed to visit http://httpbin.org/anything/something (allow) * but would receive an ‘access blocked’ error message when viewing http://httpbin.org/ (block) * would receive a 404 not found error when viewing http://httpbin.org/anything (exclude)

Access Types: allow, block, exclude, allow_ignore_embargo

The available access types are as follows:

  • exclude - when matched, results are excluded from the index, as if they do not exist. User will receive a 404.
  • block - when matched, results are not excluded from the index, marked with access: block, but access to the actual is blocked. User will see a 451
  • allow - full access to the index and the resource, but may be overriden by embargo
  • allow_ignore_embargo - full access to the index and resource, overriding any embargo settings

The difference between exclude and block is that when blocked, the user can be notified that access is blocked, while with exclude, no trace of the resource is presented to the user.

The use of allow is useful to provide access to more specific resources within a broader block/exclude rule, while allow_ignore_embargo can be used to override any embargo settings.

If both are present, the embargo restrictions are checked first and take precedence, unless the allow_ignore_embargo option is used to override the embargo.

User-Based Access Controls

The access control rules can further be customized be specifying different permissions for different ‘users’. Since pywb does not have a user system, a special header, X-Pywb-ACL-User can be used to indicate a specific user.

This setting is designed to allow a more priveleged user to access additional setting or override an embargo.

For example, the following access control settings restricts access to https://example.com/restricted/ by default, but allows access for the staff user:

com,example)/restricted - {"access": "allow", "user": "staff"}
com,example)/restricted - {"access": "block"}

Combined with the embargo settings, this can also be used to override the embargo for internal organizational users, while keeping the embargo for general access:

com,example)/restricted - {"access": "allow_ignore_embargo", "user": "staff"}
com,example)/restricted - {"access": "allow"}

To make this work, pywb must be running behind an Apache or Nginx system that is configured to set X-Pywb-ACL-User: staff based on certain settings.

For example, this header may be set based on IP range, or based on password authentication.

Further examples of how to set this header will be provided in the deployments section.

Note: Do not use the user-based rules without configuring proper authentication on an Apache or Nginx frontend to set or remove this header, otherwise the ‘X-Pywb-ACL-User’ can easily be faked.

See the Configuring Access Control Header section in Usage for examples on how to configure this header.

Access Error Messages

The special error code 451 is used to indicate that a resource has been blocked (access setting block)

The error.html template contains a special message for this access and can be customized further.

By design, resources that are exclude-ed simply appear as 404 not found and no special error is provided.

Managing Access Lists via Command-Line

The .aclj files need not ever be added or edited manually.

The pywb wb-manager utility has been extended to provide tools for adding, removing and checking access control rules.

The access rules are written to <collection>/acl/access-rules.aclj for a given collection <collection> for automatic collections.

For example, to add the first line to an ACL file access.aclj, one could run:

wb-manager acl add <collection> http://httpbin.org/anything/something exclude

The URL supplied can be a URL or a SURT prefix. If a SURT is supplied, it is used as is:

wb-manager acl add <collection> com, allow

A specific user for user-based rules can also be specified, for example to add allow_ignore_embargo for user staff only, run:

wb-manager acl add <collection> http://httpbin.org/anything/something allow_ignore_embargo staff

By default, access control rules apply to a prefix of a given URL or SURT.

To have the rule apply only to the exact match, use:

wb-manager acl add <collection> http://httpbin.org/anything/something allow --exact-match

Rules added with and without the --exact-match flag are considered distinct rules, and can be added and removed separately.

With the above rules, http://httpbin.org/anything/something would be allowed, but http://httpbin.org/anything/something/subpath would be excluded for any subpath.

To remove a rule, one can run:

wb-manager acl remove <collection> http://httpbin.org/anything/something

To import rules in bulk, such as from an OpenWayback-style excludes.txt and mark them as exclude:

wb-manager acl importtxt <collection> ./excludes.txt exclude

See wb-manager acl -h for a list of additional commands such as for validating rules files and running a match against an existing rule set.

Access Controls for Custom Collections

For manually configured collections, there are additional options for configuring access controls. The access control files can be specified explicitly using the acl_paths key and allow specifying multiple ACL files, and allowing sharing access control files between different collections.

Single ACLJ:

collections:
     test:
          acl_paths: ./path/to/file.aclj
          default_access: block

Multiple ACLJ:

collections:
     test:
          acl_paths:
               - ./path/to/allows.aclj
               - ./path/to/blocks.aclj
               - ./path/to/other.aclj
               - ./path/to/directory

          default_access: block

The acl_paths can be a single entry or a list, and can also include directories. If a directory is specified, all .aclj files in the directory are checked.

When finding the best rule from multiple .aclj files, each file is binary searched and the result set merge-sorted to find the best match (very similar to the CDXJ index lookup).

Note: It might make sense to separate allows.aclj and blocks.aclj into individual files for organizational reasons, but there is no specific need to keep more than one access control files.

Finally, ACLJ and embargo settings combined for the same collection might look as follows:

collections:
     test:
          ...
          embargo:
              newer:
                  days: 366

          acl_paths:
               - ./path/to/allows.aclj
               - ./path/to/blocks.aclj

Default Access

An additional default_access setting can be added to specify the default rule if no other rules match for custom collections. If omitted, this setting is default_access: allow, which is usually the desired default.

Setting default_access: block and providing a list of allow rules provides a flexible way to allow access to only a limited set of resources, and block access to anything out of scope by default.