Configuring Content Security policy

This site is the new docs site currently being tested. For the actual docs in use please go to https://www.jenkins.io/doc.

This page describes the restrictions applied by potentially untrusted files served by Jenkins by default and how to customize them.

The Default Rule Set

The default rule set results in the following:

  • No JavaScript allowed at all

  • No plugins (object/embed) allowed

  • No inline CSS, or CSS from other sites allowed

  • No images from other sites allowed

  • No frames allowed

  • No web fonts allowed

  • No XHR/AJAX allowed

  • etc.

The Content-Security-Policy header value is:

sandbox allow-same-origin; default-src 'none'; img-src 'self'; style-src 'self';

  • sandbox allow-same-origin limits a number of things of what the page can do, similar to the sandbox attribute set on iframes. For a full list of what is prohibited, see this site. This attribute is not widely supported.

  • default-src 'none' prohibits loading scripts, URLs for AJAX/XHR/WebSockets/EventSources, fonts, plugin objects, media, and frames from anywhere (images and styles would also be prohibited, but are allowed by more specific rules described below).

  • img-src 'self' allows loading images from other files served by Jenkins. Inline image definitions are prohibited.

  • style-src 'self' allows loading style sheets from other files served by Jenkins. Inline style sheets are prohibited.

See content-security-policy.com for a reference on this header and its possible values.

Customizing Content Security Policy

It is strongly recommended to set up the Resource Root URL instead of customizing Content-Security-Policy. Most of the documentation below was written when Content-Security-Policy was first introduced and is retained for use by administrators unable to set up Jenkins to serve user content from a different domain.

Considerations

It depends on the specific Jenkins setup whether relaxing these rules substantially is safe.

The following needs to be taken into consideration:

  • Are less trusted users allowed to create or modify files in Jenkins workspaces? Jenkins builds pull requests sent by untrusted users, or employ a security model that limits trust in users allowed to configure one or more jobs, this also affects in what way the CSP rule set should be relaxed: Anything allowed there could be abused by users with the ability to change files in workspaces or archived artifacts.

  • Are some agents not fully trusted? Even when Agent To Controller Access is used to limit what agents can do on the controller node, the entire build directory on the controller node is writable by agents, with the exception of the build.xml file itself. Therefore any file stored in a build directory and served by Jenkins should be considered potentially unsafe.

If either of these are true, you should be very careful when relaxing the CSP rule set. If neither is true, and all users with the ability to change files in workspaces are fully trusted, as are all agent machines, then it should be safe to relax or even disable the CSP rules.

Implementation

The CSP header sent by Jenkins can be modified by setting the Java system property hudson.model.DirectoryBrowserSupport.CSP:

If its value is the empty string, e.g. java -Dhudson.model.DirectoryBrowserSupport.CSP= -jar jenkins.war then the header will not be sent at all.

This is potentially very unsafe and should only be used after reviewing the overall security setup.

Any other value will be used as the header value, e.g. java -Dhudson.model.DirectoryBrowserSupport.CSP="sandbox allow-same-origin; default-src 'self';" -jar jenkins.war. See content-security-policy.com for a reference on this header and its possible values.

Changes to the system property will be effective immediately, so it’s possible to set this system property temporarily via the Script Console, allowing you to experiment with different values:

Set a custom value for the header:

System.setProperty("hudson.model.DirectoryBrowserSupport.CSP", "sandbox allow-same-origin; default-src 'self';")

Unset the header:

System.setProperty("hudson.model.DirectoryBrowserSupport.CSP", "")

Set the header to the default:

System.clearProperty("hudson.model.DirectoryBrowserSupport.CSP")

Find out the current header value:

System.getProperty("hudson.model.DirectoryBrowserSupport.CSP")

How to interpret the output:

  • No output below "Result" header: default protection

  • Output Result: below "Result" header: protection disabled

  • Output Result: some text here below "Result" header: custom protection

Forcing an uncached reload ("Shift-F5" or equivalent) of the affected web page may be necessary after changing the system property for the behavior to change.

Making Plugins Work

Maven Integration Plugin

Maven Integration Plugin has a feature that allows browsing generated Maven documentation sites (e.g. site:site) in Jenkins. When using this feature, it may be necessary to relax the CSP rule set to allow this to work. In limited testing, it was necessary to at least allow style-src 'unsafe-inline'. Depending on the site’s content, more relaxed rules may be necessary.

sandbox allow-same-origin; default-src 'none'; img-src 'self'; style-src 'self' 'unsafe-inline';

Javadoc Plugin

The Javadoc Plugin makes Javadoc available for browsing in Jenkins. The default rule set does not allow use of frames in pages served by Jenkins. To make this work again, the directives frame-src 'self' and child-src 'self' must be added to the CSP header. It appears Safari also requires the sandbox directive to be removed.

sandbox allow-same-origin; default-src 'none'; img-src 'self'; style-src 'self'; child-src 'self'; frame-src 'self';

To see the ALL CLASSES link when browsing Javadoc without frames, script-src 'unsafe-inline' must also be added to the CSP header.

HTML Publisher Plugin

Make sure to update HTML Publisher Plugin to version 1.10 to make it work with Content Security Policy.

From version 1.10 on, the HTML Publisher Plugin is compatible with Content Security Policy. Before that, it executed inline JavaScript in a file served by DirectoryBrowserSupport to set up the frame wrapper around the published files and would fail unless script-src 'unsafe-inline' was allowed, which is a possible security issue.

If the published HTML files require JavaScript or other dynamic features prohibited by Content Security Policy to work properly, the Content-Security-Policy header will need to be adjusted accordingly. This applies to all versions of HTML Publisher Plugin.