asgard.chat UUIDs can trigger word filter

[turt2live]

I am a...

User seeing weird behaviour in a policyserv-protected room

Description

The UUIDs are broken up by - characters, which means each segment is a new word. This doesn't currently affect their ability to join rooms, but will in the future.

Steps to reproduce

• Set up an asgard bot
• Join a protected room

Installation Method

Docker (ghcr.io/matrix-org/policyserv)

Homeserver

N/A

Policyserv Server Name

beta2.matrix.org

Policyserv Version

v1.5.0

Affected Filters

User ID word filter

Relevant log output

N/A

Anything else that would be useful to know?

Possible solutions:

• Ask asgard to do different
• Allow list some domains
• Increase limit (not always great)
• Allow list some event types (also not great for this filter)

May be fixed by more composable/conditional filtering

[ll-SKY-ll]

The UUIDs mentioned here are the localparts of the bots?

[turt2live]

Correct, yea

[ll-SKY-ll]

In that case doing something different on our part would be pretty intense in terms of work because not only would both Draupnir and meowlnir have to be changed code wise to generate the local part differently, but we would also need to replace any already provisioned bots to prevent issues in the future which doesn't seem too practical (we currently have 60 bots provisioned)

[FSG-Cat]

The problem here from my perspective is that you have a protection that blocks UUID matrix IDs and those are legitimate when its an appservice that created those users i would argue.

Plenty of services that you will bridge using matrix runs UUID user IDs. Be that via UUID vX or Snowflakes or similar ID systems or even Windows GUIDs.

Also it would be recommended for this to be filed as a bug upstream with Draupnir and Meowlnir as both projects run UUIDs as asgard is just running the main/releases of said projects and not a fork. (Even if upstream will say its not a bug to use UUIDs)

If this is resolved by Policy Srv via having some way of green lighting UUID users that is always a way to do it. Especially since all legitimate UUID users are expected to come from special servers or appservice namespaces in most cases.

[turt2live]

We aren't currently considering this a bug with Asgard, Draupnir, or Meowlnir. It's just a documented false positive case for a policyserv filter.

The purpose of the filter is to block long user IDs, even if they are otherwise spec compliant or useful. Each community can have a different definition of "too long" and the metrics used to calculate it.