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RServe Execution Context

  • Article

As per the standard usage of R, the current user starts the R executable and interacts with the application via the R Language and the R Interpreter. The R language provides OS-level access via the system function. With this function, a user can execute an OS command such as system(“rmdir –r C:\\tmp”). While this is useful functionality for individual users, it is also a potential entry point through which the computer's security could be compromised.

DeployR provides various API calls that permit the execution of R scripts and R code. The R scripts stored on the DeployR server can have different levels of permissions dictating what a client can do. While public scripts can be executed by either anonymous or authenticated clients, private scripts can only be executed by the authenticated user that created the script. Raw R code execution, via the DeployR API, can only be executed by an authenticated user that has the POWER_USER role.

All authentication takes place on the DeployR server, and the execution of the R code is managed through the DeployR RServe add-on component. Rserve provides a TCP/IP interface to the R Interpreter running on the machine. By default, Rserve runs on the same machine as the DeployR Server. RServe is started by Windows Service (RServeWinService) that runs under a virtual service account. RServe inherits the permissions of that virtual service account. In the default configuration, Rserve will only accept socket connections from localhost. In other words, only those processes running on the same machine where RServe is running can directly connect to it and execute R code.

Important

The DeployR Server should, ideally, be the only local process that connects to RServe. To help ensure this is the case, a username and password is required to validate any connection between RServe and a client process.

However, there exist several vulnerabilities of which you should be aware. They are:

  • RServe only accepts usernames and passwords in plain text from connecting clients.
  • RServe uses a plain text configuration file to store the username and password.
  • RServe has the permissions of the virtual service account, so it may have unwanted access to resources on the computer.

If a DeployR instance requires additional compute capacity, a network of grid nodes can be added to provide sophisticated load-balancing capabilities. A grid node is simply a DeployR server with R installed and the RServe component installed and configured to accept connections from remote clients. Whenever remote grid nodes exist, a firewall should also be configured to accept only connections from the DeployR Server IP address.