Yuuz12/dsh-webui-auth

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A persistent WebUI authentication plugin for DeepSeek Harness. Once you create an account/password in Settings → 身份认证 (Authentication) or via the first-run login page, unauthenticated browsers cannot load any WebUI resource, call any API, or open any realtime connection — authentication is enforced at the HTTP/transport layer and cannot be bypassed through browser devtools.

Architecture

Authentication is enforced in four layers, all implemented by wrapping the webServer routes at runtime — no DSH core package source is modified:

Layer	Mechanism	Unauthenticated behavior
WebUI resources (index.html, /assets/*, SPA routes)	Plugin registers a prefix '' catch-all route; after session validation it hands off to frontend-static	302 → login page
Plugin bundles (/plugins/*)	Wraps the /plugins prefix route handler at runtime	401
/api RPC surface	Wraps the /api prefix route handler at runtime	401
WebSocket (/api/remote.mux; legacy cores /api/events.mux, /api/events.host)	Wraps the upgrade route handlers at runtime	401 upgrade rejected

• No core patching: a DSH upgrade never overwrites patches and never leaves /api exposed after an upgrade. Every startup re-wraps the route tables, with a 2s→10s rescan loop that catches late-registered routes. On v0.1.2-alpha.2+ the event-stream WebSocket lives at /api/remote.mux (registered by dsh-api-gateway); the candidate list adapts automatically, so the plugin no longer falsely reports "upgrade route missing".

• Fail-closed: if the expected routes are missing (DSH internals changed so wrapping can't apply), setup/configure refuse to enable authentication and the problem is reported both in the host log and on the settings page — better unusable than "login enabled with an unprotected /api".

• Cooperation with the core's own browser auth (v0.1.2-alpha.2+): that core version ships launch-token exchange with an origin-bound signed cookie (dsh-auth-*) guarding / and /api. After a successful plugin login the browser is automatically sent to the core's token-bearing root URL so the core cookie exchange runs too; /api requests pass through unchanged after the plugin session check (no more Host/Origin rewrite, which would break the core's cookie/Host binding). Both gates apply: a browser must hold the plugin session cookie and the core cookie.

• Privileged methods behind a reverse proxy / LAN (legacy cores ≤ alpha.1): after the session check the plugin hands authenticated requests to the core in a "loopback shape", so the core's loopback-pinned privileged methods (settings/credentials/agentPreset/llm.discoverModels) work in proxied deployments — the session-cookie gate is a strictly stronger identity proof than the Host-header heuristic it replaces.

• WebSocket and trustedHosts: the WS upgrade handshake still goes through the core's own requestRejection / isTrustedApiRequest, so in reverse-proxy / LAN deployments (non-loopback Host) you must also add the public hostname to client-connection.trustedHosts in the DSH config, otherwise even authenticated upgrades are rejected.

• Scheme-adaptive post-login redirect (0.3.3, fixes #6 / #7): after a successful login the plugin sends the browser to the core's token-bearing root URL. Its authority now comes from the request Host (no longer hardcoded to 127.0.0.1) and its scheme follows the protocol the request actually used, resolved in this order: ① the operator's explicit remote-web-ui.publicBaseUrl (trusted only when its host/port matches the incoming Host — otherwise a LAN direct hit would be redirected to the public address and lose the freshly issued session cookie to a cross-origin hop); ② the standard proxies headers X-Forwarded-Proto (leftmost value) or RFC 7239 Forwarded: proto=; ③ a TLS-terminating socket (socket.encrypted); ④ fallback http. It deliberately does not guess "non-IP hostname ⇒ https", which would turn plain-http intranet access (http://nas.local:3080) into a dead https link. The login page adds a one-way client-side fallback: an https page receiving a same-origin http:// redirect upgrades it to https:// (never downgrades, never rewrites another origin).

• Desktop marker pass-through (0.3.5, fixes #8): DSH Desktop's advanced / extended modes disable the core ui-layout row at the composition layer. That leaves the desktop's own client plugin as the only provider of the client layout service — and it only activates when the URL carries the dsh-desktop-* markers (parseDesktopClientEnvironment() returns undefined without them, so apply() returns immediately). Any redirect that lands on a clean / drops those markers → the 12 client plugins that depend on layout stay pending forever → the renderer never reports healthy within 30s → the host shows the "some plugins failed to load" recovery dialog. Two marker-loss paths are confirmed: ① first login — the core's token→cookie exchange 303s the browser to a clean /; ② logout then re-login — logout is the client doing location.href = '/' itself, so the server never sees the marker-bearing URL being abandoned. The fix is proactive remembering: whenever the renderer loads with markers in the URL, they are written into a cookie (dsh_wua_desktop, HttpOnly / SameSite=Lax / 12h). From then on, any document request that lands on a clean / is 302'd back to the marker-bearing URL. The restore happens before the document loads, so there is no race with the client plugins. The stash is deliberately never cleared — clearing would introduce a "remember → clear immediately → nothing left to restore after logout" ordering trap; expiry is left to Max-Age. Markers are passed through by the dsh-desktop- prefix as a whole (deliberately not a hardcoded whitelist — a future marker added by DSH Desktop would otherwise silently break desktop startup again, the very coupling behind this issue); mode must be one of compatibility/extended/advanced and values are capped at 64 chars. The redirect target is always the same-origin relative path /, so there is no open-redirect surface; the web build (no dsh-desktop-* markers) is unaffected. This adaptation lives entirely in lib/desktop-adapter.js; index.js keeps only two call sites in the gate (marked "宿主适配层"). The module imports nothing from the main module and can be removed wholesale — its header documents the design trade-offs, the removal steps, and the contract for adding further host adaptations ({ remember(req,res), restore(req,res) }).

Sessions are server-side and persisted to disk (sessions.jsonl, survive a DSH restart, expire server-side), carried by an HttpOnly; SameSite=Lax cookie (dsh_wua_session) that JS cannot read; changing the password revokes every other session.

Installation

This plugin is a standard bundle, published on npm — the official dsh plugin command is the recommended way to install it. The manual method is kept as a fallback. Prerequisite: pnpm on the machine (Node ships corepack — run corepack enable pnpm to activate it).

Method 1: npm install (recommended)

npx @deepseek-ai/dsh plugin --profile web add dsh-webui-auth

Pulls the prebuilt package from the npm registry (plain JS — no prepare script, no build authorization), adds the dependency and appends it to the dsh.profile.bundles list; the plugin row is inserted automatically via the bundle layer.

Method 2: GitHub install

npx @deepseek-ai/dsh plugin --profile web add github:Yuuz12/dsh-webui-auth

Fetches the repository source (works directly — no build step either). Prefer Method 1 when the network to GitHub is unreliable.

Method 3: manual (fallback)

1. Put the dsh-webui-auth directory into profiles/web/node_modules/
2. Add one row to the insert list in profiles/web/cordis.patch.yml:

    - id: dsh-webui-auth
      name: 'dsh-webui-auth'

Maintainer dev mode: dsh plugin --profile web add ./dsh-webui-auth from a local source checkout (link: install) — edit code, restart DSH, done; no reinstall needed.

Common to all methods

No core-package patches are needed (no [dsh-webui-auth patch] markers, no node_modules edits) — just restart DSH. On startup the host log prints [dsh-webui-auth] started, credentials file: ...; if the route wrapping is incomplete it prints ROUTE GATE INCOMPLETE and authentication cannot be enabled (fail-closed).

Uninstallation

Method 1: dsh plugin command (for method-1 installs)

1. npx @deepseek-ai/dsh plugin --profile web remove dsh-webui-auth (removes both the dependency and the bundle layer)
2. Restart DSH

Method 2: manual (for method-2 installs)

1. Delete the plugin directory profiles/web/node_modules/dsh-webui-auth/ (since 0.3.1 runtime data lives outside the package, deleting it does not touch the account; to wipe the account too, also delete the .dsh-webui-auth/ data directory — see "Data file locations")
2. Remove the mount row from profiles/web/cordis.patch.yml:

    - id: dsh-webui-auth
      name: 'dsh-webui-auth'

This step is required — otherwise the loader fails at startup because the package is missing. 3. Restart DSH

With either method, after the restart authentication is fully disabled (no core sources to restore — the plugin never modified core files). To also clear persisted sessions, delete sessions.jsonl in the data directory. If you previously used the older pre-hardening build, the leftover dsh-webui-auth.session key in browser localStorage is harmless and may be removed optionally.

Usage

• First enable (setup token required): while no credentials exist, authentication is off (all requests pass), but creating the administrator account requires a per-boot setup token — open WebUI → Settings → 身份认证 (Authentication), or visit /dsh-webui-auth/login, enter the token printed in the startup log as [dsh-webui-auth] setup token (...) (or read the setup-token file in the data directory, mode 0600), then create an account/password (≥8 characters, must include uppercase, lowercase, digit and special character). The token is regenerated on every boot and deleted once setup succeeds, preventing someone from claiming the administrator account in the "exposed before configured" window.
• Username rule: 3-32 characters of letters, digits, underscore or hyphen (enforced on create/change; legacy accounts are unaffected and can still log in).
• Afterwards: any unauthenticated visit to any path redirects to the login page; after login you stay signed in for the chosen session lifetime (browser session / 1 hour / 12 hours (default) / 1 day / 3 days), enforced server-side by expiry. Sessions are persisted to disk — after a DSH restart logged-in devices stay signed in (the expiry still applies). "Browser session" mode: the 30-minute window slides with activity, and closing the browser logs you out.
• Change / disable / log out: Settings → 身份认证 (all require the current password); changing the password revokes every other logged-in session.
• Forgot password: delete dsh-webui-auth.json in the data directory — a background check every minute disables authentication within at most 1 minute (no restart needed), then create a new account with a fresh setup token.

Where data files live (depends on install mode)

Credentials and security data are stored in the runtime data directory, chosen automatically by install mode:

• npm / GitHub / tarball installs: the package lives inside node_modules, which is wholesale replaced on upgrade, reinstall or cleanup — so data is stored in a .dsh-webui-auth/ directory next to that node_modules (usually the profile root, e.g. ~/.dsh/profiles/web/.dsh-webui-auth/). Upgrading the plugin, pnpm clean, or reinstalling DSH no longer loses the account or login sessions.
• Local link / source installs (dsh plugin add ./dsh-webui-auth): the plugin source directory itself (managed with the repo and excluded from git via .gitignore; deleting the whole source checkout is what deletes the data).
• Fallback: when none of the above is writable, $DSH_HOME/dsh-webui-auth/ (default ~/.dsh/dsh-webui-auth/) is used.

Upgrading from 0.3.x: runtime data is not migrated automatically. If the legacy data (inside the package directory or ~/.dsh/dsh-webui-auth/) still exists, copy dsh-webui-auth.json, sessions.jsonl, audit-hmac-key and audit.jsonl from the table below into the new data directory manually (for npm / GitHub / tarball installs that is .dsh-webui-auth/ next to node_modules); otherwise just recreate the account with a fresh setup token (see "Forgot password").

Files in the data directory:

File	Purpose	Permissions
dsh-webui-auth.json	Credentials (scrypt hash, v3 format; 0.2.x v2 credentials still verify and log in)	—
audit.jsonl	Audit log (IPs pseudonymized, see "Audit log")	—
sessions.jsonl	Persisted sessions (restart recovery)	0600
audit-hmac-key	HMAC key for audit-IP pseudonymization (auto-generated once)	0600
setup-token	First-run setup token (deleted after setup succeeds)	0600

The data directory is chosen by install mode (npm / GitHub / tarball → .dsh-webui-auth/ next to node_modules; link / source → the plugin source directory; fallback $DSH_HOME/dsh-webui-auth/); the "forgot password", audit and session paths above refer to that data directory.

Audit log

Security events — login success/failure/rate-limit, setup, configure, disable, logout — are appended as JSONL to audit.jsonl in the data directory (timestamp, username, IP, user-agent, detail). Client IPs are pseudonymized with HMAC-SHA256 (e.g. hmac:5151e752|203.0.113.0/24, with the /24 (IPv4) or /64 (IPv6) network prefix kept in cleartext for aggregation); raw addresses are never written to disk. Two ways to view:

• CLI (recommended): run node index.js audit [--limit N] (last 20 entries by default; run from the module path):

  node index.js audit --limit 50
  

• Settings page: Settings → 身份认证 → "最近登录记录" (Recent activity) shows the last 8 entries.

Audit write failures never block authentication (only a host-log warning).

Appearance

Both the login page and the "Settings → 身份认证 (Authentication)" settings page follow DSH's built-in appearance setting (Settings → General → Appearance: Light / Dark / System); no separate appearance switch is provided. The settings page lives inside the WebUI and consumes DSH's theme tokens directly, so it tracks light/dark automatically. The login page is a standalone page: the server reads the current appearance preference (settings ui-theme.preference), injects it into the page, and the page mirrors DSH's boot logic — System resolves via prefers-color-scheme and reacts live to OS changes. The login response is served with cache-control: no-store, so a refresh picks up any appearance change immediately.

What to do after upgrading DSH

Nothing. The plugin never modifies core packages — after a DSH upgrade the runtime route wrapping is re-applied automatically on startup. On v0.1.2-alpha.2+ the plugin adapts to the /api/remote.mux event-stream route and cooperates with the core's built-in browser auth (launch-token ↔ signed cookie): after logging into the plugin, the browser is automatically guided through the core authentication, after which the WebUI works normally. If the wrapping is incomplete (DSH internals changed), the host log prints ROUTE GATE INCOMPLETE, the settings page shows a red warning, and setup/configure refuse to enable authentication (fail-closed).

Note (v0.1.2-alpha.2+): the core's browser auth requires the browser to first exchange the launch token for the core cookie (the ?token= URL printed by dsh web / DSH Desktop). The plugin performs that exchange automatically; if a browser has never visited that address, open the full URL printed at DSH startup once (or log in via the plugin's login page — the exchange happens automatically).

Data & Security

• Passwords are hashed with scrypt (Node's built-in memory-hard KDF — GPU/ASIC resistant, zero dependencies) and stored in dsh-webui-auth.json in the data directory (location depends on install mode, see above); plaintext is never written to disk. Credentials format is v3 (same scrypt encoding as v2 — only the version marker and field semantics changed); 0.2.x v2 credentials still verify. Since 0.2.0 only scrypt hashes are accepted: 0.1.x SHA-256 credentials can no longer be verified — delete the credentials file and recreate the account (see "Forgot password").
• Login rate limiting: per client IP, at most 5 failures per minute — a single attacker can no longer lock out other users (or the operator). Behind a reverse proxy the client IP is taken from CF-Connecting-IP / the leftmost X-Forwarded-For, and the proxy headers are trusted only when the socket peer is loopback (local caddy/cloudflared) — remote callers cannot spoof them. Failed verifications also run a dummy scrypt pass so "unknown account" and "wrong password" take the same time, defeating username enumeration via response timing.
• First-run setup requires a per-boot setup token (128-bit, printed to the host log and written to setup-token in the data directory, mode 0600), preventing account claiming in the "exposed before configured" window.
• Audit log: audit.jsonl, client IPs pseudonymized with HMAC (see "Audit log").
• Persisted sessions: sessions.jsonl (0600), restored on restart; a write failure never affects authentication — the settings page just warns that a restart will require re-login.
• Security headers on the login page and API responses: strict CSP, nosniff, DENY framing, no-referrer, noindex, no-store.
• Cookie HttpOnly + SameSite=Lax: not readable by JS, not sent on cross-site requests.
• The login/setup endpoints are intentionally public (the entry point of authentication): /dsh-webui-auth/login and /dsh-webui-auth/setup (the latter protected by the setup token).

Known limits

• Inherent runtime-wrapping window: between a route-object replacement (service hot-reload) and the next rescan (≤10s) there is an unprotected window; the fail-closed check on enabling covers the "initially exposed" case, so this window only affects hot-reload during runtime.
• WebSocket and trustedHosts: in reverse-proxy / LAN deployments (non-loopback Host), WS downlinks need the public hostname added to client-connection.trustedHosts in the DSH config (see "Architecture").
• Proxy on a different host: if the reverse proxy is not on the same machine as DSH (non-loopback peer), the proxy headers are not trusted and rate limiting aggregates per proxy IP (degrades to a global bucket).
• HTTPS proxy that sends no protocol header: the post-login redirect scheme depends on ① remote-web-ui.publicBaseUrl or ② an X-Forwarded-Proto / Forwarded header from the proxy. With neither, it can only fall back to http (the browser then handshakes against the TLS port and the page looks frozen after clicking Login). Pick one: declare the public address in settings.yaml, or make the proxy send proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;. Note publicBaseUrl only applies when it matches the request Host, which is what keeps LAN direct access from being rewritten to the public address.
• --trusted-host is not optional: after desktop password login, requests that hit /api directly depend on --trusted-host <public-host:port>; the remote-web-ui pairing flow (/remote channel) does not. Dropping the flag makes every /api call return 403.
• Limits of audit pseudonymization: the HMAC key lives in the same data directory (0600); a local attacker who can read it can brute-force the IP space — pseudonymization protects against "plaintext IPs at rest", not against an attacker with file access.
• Sessions live in sessions.jsonl: they survive restarts (expiry unchanged); uninstalling/disabling the plugin does not affect credentials.
• Threat model is "browser/network clients": local processes that can read/write the host's memory or files are out of scope.