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attack-surface.md

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Attack Surface Analysis for vurtun/nuklear

Attack Surface: Buffer Overflows in Input Handling (Keyboard/Mouse)

  • Description: Vulnerabilities arising from writing beyond allocated memory buffers when Nuklear processes keyboard or mouse input events.
  • Nuklear Contribution: Nuklear handles raw input events and might use fixed-size buffers internally. Insufficient buffer sizing or bounds checking in Nuklear's code can lead to overflows.
  • Example: Sending an extremely long string of characters as keyboard input to a text field rendered by Nuklear, exceeding internal buffer limits and overwriting adjacent memory.
  • Impact: Memory corruption, application crash, potential for code execution if critical data or function pointers are overwritten.
  • Risk Severity: High
  • Mitigation Strategies:
    • Code Review and Static Analysis (Nuklear): Review Nuklear's input handling code specifically for buffer overflow vulnerabilities. Use static analysis tools on Nuklear's codebase.
    • Fuzzing (Nuklear): Fuzz Nuklear's input processing with long and malformed input sequences to detect buffer overflows.
    • Memory Safety Tools (Development & Testing): Utilize memory safety tools like AddressSanitizer (ASan) and MemorySanitizer (MSan) during development and testing of applications using Nuklear to catch buffer overflows at runtime.

Attack Surface: Font Parsing Vulnerabilities

  • Description: Vulnerabilities in the parsing of font files (e.g., TrueType, OpenType) if Nuklear directly handles font loading or relies on vulnerable font libraries.
  • Nuklear Contribution: If Nuklear includes font parsing capabilities or integrates with external font libraries, vulnerabilities in these components become part of Nuklear's attack surface.
  • Example: Loading a maliciously crafted font file through Nuklear's font loading API that exploits a buffer overflow or other vulnerability in the font parsing logic within Nuklear or its dependencies, leading to code execution.
  • Impact: Code execution, denial of service, application crash.
  • Risk Severity: High
  • Mitigation Strategies:
    • Use Reputable and Updated Font Libraries (Nuklear/Dependencies): If Nuklear relies on external font libraries, ensure they are well-maintained, regularly updated, and known for security. Consider replacing vulnerable libraries if necessary.
    • Font Validation (Application Level & Potentially Nuklear): Implement validation checks on font files before loading them, both at the application level and potentially within Nuklear if modifications are feasible, to detect malicious or malformed files.
    • Sandboxing (If Feasible): If possible, isolate font parsing and rendering processes within a sandboxed environment to limit the impact of potential exploits.

Attack Surface: Text Rendering Buffer Overflows

  • Description: Buffer overflows occurring during the process of rendering text within Nuklear, specifically when allocating buffers to store glyph data.
  • Nuklear Contribution: Nuklear's text rendering engine is responsible for allocating buffers for glyphs. Incorrect buffer size calculations or insufficient bounds checking in Nuklear's rendering code can lead to overflows.
  • Example: Rendering an extremely long string of text or text with complex characters that exceeds the allocated buffer size for glyph data within Nuklear, leading to memory corruption.
  • Impact: Memory corruption, application crash, potential for code execution.
  • Risk Severity: High
  • Mitigation Strategies:
    • Code Review and Static Analysis (Nuklear): Thoroughly review Nuklear's text rendering code and buffer allocation logic for potential buffer overflow vulnerabilities. Use static analysis tools on Nuklear's codebase.
    • Fuzzing (Nuklear): Fuzz Nuklear's text rendering with long strings, diverse character sets, and varying font sizes to trigger potential buffer overflows.
    • Memory Safety Tools (Development & Testing): Utilize memory safety tools like ASan and MSan during development and testing to detect buffer overflows during text rendering.
    • Robust Buffer Size Calculation (Nuklear): Ensure Nuklear's buffer size calculations for text rendering are accurate and dynamically adapt to text content and rendering parameters.

Attack Surface: Image Format Parsing Vulnerabilities (If Image Loading is Used by Nuklear)

  • Description: Vulnerabilities in parsing image files (e.g., PNG, JPEG) if Nuklear directly handles image loading or integrates with vulnerable image libraries.
  • Nuklear Contribution: If the application uses Nuklear's image loading capabilities (either built-in or through integration), vulnerabilities in image parsing within Nuklear or its dependencies become relevant.
  • Example: Loading a maliciously crafted PNG image through Nuklear that exploits a buffer overflow or other vulnerability in the PNG parsing library used by Nuklear, leading to code execution.
  • Impact: Code execution, denial of service, application crash.
  • Risk Severity: High
  • Mitigation Strategies:
    • Use Secure and Updated Image Libraries (Nuklear/Dependencies): If Nuklear relies on external image libraries, use well-vetted, regularly updated libraries known for security. Consider replacing vulnerable libraries.
    • Image Validation (Application Level & Potentially Nuklear): Implement validation checks on image files before loading, both at the application level and potentially within Nuklear if modifications are feasible, to detect malicious or malformed files.
    • Sandboxing (If Feasible): Isolate image parsing and rendering processes within a sandboxed environment to limit the impact of potential exploits.

Attack Surface: Memory Management Errors (Use-After-Free, Double-Free)

  • Description: Critical memory safety issues inherent to C code, specifically use-after-free and double-free vulnerabilities, within Nuklear's codebase.
  • Nuklear Contribution: As Nuklear is written in C, it is susceptible to these memory management errors if not implemented with extreme care. Bugs in Nuklear's memory allocation and deallocation logic can lead to these vulnerabilities.
  • Example:
    • Use-After-Free: Nuklear code accesses memory that has already been freed due to incorrect object lifetime management, potentially leading to exploitation.
    • Double-Free: Nuklear code attempts to free the same memory block twice due to logic errors in memory deallocation routines, causing memory corruption.
  • Impact: Memory corruption, application crash, potential for code execution.
  • Risk Severity: Critical
  • Mitigation Strategies:
    • Extensive Code Review (Nuklear): Conduct rigorous code reviews of Nuklear's codebase, focusing specifically on memory management paths and object lifetimes.
    • Static Analysis (Nuklear): Utilize advanced static analysis tools specifically designed to detect memory management errors in C code within Nuklear's codebase.
    • Memory Safety Tools (Development & Testing): Employ memory safety tools like Valgrind, AddressSanitizer (ASan), and MemorySanitizer (MSan) during development and testing to detect use-after-free and double-free errors at runtime.
    • Careful Memory Management Practices (Nuklear Development): If modifying Nuklear, adhere to the most stringent memory management practices, ensuring correct allocation, deallocation, and object lifetime management throughout the library. Consider using smart pointers or other memory safety techniques if feasible within Nuklear's design constraints.