attack-surface.md

Attack Surface Analysis for ocornut/imgui

Attack Surface: Unvalidated Drag and Drop Payloads

• Description: Exploitation of vulnerabilities arising from insufficient validation of data received through ImGui's drag-and-drop functionality. The application must not trust the data type or content provided by the drag-and-drop operation.
• How ImGui Contributes: ImGui provides the drag-and-drop API, passing the payload data to the application. The vulnerability arises if the application doesn't perform thorough validation.
• Example: An attacker drags a malicious file (e.g., a script disguised as an image) onto an ImGui window. If the application doesn't validate the file type and content, it could execute the script.
• Impact: Code execution, data exfiltration, data modification, privilege escalation (depending on how the payload is processed).
• Risk Severity: High to Critical (depending on the context).
• Mitigation Strategies:
  • Developer:
    • Thoroughly validate the type and content of the drag-and-drop payload before processing it. Do not trust the reported file type.
    • Treat the payload as untrusted input.
    • Implement strict file type validation (e.g., using magic numbers or file signatures, not just extensions).
    • If the payload is a file, consider processing it in a sandboxed environment.
  • User: (Limited options)
    • Be cautious about dragging and dropping files from untrusted sources.

Attack Surface: Unvalidated Clipboard Data

• Description: Exploitation of vulnerabilities arising from insufficient validation of data pasted from the system clipboard using ImGui's clipboard functions.
• How ImGui Contributes: ImGui provides functions to interact with the clipboard, but the application must validate pasted data. The vulnerability is present if application uses data without validation.
• Example: An attacker copies malicious code to the clipboard. The user then pastes this code into an ImGui InputText field that is used to execute commands. If the application doesn't validate the pasted data, it could execute the attacker's code.
• Impact: Code execution, data exfiltration, data modification, privilege escalation (depending on how the pasted data is used).
• Risk Severity: High to Critical (depending on the context).
• Mitigation Strategies:
  • Developer:
    • Treat data pasted from the clipboard as untrusted input.
    • Apply the same validation and sanitization procedures as for other input sources.
    • Avoid directly executing or interpreting clipboard data without proper security checks.
  • User: (Limited options)
    • Be cautious about pasting data from untrusted sources into application input fields.

Attack Surface: Memory Corruption (ImGui Bugs)

• Description: Exploitation of potential memory corruption bugs (buffer overflows, use-after-free, etc.) within the ImGui library itself. This is less likely than application-level vulnerabilities but remains a possibility.
• How ImGui Contributes: This is a vulnerability within ImGui's code, not just in how the application uses it.
• Example: A specially crafted sequence of ImGui calls, potentially triggered by unusual input or a specific combination of UI elements, could exploit a hypothetical buffer overflow in ImGui's rendering or internal data handling, leading to arbitrary code execution. (This is hypothetical; the risk is generally low but non-zero).
• Impact: Potentially arbitrary code execution (though this is rare).
• Risk Severity: High (While rare, the potential impact is severe).
• Mitigation Strategies:
  • Developer:
    • Keep ImGui up-to-date with the latest version. This is the most important mitigation.
    • Use memory safety tools (e.g., AddressSanitizer, Valgrind) during development and testing.
    • Follow secure coding practices in the application code that interacts with ImGui.
    • Report any suspected bugs to the ImGui developers.
  • User:
    • Keep the application (and therefore the embedded ImGui library) updated.