threat-modeling.md

Threat Model Analysis for reactivex/rxdart

Threat: Unintended Data Exposure through Stream Operators

• Description: An attacker might gain access to sensitive data if developers inadvertently expose it through RxDart stream operators. This can happen when operators like map, doOnNext, or custom operators are used to process sensitive information within a stream, and this processed data is then logged, displayed, or sent to external systems without proper sanitization. For example, logging the output of a map operator that transforms user data, including sensitive fields, without masking those fields.
• Impact: Confidentiality breach, exposure of sensitive user data, regulatory compliance violations.
• RxDart Component Affected: Stream operators (map, scan, doOnNext, tap, custom operators).
• Risk Severity: High
• Mitigation Strategies:
  • Implement data sanitization and masking within RxDart stream pipelines before logging, displaying, or sending data externally.
  • Carefully review and audit all RxDart stream operators that handle sensitive data to ensure proper data handling and prevent unintended exposure.
  • Apply the principle of least privilege to data transformations within streams, ensuring only necessary data is processed and exposed downstream.

Threat: Data Integrity Issues due to Asynchronous RxDart Operations

• Description: An attacker could potentially exploit concurrency issues arising from RxDart's asynchronous nature to compromise data integrity. If RxDart streams perform transformations on shared mutable state (though discouraged) or interact with external systems in a non-atomic manner, race conditions can occur. An attacker might manipulate timing or event flow to induce data corruption or inconsistent states within the application's reactive flows managed by RxDart.
• Impact: Data corruption, inconsistent application state, incorrect business logic execution, potential for financial loss or reputational damage.
• RxDart Component Affected: RxDart stream composition, concurrency operators (concatMap, switchMap, exhaustMap), Subjects when used for shared state, asynchronous stream transformations.
• Risk Severity: High
• Mitigation Strategies:
  • Favor immutable data structures within RxDart streams to minimize side effects and the risk of race conditions.
  • Utilize appropriate RxDart concurrency operators (concatMap, switchMap, exhaustMap etc.) to manage asynchronous operations and ensure data consistency in concurrent scenarios.
  • Thoroughly test RxDart stream pipelines, especially those involving concurrent operations or interactions with external systems, to verify data integrity under various load conditions.
  • Avoid shared mutable state within RxDart streams. If absolutely necessary, implement robust synchronization mechanisms, but prefer reactive and immutable approaches.

Threat: Resource Exhaustion due to RxDart Stream Backpressure Neglect

• Description: An attacker can initiate a Denial of Service (DoS) attack by overwhelming the application with a flood of events into an RxDart stream if backpressure is not properly implemented. If a stream source produces events faster than the consumer can process them, and no backpressure mechanism is in place, RxDart will buffer these events. This can lead to unbounded memory consumption, eventually exhausting application resources and causing a crash or severe performance degradation, effectively denying service to legitimate users.
• Impact: Denial of Service (DoS), application crash, severe performance degradation, resource exhaustion (memory, CPU), impacting application availability and user experience.
• RxDart Component Affected: RxDart Streams, backpressure operators (buffer, throttleTime, debounceTime, sample), stream consumers, stream subscriptions.
• Risk Severity: High
• Mitigation Strategies:
  • Implement backpressure strategies within RxDart stream pipelines using operators like buffer, throttleTime, debounceTime, sample, or custom backpressure mechanisms to control event flow.
  • Monitor resource consumption (memory, CPU) of applications using RxDart streams, especially under anticipated or attack-simulated load conditions.
  • Design RxDart stream pipelines with careful consideration of consumer processing capacity and potential event rates from stream sources.
  • Implement rate limiting or throttling at the stream source level if feasible to prevent overwhelming the RxDart streams.

Threat: Unhandled Exceptions in RxDart Operators Causing Application Failure

• Description: An attacker could craft specific inputs or trigger conditions designed to cause exceptions within RxDart stream operators (e.g., map, filter, custom operators). If these exceptions are not properly handled using RxDart's error handling mechanisms (catchError, onErrorResumeNext), they will propagate up the stream, potentially leading to unhandled exceptions that crash the application or cause unpredictable and insecure states. This can be exploited to disrupt application availability or bypass security logic dependent on stream processing.
• Impact: Application crash, instability, Denial of Service (DoS), potential data loss or corruption if exceptions occur during critical data processing stages within RxDart streams, bypassing security checks.
• RxDart Component Affected: RxDart stream operators (map, filter, custom operators), error handling operators (catchError, onErrorResumeNext), stream subscriptions.
• Risk Severity: High
• Mitigation Strategies:
  • Implement robust error handling within all RxDart stream pipelines using operators like catchError, onErrorResumeNext, retry, and retryWhen to gracefully handle exceptions.
  • Ensure that all custom RxDart operators and stream transformations include comprehensive error handling logic to prevent unhandled exceptions from propagating.
  • Log errors occurring within RxDart streams for debugging, monitoring, and security auditing purposes.
  • Consider using error streams or dedicated error handling streams to manage and propagate errors in a controlled manner, allowing for centralized error response and recovery.

Threat: Security Misconfigurations or Misuse of RxDart Operators Leading to Vulnerabilities

• Description: Developers, lacking sufficient understanding or making mistakes in implementation, might misuse RxDart operators in ways that unintentionally create security vulnerabilities. This could involve using operators in a manner that bypasses intended security checks, introduces race conditions, or leads to unexpected data handling. For example, incorrectly using a buffering operator might expose sensitive data in memory for longer than intended, or misconfiguring concurrency operators could create exploitable race conditions in security-sensitive stream processing logic.
• Impact: Introduction of security vulnerabilities due to misconfiguration, potential bypass of security controls, data leaks, race conditions, unexpected application behavior, weakened security posture.
• RxDart Component Affected: All RxDart operators, stream configuration, overall reactive application design and architecture using RxDart.
• Risk Severity: High
• Mitigation Strategies:
  • Provide comprehensive documentation, training, and secure coding examples for RxDart usage within the development team.
  • Establish and enforce clear coding guidelines and best practices for secure usage of RxDart operators within the project.
  • Conduct thorough security-focused code reviews, specifically looking for potential misuses or misconfigurations of RxDart operators that could introduce vulnerabilities.
  • Ensure developers stay updated with RxDart documentation, security advisories, and best practices to avoid common pitfalls and security-related misconfigurations.
  • Implement automated static analysis tools and linters configured to detect potential insecure patterns or misuses of RxDart operators.