Threat: Client Spoofing
Description: An attacker gains access to valid client credentials for RabbitMQ (username/password, certificates) or exploits vulnerabilities in RabbitMQ's client authentication mechanisms. They then impersonate a legitimate application to connect to RabbitMQ and perform unauthorized actions such as sending malicious messages or consuming sensitive data from queues. Impact: Data breaches, unauthorized actions within the messaging system, system malfunction, data corruption, reputational damage. Affected RabbitMQ Component: Authentication Module, Connection Handling. Risk Severity: High Mitigation Strategies: * Enforce strong client authentication mechanisms provided by RabbitMQ (TLS client certificates, SASL mechanisms with strong passwords, OAuth 2.0 if supported via plugins). * Regularly rotate client credentials used to connect to RabbitMQ. * Implement the principle of least privilege by granting clients only the necessary permissions to specific virtual hosts, queues, and exchanges within RabbitMQ. * Monitor RabbitMQ connection logs for unusual client connection patterns or failed authentication attempts. * Enforce account lockout policies within RabbitMQ or externally for repeated failed login attempts.
Threat: Message Tampering in Transit
Description: An attacker intercepts network traffic between clients and RabbitMQ or between RabbitMQ nodes in a cluster. If TLS encryption is not enabled for these connections, the attacker can modify message content while in transit. This can lead to data corruption, application malfunction, or injection of malicious payloads into the message flow. Impact: Data corruption, application malfunction due to altered messages, injection of malicious code or data, data integrity compromise, reputational damage. Affected RabbitMQ Component: Network Communication, Inter-node Communication (clustering). Risk Severity: High Mitigation Strategies: * Mandatory Enablement of TLS/SSL encryption for all RabbitMQ communication channels: Client-to-RabbitMQ connections, RabbitMQ-to-RabbitMQ connections for clustering, and access to the Management UI. Configure RabbitMQ to enforce TLS. * Consider application-level message signing or encryption for end-to-end integrity and confidentiality, especially for highly sensitive data, as TLS protects only in transit.
Threat: Plugin Tampering
Description: An attacker with administrative privileges on RabbitMQ or by exploiting vulnerabilities in plugin management installs or modifies RabbitMQ plugins. Malicious plugins can introduce backdoors, compromise the server's integrity, steal data processed by RabbitMQ, or cause a denial of service by disrupting core RabbitMQ functionalities. Impact: Server compromise, data breaches (including message data and RabbitMQ configuration), denial of service, creation of persistent backdoors within the messaging infrastructure, complete loss of control over the RabbitMQ instance. Affected RabbitMQ Component: Plugin System, Core Server Functionality (if a malicious plugin is installed and active). Risk Severity: Critical Mitigation Strategies: * Strictly restrict plugin installation and management to authorized RabbitMQ administrators only. * Only install plugins from trusted and officially verified sources (RabbitMQ community plugins, official vendor plugins). Avoid installing plugins from unknown or untrusted sources. * Regularly audit the list of installed plugins in RabbitMQ. * If available and feasible, implement plugin signing and verification mechanisms to ensure plugin integrity. * Monitor RabbitMQ logs and system behavior for any suspicious activity related to plugin loading or execution.
Description: An attacker gains unauthorized access to the RabbitMQ server's underlying filesystem and directly modifies the Mnesia database files. Mnesia stores critical RabbitMQ metadata, including queue definitions, exchange configurations, user credentials, and permissions. Tampering with these files can lead to severe service disruption, data corruption, or unauthorized access. Impact: Data corruption within RabbitMQ's internal configuration, service disruption or failure, loss of queue and exchange definitions, potential compromise of user credentials stored in Mnesia, operational failure of the messaging system. Affected RabbitMQ Component: Mnesia Database, Data Storage Layer. Risk Severity: High Mitigation Strategies: * Secure the underlying operating system and filesystem where RabbitMQ data (including Mnesia database files) is stored. * Implement strong file system permissions, ensuring that only the RabbitMQ server process user has read and write access to the Mnesia database directory. * Consider using disk encryption for the storage volume containing RabbitMQ data to protect against offline attacks. * Regularly back up RabbitMQ data, including the Mnesia database, to allow for restoration in case of data corruption or tampering.
Description: Sensitive information (PII, credentials, financial data) is transmitted in message payloads without application-level encryption, and TLS encryption is not enabled or enforced for RabbitMQ communication channels. This lack of encryption allows an attacker intercepting network traffic to read sensitive data directly from the messages. Impact: Data breaches, privacy violations, compliance violations, reputational damage, financial loss, identity theft due to exposure of sensitive information in message payloads. Affected RabbitMQ Component: Network Communication, Message Handling (in terms of lack of transport security). Risk Severity: Critical Mitigation Strategies: * Enforce mandatory TLS/SSL encryption for all RabbitMQ communication channels to protect messages in transit. This is the primary mitigation for this threat at the RabbitMQ server level. * As a best practice, avoid sending sensitive data in messages if possible. If unavoidable, encrypt sensitive data at the application level before publishing messages to RabbitMQ, providing end-to-end encryption regardless of transport security.
Threat: Connection Exhaustion (DoS)
Description: An attacker establishes a large number of connections to RabbitMQ, rapidly consuming server resources such as connection limits, memory, and CPU. This can exhaust RabbitMQ's capacity to handle legitimate client connections, leading to denial of service and preventing applications from communicating with the message broker. Impact: Denial of service, service unavailability for legitimate applications, disruption of message processing, operational downtime, reputational damage. Affected RabbitMQ Component: Connection Handling, Network Listener, Resource Management. Risk Severity: High Mitigation Strategies: * Implement connection limits and rate limiting within RabbitMQ configuration to restrict the number of connections from individual clients or networks. * Configure appropriate connection timeouts in RabbitMQ to release resources from idle or stalled connections. * Use firewalls or network security groups to restrict access to RabbitMQ ports to only authorized clients and networks, limiting the potential attack surface. * Monitor RabbitMQ connection metrics and set up alerts to detect unusual spikes in connection attempts or connection counts, indicating a potential DoS attack.
Threat: Message Queue Flooding (DoS)
Description: An attacker publishes a massive volume of messages to RabbitMQ queues, overwhelming the broker's processing capacity, memory, and disk I/O. This can lead to service degradation, message loss (if queues overflow), or even broker crashes, effectively causing a denial of service for legitimate message processing. Impact: Denial of service, service degradation, message loss due to queue overflow, performance degradation for legitimate message processing, operational downtime, potential data loss. Affected RabbitMQ Component: Queue Processing, Message Storage, Resource Management, Flow Control. Risk Severity: High Mitigation Strategies: * Implement message rate limiting and flow control mechanisms within RabbitMQ using policies or application-level logic to prevent excessive message publishing rates. * Set appropriate queue limits within RabbitMQ, such as maximum message count, queue length, and memory limits, to prevent queues from growing indefinitely and consuming excessive resources. * Utilize dead-letter exchanges to automatically handle messages that cannot be processed within a certain timeframe or due to queue limits, preventing queue buildup and potential resource exhaustion. * Monitor queue depths and message rates in RabbitMQ and set up alerts to detect unusual spikes in message traffic, indicating a potential queue flooding attack.
Threat: CPU/Memory Exhaustion (DoS)
Description: An attacker exploits vulnerabilities in RabbitMQ itself or its plugins, or sends maliciously crafted messages that trigger resource-intensive operations within RabbitMQ. This can lead to excessive CPU or memory consumption on the RabbitMQ server, causing service degradation, instability, or crashes, resulting in a denial of service. Impact: Denial of service, service instability, performance degradation, RabbitMQ broker crashes, operational downtime, potential data loss if crashes occur during message processing. Affected RabbitMQ Component: Core Server Functionality, Plugin Functionality, Message Processing, Resource Management. Risk Severity: High Mitigation Strategies: * Regularly update RabbitMQ server and all installed plugins to the latest versions to patch known vulnerabilities that could be exploited for resource exhaustion attacks. * Monitor CPU and memory usage on the RabbitMQ server and set up alerts to detect unusual spikes or sustained high resource consumption, indicating potential attacks or misconfigurations. * Implement resource limits and quotas within RabbitMQ for users, virtual hosts, or queues to restrict resource consumption and prevent any single entity from monopolizing server resources. * Perform thorough testing and performance tuning of RabbitMQ configurations and applications to identify and address any potential resource bottlenecks or inefficient configurations that could be exploited.
Threat: Authentication Bypass
Description: An attacker exploits vulnerabilities in RabbitMQ's authentication mechanisms (e.g., flaws in SASL implementations, logic errors in authentication checks). Successful exploitation allows the attacker to bypass authentication and gain unauthorized access to the RabbitMQ broker without providing valid credentials. Impact: Unauthorized access to RabbitMQ, complete compromise of the message broker, potential for data breaches, configuration tampering, denial of service, and further attacks on connected systems. Affected RabbitMQ Component: Authentication Module, SASL Implementation, Connection Handling. Risk Severity: Critical Mitigation Strategies: * Utilize strong and well-tested authentication mechanisms provided by RabbitMQ, such as SASL PLAIN over TLS or x509 client certificates, avoiding weaker or less secure authentication methods. * Keep RabbitMQ server updated to the latest version to ensure that any known authentication vulnerabilities are patched promptly. * Enforce strong password policies if using password-based authentication mechanisms within RabbitMQ. * Consider implementing multi-factor authentication for administrative access to RabbitMQ if supported by plugins or external authentication providers. * Regularly audit RabbitMQ authentication configurations and access logs to detect and respond to any suspicious authentication activity.
Threat: Authorization Bypass
Description: An attacker exploits vulnerabilities in RabbitMQ's authorization mechanisms or misconfigurations in permission settings. This allows the attacker to bypass authorization checks and gain unauthorized access to resources within RabbitMQ, such as queues and exchanges, or perform actions like publishing, consuming, or managing resources beyond their intended permissions. Impact: Unauthorized access to queues and exchanges, data breaches due to unauthorized message access, unauthorized manipulation of messages, potential for denial of service by unauthorized actions, privilege escalation within the messaging system. Affected RabbitMQ Component: Authorization Module, Permission System, Virtual Host Management. Risk Severity: High Mitigation Strategies: * Implement a robust and well-defined Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) model within RabbitMQ, carefully defining roles and permissions based on the principle of least privilege. * Utilize RabbitMQ virtual hosts to isolate different environments and enforce granular permissions at the virtual host level, limiting the scope of potential authorization bypass vulnerabilities. * Regularly review and audit user permissions and access control policies within RabbitMQ to identify and correct any misconfigurations or overly permissive settings. * Thoroughly test authorization rules and configurations after any changes to ensure that they are functioning as intended and preventing unauthorized access.
Threat: Plugin Privilege Escalation
Description: A malicious or vulnerable RabbitMQ plugin is used by an attacker to escalate privileges within the RabbitMQ server process or the underlying operating system. This could be due to vulnerabilities in the plugin code itself or insecure plugin design that allows access to sensitive resources or execution of arbitrary code with elevated privileges. Impact: Full server compromise, potential operating system compromise, data breaches, complete loss of control over the RabbitMQ instance and potentially the host system, allowing the attacker to perform any action on the server. Affected RabbitMQ Component: Plugin System, Plugin Code, Operating System Interaction (if a malicious plugin is used). Risk Severity: Critical Mitigation Strategies: * Absolutely only install plugins from highly trusted and reputable sources. Exercise extreme caution when considering installing any third-party plugins. * Thoroughly vet and test any plugins in a non-production environment before deploying them to production RabbitMQ instances. Analyze plugin code if possible and understand its functionality and security implications. * Run the RabbitMQ server process with the principle of least privilege, using a dedicated user account with minimal necessary permissions on the operating system. * Implement security monitoring and intrusion detection systems to detect any suspicious plugin activity or unexpected system calls originating from the RabbitMQ process, which could indicate plugin-related privilege escalation attempts.