threat-modeling.md

Threat Model Analysis for charmbracelet/bubbletea

Threat: Terminal Escape Sequence Injection

Description: An attacker crafts user input containing malicious terminal escape sequences. When the Bubble Tea application processes and displays this input without proper sanitization, the terminal emulator interprets these sequences. This allows the attacker to manipulate the terminal display, potentially execute commands indirectly (in vulnerable terminals), or cause a denial of service by overloading the terminal. Impact:

• Display manipulation leading to user confusion or misinformation.
• Potential indirect command execution on the user's system.
• Terminal denial of service, disrupting application usability and potentially other terminal activities. Affected Bubble Tea Component:
• tea.Program input handling (specifically when reading user input).
• tea.Model and View functions when rendering user-controlled data to the terminal. Risk Severity: High Mitigation Strategies: Developer:
• Implement robust input sanitization using libraries or custom functions to remove or escape potentially harmful terminal escape sequences before processing and displaying user input.
• Utilize libraries specifically designed for safe terminal input handling in Go.
• Ensure output encoding is correctly configured (e.g., UTF-8) to minimize accidental interpretation of data as escape sequences.
• Conduct thorough input validation to reject or sanitize unexpected or potentially malicious input formats. User:
• Be cautious about pasting or typing input from untrusted sources into Bubble Tea applications.
• Keep terminal emulators updated to the latest versions, which often include security fixes for escape sequence handling.

Threat: Input Injection leading to Application Logic Exploitation

Description: An attacker provides carefully crafted input, even without terminal escape sequences, that exploits vulnerabilities in the Bubble Tea application's input processing logic. This input can manipulate application state, trigger unexpected behavior, bypass intended controls, or cause application crashes. The attacker aims to deviate the application from its intended functionality through malicious input. Impact:

• Unexpected application behavior, leading to incorrect functionality or data processing.
• Data manipulation or corruption within the application's state.
• Application denial of service (crashes or unresponsiveness).
• Potential for privilege escalation or unauthorized access to application features depending on the specific vulnerability. Affected Bubble Tea Component:
• tea.Program input handling and command processing.
• tea.Model Update function, where input is processed and state is updated.
• Application-specific input parsing and validation logic within the Update function or related handlers. Risk Severity: High Mitigation Strategies: Developer:
• Implement comprehensive input validation to ensure user input conforms to expected formats, types, and ranges.
• Use secure input parsing techniques to avoid vulnerabilities like format string bugs or buffer overflows (though less common in Go, principle applies).
• Implement robust error handling for invalid input to prevent application crashes and provide informative error messages without revealing sensitive information.
• Follow secure coding practices when designing input processing logic in the Update function.
• Conduct thorough testing, including fuzzing and edge-case testing, of input handling logic.

Threat: State Manipulation through Unintended Actions

Description: Vulnerabilities in the application's state management logic, particularly within the Bubble Tea Update function, can allow attackers to manipulate the application's internal state in unintended ways. This could be achieved through specific input sequences or by exploiting race conditions in state updates. An attacker aims to alter the application's behavior or data by corrupting its state. Impact:

• Application behaving in unexpected or incorrect ways.
• Data corruption or inconsistencies within the application's state.
• Bypassing intended application logic or security controls.
• Potential for privilege escalation or unauthorized access to features depending on the state manipulation. Affected Bubble Tea Component:
• tea.Model state structure and data.
• tea.Model Update function, responsible for state transitions.
• Application-specific state management logic and data structures. Risk Severity: High Mitigation Strategies: Developer:
• Design application state and state transitions carefully, considering all possible input and event sequences to prevent unintended state changes.
• Implement thorough unit and integration tests to verify state transitions and ensure they behave as expected under various conditions, including edge cases and error scenarios.
• Consider using immutable data structures for state to reduce the risk of accidental state modification and race conditions (although not strictly enforced by Bubble Tea).
• If commands are dynamically generated based on state, ensure proper validation and sanitization to prevent command injection vulnerabilities within the application's command handling logic.
• Carefully manage concurrency and synchronization if state updates are performed in concurrent goroutines to avoid race conditions.