mitigations.md

Mitigation Strategies Analysis for micro/go-micro

Mitigation Strategy: Secure Go-Micro Client Interaction with Service Registry

• Mitigation Strategy: Implement Authentication and TLS Encryption for Go-Micro Service Registry Clients.
• Description:
  1. Configure Go-Micro Client Authentication: When initializing the go-micro client to connect to the service registry (e.g., Consul, Etcd), configure authentication credentials. This typically involves setting options within the registry.NewRegistry() function or through environment variables that go-micro's registry client can utilize. Refer to your chosen service registry's documentation for specific authentication methods and how to configure go-micro to use them.
  2. Enable TLS for Go-Micro Registry Client: Configure the go-micro registry client to use TLS encryption when communicating with the service registry. This is usually done by providing TLS configuration options to the registry.NewRegistry() function. This might involve specifying certificate paths or using TLS configuration structs provided by go-micro or the underlying transport library.
  3. Verify Client Configuration: Ensure that your go-micro services are correctly configured to use authentication and TLS when connecting to the service registry. Check logs and network traffic to confirm encrypted and authenticated connections.
• List of Threats Mitigated:
  • Unauthorized Service Registration/Discovery by Go-Micro Clients (High Severity): If go-micro clients connect to the registry without authentication, malicious actors could potentially use rogue go-micro clients to register or discover services without authorization, leading to service disruption or information leakage.
  • Eavesdropping on Go-Micro Client-Registry Communication (High Severity): Without TLS, communication between go-micro clients and the service registry can be intercepted, exposing service metadata and potentially authentication credentials if not properly handled.
  • Man-in-the-Middle (MITM) Attacks on Go-Micro Client-Registry Communication (High Severity): Attackers could intercept and manipulate communication between go-micro clients and the registry, potentially redirecting service discovery or injecting false service information.
• Impact:
  • Unauthorized Service Registration/Discovery by Go-Micro Clients: High risk reduction. Prevents unauthorized actions from go-micro clients interacting with the registry.
  • Eavesdropping on Go-Micro Client-Registry Communication: High risk reduction. Protects sensitive data transmitted between go-micro clients and the registry.
  • Man-in-the-Middle (MITM) Attacks on Go-Micro Client-Registry Communication: High risk reduction. Ensures the integrity and authenticity of communication between go-micro clients and the registry.
• Currently Implemented: Partially implemented. TLS is enabled for go-micro registry clients in the staging environment. Authentication configuration for go-micro registry clients is basic and needs review.
• Missing Implementation: Robust authentication needs to be configured for go-micro registry clients in all environments, especially production. TLS encryption needs to be enabled for go-micro registry clients in production. Specific configuration steps for go-micro client-side TLS and authentication based on the chosen registry (Consul) need to be fully implemented.

Mitigation Strategy: Implement Mutual TLS (mTLS) for Go-Micro Service Communication

• Mitigation Strategy: Enforce Mutual TLS (mTLS) for Inter-Service Communication within Go-Micro.
• Description:
  1. Configure Go-Micro Transports for mTLS: When initializing your go-micro services, configure the chosen transport (e.g., gRPC, HTTP) to use mTLS. This involves setting TLS options within the server.NewServer() and client.NewClient() functions in go-micro. You will need to provide paths to service certificates, private keys, and CA certificates for both server and client configurations.
  2. Utilize Go-Micro Interceptors/Middleware for mTLS Enforcement: Implement go-micro interceptors (for gRPC) or middleware (for HTTP) to enforce mTLS. These interceptors/middleware should verify that incoming requests have valid client certificates and reject requests that do not meet the mTLS requirements. This ensures that only services with valid certificates can communicate with each other.
  3. Certificate Management for Go-Micro Services: Establish a secure process for managing and distributing TLS certificates to your go-micro services. Consider using secrets management solutions or service mesh integrations to simplify certificate distribution and rotation within the go-micro ecosystem.
  4. Test and Verify mTLS in Go-Micro: Thoroughly test inter-service communication within your go-micro application to confirm that mTLS is correctly configured and enforced. Use network monitoring tools or service logs to verify that connections are encrypted and mutually authenticated.
• List of Threats Mitigated:
  • Service Spoofing/Impersonation within Go-Micro (High Severity): Without mTLS in go-micro, a malicious service could potentially impersonate a legitimate service within the go-micro ecosystem, leading to data breaches or unauthorized actions.
  • Unauthorized Service Access within Go-Micro (High Severity): Without mTLS, any service (even unauthorized or compromised ones) could potentially communicate with other go-micro services if network access is available, bypassing intended access controls.
  • Man-in-the-Middle (MITM) Attacks on Go-Micro Inter-Service Communication (High Severity): While basic TLS encrypts communication, mTLS within go-micro adds a crucial layer of identity verification for both communicating services, making MITM attacks significantly more difficult to execute successfully within the go-micro environment.
• Impact:
  • Service Spoofing/Impersonation within Go-Micro: High risk reduction. Prevents malicious services from impersonating legitimate go-micro services.
  • Unauthorized Service Access within Go-Micro: High risk reduction. Enforces strict access control between go-micro services based on verified identities.
  • Man-in-the-Middle (MITM) Attacks on Go-Micro Inter-Service Communication: High risk reduction. Significantly strengthens protection against MITM attacks within the go-micro service mesh.
• Currently Implemented: Not implemented. mTLS is not currently configured or enforced for inter-service communication in go-micro applications in any environment.
• Missing Implementation: mTLS needs to be implemented for inter-service communication across all environments (development, staging, production). This requires configuring go-micro transports for mTLS, developing enforcement interceptors/middleware, and establishing a certificate management process for go-micro services.

Mitigation Strategy: Implement Rate Limiting using Go-Micro Middleware

• Mitigation Strategy: Utilize Go-Micro Middleware for Service-Level Rate Limiting.
• Description:
  1. Choose a Rate Limiting Strategy: Decide on a rate limiting strategy suitable for your go-micro services. This could be based on requests per second, minute, or hour, and might be applied globally to a service or per endpoint.
  2. Develop Go-Micro Rate Limiting Middleware: Create custom middleware in go-micro to implement your chosen rate limiting strategy. This middleware will typically:
     • Track Request Counts: Maintain counters for requests received by each service or endpoint within a defined time window. This could be done in-memory (for simple cases) or using a distributed cache (e.g., Redis) for more robust and scalable rate limiting across service instances.
     • Enforce Limits: Check if the request count for a given service or endpoint exceeds the defined rate limit.
     • Reject Exceeding Requests: If the rate limit is exceeded, the middleware should reject the incoming request and return an appropriate error response (e.g., HTTP 429 Too Many Requests for HTTP transport, or a gRPC error code for gRPC transport).
  3. Apply Middleware to Go-Micro Services: Register the rate limiting middleware with your go-micro services when initializing them. This can be done using server.NewServer(server.WrapHandler(...)) or server.NewServer(server.WrapSubscriber(...)) for handlers and subscribers respectively, or similar mechanisms depending on the transport.
  4. Configure Rate Limits: Make rate limits configurable, ideally through environment variables or configuration files, so they can be adjusted without code changes.
  5. Monitoring and Tuning: Monitor the effectiveness of your rate limiting middleware. Track rate limit hits and adjust the limits as needed to balance security and service availability.
• List of Threats Mitigated:
  • Denial of Service (DoS) Attacks Targeting Go-Micro Services (High Severity): go-micro middleware-based rate limiting helps prevent DoS attacks by limiting the number of requests processed by a service, protecting it from being overwhelmed.
  • Resource Exhaustion in Go-Micro Services (Medium Severity): Rate limiting prevents excessive resource consumption in go-micro services due to unexpected traffic spikes or malicious request floods, ensuring service stability and availability.
  • Brute-Force Attacks Against Go-Micro Services (Medium Severity): Rate limiting can slow down brute-force attacks targeting go-micro services by limiting the rate at which attackers can make requests.
• Impact:
  • Denial of Service (DoS) Attacks Targeting Go-Micro Services: High risk reduction. Significantly reduces the impact of DoS attacks on individual go-micro services.
  • Resource Exhaustion in Go-Micro Services: Medium risk reduction. Improves the stability and resilience of go-micro services under heavy load.
  • Brute-Force Attacks Against Go-Micro Services: Medium risk reduction. Makes brute-force attacks less efficient and easier to detect.
• Currently Implemented: Partially implemented. Basic rate limiting middleware is used in the API Gateway component of the go-micro application for external requests.
• Missing Implementation: Service-level rate limiting middleware is not implemented within individual backend go-micro services. Rate limiting needs to be extended to critical backend services using go-micro middleware to provide more granular protection and prevent internal DoS scenarios and resource exhaustion within the microservice architecture.