mitigations.md

Mitigation Strategies Analysis for mozilla/sops

Mitigation Strategy: Employ Granular sops Policies

• Description:

  1. Design sops policies that adhere to the principle of least privilege.
  2. Define policies that grant access only to the specific secrets and environments that users or services require, using path_regex or similar features.
  3. Avoid using wildcard characters or overly broad rules in sops policies that grant excessive access.
  4. Organize secrets into logical groups or namespaces and create policies that control access at this granular level.
  5. Regularly review and refine sops policies to ensure they remain aligned with current access requirements and security best practices.

• List of Threats Mitigated:

  • Unauthorized Access to Secrets (Medium Severity): Overly permissive policies can grant unintended access to sensitive secrets.
  • Lateral Movement (Low Severity): Restricting access to only necessary secrets can limit the impact of a compromised account or service by preventing lateral movement to other sensitive data.

• Impact:

  • Unauthorized Access to Secrets: Medium Reduction - Granular policies significantly reduce the risk of unintended access by enforcing stricter access control within sops.
  • Lateral Movement: Low Reduction - Contributes to a defense-in-depth strategy by limiting potential damage from compromised accounts through sops policy enforcement.

• Currently Implemented: Partially implemented. sops policies are in place, but some policies are still too broad and need further refinement for granularity.

• Missing Implementation: Review and refactor existing sops policies to achieve finer-grained access control. Implement automated policy validation to ensure policies adhere to least privilege principles within sops configuration.

Mitigation Strategy: Regularly Review and Audit sops Policies

• Description:

  1. Establish a schedule for regular reviews of sops policies (e.g., quarterly, bi-annually).
  2. During policy reviews, verify that sops policies are still aligned with current access requirements and security best practices.
  3. Audit logs related to sops policy changes and access attempts to identify any anomalies or unauthorized modifications within sops policy management.
  4. Involve security personnel in the sops policy review process to ensure security considerations are adequately addressed in sops configurations.
  5. Document the sops policy review process and maintain records of policy reviews and any changes made to sops policies.
  6. Use policy-as-code principles and version control for sops policies to track changes and facilitate audits of sops policy history.

• List of Threats Mitigated:

  • Policy Drift and Stale Policies (Low Severity): sops policies can become outdated or misconfigured over time, leading to unintended access or security gaps within sops managed secrets.
  • Unauthorized Policy Modifications (Low Severity): Malicious or accidental changes to sops policies could weaken security of secrets managed by sops.

• Impact:

  • Policy Drift and Stale Policies: Low Reduction - Regular reviews help maintain sops policy relevance and prevent security gaps from emerging over time in sops secret management.
  • Unauthorized Policy Modifications: Low Reduction - Auditing and reviews can detect unauthorized changes to sops policies, allowing for timely remediation within sops configuration.

• Currently Implemented: Partially implemented. sops policies are version controlled, but regular scheduled reviews are not consistently performed. Audit logging is basic for sops policy changes.

• Missing Implementation: Establish a formal schedule for sops policy reviews. Implement more comprehensive audit logging specifically for sops policy changes and access attempts.

Mitigation Strategy: Version Control sops Policies

• Description:

  1. Treat sops policies as code and store them in a version control system (e.g., Git).
  2. Use branches and pull requests for managing changes to sops policies.
  3. Implement code review processes for all sops policy changes to ensure they are properly vetted and secure.
  4. Track the history of sops policy changes in version control for auditing and rollback purposes.
  5. Use tags or releases to version sops policies for different environments or application versions.
  6. Automate the deployment of sops policies from version control to the relevant systems that use sops.

• List of Threats Mitigated:

  • Accidental Policy Changes (Low Severity): Version control provides a history and rollback mechanism for accidental or incorrect sops policy modifications.
  • Lack of Audit Trail for Policy Changes (Low Severity): Version control provides a clear audit trail of who changed what and when in sops policies.

• Impact:

  • Accidental Policy Changes: Low Reduction - Provides a safety net for accidental errors in sops policy management and allows for quick recovery.
  • Lack of Audit Trail for Policy Changes: Low Reduction - Improves accountability and auditability of sops policy management.

• Currently Implemented: Implemented. sops policies are stored in Git and use pull requests for changes.

• Missing Implementation: N/A - Version control for sops policies is already in place.

Mitigation Strategy: Keep sops Tool Up-to-Date

• Description:

  1. Establish a process for monitoring sops releases and security advisories.
  2. Subscribe to sops release notifications or use automated tools to track new sops versions.
  3. Regularly update the sops tool to the latest stable version across all environments where it is used (developer workstations, CI/CD agents, servers).
  4. Test new sops versions in a non-production environment before deploying them to production.
  5. Document the sops update process and schedule.

• List of Threats Mitigated:

  • Exploitation of Known sops Vulnerabilities (High Severity): Outdated sops versions may contain known security vulnerabilities that attackers can exploit when interacting with sops.

• Impact:

  • Exploitation of Known sops Vulnerabilities: High Reduction - Ensures that known vulnerabilities in sops are patched, reducing the attack surface of the sops tool itself.

• Currently Implemented: Partially implemented. sops updates are performed manually and less frequently than ideal. Monitoring for new releases is not automated.

• Missing Implementation: Automated monitoring for sops releases and security advisories. Establish a more frequent and automated sops update process across all environments.

Mitigation Strategy: Verify sops Tool Integrity

• Description:

  1. When downloading or installing sops, always obtain it from the official source (e.g., GitHub releases page, official package repositories).
  2. Verify the integrity of the downloaded sops binary using checksums or signatures provided by the official source.
  3. Automate the integrity verification process as part of the sops installation or update process.
  4. Use package managers or trusted distribution channels to minimize the risk of downloading compromised versions of sops.

• List of Threats Mitigated:

  • Supply Chain Attacks - Compromised sops Tool (High Severity): If a compromised version of sops is used, it could contain backdoors or malware that could compromise secrets or systems through malicious sops operations.

• Impact:

  • Supply Chain Attacks - Compromised sops Tool: High Reduction - Significantly reduces the risk of using a tampered sops tool by verifying its integrity, ensuring the tool itself is not a vulnerability.

• Currently Implemented: Partially implemented. Manual verification of checksums is sometimes performed, but not consistently or automated for sops installations.

• Missing Implementation: Automated integrity verification as part of the sops installation and update process.