Threat: Unencrypted Message Interception
Description: An attacker on the same network as NSQ components (nsqd, producers, consumers) can use network sniffing tools to intercept unencrypted TCP traffic and read message content as it is transmitted between components.
Impact: Confidential message data is exposed to unauthorized parties, potentially leading to data breaches, privacy violations, or misuse of sensitive information.
Affected NSQ Component: nsqd, Network Communication (TCP)
Risk Severity: High
Mitigation Strategies:
- Implement TLS/SSL encryption for network communication between NSQ components (e.g., using VPN or network infrastructure encryption).
- Encrypt sensitive data within the message payload at the application level before publishing.
Threat: Message Tampering in Transit
Description: An attacker performing a man-in-the-middle (MITM) attack can intercept unencrypted network traffic and modify message content before it reaches its intended destination (nsqd or consumer).
Impact: Data integrity is compromised, leading to consumers processing tampered messages, potentially causing incorrect application behavior, data corruption, or malicious actions based on altered data.
Affected NSQ Component: nsqd, Network Communication (TCP)
Risk Severity: High
Mitigation Strategies:
- Implement message signing at the application level. Producers sign messages, and consumers verify signatures to detect tampering.
- Use TLS/SSL encryption to protect against MITM attacks and ensure message integrity during transit.
Description: If nsqd persists messages to disk and the underlying storage is not properly secured, an attacker who gains unauthorized access to the server's filesystem can read the persisted message files and extract sensitive data.
Impact: Confidential message data stored on disk is exposed, potentially leading to data breaches and privacy violations.
Affected NSQ Component: nsqd, Persistence Module (Disk Storage)
Risk Severity: High
Mitigation Strategies:
- Encrypt the disk partition or volume where nsqd stores persistent data using disk encryption technologies (e.g., LUKS, dm-crypt, BitLocker).
- Implement strong access control mechanisms on the server's filesystem to restrict access to the nsqd data directory to only authorized users and processes.
Threat: Message Flooding DoS
Description: An attacker intentionally or unintentionally publishes a massive volume of messages to NSQ topics, overwhelming nsqd's processing capacity, network bandwidth, and potentially disk I/O.
Impact: nsqd becomes unresponsive or crashes, leading to denial of service for message processing and application unavailability. Legitimate messages may be delayed or dropped.
Affected NSQ Component: nsqd, Message Processing, Network Input
Risk Severity: High
Mitigation Strategies:
- Implement rate limiting on message producers at the application level to control the message publishing rate.
- Configure nsqd resource limits (e.g.,
--max-memory-per-topic,--max-bytes-per-topic,--max-msg-timeout) to prevent resource exhaustion. - Use network-level rate limiting or firewalls to restrict traffic to nsqd from untrusted sources.
Threat: Weak nsqadmin Authentication
Description: nsqadmin is configured with default credentials, weak passwords, or lacks strong authentication mechanisms, allowing attackers to easily gain unauthorized access.
Impact: Unauthorized users gain administrative access to the NSQ cluster via nsqadmin, potentially leading to data breaches, service disruption, configuration changes, or other malicious actions.
Affected NSQ Component: nsqadmin, Authentication Module
Risk Severity: High
Mitigation Strategies:
- Ensure nsqadmin is configured with strong authentication mechanisms. If available, use features like OAuth or integrate with existing identity providers.
- Change any default credentials immediately upon deployment.
- Enforce strong password policies for nsqadmin users.
- Implement multi-factor authentication (MFA) for nsqadmin access if possible.