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attack-surface.md

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Attack Surface Analysis for open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector

Attack Surface: Unprotected Receiver Ports (Critical)

  • Description: Exposing receiver ports (e.g., 4317, 4318) without proper authentication or authorization.
  • OpenTelemetry Collector Contribution: Collectors are designed to receive telemetry data via network ports. Default configurations often do not enforce authentication, making them inherently open by default.
  • Example: A collector exposes port 4317 (gRPC OTLP) without any authentication mechanism. An attacker can freely send a flood of invalid or malicious telemetry data to this port from anywhere on the network.
  • Impact: Denial of Service (DoS), data injection leading to corrupted monitoring data, potential exploitation of vulnerabilities in receiver components, resource exhaustion on the collector and backend systems due to processing malicious data.
  • Risk Severity: Critical
  • Mitigation Strategies:
    • Mandatory Authentication and Authorization: Always enable authentication and authorization on all exposed receiver ports. Utilize extensions like oidcauth, basicauth, or leverage network policies for access control.
    • Network Segmentation (Defense in Depth): Implement network segmentation using firewalls or network policies to restrict access to receiver ports to only trusted and necessary sources, even with authentication in place.
    • Rate Limiting (DoS Prevention): Configure rate limiting on receivers directly within the collector configuration to prevent DoS attacks by limiting the volume of incoming requests, regardless of authentication status.
    • TLS/SSL Encryption (Data Protection & Auth): Enforce TLS/SSL encryption for all receiver communication. This not only protects data in transit but can also be used for client certificate authentication, adding a strong layer of security.

Attack Surface: Insecure Exporter Configurations (High)

  • Description: Misconfiguring exporters with weak or default credentials, or inadvertently sending telemetry data to untrusted or malicious destinations.
  • OpenTelemetry Collector Contribution: Collectors rely on exporters to forward telemetry data to backend systems. Misconfiguration in exporter settings directly leads to security vulnerabilities.
  • Example: An exporter configured to send data to a monitoring backend uses default API keys or hardcoded credentials directly in the collector's configuration file. This configuration file is then compromised, or the credentials are leaked. Alternatively, an exporter is misconfigured to send data to an unintended, potentially malicious, external endpoint.
  • Impact: Credential theft leading to unauthorized access to backend monitoring systems, data leakage of sensitive telemetry information to unauthorized parties, potential data tampering if data is sent to a malicious endpoint, compromise of backend systems if exporter credentials are used to pivot.
  • Risk Severity: High
  • Mitigation Strategies:
    • Secure Secret Management (Crucial): Never hardcode credentials in collector configuration files. Mandatory use of secure secret management practices like environment variables, dedicated secret stores (e.g., HashiCorp Vault), or specialized collector extensions designed for secret handling.
    • Principle of Least Privilege (Exporter Access): Configure exporters with the minimum necessary permissions to access backend systems. Avoid overly permissive API keys or service accounts.
    • Encryption in Transit (Exporter Communication): Always ensure exporters use encrypted connections (e.g., HTTPS, TLS) when communicating with backend systems to protect data and credentials in transit.
    • Destination Validation and Control (Exporter Output): Strictly validate and control the destination endpoints configured for exporters. Implement mechanisms to prevent accidental or malicious redirection of telemetry data to untrusted locations.

Attack Surface: Configuration Injection Vulnerabilities (Critical)

  • Description: Dynamically loading or allowing external influence on the collector's configuration without rigorous validation, leading to the potential for malicious configuration injection.
  • OpenTelemetry Collector Contribution: Collectors can be configured via files, environment variables, and potentially through extensions. If these configuration loading mechanisms are not secured, they become injection points.
  • Example: The collector is configured to load its configuration file from a path specified by an environment variable. An attacker gains control over this environment variable (e.g., through a compromised application or container environment) and modifies it to point to a malicious configuration file under their control. This malicious configuration could reconfigure exporters to exfiltrate data, disable security features, or even potentially execute code through certain extensions or configuration options.
  • Impact: Complete compromise of collector behavior, including data exfiltration, denial of service, disabling security controls, and in extreme scenarios, potential for code execution within the collector process (depending on configuration capabilities and extension vulnerabilities).
  • Risk Severity: Critical
  • Mitigation Strategies:
    • Immutable Configuration (Best Practice): Adopt immutable configuration deployments where the collector's configuration is fixed at deployment time and changes are strictly controlled through infrastructure-as-code and version control pipelines. This significantly reduces the attack surface.
    • Restrict Configuration Sources (Principle of Least Privilege): Limit the sources from which the collector loads its configuration to only trusted locations and mechanisms. Avoid dynamic or externally influenced configuration loading if possible.
    • Strict Configuration Validation (Input Sanitization): Implement rigorous validation of all configuration parameters loaded by the collector to prevent injection of malicious or unexpected values. This should include schema validation and input sanitization.
    • Principle of Least Privilege for Configuration Access (Access Control): Restrict access to configuration files and environment variables used by the collector to only authorized users and processes. Employ file system permissions and access control lists (ACLs) to enforce this.

Attack Surface: Deserialization Vulnerabilities in Receivers (High)

  • Description: Vulnerabilities present in the code responsible for parsing incoming telemetry data formats (e.g., OTLP, Prometheus, Jaeger) within receivers.
  • OpenTelemetry Collector Contribution: Collectors must parse various telemetry protocols to function. Vulnerabilities in the underlying parsing libraries or the collector's receiver implementation can be exploited by attackers sending crafted telemetry data.
  • Example: A receiver parsing OTLP data contains a vulnerability in its deserialization logic (e.g., a buffer overflow or an arbitrary code execution flaw). An attacker crafts a malicious OTLP payload and sends it to the vulnerable receiver, triggering the vulnerability.
  • Impact: Denial of Service (DoS), potential for arbitrary code execution on the collector host, information disclosure (e.g., memory leaks), bypass of security controls or input validation mechanisms.
  • Risk Severity: High
  • Mitigation Strategies:
    • Continuous Updates and Patching (Essential): Maintain a rigorous update schedule for the OpenTelemetry Collector and all its dependencies. Regularly apply security patches to address known deserialization vulnerabilities and other security flaws.
    • Robust Input Validation and Sanitization (Defense in Depth): Implement strong input validation and sanitization within receiver components to filter out potentially malicious payloads before they reach the deserialization logic. This acts as a crucial layer of defense.
    • Fuzz Testing (Proactive Security): Conduct regular fuzz testing on receiver components, especially the deserialization logic, to proactively identify potential vulnerabilities before they are exploited in production.
    • Web Application Firewall (WAF) or Intrusion Detection/Prevention System (IDS/IPS) (External Protection): Deploy a WAF or IDS/IPS in front of collector receivers to detect and block potentially malicious payloads before they reach the collector. This provides an external layer of security.