threat-modeling.md

Threat Model Analysis for open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector

Threat: Exploitation of Receiver Vulnerability (Receiver)

• Description: An attacker sends specially crafted data to a specific receiver, exploiting a vulnerability in the receiver's code (e.g., a buffer overflow, format string vulnerability, injection flaw, deserialization issue). The attacker might have researched known vulnerabilities or used fuzzing techniques to discover new ones. The crafted data could lead to arbitrary code execution.
  • Impact: The attacker gains control of the Collector process, potentially leading to:
    • Complete system compromise.
    • Data exfiltration.
    • Data manipulation.
    • Use of the Collector as a pivot point for further attacks within the network.
  • Affected Component: Specific receiver implementations (e.g., receiver/otlp, receiver/jaeger, receiver/zipkin, receiver/prometheus), protocol parsing logic, data handling functions.
  • Risk Severity: Critical
  • Mitigation Strategies:
    • Patching: Keep the Collector and all its components (including receivers) up-to-date with the latest security patches. Subscribe to security advisories for the OpenTelemetry project and relevant components.
    • Vulnerability Scanning: Regularly scan the Collector and its dependencies for known vulnerabilities.
    • Input Validation: Implement strict input validation and sanitization within custom receivers (if applicable).
    • Fuzzing: Perform fuzz testing of receivers with malformed and unexpected input to identify potential vulnerabilities.
    • WAF (for HTTP-based receivers): Use a Web Application Firewall (WAF) to filter malicious input based on known attack patterns.
    • Least Privilege: Run the Collector with the least necessary privileges.

Threat: Data Manipulation via Processor Misconfiguration (Processor)

• Description: An attacker with access to the Collector's configuration (either a malicious insider or through a compromised system) modifies processor settings (e.g., filter, attributes, metricstransform, resource, groupbyattrs processors). They might: * Drop specific attributes or metrics to hide malicious activity. * Modify attribute values to inject false data or disrupt monitoring dashboards. * Disable or misconfigure sampling to reduce the effectiveness of monitoring. * Add resource-intensive processors to cause performance degradation.
  • Impact: Telemetry data is altered or lost, leading to inaccurate monitoring, delayed incident response, and potentially masking security breaches. The integrity of the telemetry pipeline is compromised.
  • Affected Component: Processor configuration, specific processor implementations (e.g., processor/filter, processor/attributes, processor/metricstransform, processor/resource, processor/groupbyattrs).
  • Risk Severity: High
  • Mitigation Strategies:
    • Access Control: Implement strict access controls on the Collector's configuration file(s) and any systems that manage the configuration. Use the principle of least privilege.
    • Configuration Management: Use a configuration management system (e.g., Ansible, Chef, Puppet, Kubernetes ConfigMaps) with version control, auditing, and change management processes.
    • Regular Audits: Regularly review the Collector's configuration for unauthorized changes and deviations from the expected configuration.
    • Input Validation (for configuration): If the configuration is loaded dynamically, implement validation to prevent injection of malicious processor configurations.

Threat: Credential Exposure (Exporter)

• Description: An attacker gains access to the Collector's configuration file or the environment variables of the Collector process. The configuration contains sensitive credentials (API keys, passwords, tokens) for accessing backend systems (e.g., monitoring platforms, databases). The attacker might exploit a vulnerability in the Collector, compromise the host system, or gain access through social engineering.
  • Impact: The attacker obtains credentials that allow them to access and potentially compromise backend systems. This could lead to data breaches, data manipulation, service disruption, and significant financial or reputational damage.
  • Affected Component: Exporter configuration (e.g., exporter/otlphttp, exporter/otlp, exporter/prometheusremotewrite, exporter/logging), credential handling logic.
  • Risk Severity: Critical
  • Mitigation Strategies:
    • Secret Management: Never store credentials directly in the Collector's configuration file. Use a secure secret management system (e.g., HashiCorp Vault, AWS Secrets Manager, Azure Key Vault, Kubernetes Secrets) to store and retrieve credentials.
    • Environment Variables: Use environment variables to inject credentials into the Collector's process, avoiding storage in configuration files.
    • Least Privilege (for backend access): Grant the Collector the minimum necessary permissions on the backend systems.
    • Credential Rotation: Regularly rotate credentials used by the Collector.
    • Access Control (for configuration): Implement strict access controls on the Collector's configuration file and environment.

Threat: Data Exfiltration to Unauthorized Destination (Exporter)

• Description: An attacker modifies the Collector's configuration to redirect telemetry data to an attacker-controlled server. They might change the endpoint URL, API key, or other settings of an exporter (e.g., exporter/otlphttp, exporter/otlp). The attacker could gain access to the configuration through a vulnerability, compromised credentials, or insider threat.
  • Impact: Sensitive telemetry data (including potentially sensitive application data, logs, and metrics) is sent to an unauthorized party. This could lead to data breaches, privacy violations, and exposure of intellectual property.
  • Affected Component: Exporter configuration (e.g., exporter/otlphttp, exporter/otlp, exporter/prometheusremotewrite), endpoint configuration, network communication logic.
  • Risk Severity: Critical
  • Mitigation Strategies:
    • Access Control: Implement strict access controls on the Collector's configuration file(s) and any systems that manage the configuration.
    • Configuration Management: Use a configuration management system with version control, auditing, and change management processes.
    • Regular Audits: Regularly review the Collector's configuration for unauthorized changes, particularly exporter endpoints.
    • Network Segmentation: Use network segmentation and firewalls to restrict the Collector's outbound network access to only authorized destinations. Implement egress filtering.
    • Monitoring: Monitor network traffic from the Collector to detect connections to unexpected or suspicious destinations.

Threat: Privilege Escalation (Core Collector)

• Description: An attacker exploits a vulnerability in the Collector (e.g., in a receiver, processor, or core component) to gain elevated privileges on the host system. The Collector might be running with excessive privileges (e.g., as root), making it a more attractive target. The vulnerability could be a buffer overflow, code injection flaw, or other type of security issue.
  • Impact: The attacker gains control of the host system, potentially leading to:
    • Complete system compromise.
    • Data exfiltration.
    • Data manipulation.
    • Installation of malware.
    • Use of the compromised system for further attacks.
  • Affected Component: Any vulnerable component within the Collector (receiver, processor, exporter, core logic), operating system interaction points.
  • Risk Severity: Critical
  • Mitigation Strategies:
    • Least Privilege: Run the Collector process with the least necessary privileges. Never run the Collector as root unless absolutely necessary. Use a dedicated, unprivileged user account.
    • Containerization: Use containerization (e.g., Docker, Kubernetes) to isolate the Collector process and limit its access to the host system. Configure appropriate resource limits and security contexts for the container.
    • Patching: Keep the Collector and all its components up-to-date with the latest security patches.
    • Vulnerability Scanning: Regularly scan the Collector and its dependencies for known vulnerabilities.
    • Security Hardening: Apply security hardening best practices to the host operating system.