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Threat Model Analysis for tsenart/vegeta

Threat: Unintentional Denial of Service (DoS)

  • Description: Vegeta, when misconfigured or used without proper planning, can send an overwhelming number of requests to the target application. This floods the application with traffic, exceeding its capacity to process requests. Legitimate user requests are then delayed or dropped, making the application unavailable. This is a direct consequence of Vegeta's purpose and capabilities if not managed correctly.
    • Impact: Service disruption, application downtime, negative user experience, potential revenue loss, damage to reputation.
    • Vegeta Component Affected: Attacker module (configuration and execution of attacks).
    • Risk Severity: High (if production impact) / Medium (if testing environment impact - However, if production impact is possible, it's considered High for this filtered list).
    • Mitigation Strategies:
      • Rate Limiting in Vegeta: Use Vegeta's -rate flag to control the requests per second.
      • Gradual Ramp-Up: Start with low attack rates and incrementally increase them.
      • Resource Monitoring: Continuously monitor target system resources (CPU, memory, network) during tests.
      • Non-Production Testing: Conduct load tests in staging or pre-production environments that mirror production.
      • Circuit Breakers/Throttling in Target: Implement application-level rate limiting or circuit breaker patterns to protect against overload.
      • Rollback Plan: Have a plan to quickly stop the Vegeta attack and recover the target system if overload occurs.

Threat: Resource Exhaustion on Target Infrastructure Components

  • Description: Vegeta attacks can generate load that not only targets the application servers but also exhausts resources on supporting infrastructure like databases, load balancers, and firewalls. This can happen by overwhelming database connections, exceeding load balancer capacity, or triggering firewall rate limits. Vegeta's ability to generate high volume traffic directly contributes to this risk.
    • Impact: Infrastructure instability, performance degradation across multiple services, potential cascading failures, broader outages beyond the target application.
    • Vegeta Component Affected: Attacker module (volume and type of traffic generated).
    • Risk Severity: High (if critical infrastructure is affected).
    • Mitigation Strategies:
      • Infrastructure Monitoring: Monitor resource utilization of all infrastructure components during load tests.
      • Infrastructure Capacity Planning: Ensure infrastructure is adequately sized to handle anticipated load tests and production traffic.
      • Isolated Infrastructure Testing: Test infrastructure components in isolation before full application load tests.
      • Realistic Test Scenarios: Design tests that simulate realistic user behavior and traffic patterns to avoid artificial infrastructure stress.
      • Rate Limiting (Infrastructure Level): Configure rate limiting or connection limits on infrastructure components like load balancers and firewalls.

Threat: Exposure of Sensitive Information in Vegeta Configuration

  • Description: Vegeta configuration files (e.g., attack definitions, scripts) might contain sensitive information like API keys, authentication tokens, or database credentials required to interact with the target application. If these configurations are not properly secured, they could be exposed. This is a risk directly related to how Vegeta is configured and used, as it requires defining attack parameters which might include sensitive data.
    • Impact: Credential compromise, unauthorized access to target application and data, data breaches, privilege escalation.
    • Vegeta Component Affected: Configuration files and scripts, potentially Attacker module if credentials are embedded in attack definitions.
    • Risk Severity: High (if critical credentials are exposed).
    • Mitigation Strategies:
      • Secure Credential Management: Use environment variables, secrets management tools (like HashiCorp Vault, AWS Secrets Manager), or secure configuration management systems to handle sensitive credentials.
      • Avoid Hardcoding: Never hardcode sensitive information directly in Vegeta configuration files or scripts.
      • Access Control: Implement strict access control to Vegeta configuration files and the systems where they are stored.
      • Version Control Security: If using version control, ensure repositories are private and access is restricted.
      • Regular Audits: Periodically review Vegeta configurations and scripts to ensure no sensitive data is inadvertently exposed.