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attack-surface.md

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Attack Surface Analysis for apache/shardingsphere

Attack Surface: Misconfigured Sharding Rules

  • Description: Incorrectly defined sharding rules can lead to data inconsistencies, routing errors, and potential data exposure.
    • How ShardingSphere Contributes: ShardingSphere's core functionality relies on user-defined sharding rules. The complexity of these rules, and the logic within ShardingSphere for interpreting them, creates opportunities for errors that directly impact data routing and consistency.
    • Example: A rule that uses a modulo operation on a user ID for sharding, but the ID generation logic changes, causing new users to be incorrectly routed by ShardingSphere. Or, a rule that accidentally sends sensitive data to a less-secure shard due to ShardingSphere's interpretation.
    • Impact: Data corruption, data loss, denial of service (due to inefficient queries), information disclosure.
    • Risk Severity: High
    • Mitigation Strategies:
      • Rigorous Testing: Thoroughly test sharding rules with a wide range of data and query patterns, including edge cases and boundary conditions. Use automated testing frameworks that specifically target ShardingSphere's routing logic.
      • Configuration Validation: Implement strict validation of configuration changes before they are applied to ShardingSphere. Use a schema or configuration language that supports validation against ShardingSphere's expected rule format.
      • Configuration Management: Use a configuration management system (e.g., Git, Ansible, Chef) to track and audit changes to ShardingSphere's sharding rules. Implement a rollback mechanism.
      • Regular Audits: Periodically review and audit ShardingSphere's sharding rules to ensure they remain correct and aligned with the application's evolving requirements.
      • Least Privilege (Data Routing): Design sharding rules, within ShardingSphere, to minimize the amount of data accessible from any single shard, reducing the impact of a compromised shard.

Attack Surface: Weak ShardingSphere-Proxy Authentication/Authorization

  • Description: Insufficient authentication or authorization on the ShardingSphere-Proxy allows unauthorized access to the database cluster through ShardingSphere.
    • How ShardingSphere Contributes: ShardingSphere-Proxy acts as a database gateway, and its security is paramount. It provides its own authentication and authorization layer, separate from the backend databases. This layer is entirely within ShardingSphere's control.
    • Example: Using the default ShardingSphere-Proxy username/password, or configuring a user within ShardingSphere-Proxy with excessive privileges (e.g., granting ALL PRIVILEGES instead of only SELECT on specific tables, as defined within ShardingSphere).
    • Impact: Complete database compromise, data theft, data modification, denial of service.
    • Risk Severity: Critical
    • Mitigation Strategies:
      • Strong Passwords: Enforce strong, unique passwords for all ShardingSphere-Proxy users. Use a password manager.
      • Robust Authentication: Use a strong authentication mechanism within ShardingSphere-Proxy (e.g., password hashing with a secure algorithm like bcrypt or Argon2). Consider integrating with an external identity provider (e.g., LDAP, Kerberos) through ShardingSphere's configuration.
      • Least Privilege (Proxy Users): Grant ShardingSphere-Proxy users only the minimum necessary privileges required for their tasks, as configured within ShardingSphere. Avoid granting global privileges.
      • Disable Unused Authentication: Disable any authentication methods within ShardingSphere-Proxy that are not actively used.
      • Regular Credential Rotation: Implement a policy for regularly rotating ShardingSphere-Proxy credentials.

Attack Surface: Unprotected Management Interfaces (DistSQL/YAML)

  • Description: Exposed management interfaces of ShardingSphere, without proper security, allow attackers to reconfigure ShardingSphere, potentially disabling security features or altering sharding rules.
    • How ShardingSphere Contributes: ShardingSphere provides management interfaces (DistSQL, YAML configuration endpoints) for dynamic configuration and administration. These are entirely part of ShardingSphere.
    • Example: Leaving the DistSQL interface accessible on a public IP address without authentication, allowing an attacker to execute DROP DATABASE or modify sharding rules within ShardingSphere.
    • Impact: Complete system compromise, data loss, denial of service.
    • Risk Severity: Critical
    • Mitigation Strategies:
      • Network Segmentation: Restrict access to ShardingSphere's management interfaces to a trusted internal network or specific IP addresses using firewall rules.
      • Strong Authentication: Require strong authentication (e.g., multi-factor authentication) for all access to ShardingSphere's management interfaces.
      • Authorization: Implement role-based access control (RBAC) within ShardingSphere to limit the actions that can be performed through management interfaces.
      • Disable Unused Interfaces: If a ShardingSphere management interface (e.g., DistSQL) is not required, disable it completely.
      • Auditing: Log all access and actions performed through ShardingSphere's management interfaces.

Attack Surface: ShardingSphere-Specific SQL Injection

  • Description: Exploiting vulnerabilities in ShardingSphere's SQL parsing and rewriting engine to bypass sharding rules or execute unintended SQL on backend databases.
    • How ShardingSphere Contributes: ShardingSphere parses and rewrites SQL queries to route them to the correct shards. This parsing logic, internal to ShardingSphere, introduces a new potential attack surface.
    • Example: Crafting a SQL query with specially designed comments or escape sequences that confuse ShardingSphere's parser, causing it to route the query to the wrong shard or execute unintended SQL on the backend database. This is entirely dependent on ShardingSphere's internal logic.
    • Impact: Data leakage, data modification, denial of service, bypassing application-level security controls.
    • Risk Severity: High
    • Mitigation Strategies:
      • Input Validation (Pre-ShardingSphere): Implement rigorous input validation before the SQL query reaches ShardingSphere. This helps prevent malicious SQL from reaching ShardingSphere's parser. While this is an application-level concern, it's crucial for mitigating this ShardingSphere-specific vulnerability.
      • ShardingSphere Updates: Keep ShardingSphere updated to the latest version to benefit from security patches and improvements to the SQL parser. This is the most direct mitigation.
      • Fuzz Testing: Perform fuzz testing of the ShardingSphere SQL parser with a variety of malicious and edge-case SQL inputs to identify potential vulnerabilities within ShardingSphere.
      • Monitoring: Monitor ShardingSphere logs for unusual SQL patterns or errors that might indicate attempted SQL injection attacks targeting ShardingSphere.

Attack Surface: DistSQL Injection

  • Description: Injection of malicious DistSQL commands to alter ShardingSphere's configuration.
    • How ShardingSphere Contributes: DistSQL is ShardingSphere's own configuration language, providing powerful administrative capabilities entirely within ShardingSphere.
    • Example: An attacker gaining access to the DistSQL interface and executing commands like ALTER SHARDING RULE to redirect traffic or DROP DATABASE to cause data loss. This is a direct attack on ShardingSphere.
    • Impact: Complete system compromise, data loss, denial of service.
    • Risk Severity: Critical
    • Mitigation Strategies:
      • Secure Access: Restrict network access to the ShardingSphere DistSQL interface to trusted hosts and networks.
      • Strong Authentication: Enforce strong authentication for ShardingSphere's DistSQL access, ideally with multi-factor authentication.
      • Authorization (RBAC): Implement role-based access control within ShardingSphere to limit the DistSQL commands that different users can execute.
      • Input Validation: If DistSQL commands are accepted from user input (which should be avoided if possible), implement strict input validation and sanitization specifically for DistSQL syntax.
      • Auditing: Log all DistSQL commands executed within ShardingSphere, including the user, timestamp, and command details.