Skip to content

Latest commit

 

History

History
64 lines (53 loc) · 6.3 KB

attack-surface.md

File metadata and controls

64 lines (53 loc) · 6.3 KB

Attack Surface Analysis for lmax-exchange/disruptor

Attack Surface: Ring Buffer Exhaustion (Producer Outpacing Consumer)

  • Description: Producers generate events faster than consumers can process them, leading to a buildup of events in the ring buffer. While the buffer doesn't "overflow" (it wraps), the practical effect is similar: producers may block (depending on the WaitStrategy), leading to application slowdown or unresponsiveness.
  • How Disruptor Contributes: The Disruptor's core mechanism is the ring buffer. Its performance characteristics encourage high-throughput event production, which, if not matched by consumer capacity, leads to this issue. This is a direct consequence of the Disruptor's design.
  • Example: A financial trading application receives a sudden burst of market data. The producers flood the Disruptor with trade events, but the consumers cannot keep up. Producers using a BlockingWaitStrategy start to block, halting the ingestion of new trades.
  • Impact: Denial of Service (DoS) – the application becomes unresponsive or experiences significant delays. Data loss may occur if a non-blocking WaitStrategy is used and events are overwritten.
  • Risk Severity: High
  • Mitigation Strategies:
    • Consumer Optimization: Profile and optimize consumer logic to maximize throughput.
    • Backpressure: Implement backpressure mechanisms before the Disruptor. Rate-limit producers or use a queue to absorb bursts.
    • WaitStrategy Selection: Carefully choose the WaitStrategy. BlockingWaitStrategy can lead to deadlocks; consider TimeoutBlockingWaitStrategy. BusySpinWaitStrategy consumes high CPU.
    • Monitoring: Monitor the remaining capacity of the ring buffer. Alert on low remaining capacity.
    • Ring Buffer Sizing: Choose an appropriate ring buffer size.

Attack Surface: Memory Exhaustion (Event Objects)

  • Description: Large or numerous event objects, combined with inefficient memory management or leaks in event handling, lead to excessive memory consumption.
  • How Disruptor Contributes: While the ring buffer itself is pre-allocated, the event objects within it are often allocated dynamically. The Disruptor's high throughput can amplify memory allocation issues if the event objects are not managed correctly. This is a direct interaction with how the Disruptor handles events.
  • Example: A logging system uses the Disruptor. Each log message is a large object. A memory leak in the consumer prevents these objects from being garbage collected, leading to an OutOfMemoryError.
  • Impact: Denial of Service (DoS) – the application crashes due to OutOfMemoryError.
  • Risk Severity: High
  • Mitigation Strategies:
    • Event Object Pooling: Use an EventFactory that pre-allocates and reuses event objects. This is crucial.
    • Event Object Design: Design event objects to be as small as possible.
    • Memory Profiling: Profile the application's memory usage.
    • Resource Release: Ensure resources held by event objects are properly released.

Attack Surface: Data Corruption (Incorrect Sequence Handling)

  • Description: Bugs in custom EventProcessor or EventHandler implementations, or direct (and incorrect) manipulation of sequence numbers, lead to out-of-order processing or data inconsistencies.
  • How Disruptor Contributes: The Disruptor relies on sequence numbers for ordering. Incorrect handling of these sequences within the Disruptor's context is the root cause. This is a direct attack surface of the Disruptor's core functionality.
  • Example: A custom EventHandler incorrectly increments the sequence number, causing events to be processed out of order.
  • Impact: Data corruption, application instability, incorrect results.
  • Risk Severity: High
  • Mitigation Strategies:
    • Avoid Direct Sequence Manipulation: Do not directly manipulate sequence numbers.
    • Thorough Testing: Extensively test any custom EventProcessor or EventHandler implementations.
    • Use Disruptor DSL: Prefer the provided Disruptor DSL and high-level APIs.

Attack Surface: Unhandled Exceptions in Event Handlers

  • Description: An EventHandler throws an unhandled exception, causing the EventProcessor to halt, preventing further event processing.
  • How Disruptor Contributes: The Disruptor's event processing model relies on EventHandler implementations. Uncaught exceptions within these handlers directly impact the Disruptor's operation, halting its core processing loop.
  • Example: An EventHandler attempts to write to a database, but the connection is unavailable, resulting in an unhandled exception. The EventProcessor stops.
  • Impact: Denial of Service (DoS) - Event processing stops.
  • Risk Severity: High
  • Mitigation Strategies:
    • Robust Exception Handling: Implement comprehensive exception handling within all EventHandler implementations.
    • ExceptionHandler: Use an ExceptionHandler with the EventProcessor to log, retry, or skip the event.

Attack Surface: Dependency Vulnerabilities (Vulnerable Disruptor Version)

  • Description: Using an outdated or vulnerable version of the Disruptor library.
    • How Disruptor Contributes: The vulnerability exists within the Disruptor library itself. This is a direct attack surface.
    • Example: A CVE is published for a specific version of the Disruptor, detailing a denial-of-service vulnerability.
    • Impact: Varies depending on the specific vulnerability (e.g., DoS, data corruption).
    • Risk Severity: Varies (High to Critical) depending on the vulnerability.
    • Mitigation Strategies:
      • Regular Updates: Keep the Disruptor library updated.
      • Vulnerability Monitoring: Monitor security advisories and CVE databases.
      • Dependency Management: Use dependency management tools.