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Threat Model Analysis for lmax-exchange/disruptor

Threat: Threat 1: Ring Buffer Overflow / Wrap-Around (Denial of Service)

  • Description: An attacker floods the system, causing producers to generate events faster than consumers can process. If the WaitStrategy is overwhelmed or improperly configured (e.g., a BlockingWaitStrategy with indefinitely blocked consumers), the ring buffer's sequence number wraps around, overwriting unprocessed events. This is a direct attack on the Disruptor's core mechanism.
    • Impact: Loss of critical events, application instability, and denial of service. Users cannot use the application.
    • Affected Disruptor Component: RingBuffer, WaitStrategy (the specific implementation chosen), Producer logic (indirectly, as the source).
    • Risk Severity: High
    • Mitigation Strategies:
      • Appropriate WaitStrategy: Choose a WaitStrategy that balances latency and backpressure handling. Avoid BlockingWaitStrategy without careful consideration of blocking conditions and timeouts. Prefer YieldingWaitStrategy, SleepingWaitStrategy, or TimeoutBlockingWaitStrategy.
      • Ring Buffer Capacity Monitoring: Implement monitoring to track remaining ring buffer capacity. Alert on low capacity.
      • Producer-Side Backpressure: Design producers to slow down or reject requests when the ring buffer is near full. Use tryPublishEvent and handle InsufficientCapacityException.
      • Rate Limiting (Input): Implement rate limiting before event production to prevent overwhelming the system.
      • Sufficient Ring Buffer Size: Ensure the ring buffer is adequately sized for peak load and consumer latency.

Threat: Threat 2: Blocking Operations in Event Handlers (Availability)

  • Description: An event handler performs a long-running or blocking operation (synchronous I/O, etc.). An attacker triggers actions that cause these operations to take an excessively long time. This directly impacts the Disruptor's ability to process events quickly, leading to a denial of service by delaying or preventing the processing of subsequent events. This is a direct attack on the Disruptor's performance guarantees.
    • Impact: Increased latency, potential denial of service, reduced throughput.
    • Affected Disruptor Component: EventHandler implementations, EventProcessor.
    • Risk Severity: High
    • Mitigation Strategies:
      • Asynchronous Operations: Use asynchronous I/O and non-blocking operations within event handlers.
      • Offload Blocking Tasks: Delegate long-running tasks to separate threads or processes, outside the Disruptor's event loop.
      • Timeouts: If blocking is unavoidable, use strict timeouts to prevent indefinite delays.
      • Separate Disruptor Instances: Use separate Disruptor instances for long-running tasks, isolating them from the main event flow.

Threat: Threat 3: Resource Exhaustion in Event Handlers (Availability)

  • Description: Event handlers consume excessive resources (memory, file handles, connections) without proper management. An attacker crafts input to trigger excessive resource allocation within a vulnerable event handler, directly impacting the Disruptor's ability to function and potentially crashing the entire application.
    • Impact: Application instability, denial of service, potential crashes.
    • Affected Disruptor Component: EventHandler implementations.
    • Risk Severity: High
    • Mitigation Strategies:
      • Resource Management: Implement proper resource management (e.g., try-finally for release, connection pooling).
      • Resource Limits: Set limits on resource usage (memory, open files, etc.).
      • Monitoring: Monitor resource usage to detect leaks or excessive consumption.
      • Input Validation: Validate input to prevent triggering excessive resource allocation.

Threat: Threat 4: Malicious Event Publication (Integrity/Availability)

  • Description: A compromised or buggy producer publishes incorrect, malformed, or duplicate events. An attacker with control over a producer (or able to inject messages into the producer's input) directly corrupts the data flowing through the Disruptor, leading to application state corruption, errors, or DoS.
    • Impact: Data corruption, application errors, crashes, denial of service.
    • Affected Disruptor Component: Producer logic, RingBuffer.publishEvent (and related methods).
    • Risk Severity: High
    • Mitigation Strategies:
      • Producer-Side Input Validation: Thoroughly validate all data before publishing it as an event.
      • Event Schema: Use a well-defined schema for event objects.
      • Authentication and Authorization: If producers are external, implement authentication and authorization.
      • Code Reviews: Focus code reviews on producer logic.
      • Rate Limiting: Limit the event publication rate to prevent flooding.

Threat: Threat 5: Disruptor Library Vulnerability (Integrity/Availability/Confidentiality)

  • Description: A vulnerability exists within the LMAX Disruptor library itself. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability to compromise the application. This is a direct threat to the underlying library.
    • Impact: Varies depending on the vulnerability, potentially ranging from denial of service to arbitrary code execution.
    • Affected Disruptor Component: The LMAX Disruptor library itself (any part).
    • Risk Severity: Low probability, but potentially High impact.
    • Mitigation Strategies:
      • Keep Updated: Maintain the Disruptor library at the latest stable version.
      • Monitor Security Advisories: Subscribe to security advisories and vulnerability databases.
      • Rapid Patching: Have a process for quickly updating the library.