threat-modeling.md

Threat Model Analysis for macrozheng/mall

Threat: Merchant Account Takeover

Description: An attacker gains unauthorized access to a merchant account within mall. This could be through exploiting weak authentication in mall's merchant login, vulnerabilities in session management specific to merchant accounts, or flaws in merchant-specific API endpoints. Once in, the attacker can manipulate product listings, access sales data, and potentially redirect payments, directly impacting merchants using the mall platform.

Impact: Financial loss for merchants, reputational damage to the platform, data breach of merchant and potentially customer data, manipulation of product offerings leading to customer dissatisfaction and loss of trust in the mall platform.

Affected Component: mall's Merchant Authentication Module, mall's Merchant Account Management Functionality, mall's Product Management Module, mall's Order Management Module, mall's Payment Processing Integration (indirectly via merchant settings).

Risk Severity: High

Mitigation Strategies:

• Implement strong, mall-specific password policies for merchant accounts, enforced within the application.
• Mandatory multi-factor authentication (MFA) for merchant logins within mall.
• Regular security audits and penetration testing specifically targeting mall's merchant authentication and authorization mechanisms.
• Implement robust session management for merchant accounts within mall, preventing session hijacking or fixation.
• Monitor merchant account activity within mall for suspicious behavior and implement alerting.

Threat: Customer Account Takeover via Insecure Password Reset in mall

Description: An attacker exploits vulnerabilities specific to mall's implementation of the password reset process to gain access to customer accounts. This could be due to predictable password reset tokens generated by mall, lack of proper email verification within mall's reset flow, or vulnerabilities in how mall handles password reset links. This is distinct from general password reset vulnerabilities and focuses on flaws in mall's code.

Impact: Data breach of customer personal and financial data stored within mall, financial loss for customers due to fraudulent purchases made through their mall accounts, reputational damage specifically to the mall platform, loss of customer trust in mall.

Affected Component: mall's Password Reset Functionality, mall's User Authentication Module, mall's Customer Account Management Module.

Risk Severity: High

Mitigation Strategies:

• Implement a secure password reset mechanism within mall using cryptographically strong, unpredictable tokens.
• Mandatory email verification for password reset requests within mall's workflow.
• Use time-limited password reset links generated and validated by mall.
• Thoroughly test mall's password reset functionality for vulnerabilities.

Threat: Exposure of Customer Personal Data via Insecure mall API Endpoint

Description: An attacker discovers or gains access to an insecure API endpoint developed as part of mall that unintentionally exposes customer personal data. This is not a general API security issue, but a vulnerability in a specific API endpoint designed and implemented within mall for e-commerce functions. This could be due to lack of authentication in mall's API, improper authorization checks within mall's API logic, or overly permissive API responses designed by mall developers.

Impact: Data breach of customer personal data managed by mall, violation of privacy regulations (GDPR, CCPA etc.) due to mall's data handling, reputational damage specifically to the mall platform, legal liabilities for the mall platform operators.

Affected Component: mall's Customer API Endpoints, mall's API Gateway (if implemented as part of mall), mall's Data Access Layer, mall's Logging and Monitoring (if logs expose data due to mall's logging practices).

Risk Severity: High

Mitigation Strategies:

• Implement robust authentication and authorization for all mall API endpoints.
• Follow the principle of least privilege when designing mall API responses (return only necessary data).
• Regularly audit mall API endpoints for security vulnerabilities, specifically focusing on data exposure.
• Use secure coding practices within mall development to prevent data leaks through APIs.

Threat: Insecure Admin Panel Access to mall Backend

Description: An attacker gains unauthorized access to the admin panel of mall due to weak or default admin credentials set up for mall, lack of MFA in mall's admin login, or publicly accessible admin panel URLs due to mall's deployment configuration. This is specifically about securing the admin interface provided by mall. Once in, the attacker can perform administrative actions within mall, potentially compromising the entire e-commerce platform, including accessing sensitive data, modifying system configurations, and disrupting mall operations.

Impact: Complete compromise of the mall platform, data breach of all data (customer, merchant, system) managed by mall, system downtime of the mall platform, reputational damage to the mall platform, significant financial loss for the mall platform operators and merchants.

Affected Component: mall's Admin Panel Authentication, mall's Admin Panel Authorization, mall's Admin Panel Functionality, mall's Backend System.

Risk Severity: Critical

Mitigation Strategies:

• Enforce strong password policies for admin accounts within mall.
• Mandatory multi-factor authentication (MFA) for all admin logins to mall's admin panel.
• Restrict access to the mall admin panel to authorized IP addresses or networks at the deployment level, but guided by mall's architecture.
• Regularly audit admin user accounts and permissions within mall.
• Implement intrusion detection and prevention systems for mall admin panel access.
• Use a non-default and hard-to-guess URL for the mall admin panel during deployment and configuration of mall.

Threat: SQL Injection in mall Admin Panel Functionality

Description: An attacker exploits SQL injection vulnerabilities in input fields within the mall admin panel. This is due to insufficient input sanitization or lack of parameterized queries in the code of mall's admin panel functionalities. Successful SQL injection can allow the attacker to bypass authentication in mall, access or modify database data managed by mall, or even execute arbitrary commands on the database server underlying mall. This is a direct vulnerability in mall's code.

Impact: Data breach of data stored in mall's database, data manipulation within mall's system, potential system compromise of the server hosting mall, privilege escalation within mall, denial of service of the mall platform.

Affected Component: mall's Admin Panel Input Forms, mall's Database Interaction Layer, Backend Database used by mall.

Risk Severity: Critical

Mitigation Strategies:

• Use parameterized queries or prepared statements throughout mall's codebase for all database interactions.
• Implement robust input validation and sanitization on all admin panel input fields within mall's admin panel code.
• Regularly perform static and dynamic code analysis of mall's codebase to identify SQL injection vulnerabilities.
• Use an application-level firewall (WAF) to detect and block SQL injection attempts targeting mall.
• Train mall developers on secure coding practices to prevent SQL injection vulnerabilities.

Threat: Vulnerable E-commerce Specific Library Used by mall

Description: mall uses a third-party library or component specifically designed for e-commerce functionality (e.g., payment processing, shipping integration) that contains a known security vulnerability. This is a vulnerability introduced by a dependency used by mall. If not patched in the mall deployment, this vulnerability can be exploited by attackers to compromise mall.

Impact: Depends on the vulnerability in the library, could range from data breach of data managed by mall to system compromise of the server hosting mall, denial of service of the mall platform, or financial loss due to exploitation of payment processing vulnerabilities.

Affected Component: Third-Party Libraries used by mall, Dependency Management in mall's project, mall's Payment Processing Module, mall's Shipping Integration Module, etc.

Risk Severity: Varies (can be High to Critical depending on the vulnerability in the dependency)

Mitigation Strategies:

• Maintain a detailed inventory of all third-party libraries and components used by mall and its dependencies.
• Regularly monitor security advisories and vulnerability databases for known vulnerabilities in mall's dependencies.
• Implement a patch management process to promptly update vulnerable libraries and components used by mall.
• Use dependency scanning tools to automatically detect vulnerable dependencies in mall's project.
• Consider using Software Composition Analysis (SCA) tools for better dependency management and vulnerability tracking for mall.