threat-modeling.md

Threat Model Analysis for macrozheng/mall

Threat: Insecure Admin Panel Access Control

• Description: Attackers could attempt to gain unauthorized access to the mall admin panel through methods like credential guessing, brute-forcing login pages, or exploiting vulnerabilities in the admin login mechanism specific to mall's implementation. Successful access grants full administrative control.
• Impact: Full platform compromise, data breaches (customer, product, order data), financial fraud, website defacement, denial of service, complete loss of business operation control.
• Affected Component: Admin Panel Module, Authentication System (specifically admin authentication within mall)
• Risk Severity: Critical
• Mitigation Strategies:
  • Immediately change default admin credentials upon deployment.
  • Enforce strong, unique passwords for all admin accounts.
  • Mandatory multi-factor authentication (MFA) for all admin accounts.
  • Implement robust account lockout policies after failed login attempts to the admin panel.
  • Regular security audits focusing on admin panel access controls.
  • Consider IP address whitelisting for admin panel access.

Threat: Vulnerabilities in User Authentication Mechanisms

• Description: Attackers could exploit weaknesses in mall's user authentication implementation, such as flawed password hashing, session management vulnerabilities (specific to mall's code), or lack of account lockout for user accounts. Exploitation methods could include credential stuffing, phishing attacks targeting mall users, or exploiting coding errors in mall's authentication logic.
• Impact: Widespread user account takeover, unauthorized access to user data (personal information, order history, potentially payment details if mishandled by mall), fraudulent orders placed using compromised accounts, significant reputational damage and loss of customer trust.
• Affected Component: User Registration Module, Login Module, Session Management (specifically user authentication within mall)
• Risk Severity: High
• Mitigation Strategies:
  • Utilize strong and salted password hashing algorithms (e.g., bcrypt, Argon2) within mall's user authentication.
  • Implement secure session management practices, including HTTP-only and Secure flags for cookies, and session ID regeneration after login within mall.
  • Generate cryptographically secure, unpredictable session IDs specific to mall.
  • Implement account lockout policies after failed login attempts for user accounts.
  • Consider rate limiting login attempts to protect against brute-force attacks.
  • Encourage users to adopt strong, unique passwords.
  • Offer and promote multi-factor authentication (MFA) for user accounts.

Threat: Insufficient Authorization Checks in E-commerce Workflows

• Description: Attackers could bypass authorization checks within mall's application code to access or modify resources or perform actions beyond their authorized scope. This might involve manipulating API requests specific to mall's API structure, URL parameters in mall's web application, or exploiting logic flaws in mall's authorization implementation to access sensitive e-commerce data or functions. For example, accessing another user's order details or manipulating order status if authorization is not correctly enforced in mall's code.
• Impact: Unauthorized access to sensitive e-commerce data (other users' orders, personal information, potentially admin-level data if authorization is broadly flawed), ability to perform unauthorized actions (e.g., modifying orders, accessing admin-like functions if authorization is weak across mall's modules), business logic bypass leading to financial loss or data corruption.
• Affected Component: Order Management Module, User Profile Module, Shopping Cart Module, API Endpoints (specifically authorization logic within mall's components)
• Risk Severity: High
• Mitigation Strategies:
  • Implement robust authorization checks at every layer of mall's application (controller, service, data access layers).
  • Apply the principle of least privilege when defining roles and permissions within mall.
  • Thoroughly validate user roles and permissions before granting access to any resource or action within mall.
  • Conduct regular security reviews and penetration testing specifically focused on authorization logic within mall.
  • Utilize a well-defined and tested authorization framework or library within the mall project.

Threat: Insecure Storage of Customer Data

• Description: If attackers gain unauthorized access to the database or storage systems used by mall, they could access sensitive customer data if it is not adequately secured within mall's data storage implementation. This could result from a lack of encryption at rest in mall's database setup, weak access controls to the database specifically within mall's infrastructure, or vulnerabilities in how mall manages database connections and credentials.
• Impact: Large-scale data breaches, severe privacy violations, significant regulatory fines (GDPR, CCPA, etc.), major reputational damage, legal liabilities, identity theft affecting a large customer base.
• Affected Component: Database (specifically how mall interacts with and stores data in the database), User Data Storage, Order Data Storage, Customer Profile Module (data handling within mall modules)
• Risk Severity: Critical
• Mitigation Strategies:
  • Implement strong encryption for sensitive data at rest within mall's database and storage systems (database-level encryption, file system encryption if applicable).
  • Enforce strict access controls to the database and storage systems, limiting access based on the principle of least privilege, specifically for mall's database access.
  • Regularly audit access to sensitive data stored by mall.
  • Mask or pseudonymize sensitive data in non-production environments and logs related to mall.
  • Ensure full compliance with relevant data privacy regulations (GDPR, CCPA, etc.) in how mall handles and stores data.

Threat: Insecure Handling of Payment Information (if directly handled by mall)

• Description: If macrozheng/mall is designed to directly handle payment card details (which is strongly discouraged and a major design flaw for an e-commerce platform), vulnerabilities in this handling process within mall's code could lead to the exposure of highly sensitive payment information. This could stem from insecure storage of payment data by mall, logging of payment details by mall, or vulnerabilities in mall's payment processing code itself.
• Impact: Catastrophic financial loss, devastating reputational damage, severe legal liabilities, PCI DSS compliance violations leading to significant penalties and inability to process payments, complete erosion of customer trust and business viability.
• Affected Component: Payment Processing Module (if directly handled by mall code), Order Processing Module (payment flow within mall)
• Risk Severity: Critical
• Mitigation Strategies:
  • Absolutely avoid direct handling of payment card details within mall's code.
  • Mandatory integration with PCI DSS compliant payment gateways and completely offload payment processing to these secure third-party services.
  • If, against best practices, direct handling is attempted, implement extremely strict PCI DSS compliant security controls throughout mall's payment processing flow.
  • Never store sensitive payment data persistently within mall's systems unless absolutely unavoidable and then only with extremely strong encryption and security measures exceeding industry best practices.
  • Conduct extremely rigorous and frequent security audits of any payment processing components within mall if direct handling is attempted.

Threat: Data Leakage through API Endpoints

• Description: Attackers could exploit poorly designed or insecurely implemented API endpoints exposed by mall to extract sensitive data. This could be due to excessive data exposure in API responses from mall's APIs, lack of proper authorization on API endpoints specific to mall's API design, API enumeration vulnerabilities in mall's API structure, or insecure API design patterns used within mall.
• Impact: Large-scale data breaches, privacy violations, unauthorized access to business-critical information (product data, sales data, customer behavior data, etc.), competitive disadvantage due to leaked business intelligence, potential for further attacks based on leaked information.
• Affected Component: API Endpoints (design and implementation of mall's APIs), API Gateway (if used by mall), Backend Services (data retrieval and exposure logic within mall)
• Risk Severity: High
• Mitigation Strategies:
  • Implement robust authorization and authentication for all API endpoints exposed by mall.
  • Adhere to secure API design principles, including the principle of least privilege for data exposure in API responses from mall.
  • Perform regular security audits and penetration testing specifically targeting mall's API endpoints.
  • Implement rate limiting and thorough input validation for all API requests to mall.
  • Utilize API gateways to manage, monitor, and secure mall's APIs.
  • Regularly review and minimize the amount of sensitive data exposed through API responses.