Skip to content

Latest commit

 

History

History
55 lines (44 loc) · 5.19 KB

threat-modeling.md

File metadata and controls

55 lines (44 loc) · 5.19 KB

Threat Model Analysis for stirling-tools/stirling-pdf

Threat: Dependency Vulnerability (PDF Parsing)

  • Description: An attacker exploits a known vulnerability in a PDF parsing library used by Stirling-PDF (e.g., PDFBox, iText). The attacker uploads a specially crafted PDF file that triggers the vulnerability, such as a buffer overflow, integer overflow, or code injection flaw.
    • Impact: Remote Code Execution (RCE) on the server, allowing the attacker to execute arbitrary commands. Denial of Service (DoS) by crashing the application. Information Disclosure, potentially revealing sensitive data.
    • Affected Component: Underlying PDF parsing libraries (e.g., org.apache.pdfbox.*, com.itextpdf.* packages, or specific classes within). Affects all Stirling-PDF features that parse PDF content.
    • Risk Severity: Critical
    • Mitigation Strategies:
      • Automated Dependency Updates: Use tools like Dependabot or Snyk for automatic detection and updates.
      • Vulnerability Scanning: Regularly scan dependencies with tools like OWASP Dependency-Check or Trivy.
      • Sandboxing: Run the PDF processing component in a restricted environment (e.g., Docker container).
      • Input Validation (Limited): Basic input validation (e.g., file size limits) can offer some mitigation.

Threat: Dependency Vulnerability (Image Processing)

  • Description: An attacker exploits a vulnerability in an image processing library used by Stirling-PDF for OCR, image extraction, etc. A malicious PDF with a crafted image triggers the vulnerability.
    • Impact: RCE, DoS, Information Disclosure – similar to PDF parsing vulnerabilities.
    • Affected Component: Underlying image processing libraries (depends on Stirling-PDF's implementation; may include java.awt.image.* or third-party libraries). Affects OCR, image extraction, and potentially PDF rendering.
    • Risk Severity: Critical
    • Mitigation Strategies: Same as for PDF parsing dependency vulnerabilities: automated updates, vulnerability scanning, and sandboxing.

Threat: Dependency Vulnerability (OCR)

  • Description: An attacker exploits a vulnerability in OCR libraries used by Stirling-PDF for text recognition. The attacker uploads a PDF containing a malicious image designed to exploit a vulnerability in the OCR library.
    • Impact: RCE, DoS, Information Disclosure – similar to PDF parsing vulnerabilities.
    • Affected Component: Underlying OCR libraries (specific libraries will depend on Stirling-PDF's implementation and may include libraries like Tesseract). This affects features like OCR.
    • Risk Severity: Critical
    • Mitigation Strategies: Same as for PDF parsing dependency vulnerabilities: automated updates, vulnerability scanning, and potential sandboxing.

Threat: Malicious PDF Input (Stirling-PDF Logic Flaw)

  • Description: An attacker crafts a PDF file that exploits a bug within Stirling-PDF's own code (not a dependency). This could be a flaw in handling specific PDF features, a buffer overflow, or a logic error.
    • Impact: RCE, DoS, Information Disclosure, or bypassing security controls within Stirling-PDF.
    • Affected Component: Specific Stirling-PDF modules and functions that handle PDF parsing, manipulation, and feature processing. Could be in any part of the codebase that interacts directly with PDF data (e.g., processAnnotations(), extractFormData(), parseObject()).
    • Risk Severity: High
    • Mitigation Strategies:
      • Sandboxing: Crucial to contain the impact of an exploit.
      • Fuzz Testing: Integrate fuzz testing (or encourage maintainers to do so).
      • Code Review: Thorough code reviews, focusing on complex PDF structure handling.
      • Input Validation (Limited): Basic input validation can help, but is not a primary defense.

Threat: Resource Exhaustion (PDF Bomb)

  • Description: An attacker uploads a "PDF bomb" designed to consume excessive server resources (CPU, memory, disk space) – e.g., a PDF with deeply nested structures, high-resolution images, or many pages.
    • Impact: Denial of Service (DoS) – the application becomes unresponsive or crashes.
    • Affected Component: All Stirling-PDF components involved in PDF processing. The most affected component depends on the type of PDF bomb.
    • Risk Severity: High
    • Mitigation Strategies:
      • Strict Input Size Limits: Enforce limits on uploaded PDF file size.
      • Resource Limits (Per Process/Container): Configure CPU and memory limits for the PDF processing component.
      • Timeouts: Implement timeouts for all PDF processing operations.
      • Rate Limiting: Limit the number of PDF processing requests per user/IP.
      • Monitoring: Monitor resource usage to detect potential DoS attacks.