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attack-surface.md

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Attack Surface Analysis for sortablejs/sortable

Attack Surface: Altered Item Order

  • Description: Malicious manipulation of the order of sortable elements to achieve an unauthorized outcome.
  • SortableJS Contribution: SortableJS is the mechanism that enables client-side reordering, making this attack directly dependent on its functionality.
  • Example: An attacker reorders steps in a workflow to bypass a required approval step, or changes the priority of tasks to gain an unfair advantage, or modifies the order of financial transactions.
  • Impact: Unauthorized actions, incorrect processing, data corruption, potential financial loss, or privilege escalation. The impact is directly tied to how the application uses the order.
  • Risk Severity: High to Critical (Critical if order affects security-critical operations or financial data).
  • Mitigation Strategies:
    • Server-Side Order Validation: The server must independently verify the received order against a known-good state or a set of business rules. Never trust the client-provided order.
    • Cryptographic Hashing (Optional, but Recommended): Hash the initial, valid order and compare it to a hash of the received order to detect any unauthorized changes.
    • Auditing: Log all order changes, including the user, timestamp, and before/after states.

Attack Surface: Injection of Invalid Data (via Data Attributes)

  • Description: Modification of data attributes associated with sortable elements to inject malicious values.
  • SortableJS Contribution: SortableJS allows elements to have data attributes, and these attributes are transmitted during drag-and-drop operations. The library itself doesn't validate these attributes, making it a conduit for this attack.
  • Example: An attacker changes a data-id attribute to point to a different, unauthorized resource, or injects JavaScript code into a data-description attribute that is later rendered without sanitization (leading to XSS).
  • Impact: Indirect XSS, unauthorized access to resources, data corruption, potential for code execution (if XSS is successful).
  • Risk Severity: High to Critical (XSS is typically High; unauthorized resource access can be Critical).
  • Mitigation Strategies:
    • Data Attribute Whitelisting: The server should only accept a predefined, strictly limited set of data attributes.
    • Data Attribute Validation: Rigorously validate the content of each allowed data attribute (type, length, format, allowed values).
    • Input Sanitization (for Rendering): If data attributes are ever rendered back to the user, use proper output encoding/sanitization to prevent XSS. This is crucial.
    • Content Security Policy (CSP): Use a strong CSP to restrict the execution of inline scripts, significantly mitigating the impact of XSS.

Attack Surface: Malicious Event Handler Exploitation (Indirect XSS)

  • Description: Injecting malicious JavaScript code into SortableJS event handlers.
  • SortableJS Contribution: SortableJS provides the event system (onAdd, onUpdate, onRemove, etc.) that allows developers to attach JavaScript code. This event system is the direct vector for this attack.
  • Example: If the application dynamically generates event handler code based on user input without any sanitization, an attacker could inject malicious script (e.g., <div ondrag="alert('XSS'); //maliciousCode()">).
  • Impact: Cross-Site Scripting (XSS), allowing the attacker to execute arbitrary code in the context of the victim's browser.
  • Risk Severity: High.
  • Mitigation Strategies:
    • Avoid Dynamic Event Handlers: Strongly prefer static event handlers. Dynamic generation is extremely risky.
    • Extremely Rigorous Input Sanitization (If Unavoidable): If dynamic event handlers are absolutely necessary, use a robust sanitization library and a very strict whitelist of allowed characters. This is a very high-risk approach and should be avoided if at all possible.
    • Content Security Policy (CSP): A strong CSP is essential to prevent the execution of inline scripts, significantly mitigating the risk of XSS. This is the most important mitigation for this attack.