Attack Surface Analysis for veged/coa

Attack Surface: Unexpected Command Execution

Description: An attacker manipulates input to execute commands or subcommands they shouldn't have access to.
- How coa Contributes: coa is directly responsible for command and subcommand routing based on user-provided input. Without proper application-side validation, coa will route to the attacker-specified command. This is the core function of coa, making it directly involved.
- Example: An application has commands view and admin. If input isn't validated, an attacker might provide "admin" as input when they should only have access to "view". coa executes the "admin" command.
- Impact: Execution of arbitrary code, data breaches, privilege escalation, system compromise.
- Risk Severity: Critical
- Mitigation Strategies:
  - Developers: Implement a strict whitelist of allowed commands. Reject any input that doesn't match. Avoid dynamic command construction based on user input. Use strong input validation.
  - Users: (Not directly applicable).

Attack Surface: Indirect Command Injection

Description: An attacker injects shell metacharacters into arguments parsed by coa. While the injection itself happens in the application logic using the parsed arguments, coa's role in providing those arguments is direct and essential.
- How coa Contributes: coa directly parses the attacker-provided input containing malicious metacharacters, making this data available to the application. Without coa parsing the input, the injection wouldn't be possible in this specific way (through the command-line interface).
- Example: A command takes a filename: app process --file [user_input]. The application then uses cat [user_input] internally. An attacker provides "; rm -rf /; #" as the filename. coa parses this string and passes it to the application.
- Impact: Execution of arbitrary shell commands, system compromise, data loss, denial of service.
- Risk Severity: Critical
- Mitigation Strategies:
  - Developers: Avoid shell commands whenever possible. Use language-specific APIs. If unavoidable, use parameterized execution (e.g., exec.Command in Go with separate arguments). Never concatenate user input into shell commands. Strictly validate and sanitize all input before passing it to coa and after receiving it from coa.
  - Users: (Not directly applicable).

Attack Surface: Type Confusion/Mismatch (Integer Overflow/Underflow)

Description: An attacker provides input that, while technically matching the basic type expected by coa (e.g., "number"), is outside the valid range, leading to integer overflows/underflows.
- How coa Contributes: coa performs basic type checking (e.g., is it a number string?). It directly parses the input and converts it to the specified type. The vulnerability arises because coa's type checking is insufficient for security; the application must perform additional range validation.
- Example: An option expects a positive integer. An attacker provides a very large number. coa parses this as a number (its direct role), but the application doesn't check the range, leading to an overflow.
- Impact: Denial of service, memory corruption, potentially code execution.
- Risk Severity: High
- Mitigation Strategies:
  - Developers: Validate the range of numerical input after coa parses it. Use appropriate data types. Implement robust error handling.
  - Users: (Not directly applicable).