Attack Surface: Skia Graphics Engine Vulnerabilities
Description: Exploitation of vulnerabilities within the Skia graphics library, used for rendering on Desktop and Android. This is a direct dependency of Compose Multiplatform.
* How Compose Multiplatform Contributes: Compose Multiplatform's rendering pipeline is fundamentally built upon Skia. Any Skia vulnerability is inherently a Compose vulnerability.
* Example: A crafted malicious image (e.g., a specially designed PNG or SVG) is loaded and rendered by a Compose Image composable, triggering a buffer overflow in Skia's image decoding code, leading to arbitrary code execution.
* Impact: Potential for arbitrary code execution, denial-of-service, information disclosure.
* Risk Severity: Critical
* Mitigation Strategies:
* Developer:
* Maintain the absolute latest version of Compose Multiplatform. This is the primary defense, as JetBrains updates Skia with Compose releases. Monitor security advisories closely.
* Strictly validate and sanitize all user-supplied data that influences rendering, especially images, fonts, and vector graphics. Assume all such data is potentially malicious. Do not render untrusted SVG or other complex formats directly.
* Consider pre-processing images with a separate, robust image processing library before passing them to Compose, to further reduce the attack surface (e.g., resizing, format conversion).
* If feasible (and for high-security applications), explore isolating the rendering of untrusted content in a separate process or sandbox (advanced technique).
* User: (Limited direct mitigation; relies on developers)
* Avoid opening or interacting with files/content from untrusted sources within applications built with Compose Multiplatform.
Description: Vulnerabilities arising from incorrect or insecure use of platform-specific APIs accessed through Compose's expect/actual mechanism. This is only direct if the actual implementation is part of the core Compose library or a first-party extension. If it's a custom actual implementation by the application developer, it's indirect (covered in the previous, broader list). This entry focuses on the direct case.
* How Compose Multiplatform Contributes: The expect/actual system is a core feature of Compose Multiplatform, providing the bridge to platform-specific functionality. The security of this bridge is directly tied to the quality of the actual implementations provided by JetBrains.
* Example: A vulnerability in a Compose Multiplatform-provided actual implementation for accessing the clipboard on a specific platform allows an attacker to read or write arbitrary clipboard data. (This is hypothetical; the actual risk depends on the specific actual implementations.)
* Impact: Varies significantly depending on the specific platform API and the nature of the vulnerability. Could range from information disclosure (e.g., reading clipboard data) to privilege escalation or even code execution in extreme cases.
* Risk Severity: High (Potentially Critical, depending on the API and vulnerability)
* Mitigation Strategies:
* Developer:
* Rely on the official Compose Multiplatform libraries and their actual implementations as much as possible. Avoid writing custom actual implementations unless absolutely necessary.
* If you must write a custom actual implementation, treat it as a critical security component. Apply extreme scrutiny, thorough testing, and secure coding practices.
* Keep Compose Multiplatform updated to the latest version to receive security patches for any vulnerabilities discovered in the official actual implementations.
* User: (Limited direct mitigation; relies on developers and JetBrains)