mitigations.md

Mitigation Strategies Analysis for tapadoo/alerter

Mitigation Strategy: Input Sanitization for Alert Messages

1. Input Sanitization for Alert Messages

• Mitigation Strategy: Input Sanitization for Alert Messages
• Description:
  1. Identify Alert Data Flow: Trace the flow of data that becomes the content of alerter messages. Determine all points where external or untrusted data (user input, API responses, etc.) is incorporated into alert messages.
  2. Implement Sanitization Before alerter: Before passing any untrusted data to the alerter library to be displayed, apply appropriate sanitization or encoding.
     • For Text Alerts: If alerter is used for plain text alerts, ensure data is properly encoded to prevent interpretation as markup if that's a risk in your context (though less likely with plain text focused libraries). Focus on escaping special characters if needed for your platform.
     • If alerter Supports HTML (Check Library Documentation): If alerter does allow HTML (which is less common for simple alert libraries, but verify), rigorously HTML-encode all untrusted data before embedding it in the alert message. Use platform-appropriate HTML encoding functions. Ideally, avoid using HTML features of alerter if possible.
  3. Test Sanitization with alerter: Test alert display with various inputs, including potentially malicious strings and edge cases, to confirm that sanitization is effective in the context of how alerter renders alerts. Ensure no unexpected behavior or rendering issues arise.
• List of Threats Mitigated:
  • Cross-Site Scripting (XSS): High Severity - Prevents injection of malicious scripts into alert messages, which could be executed within the alert's context, potentially leading to user account compromise or data theft.
• Impact: Significantly Reduces - Directly addresses and minimizes the risk of XSS attacks originating from unsanitized content displayed via alerter.
• Currently Implemented: Partially Implemented - Sanitization is applied in some areas of the application for general data handling, but not specifically and consistently enforced immediately before passing data to alerter for display in alerts.
• Missing Implementation: Systematic application of sanitization to all data sources used to construct alerter messages, implemented directly in the code sections that call the alerter library to display alerts.

Mitigation Strategy: Plain Text Alert Messages (Restrict alerter to Text Only)

2. Plain Text Alert Messages (Restrict alerter to Text Only)

• Mitigation Strategy: Plain Text Alert Messages (Restrict alerter to Text Only)
• Description:
  1. Verify alerter Capabilities: Review the documentation and capabilities of the tapadoo/alerter library. Confirm if it supports HTML or rich text formatting in alert messages.
  2. Restrict Usage to Plain Text: Configure or utilize alerter in a way that only allows plain text messages. Avoid using any features or options that might enable HTML or script execution within alerts.
  3. Code Review for Plain Text Enforcement: Establish a coding standard that mandates the use of plain text only for alerter messages. Conduct code reviews to ensure developers adhere to this standard and do not inadvertently introduce HTML or script elements.
  4. Alternative Formatting (If Needed): If some formatting is desired in alerts, explore if alerter provides safe, non-HTML based styling options (e.g., using library-specific styling parameters). If not, evaluate if the formatting is essential or if plain text alerts are sufficient for security and usability.
• List of Threats Mitigated:
  • Cross-Site Scripting (XSS): High Severity - By strictly limiting alerter to plain text, you eliminate the primary attack vector for XSS through alert messages, as HTML and JavaScript injection becomes impossible.
• Impact: Significantly Reduces - Completely removes the possibility of HTML/JavaScript injection via alerter messages, making XSS through this specific path impossible by design.
• Currently Implemented: No - While the intent is often to use plain text, there isn't a strict policy or code enforcement to guarantee only plain text is used with alerter. Developers might occasionally use HTML for formatting within alerts.
• Missing Implementation: Establish a clear policy and coding standard for plain text alerts. Refactor existing code to remove any HTML usage within alerter messages. Potentially configure alerter (if it has such options) to enforce plain text mode.

Mitigation Strategy: Rate Limiting for alerter Display

3. Rate Limiting for alerter Display

• Mitigation Strategy: Rate Limiting for alerter Display
• Description:
  1. Define Alert Rate Threshold: Determine an acceptable rate of alert display for your application. This could be based on alerts per minute, per second, or another relevant time window. Consider typical application usage and user experience to set a reasonable limit.
  2. Implement alerter Alert Counter: Create a mechanism to track the number of alerts displayed specifically through the alerter library within the defined time window. This counter should be associated with the alerter display logic.
  3. Rate Limit Check Before alerter Display: Before each call to display an alert using alerter, implement a check against the rate limit counter.
     • If Rate Limit Not Reached: Proceed to display the alert using alerter and increment the counter.
     • If Rate Limit Reached: Implement a rate limiting action:
       • Queue alerter Alerts: Queue the alert request for later display when the rate limit allows.
       • Drop alerter Alerts: Discard the alert request (potentially log the dropped alert for monitoring).
       • Throttle alerter Display: Delay the display of subsequent alerts to stay within the defined rate.
  4. Configuration for alerter Rate Limit: Make the rate limit parameters (threshold, time window) configurable, ideally through application settings, to allow for adjustments without code changes and to tailor the rate limit to different application environments or user needs.
• List of Threats Mitigated:
  • Denial of Service (DoS) via Alert Flooding: Medium Severity - Prevents malicious actors or faulty application logic from overwhelming the user interface and potentially application resources by triggering an excessive number of alerts through alerter.
• Impact: Moderately Reduces - Significantly reduces the impact of alert flooding DoS attacks specifically targeting the alerter functionality, maintaining application usability and responsiveness.
• Currently Implemented: No - There is no rate limiting currently implemented that specifically controls the rate at which alerts are displayed using the alerter library.
• Missing Implementation: Implementation of rate limiting logic that is directly integrated with the application's alert display mechanism, specifically targeting calls to the alerter library. This would require modifying the code that triggers alerts to include rate limit checks before invoking alerter.