Attack Surface: Content Injection (UI Redressing/Spoofing)
Description: An attacker injects malicious content into the alert's text or custom view, potentially leading to UI redressing, phishing, or code execution.
How Alerter Contributes: Alerter is the direct mechanism used to display the injected content. The vulnerability exists because Alerter displays content provided to it by the application, and the application may not properly sanitize that content.
Example:
* An attacker injects HTML with a hidden iframe that overlays a legitimate button with a malicious one (if custom views are used).
* An attacker injects text that mimics a system login prompt.
* If using a WKWebView in a custom view, an attacker injects malicious JavaScript.
Impact:
* User deception (phishing for credentials or sensitive information).
* Unauthorized actions performed by the user.
* Potential code execution (if JavaScript injection via WKWebView is possible).
* Loss of user trust.
Risk Severity: Critical (especially if WKWebView is used with unsanitized input) / High (for other forms of content injection).
Mitigation Strategies:
* Developer:
* Strict Input Sanitization: Always sanitize and escape any user-provided or externally-sourced data before displaying it in an alert. Use a whitelist approach.
* Avoid WKWebView: Strongly prefer native UI elements. If WKWebView must be used, enforce a strict Content Security Policy (CSP) and never display unsanitized content.
* URL Validation: If displaying URLs, validate them rigorously and use NSAttributedString to control link attributes. Display a URL preview.
* Text Formatting Control: Use attributed strings with controlled formatting.
Attack Surface: Denial of Service (DoS) - Alert Flooding
Description: An attacker triggers a large number of alerts to be displayed rapidly, making the application unusable.
How Alerter Contributes: Alerter is the direct mechanism for displaying the alerts. While the root cause is the application's lack of rate limiting, Alerter is the component being abused.
Example: An attacker repeatedly triggers an error condition that causes an alert to be displayed, flooding the UI.
Impact:
* Application becomes unresponsive.
* User frustration and inability to use the app.
Risk Severity: High
Mitigation Strategies:
* Developer:
* Rate Limiting/Throttling: Implement robust rate limiting or throttling at the source of the alert trigger (before calling Alerter). Debounce or use a time window.
* Queue Management: Limit the total number of alerts that can be queued.
Attack Surface: Dependency Vulnerabilities
Description: Vulnerabilities within the Alerter library itself could be exploited.
How Alerter Contributes: This is a direct vulnerability in the library code.
Example: A hypothetical buffer overflow vulnerability in Alerter's image handling code.
Impact: Varies depending on the specific vulnerability (could range from crashes to code execution).
Risk Severity: Potentially Critical.
Mitigation Strategies:
* Developer:
* Regular Updates: Keep Alerter updated to the latest version.
* Dependency Scanning: Use dependency scanning tools to identify known vulnerabilities in Alerter and other libraries.
* Monitor Security Advisories: Stay informed about security advisories related to Alerter.