Threat: Insecure Admin API Access
Threat: Insecure Admin API Access
Description: An attacker gains unauthorized access to the APISIX Admin API by exploiting default or weak credentials. They might brute-force default usernames and passwords or exploit known default credential vulnerabilities if they are not changed. Once accessed, the attacker can manipulate APISIX configurations.
Impact: Full control over APISIX configuration, including routing, plugins, and potentially backend services. This can lead to data exfiltration, service disruption, and complete compromise of the API gateway.
Affected Component: Admin API (specifically authentication mechanism)
Risk Severity: Critical
Mitigation Strategies:
- Change default Admin API credentials immediately upon deployment.
- Enforce strong password policies for Admin API users.
- Implement multi-factor authentication (MFA) for Admin API access.
- Regularly audit and rotate Admin API credentials.
- Restrict Admin API access to trusted networks using firewalls or network segmentation.
Threat: Exposed Admin API
Threat: Exposed Admin API
Description: The APISIX Admin API is unintentionally exposed to the public internet. Attackers can discover the exposed Admin API through network scanning or misconfiguration detection. Once found, they can attempt to exploit insecure authentication or vulnerabilities in the Admin API itself.
Impact: Unauthorized access to configuration, potential data exfiltration (configuration data), and service disruption by malicious configuration changes.
Affected Component: Admin API (network accessibility)
Risk Severity: High
Mitigation Strategies:
- Restrict Admin API access to internal management networks only using firewalls and network access control lists (ACLs).
- Use a dedicated network interface for the Admin API, isolated from public-facing interfaces.
- Implement network segmentation to isolate the Admin API network.
- Regularly scan for exposed services and ensure the Admin API is not publicly accessible.
Threat: Configuration Injection Vulnerabilities
Description: Attackers exploit vulnerabilities in how APISIX parses or processes configuration data (e.g., YAML, JSON). They might inject malicious payloads within configuration files or API requests to the Admin API, leading to code execution or configuration manipulation. For example, they might inject Lua code within a plugin configuration.
Impact: Code execution on the APISIX server, arbitrary configuration changes, service disruption, and potential compromise of the underlying system.
Affected Component: Configuration parsing modules (YAML/JSON parsers, plugin configuration handlers)
Risk Severity: Critical
Mitigation Strategies:
- Keep APISIX updated to the latest version with security patches.
- Sanitize and validate all configuration inputs rigorously, especially when accepting configuration from external sources.
- Follow secure coding practices in configuration parsing logic to prevent injection vulnerabilities.
- Implement input validation and output encoding for configuration data.
- Use static analysis security testing (SAST) tools to identify potential injection vulnerabilities in configuration parsing code.
Threat: Insufficient Access Control for Configuration
Description: Lack of granular Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) or misconfigured RBAC allows unauthorized users or roles to modify critical APISIX configurations. Attackers might exploit weak RBAC policies or bypass them if not properly enforced, gaining elevated privileges to change configurations.
Impact: Service disruption, security policy bypass, unauthorized access to backend services by manipulating routing or security plugins.
Affected Component: Admin API (RBAC implementation), Authorization modules
Risk Severity: High
Mitigation Strategies:
- Implement and enforce robust RBAC for the Admin API.
- Define granular roles with least privilege access for configuration management.
- Regularly audit access control policies and user permissions.
- Restrict configuration changes to authorized personnel only.
- Use audit logging to track configuration changes and identify unauthorized modifications.
Threat: Configuration Storage Vulnerabilities
Description: The external configuration store (e.g., etcd, Consul) used by APISIX is not properly secured. Attackers might exploit vulnerabilities in the configuration store itself or its access controls to gain unauthorized access to configuration data or modify it directly.
Impact: Data leakage of sensitive configuration information (API keys, secrets), configuration manipulation leading to service disruption or security bypass.
Affected Component: External Configuration Store (etcd, Consul), APISIX configuration loading modules
Risk Severity: High
Mitigation Strategies:
- Secure the configuration store with strong authentication and authorization mechanisms provided by the store itself (e.g., etcd's client certificates, Consul's ACLs).
- Encrypt sensitive data at rest and in transit within the configuration store.
- Restrict network access to the configuration store to only authorized APISIX instances and management systems.
- Regularly audit the security configuration of the configuration store.
- Implement access logging and monitoring for the configuration store.
Threat: Plugin Vulnerabilities
Threat: Plugin Vulnerabilities
Description: Built-in or third-party plugins used in APISIX contain security vulnerabilities (e.g., code injection, buffer overflows, authentication bypass). Attackers can exploit these vulnerabilities by crafting malicious requests that trigger the vulnerable plugin code, leading to various impacts.
Impact: Code execution on the APISIX server, data leakage, service disruption, authentication bypass, authorization bypass depending on the nature of the vulnerability and the plugin's function.
Affected Component: Plugins (specific vulnerable plugins)
Risk Severity: Critical to High (depending on the vulnerability and plugin)
Mitigation Strategies:
- Thoroughly vet and audit plugins before deployment, especially third-party or community-contributed plugins.
- Keep plugins updated to the latest versions to patch known vulnerabilities.
- Use plugins from trusted and reputable sources.
- Implement plugin sandboxing or isolation if available to limit the impact of plugin vulnerabilities.
- Regularly monitor for plugin vulnerabilities through security advisories and vulnerability scanning.
- Disable or remove unused plugins to reduce the attack surface.
Threat: Bypass of Security Plugins
Threat: Bypass of Security Plugins
Description: Attackers find ways to bypass security plugins (e.g., authentication, authorization, rate limiting) configured in APISIX. This could be due to misconfiguration of plugins, vulnerabilities in plugin logic, or flaws in request routing that allow bypassing plugin execution. For example, incorrect route matching might skip an authentication plugin.
Impact: Unauthorized access to backend services, security policy violations, resource exhaustion due to bypassed rate limiting.
Affected Component: Plugin execution chain, Route matching logic, Security plugins (configuration and logic)
Risk Severity: High
Mitigation Strategies:
- Properly configure and test security plugins to ensure they are correctly applied to intended routes and requests.
- Regularly audit plugin configurations and route definitions to prevent misconfigurations.
- Ensure plugins are correctly applied to all relevant routes and methods.
- Implement comprehensive security testing to verify that security plugins are effective and cannot be bypassed.
- Use negative testing to specifically try to bypass security plugins.
Threat: Request Routing Vulnerabilities
Threat: Request Routing Vulnerabilities
Description: Flaws in APISIX's request routing logic allow attackers to bypass routing rules, access unintended backend services, or perform Server-Side Request Forgery (SSRF) if routing decisions are based on external input without proper validation. For example, path traversal vulnerabilities in route matching.
Impact: Unauthorized access to backend services, SSRF attacks, service disruption by misrouting traffic.
Affected Component: Route matching engine, Routing logic
Risk Severity: High
Mitigation Strategies:
- Regularly audit and test routing configurations to ensure they are secure and correctly implemented.
- Validate routing rules and ensure they are not overly permissive.
- Sanitize and validate any input used in routing decisions to prevent injection attacks and SSRF.
- Follow secure coding practices in routing logic to prevent vulnerabilities like path traversal.
- Implement network segmentation to limit the impact of SSRF vulnerabilities.
Threat: Lack of Regular Security Updates and Patching
Description: Failure to apply security updates and patches to APISIX and its dependencies leaves known vulnerabilities unaddressed. Attackers can exploit these known vulnerabilities to compromise APISIX.
Impact: Exploitation of known vulnerabilities, data breaches, service disruption, potential compromise of the API gateway and backend systems.
Affected Component: APISIX core, Dependencies (Lua libraries, etc.)
Risk Severity: High to Critical (depending on the severity of unpatched vulnerabilities)
Mitigation Strategies:
- Establish a regular patching and update schedule for APISIX and its dependencies.
- Subscribe to security advisories and mailing lists to stay informed about security updates.
- Automate patching processes where possible to ensure timely updates.
- Test patches in a staging environment before deploying them to production.
- Implement vulnerability scanning to identify outdated components and missing patches.