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Threat Model Analysis for facebookincubator/socketrocket

Threat: Malformed WebSocket Frame Injection

  • Description: An attacker-controlled WebSocket server sends intentionally malformed or crafted WebSocket frames to the client application using SocketRocket. These frames exploit vulnerabilities in SocketRocket's frame parsing logic, potentially causing crashes, unexpected behavior, or bypassing security checks.
  • Impact: Application crash, denial of service, data corruption, potential for arbitrary code execution (less likely but theoretically possible in critical scenarios).
  • SocketRocket Component Affected: Frame Parser (within SRWebSocket.m and related frame handling logic).
  • Risk Severity: Critical to High
  • Mitigation Strategies:
    • Keep SocketRocket updated to the latest version to benefit from bug fixes and security patches.
    • Implement robust input validation and sanitization on data received after SocketRocket processing, at the application level, as a defense-in-depth measure.

Threat: Data Corruption via SocketRocket Bugs

  • Description: Internal bugs within SocketRocket's message handling, encoding/decoding, or buffer management logic lead to unintentional corruption of messages transmitted or received over the WebSocket connection. This can occur even with a secure and trusted server.
  • Impact: Data integrity loss, application malfunction due to incorrect data processing, potential for business logic errors based on corrupted data.
  • SocketRocket Component Affected: Message Handling Logic (across various modules involved in message assembly, encoding, and delivery within SRWebSocket.m and related classes).
  • Risk Severity: High
  • Mitigation Strategies:
    • Thoroughly test WebSocket communication within the application to detect any data corruption issues during development and testing.
    • Monitor SocketRocket's issue tracker and release notes for reported bugs and fixes related to data handling.
    • Implement end-to-end message integrity checks (e.g., checksums, digital signatures) at the application level, independent of SocketRocket, to detect and potentially correct data corruption.

Threat: Sensitive Data Exposure via Memory Leaks

  • Description: Memory leaks within SocketRocket cause sensitive data processed through WebSocket connections to remain in memory longer than necessary. If an attacker gains access to the device's memory, this lingering data could be exposed.
  • Impact: Potential exposure of sensitive data residing in memory, increasing the attack surface for data breaches and compromising confidentiality.
  • SocketRocket Component Affected: Memory Management (across various modules, especially buffer handling and object lifecycle management within SRWebSocket.m and related classes).
  • Risk Severity: High
  • Mitigation Strategies:
    • Monitor application memory usage during WebSocket communication to detect and address potential memory leaks.
    • Keep SocketRocket updated to benefit from bug fixes, including memory leak resolutions.
    • Follow secure coding practices in the application to minimize the duration sensitive data resides in memory.

Threat: Denial of Service via Malformed Frame Flood

  • Description: An attacker sends a large volume of specifically crafted malformed WebSocket frames to the client application. These frames trigger resource-intensive parsing or error handling within SocketRocket, overwhelming the client device's resources (CPU, memory) and causing a denial of service.
  • Impact: Application becomes unresponsive or crashes, preventing legitimate users from accessing its WebSocket functionality, impacting availability.
  • SocketRocket Component Affected: Frame Parser (within SRWebSocket.m).
  • Risk Severity: High
  • Mitigation Strategies:
    • Keep SocketRocket updated to the latest version with bug fixes and security patches that might address DoS vulnerabilities.
    • Implement rate limiting and connection throttling on the WebSocket server side to mitigate the impact of malicious frame floods reaching clients.

Threat: Client-Side Resource Exhaustion from Connection Handling Bugs

  • Description: Bugs in SocketRocket's connection management logic, particularly around error handling, reconnection attempts, or resource cleanup during connection failures, lead to excessive resource consumption on the client device. This can result from uncontrolled reconnection loops or memory leaks related to connection objects.
  • Impact: Application instability, crashes, or performance degradation due to resource exhaustion (CPU, memory, network), impacting availability and user experience.
  • SocketRocket Component Affected: Connection Management (within SRWebSocket.m, especially connection lifecycle and error handling logic).
  • Risk Severity: High
  • Mitigation Strategies:
    • Thoroughly test connection and disconnection scenarios, including various network conditions and server availability, to identify and fix resource leaks or inefficient connection handling.
    • Monitor resource usage (CPU, memory, network) of the application when using SocketRocket under different conditions, including simulated network disruptions.
    • Implement appropriate connection timeouts, backoff strategies for reconnection attempts, and resource cleanup mechanisms to prevent resource exhaustion.