attack-surface.md

Attack Surface Analysis for mutualmobile/mmdrawercontroller

Attack Surface: Indirect Exposure of Critical Vulnerabilities in Drawer Content

Description:

• The mmdrawercontroller mechanism can inadvertently expose and amplify critical vulnerabilities residing within the view controllers used as drawer content (center or drawer view controllers), significantly increasing their exploitability.

mmdrawercontroller Contribution:

• As a container view controller, mmdrawercontroller's primary function is to manage and present drawer content. By making child view controllers easily accessible through the drawer interface, it directly contributes to the attack surface of any vulnerabilities present within those child views. The library's design inherently facilitates user interaction with the drawer content, thus amplifying the reach of vulnerabilities within.

Example:

• A highly vulnerable web view (e.g., susceptible to remote code execution via JavaScript injection) is implemented as the drawer's content view controller. Without the drawer, accessing this vulnerable web view might require deeper navigation within the application. However, mmdrawercontroller makes this critical vulnerability immediately accessible via a simple swipe gesture, drastically increasing the risk of exploitation. An attacker can easily trigger the drawer and then exploit the web view vulnerability.

Impact:

• Critical Vulnerability Amplification: Elevates the risk and exploitability of critical vulnerabilities within drawer content from potentially less accessible to immediately reachable.
• Remote Code Execution (Example): If a vulnerable web view is exposed, successful exploitation could lead to remote code execution on the user's device.
• Data Breach: Exposure of sensitive data handled or displayed by vulnerable drawer content view controllers.
• Account Takeover: In scenarios where drawer content interacts with authentication or session management, vulnerabilities could lead to account takeover.

Risk Severity:

High to Critical (Severity is elevated to High or Critical because the library directly facilitates the exposure and exploitation of critical vulnerabilities within child view controllers. The impact of exploiting a critical vulnerability is inherently high, and the drawer mechanism increases the ease of exploitation).

Mitigation Strategies:

• Secure Development of Drawer Content: Prioritize rigorous security measures during the development and maintenance of all view controllers used as drawer content. This includes thorough security testing, code reviews, and adherence to secure coding practices.
• Vulnerability Scanning for Drawer Content: Implement regular vulnerability scanning and penetration testing specifically targeting the view controllers used within the drawer to proactively identify and remediate critical vulnerabilities.
• Principle of Least Privilege for Drawer Content: Carefully evaluate the necessity of placing sensitive or potentially vulnerable functionalities within drawers. If possible, relocate critical functionalities to areas with stronger access controls or implement robust authorization mechanisms within the drawer content itself.
• Input Validation and Output Encoding in Drawer Content: Enforce strict input validation and output encoding within all drawer content view controllers to mitigate common vulnerabilities like injection flaws (e.g., SQL injection, XSS in web views).
• Regular Security Audits: Conduct comprehensive security audits of the entire application, with a specific focus on the interaction between mmdrawercontroller and its child view controllers, to identify and address potential amplification of vulnerabilities.