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attack-surface.md

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Attack Surface Analysis for filp/whoops

Attack Surface: Information Disclosure via Detailed Error Pages

  • Description: Whoops is designed to display verbose error information in the browser, including stack traces, code snippets, environment variables, and request details. This detailed information, intended for debugging, becomes a significant security risk in production environments.
    • How Whoops Contributes: Whoops's core functionality is to generate and render these detailed error pages. It is the library directly responsible for creating and displaying this sensitive information.
    • Example: An attacker triggers a server-side error (e.g., by manipulating URL parameters or input data). Whoops, if enabled, responds with a page revealing server file paths, potentially database credentials exposed through environment variables, and snippets of application code, all visible in the attacker's browser.
    • Impact: Exposure of sensitive application internals. This information can be leveraged for further attacks, including reverse engineering the application, identifying vulnerabilities, and potentially gaining unauthorized access or control.
    • Risk Severity: High (in staging/development if accessible to unauthorized users) to Critical (in production environments).
    • Mitigation Strategies:
      • Disable Whoops in production environments. This is the most crucial step. Ensure Whoops is strictly disabled when deploying to production.
      • Implement robust, generic error handling for production. Replace Whoops with a system that logs errors securely server-side and displays user-friendly, non-revealing error pages to end-users.
      • Restrict access to Whoops in non-production environments. Use IP whitelisting, authentication mechanisms, or environment-specific configurations to limit access to detailed error pages to authorized developers only.
      • Carefully manage and sanitize environment variables. Avoid storing sensitive information directly in environment variables that Whoops might display in error pages. Use secure configuration management practices and consider using secrets management solutions.

Attack Surface: Misconfiguration Leading to Production Exposure

  • Description: Incorrect or absent configuration management can lead to Whoops being unintentionally enabled and publicly accessible in a production environment. This negates the intended security posture and exposes sensitive information.
    • How Whoops Contributes: Whoops's behavior is dictated by its configuration. If the configuration is not properly managed across different environments (development, staging, production), it can easily be left enabled in production due to oversight or flawed deployment processes.
    • Example: During deployment to production, the configuration setting to disable Whoops is missed or incorrectly applied. Consequently, any error occurring in the live application triggers detailed Whoops error pages, making sensitive information publicly available to all users, including malicious actors.
    • Impact: Widespread and persistent information disclosure. Any error in the production application will expose sensitive details, making the application continuously vulnerable to information leakage and subsequent attacks.
    • Risk Severity: Critical (in production environments).
    • Mitigation Strategies:
      • Implement strict environment-specific configuration management. Utilize environment variables, dedicated configuration files, or robust deployment scripts to explicitly control Whoops's enabled state based on the target environment (development, staging, production).
      • Automate deployment processes with configuration checks. Integrate automated checks into deployment pipelines to verify that Whoops is disabled or correctly configured for production environments before deployment.
      • Conduct regular security audits and configuration reviews. Periodically review production configurations to ensure Whoops is disabled and that error handling is correctly and securely configured.
      • Adopt Infrastructure as Code (IaC) practices. Manage and version control environment configurations using IaC tools to ensure consistent and secure settings across all environments and reduce the risk of manual configuration errors.