Attack Surface: Malicious or Vulnerable Plugins
Description: Attackers exploit vulnerabilities in third-party Phan plugins or create malicious plugins to execute arbitrary code or compromise the analysis process.
How Phan Contributes: Phan's plugin architecture allows for extending functionality, but also introduces a risk from external code that executes within Phan's process. This is a direct involvement.
Example: An attacker publishes a malicious plugin named "phan-security-enhancer" on Packagist. A developer installs it, and the plugin steals API keys from the codebase during analysis. Or, a legitimate plugin has a vulnerability that allows code execution when Phan processes a crafted PHP file.
Impact: * Arbitrary code execution within the Phan analysis context. * Compromise of the build server or developer workstation. * Data exfiltration (source code, credentials). * Code modification (injection of backdoors).
Risk Severity: Critical
Mitigation Strategies: * Plugin Vetting: Thoroughly vet any third-party plugins. Examine source code, check author reputation, and look for security advisories. * Dependency Management: Use a dependency manager (e.g., Composer) and lock files. * Vulnerability Scanning: Use a software composition analysis (SCA) tool. * Sandboxing (Ideal, but Difficult): Ideally, run Phan and plugins in a sandboxed environment. * Least Privilege: Run Phan with minimum necessary privileges. * Regular Updates: Keep plugins updated.
Attack Surface: Phan Core Vulnerabilities
Description: Exploitable vulnerabilities within the core Phan codebase itself (parsing, type inference, etc.).
How Phan Contributes: This is inherently and directly related to Phan, as it concerns vulnerabilities within Phan's own code.
Example: An attacker crafts a PHP file with a deeply nested, unusual combination of language features that triggers a buffer overflow in Phan's parser, leading to code execution. Or, a flaw in type inference allows a type confusion vulnerability to be missed.
Impact: * Arbitrary code execution (less likely than plugins, but high impact). * Denial of service (crashing Phan). * Incorrect analysis results (false negatives or positives).
Risk Severity: High
Mitigation Strategies: * Keep Phan Updated: Always use the latest stable version of Phan. * Monitor Security Advisories: Subscribe to Phan's security announcements. * Contribute to Phan Security (Advanced): Report vulnerabilities or review code. * Fuzzing (for Phan maintainers): Phan maintainers should regularly fuzz.
Attack Surface: Configuration Manipulation
Description: Attackers modify Phan's configuration file (.phan/config.php or similar) to alter its behavior, disable security checks, or introduce malicious actions.
How Phan Contributes: Phan's behavior is directly controlled by its configuration. The configuration file is part of how Phan operates.
Example: An attacker changes the configuration to disable taint analysis ('enable_taint_analysis' => false), allowing SQL injection. Or, they add a malicious plugin path, which Phan will then load.
Impact: * Disabled security checks. * False negatives/positives. * Potential for arbitrary code execution (via malicious plugins loaded through config).
Risk Severity: High
Mitigation Strategies: * Treat Configuration as Code: Store in version control (e.g., Git). * Code Reviews: Require code reviews for any configuration changes. * Access Control: Restrict write access to authorized developers/build systems. * Configuration Validation: Validate the configuration file's integrity before Phan runs. * Principle of Least Privilege: Run Phan with minimum necessary permissions.