attack-surface.md

Attack Surface Analysis for emilk/egui

Attack Surface: Input Injection via Text Fields

• Description: Vulnerabilities arising from processing user-provided text input from egui text fields without proper sanitization or validation, leading to backend injection attacks.
• Egui Contribution: egui provides the text input widgets that are the entry point for user-supplied text. While egui itself is not vulnerable to XSS-style injection within the UI, it facilitates the collection of user input that can become the source of injection vulnerabilities in the application's backend if not handled securely.
• Example: An application uses an egui text field to get user input for a database query. If the application directly embeds this input into an SQL query without sanitization, an attacker could use SQL injection techniques via the egui text field to manipulate the database.
• Impact: Database breaches, data modification, unauthorized data access, potential for command execution on the backend database server.
• Risk Severity: Critical
• Mitigation Strategies:
  • Parameterized Queries/Prepared Statements: Always use parameterized queries or prepared statements when interacting with databases to prevent SQL injection. Never directly embed user input into SQL queries.
  • Input Validation and Sanitization: Validate and sanitize user input received from egui text fields before using it in backend operations. Use appropriate encoding and escaping techniques for the target backend system (e.g., database, command line).
  • Principle of Least Privilege: Ensure the application's backend components operate with the minimum necessary privileges to limit the impact of successful injection attacks.

Attack Surface: Clipboard Interaction Vulnerabilities

• Description: Risks associated with using egui's clipboard interaction features, potentially allowing injection of malicious content into the application via copy/paste, leading to unexpected or harmful behavior when the application processes clipboard data.
• Egui Contribution: egui provides functions to copy and paste text to/from the system clipboard. This feature, while useful, can be exploited if the application naively processes data pasted via egui without proper validation, as egui itself does not sanitize clipboard content.
• Example: An application allows users to paste text into an egui text area that is then interpreted as commands or configuration data. An attacker could craft malicious commands or configuration and place them on the clipboard. If a user pastes this content into the egui application, it could lead to unintended actions or system compromise.
• Impact: Code execution, configuration manipulation, data injection, unexpected application behavior, potentially leading to system compromise depending on how the application processes pasted data.
• Risk Severity: High
• Mitigation Strategies:
  • Clipboard Data Validation: Treat all data pasted from the clipboard via egui as untrusted input. Implement strict validation and sanitization of clipboard data before processing it within the application.
  • Context-Specific Pasting: If possible, limit clipboard pasting to specific contexts and data types. For example, if only plain text is expected, reject pasting of rich text or other formats.
  • User Confirmation for Sensitive Actions: For actions triggered by pasted clipboard data that have security implications, require explicit user confirmation before execution to prevent accidental or malicious pasting attacks.
  • Disable Clipboard Feature (if unnecessary): If clipboard functionality is not essential for the application's security-critical features, consider disabling or restricting egui's clipboard interaction to reduce this attack surface.