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attack-surface.md

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Attack Surface Analysis for sergiobenitez/rocket

Attack Surface: 1. Insufficiently Strict Request Guards

  • Description: Rocket's request guards are the primary mechanism for validating incoming request data. If they are too permissive, incorrectly implemented, or missing, attackers can bypass security checks and exploit application logic.
  • Rocket Contribution: This is entirely a Rocket-specific concern. The framework's design relies heavily on request guards for data validation.
  • Example: A route expects a JSON payload with a user_id field (an integer). The request guard only checks for the presence of the user_id field, but not its type or value. An attacker could send {"user_id": "malicious_string"} or {"user_id": -1} to potentially cause errors or access unauthorized data.
  • Impact: Unauthorized data access, data corruption, denial of service, application logic errors, potential for code injection depending on how the data is used.
  • Risk Severity: High to Critical (depending on the data being protected and how it's used).
  • Mitigation Strategies:
    • Comprehensive Validation: Validate all relevant aspects: type, range, format, length, and application-specific constraints. Use Rocket's type system effectively (e.g., i32, String, custom types with FromParam or FromData implementations).
    • Use Built-in Guards: Prefer Rocket's built-in guards (Form, Json, FromParam) as they provide robust, tested validation.
    • Custom Guard Review: Rigorously review and test all custom request guards. Use unit tests with various valid and invalid inputs.
    • Principle of Least Privilege: Guards should only allow the absolute minimum necessary data.
    • Input Sanitization: Sanitize input after validation to remove any potentially harmful characters, especially if the data will be used in contexts like HTML rendering or database queries (though this is a general security practice, not solely a Rocket concern).

Attack Surface: 2. Malicious or Misconfigured Fairings

  • Description: Rocket fairings are powerful middleware that can intercept and modify requests and responses. A malicious or poorly written fairing can introduce significant vulnerabilities.
  • Rocket Contribution: Fairings are a core, Rocket-specific feature. Their power and flexibility create a large potential attack surface.
  • Example: A custom fairing designed to add a security header accidentally introduces a vulnerability by setting the header to an attacker-controlled value from the request. Or, a fairing intended to rate-limit requests has a bug that allows an attacker to bypass the rate limits.
  • Impact: Data leakage, introduction of new vulnerabilities (e.g., XSS, CSRF), denial of service, bypassing of security checks (including request guards).
  • Risk Severity: High to Critical.
  • Mitigation Strategies:
    • Trusted Sources Only: Only use fairings from trusted sources. Thoroughly review the source code of any third-party fairing.
    • Secure Fairing Development: If writing custom fairings, follow strict secure coding practices. Avoid logging sensitive data. Handle errors gracefully and securely. Minimize the fairing's impact on performance and security.
    • Fairing Ordering is Crucial: The order of fairings matters. Security-related fairings (authentication, authorization, input validation) should generally be placed early in the chain, before any fairings that might modify the request in a way that could bypass security checks.
    • Least Privilege: Fairings should have the absolute minimum necessary permissions.
    • Auditing: Regularly audit the behavior of all fairings to ensure they are not introducing security issues.

Attack Surface: 3. Template Injection (with rocket_dyn_templates)

  • Description: While rocket_dyn_templates uses generally safe templating engines, improper use can still lead to template injection if user-provided data isn't properly escaped. This is a high-risk vulnerability.
  • Rocket Contribution: rocket_dyn_templates is the official Rocket library for template integration. While the underlying engines (Handlebars, Tera) are designed to be safe, the responsibility for correct usage rests with the developer.
  • Example: A user's comment is displayed on a page without escaping. An attacker submits a comment containing: {{#if true}} <script>alert('XSS')</script> {{/if}}. If the templating engine doesn't automatically escape this, the attacker's JavaScript will execute.
  • Impact: Cross-site scripting (XSS), data theft, session hijacking, website defacement, potential for server-side code execution (depending on the templating engine and configuration).
  • Risk Severity: High to Critical.
  • Mitigation Strategies:
    • Auto-Escaping (Primary Defense): Ensure auto-escaping is enabled in your chosen templating engine (Handlebars, Tera). This is usually the default, but verify it.
    • Manual Escaping (Rarely Needed): If you absolutely must disable auto-escaping for a specific variable (very rare and generally discouraged), use the templating engine's built-in escaping functions explicitly.
    • Content Security Policy (CSP): Implement a strong CSP as a defense-in-depth measure to mitigate the impact of XSS, even if a template injection vulnerability exists.
    • Input Validation (Before Storage): Validate user input before storing it in the database. This helps prevent storing malicious data that could be injected later. This is a general security best practice, but it's particularly important in the context of templating.