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The first part concerns attacks against the infrastructure from external or internal sources. This includes any kind of vectors including data manipulation as well as service disruption.
Security vulnerabilities affects two aspects of the infrastructure:
- Internal infrastructure which is only available over a secure connection (SSH) and by authenticated users
- Infrastructure with public interfaces which obtains data by a read-only database
An attack on the internal infrastructure is very unlikely due the secure connection and the insensitive nature of space weather data. To reduce the vulnerability on the public interfaces we only provide a seperate database with read-only access which is periodically synchronized with the internal Flarecast database. Hereby, only attacks involving a service disruption are possible.
The following table gives a summary of such possible attack vectors, there risk and impact level as well as possible countermeasures.
| Attack Vector | Description | Risk Level (1 - 5) | Impact Level (1 - 5) | Countermeasure |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Attacks concerning general web applications | ||||
| Cross-site request forgery (XSRF, CSRF) | Victim has an open VPN session and runs a malicious script downloaded from an attacker's server. | 1 | 4 | Nonce tokens |
| Cross-site script inclusion (XSSI) | Victim has an open VPN session and forwards JSON responses due a malicious script downloaded from an attacker's server. | 0 | 0 | - |
| Cross-site scripting (XSS) | Victim/Docker container uploads malicious script which is executed while visualizing data by a web service. | 1 | 2 | HTML escaping |
| Header injection (response splitting) | Victim/Attacker sends a request with a manipulated header field provided as query parameter which is then used within | 0 | 0 | - |
| Mixed content | Due the mix of resources partly available by HTTP and partly by HTTPS e.g. a man-in-the-middle attack is possible. | 0 | 0 | - |
| Open redirection | Victim/Attacker sends a request with a manipulated URL provided as query parameter, e.g. forcing a redirection. | 1 | 2 | HTML escaping |
| Referer leakage | Victim calls an external link from a sensitive URL which is then published within the 'referer' header field of the request to | 0 | 0 | - |
| Session hijacking | Attacker uses a man-in-the-middle attack while victim has an open connection to the internal infrastructure. | 1 | 5 | Keep informed about issues concerning secure connections (e.g. OpenSSL vulnerability CVE-2016-6304) |
| Session fixation | Attacker provides a URL with a pre-defined session ID to the Victim. As soon as the Victim logs into the system the attacker can use the same session ID for his own requests. Very unlikely as the internal infrastructure is only accessible by a secure connection. | 1 | 3 | Inform end-users about the risk. |
| Specific to the design of web applications | ||||
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