Business information leak - Customers or providers
Need
Protection of sensitive business information from unauthorized access or leakage
Context
• Usage of Go 1.16 for building efficient and scalable applications
• Usage of Gin for building web applications in Go
Description
1. Non compliant code
package main
import (
"github.com/gin-gonic/gin"
)
type Customer struct {
Email string `json:"email"`...In the above code, we have a simple Gin application that serves customer data at the `/customers` endpoint. The customer data includes sensitive information such as name, email, and phone number. The vulnerability lies in the `/customers` route handler. When a GET request is made to this endpoint, it responds with the entire list of customers, including their sensitive information. This means that anyone who can make a GET request to this endpoint can access this sensitive information. This is a serious security issue as it can lead to information leakage. Attackers can exploit this vulnerability to gain unauthorized access to customer data, which can lead to a variety of problems including identity theft, spamming, and other forms of abuse.
2. Steps
• Implement authentication and authorization mechanisms to restrict access to sensitive information.
• Store sensitive information securely, such as using encryption or hashing algorithms.
• Implement input validation and sanitization to prevent injection attacks.
• Limit the amount of sensitive information exposed in API responses.
• Implement rate limiting and throttling to prevent abuse and excessive data retrieval.
• Regularly review and update access controls and permissions for sensitive data.
• Implement logging and monitoring to detect and respond to any unauthorized access attempts.
3. Secure code example
package main
import (
"github.com/gin-gonic/gin"
"github.com/gin-contrib/sessions"
"github.com/gin-contrib/sessions/cookie"
"golang.org/x/crypto/bcrypt"
...The updated code includes several security measures to prevent unauthorized access to sensitive customer information. 1. **Authentication**: A new `/login` endpoint is added, which checks the provided username and password against a list of users. If the credentials match, a session is created for the user. The password is hashed using bcrypt, a secure hashing algorithm. 2. **Authorization**: The `/customers` endpoint now checks if a user is logged in before returning the customer data. If no user is logged in, it returns a 401 Unauthorized status. 3. **Data Exposure**: The `json` tags on the `Customer` struct have been updated to prevent the customer's name and phone number from being included in the JSON response. Only the email is included. 4. **Session Management**: The application now uses the `sessions` middleware from the `gin-contrib/sessions` package to manage user sessions. The session data is stored in a secure cookie. Remember to replace `"secret"` with your own secret key in the `cookie.NewStore([]byte("secret"))` line. This key is used to sign the session cookie. This code is a basic example and might need to be adjusted to fit your specific needs. For example, you might want to replace the hardcoded list of users with a database, or add rate limiting to prevent brute force attacks.