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Deprecating some Security Risks

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Sarah Jamie Lewis 2020-12-02 14:33:29 -08:00
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@ -2,18 +2,6 @@
# Known Risks
## Dependency on Outdated Protobuf Implementation
**Status: Partially Mitigated (Work in Progress)**
The group features of Cwtch are enabled by an untrusted infrastructure
protcol that is implemented using the older ricochet-based channels. The go
code that was generated from these channels no longer works given the newest
version of the protobufs framework.
The goal is to remove protobufs entirely from the project by porting this
functionality over the Tapir, once a suitable replacement protocol has been
defined.
## Thread Safety
@ -39,23 +27,7 @@ the file system cross the boundary between the UI front-end and the App backend.
Intercepting this information requires a privileged position on the local
machine. There are currently no plans to mitigate this issue.
## PoW Spam Prevention as a Metadata Vector
**Status: Speculative**
Processing capabilities are not constant, and so a malicious server could perform
some correlations/fiddle with difficulty per connection in an attempt to identify
connections over time.
Needs some statistical experimentation to quantify, but given the existing
research detecting timeskews over Tor I wouldn't be surprised if this could be derived.
As for mitigation: Adding a random time skew might be an option,some defense
against the server adjusting difficulty too often would also mitigate some of
the more extreme vectors.
Additionally, Token Based Services and Peer-based Groups are both potential
options for eliminating this attack vector entirely.
## Testing Status
@ -70,4 +42,37 @@ In addition, unit tests are defined for a number of Cwtch modules, however
Most tests are run with the `-race` flag which will cause them to fail if
race conditions are detected.
Both integration tests and unit tests are run automatically for every pull request and main branch merge.
Both integration tests and unit tests are run automatically for every pull request and main branch merge.
## Resolved or Outdated Risks
## ~~Dependency on Outdated Protobuf Implementation~~
**Status: Mitigated**
The group features of Cwtch are enabled by an untrusted infrastructure
protcol that was originally implemented using the older ricochet-based channels. The go
code that was generated from these channels no longer works given the newest
version of the protobufs framework.
We have removed protobufs entirely from the project by porting this
functionality over the Tapir.
## PoW Spam Prevention as a Metadata Vector
**Status: Outdated**: Cwtch now uses Token Based Services to separate challenges like PoW from
resolving the tokens.
Processing capabilities are not constant, and so a malicious server could perform
some correlations/fiddle with difficulty per connection in an attempt to identify
connections over time.
Needs some statistical experimentation to quantify, but given the existing
research detecting timeskews over Tor I wouldn't be surprised if this could be derived.
As for mitigation: Adding a random time skew might be an option,some defense
against the server adjusting difficulty too often would also mitigate some of
the more extreme vectors.
Additionally, Token Based Services and Peer-based Groups are both potential
options for eliminating this attack vector entirely.