security-review

name

security-review

description

Runs a full security review of DedupEndNote covering OWASP Top 10 plus DoS and resource-exhaustion risks. Use when the user asks for a security review, security audit, vulnerability check, or mentions OWASP. Already-fixed risks (path traversal, DOM XSS, error exposure, actuator hardening) are noted as closed so the review focuses on remaining concerns: DoS via large uploads and unbounded concurrent runs, user file namespace collisions in the shared upload directory, WebSocket topic access, missing HTTP security headers, and RIS input content validation. Outputs a prioritised finding list with severity, location, and recommended fix.

DedupEndNote Security Review

Application context (read before reviewing)

• Spring Boot 4.0 / Java 21, port 9777, fat JAR, no authentication — intentional public tool
• 150 MB upload limit; virtual threads for concurrent dedup runs; WebSocket progress reporting
• All uploads land in a single shared directory — no per-user or per-session isolation
• O(n²) pair comparison bucketed by year; large files are CPU- and memory-intensive

Already fixed — do not re-report unless regression found:

Risk	Fix
Path traversal (upload, download, start endpoints)	UtilitiesService.resolveInUploadDir validates all user-supplied filenames
DOM-based XSS via filename	All .html(userValue) sinks replaced with .text() / $('<span>').text()
Error / stack-trace exposure	GlobalExceptionHandler returns generic messages; log.error only
Actuator over-exposure	management.endpoints.web.exposure.include=health,info in dev profile

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Review checklist

Report each finding as: [SEVERITY] file:line — risk — fix.
Severity scale: Critical / High / Medium / Low / Info.

DoS and resource exhaustion ← primary focus for this project

• Upload rate limiting — any per-IP or per-session limit on the 150 MB endpoint?
• Concurrent session cap — can an attacker spawn unbounded parallel dedup threads?
• Record-count cap — is there a maximum number of RIS records per file to bound O(n²) CPU?
• Run timeout — can a single dedup session run indefinitely and starve other users?
• Memory bound — could a crafted large file cause OOM loading List<BibliographicItem>?
• Output file growth — can output files grow without bound, filling the upload disk?

User file namespace collisions

• Two users uploading results.ris simultaneously — does one silently overwrite the other?
• Output filename derived from input filename — same collision risk for result files?
• Is there any session-scoped or UUID-scoped subdirectory isolation?

WebSocket

• Can any client subscribe to /topic/messages-<uuid> and observe another user's progress?
• Is the UUID unguessable (client-generated crypto.randomUUID or equivalent)?
• setAllowedOriginPatterns("*") — is an explicit allow-list appropriate for the deployment?

OWASP A01 — Broken Access Control

• All endpoints are public by design — confirm no admin or privileged operation is exposed
• Verify resolveInUploadDir is applied consistently at every controller entry point

OWASP A02 — Cryptographic Failures

• Uploads and results travel over HTTP — is TLS terminated at a reverse proxy?
• Document the TLS expectation explicitly (or flag as accepted risk)

OWASP A03 — Injection

• No SQL, LDAP, command-injection vectors (confirmed: no DB, no ProcessBuilder)
• RIS field content: could maliciously crafted field values cause regex catastrophic backtracking?

OWASP A05 — Security Misconfiguration

• HTTP security headers absent (X-Content-Type-Options, X-Frame-Options, CSP) — risk level given no Spring Security?
• Error responses in all profiles: confirm no exception detail leaks

OWASP A06 — Vulnerable Components

• Check POM dependencies for known CVEs (./mvnw dependency:check or equivalent)
• No snapshot or unverified dependencies

OWASP A07 — Auth / Identity failures (accepted risk)

• No auth by design; CSRF has nothing to forge without a privileged session — document as accepted

OWASP A08 — Software & Data Integrity

• Malformed RIS file: does BibliographicItemReader fail gracefully without 500 or resource leak?
• InvalidRisFileException path: confirm error is returned to caller cleanly

OWASP A09 — Logging & Monitoring

• Traversal attempts and invalid filenames logged at WARN with log.warn?
• No uploaded file content, user filenames, or PII written to logs

OWASP A10 — SSRF

• No outbound HTTP triggered by user input (confirmed: no HTTP client in codebase)

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Output format

[SEVERITY] Short title
  Location : file:line (or "N/A — design-level")
  Risk     : one sentence
  Fix      : concrete recommendation

End with a summary table: open findings by severity, and a list of risks accepted by design.

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Reference

.plans/2026-06-02-1615-owasp-risk-analysis.md — full original analysis and what each priority tier fixed.