API9-Improper-Assets-Management.md

Improper Assets Management

The code below is vulnureable to Improper Assets Management

// This code is for the social network's official API

const express = require("express");
const app = express();

// Connect to the user database

const mongoose = require("mongoose");
mongoose.connect("mongodb://localhost/users");

// Create a user model

const User = mongoose.model("User", {
  username: String,
  password: String,
  name: String,
  email: String,
  phone: String
});

// Implement rate limiting to prevent brute-force attacks

const rateLimiter = require("express-rate-limit");
const limiter = rateLimiter({
  windowMs: 60 * 1000, // 1 minute
  max: 10 // maximum of 10 attempts per minute
});
app.use("/reset-password", limiter);

// Handle reset password requests

app.post("/reset-password", (req, res) => {
  // Read the user's input from the request
  
  let username = req.body.username;
  let token = req.body.token;

  // Check if the token is valid
  
  if (isValidToken(token)) {
    // Update the user's password
    
    User.findOneAndUpdate({
      username: username
    }, {
      password: req.body.newPassword
    }, (err, user) => {
      if (err) {
        res.status(500).json({
          error: err
        });
        return;
      }

      // Return the updated user
      
      res.json({
        user: user
      });
    });
  } else {
    res.status(401).json({
      error: "Invalid token"
    });
  }
});

// Start the server

const port = process.env.PORT || 8080;
app.listen(port, () => {
  console.log(`API server listening on port ${port}`);
});

Why it's vulnerable?

The code is setting up the social network's official API and implementing rate limiting to prevent brute-force attacks. However, the code is not properly managing the API assets, as it is not applying the rate limiting mechanism to the beta API host.

Impact?

This allows an attacker to access the beta API and reset the password of any user.

How to fix?

To fix the issue of improper assets management in the code example above, the rate limiting mechanism should be applied to the beta API host as well.