This document describes Wickra's attack surface and the threats considered,
together with their mitigations. It complements the security assurance case in
SECURITY.md. Wickra is a computational technical-analysis
library (a Rust core with Python, Node.js and WASM bindings plus a C ABI
and the C#, Go, Java and R bindings built on it),
not a network service or trading system; the attack surface is correspondingly
small.
- Integrity of computed indicator values — consumers may use them in automated decisions, so silently wrong output is the primary concern.
- Availability of the calling process — a library must not crash or hang its host on malformed input.
- Integrity of published artifacts — the crates, wheels and npm packages users install.
- The build and release pipeline and its secrets (publishing tokens).
- Library consumer (trusted) — calls the API with numeric data. Data may originate from untrusted sources (e.g. a market feed), so input values are treated as untrusted even though the caller is trusted.
- Optional live feed — with the
live-binancefeature, data crosses a network boundary from an exchange over TLS. - Contributors (semi-trusted) — propose changes via pull requests.
- Supply chain — upstream dependencies and the CI/CD platform.
| Threat | Mitigation |
|---|---|
| Memory-safety exploit (buffer overflow, UAF) via crafted input | Pure safe Rust; unsafe is forbidden/minimised, so the compiler precludes these classes. |
| Misuse of the C ABI FFI boundary (invalid/dangling handle, undersized batch buffer) | The C ABI (bindings/c) is the sole unsafe surface. Its shim adds no logic, NULL-checks every handle (returning NaN/no-op), writes only into caller-sized buffers, and is built with panic = "abort" so a panic terminates the process deterministically instead of unwinding across the FFI boundary (which would be undefined behaviour). A caller passing a non-NULL but dangling pointer is undefined behaviour by C's own contract — out of scope, the same as any C library. |
| Denial of service via malformed/degenerate input (NaN, infinities, extreme magnitudes) | Indicators reject non-finite inputs and validate parameters at construction; update paths are exercised by coverage-guided fuzzing and unit tests for edge cases. |
| Silently incorrect results | 100% line coverage on the core crate; reference-value tests against known-good sources; streaming/batch parity tests. |
| Integer overflow / panics | clippy::pedantic with -D warnings; debug assertions and overflow checks enabled in test/fuzz builds. |
| Adversary-in-the-middle on the optional live feed | Connection uses TLS via the platform library; transport security is delegated to that reviewed implementation. |
| Compromised dependency (supply chain) | Dependencies pinned (Cargo.lock, hash-locked CI requirements), monitored by Dependabot, audited by cargo-deny (advisories + licenses) on every change. |
Malicious or accidental change to main |
Branch protection requires signed commits and blocks force-push and deletion; all changes flow through pull requests with required CI; static analysis (CodeQL, Clippy) and fuzzing run on every change. |
| Compromised CI / leaked secrets | Workflows use least-privilege permissions:; secrets live only as encrypted GitHub Actions secrets; secret scanning with push protection is enabled; workflows are linted by zizmor. |
| Tampered release artifact | Releases are built in CI, tags are signed, and assets carry build provenance attestations (verifiable with gh attestation verify). |
- Wickra implements no authentication, authorization or cryptography of its own, stores no user data, and exposes no network listener; those threat classes do not apply.
- Vulnerabilities in third-party dependencies that do not affect Wickra are
tracked as exploitability (VEX) records (see
SECURITY.md).
This threat model is reviewed when the architecture changes materially (for example, a new input family, a new network feature, or a new release channel).