Security | Threat Detection | Cyberattacks | DevSecOps | Compliance

Were you tasked with building a product that requires the execution of dynamic JavaScript originating from end users? You might think building it on-top of Node.js VM module is a viable way to create a JavaScript sandbox. In this article, we’ll learn why that’s far from being a recommended approach and the security implications of doing so. Every now and then there’s a project that challenges the rudimentary and routine backend development. APIs? Message queues?

I was inspired to write this after reading a post from Thomas Depierre on Mastodon. The post touched on something that’s been troubling me recently. When it comes to software security, we spend a lot of time talking about the software supply chain and related concepts, such as the software bill of materials (SBOM). This metaphor comes from an industrial lexicon. People who are used to talking about economies and how manufacturing works are familiar with the idea of supply chain.

Mass assignment, also known as autobinding or object injection, is a category of vulnerabilities that occur when user input is bound to variables or objects within a program. Mass assignment vulnerabilities are often the result of an attacker adding unexpected fields to an object to manipulate the logic of a program.

If I throw a coin high up in the air, I know the outcome — it will either be heads or tails. However, I can’t predict which it will be. I will certainly be able to guess with a 50% chance, but I can’t be 100% certain. If I were to roll a die, my certainty becomes less (1 in 6). However, I still know what the output could be. Computers are great at many things, especially predictability. They are deterministic and creating a truly random number is impossible.