I have my mobile app connected to Firebase realtime database with read access to everyone (read = true).
Will this be a problem in the future since you pay for what you use and users can do a lot of searches in there?
What can I do to protect this from happening and not go over "the budget"?
Thanks!
Firebase Realtime Database Security Rules determine who has read and write access to your database, how your data is structured, and what indexes exist. These rules live on the Firebase servers and are enforced automatically at all times. Every read and write request will only be completed if your rules allow it. By default, your rules do not allow anyone access to your database. This is to protect your database from abuse until you have time to customize your rules or set up authentication.
Related
what are firebase lock mode and test mode my android app is already on google play enter image description herestore but what choose firebase mode?
Start in locked mode
Your data is private by default. Client
read/write access will only be granted
as specified by your security rules.
Start in test mode
Your data is open by default to enable
quick setup. However, you must update
your security rules within 30 days to
enable long-term clients to read/write
access.
The default security rules for test mode allow anyone with your
database reference to view, edit, and delete all data in your
database for the next 30 days
Those are just presets of security rules that you want when creating the database. You can also change and customize the security rules later as need from Firebase console.
Test mod essential allows reads and writes by default to everyone and production mode does not. If you had chosen production, you must chnage the rules and allow users to read write the DB paths that they are supposed to.
Firebase Security Rules stand between your data and malicious users. You can write simple or complex rules that protect your app's data to the level of granularity that your specific app requires.
Firebase Security Rules leverage extensible, flexible configuration languages to define what data your users can access for Realtime Database, Cloud Firestore, and Cloud Storage. Firebase Realtime Database Rules leverage JSON in rule definitions, while Cloud Firestore Security Rules and Firebase Security Rules for Cloud Storage leverage a unique language built to accommodate more complex rules-specific structures.
reference: https://firebase.google.com/docs/rules
Each time you create a database (in any kind of system, not only Firebase) a security setting must be set in place during creation.
For Firebase Realtime Database it's done through the security rules.
Firebase offers 2 options either locked mode or test mode:
Locked mode: Restrict anyone from your data
Test mode: Allow anyone to your data
These are just default settings and are not recommended for production apps, You can read more about these default rules here.
If you create an app which makes use of the RTDB, check first how they work here and protect your DB from malicious actions.
Side node: If you are on the Blaze plan structuring your rules is a must as it can lead to unexpected scenarios(completely wiped out DB, stealing data, maliciously modifying data, exorbitant bills, etc...).
My android wallpaper app is connected to Firebase Cloud Firestore. It doesn't have any user authentication because I want the user to be able to use it without fuss. To do this, it must be in open access, meaning, the user is allowed to read and write. This is dangerous as he can also edit and modify the data if he knows the project id. The project id is visible in the url of the app so this is not really a good choice. Closed access is also not an option for obvious reasons.
Is there anything I can do to protect my data without need of a user authentication? I would love to see the code needed for the Cloud Firestore and Storage to protect the data. I want the user to read only and I, as the owner, should be the only one who could write. Please refer to the images attached. Thanks a lot for taking time to answer my questions.
My data structure in Firebase Cloud Firestore:
Securing your data with Security Rules
Firebase Cloud Firestore, Firebase Realtime Database and Firebase Cloud Storage are secured by their own Security Rules. They provide access control and data validation in a simple yet expressive format and allow you to control access to documents and collections in your database.
To build user-based and role-based access systems that keep your users' data safe, you need to use Firebase Authentication with Cloud Firestore Security Rules.
Your specific use case
I assume that you store your data in Firebase Cloud Firestore and the wallpapers in Firebase Cloud Storage. The user then gets a document with a link to download a wallpaper and maybe also can upload their own wallpapers to the database.
The dangers of an open database
As you mentioned allowing all reads and writes to your database in a production app is very dangerous. Obviously, anyone with your database reference will be able to read or write data to your database. Unauthorized users could destroy your backend and there are also possibilities that costs could increase exponentially. Therefore this is not recommended. There always should be some mechanisms preventing these scenarios.
Recommendation: Using anonymous authentication first and connect later with existing Identity Providers
I recommend that you use Firebase Authentication to create and use temporary anonymous accounts to authenticate with Firebase. These temporary anonymous accounts can be used to allow users who haven't yet signed up to your app to work with data protected by security rules while not being in the way of your user experience. If an anonymous user later decides to sign up to your app, you can link their sign-in credentials to the anonymous account so that they can continue to work with their protected data in future sessions.
You could also enable Google-Sign-In, Facebook Login, Twitter, GitHub, Microsoft, Yahoo, etc. to let users authenticate in a very fast and easy way without compromising on a security standpoint if using regular password authentication is not what you want (from a UX standpoint). FirebaseUI makes it really easy to add these to your existing app. Check out the official documentation on this topic.
Implementing Cloud Firestore Security Rules
The official documentation on this is really great on how to get started with Cloud Firestore Security Rules.
However these security rules could work for you:
Allow read access to all users to the root (Not recommended because this can create huge costs in production). Users don't have write (create, update, delete) access. In this case you can edit your data via the Firebase Console. Choose either option 1 or option 2 for your project.
rules_version = '2';
service cloud.firestore {
match /databases/{database}/documents {
// Option 1: Matches any document in the 'root' collection.
match /root/{rumiXYZ} {
allow read: if true;
allow write: if false;
}
// Option 2: Matches any document in the 'root' collection or subcollections.
match /root/{document=**} {
allow read: if true;
allow write: if false;
}
}
}
The {document=**} path in the rules above can be used to match any document in the collection/subcollections or in the entire database. This should however not be necessary for your use case. Continue on to the guide for structuring security rules to learn how to match specific data paths and work with hierarchical data.
Don't forget to secure your Firebase Cloud Storage too!
I have migrated data to firebase storage, which have structure like:
<fileId>/<filename>
I can store fileIds associated with user in firebase database like:
<userId>/<fileids>
Is there anyway I can get something like auth.uid/fileids from firebase database in security rules of firestorage, to only allow to read file to auth user, if fileIds belong to him. If not, what all options are available to achieve the same and which one is best among them?
It's currently not possible to use data from databases in your Cloud Storage security rules. You can only use information about the object stored in the bucket.
You could instead write a backend API that performs all the checks and then operates on the object in storage, or store information about the file in its metadata for use in rules.
I developed a flutter app,
I use Firebase as my DB, which means that any user can write and read from my DB,
I'm getting the following email every couple of hours.
[Firebase] Your Cloud Firestore database has insecure rules
We've detected the following issue(s) with your security rules:
any user can read your entire database
any user can write to your entire database
Which is exactly what I want, since I want my app to be available to unregistered users.
Did I missed something? is my app is actually insecure?
The access to the DB is done through the app with filters only user specific data.
Is there a way to make my more secure, and keeping it available for unregistered users?
I also not sure why allowing only registered user will make it insecure, since any one can register to the app with a click of a button.
Please shed some light on this issue.
You will definitely need to learn how to use security rules. A full discussion is beyond the scope of a single answer, but you should know that security rules allow you to specify who (signed in through Firebase Auth) can read and write which documents and collections. Not using security rules at all is a massive security hole.
The video in the following documentation explain it in a very simple way
https://firebase.google.com/docs/firestore/security/get-started#writing_rules
The bottom line is that you must auth your users, and then use security rules for filtering the data, inorder for your data to be secured.
Using insecure rule should be done only for testing s
I would like to use data in the realtime database to allow user access in the firestore database. Is it possible to reference nodes in the realtime database from the firestore security rules?
It is currently not possible to cross between database products like this in security rules. Please feel free to file a feature request for this.
You can, however, write code to run on Cloud Functions that deals with database changes after the change has happened, and undo or restrict the change there.