How to prevent malicious scripts writing to Firebase database? - firebase

I been reading firebase 3+ documentation for a while and I'm still wondering how to manage the following scenario regarding safety:
Let say I have a website for publishing local business like yellow pages in where everyone with an account can add new entries and edit the info of the existing ones with the following schema:
{
"businesses"": {
"62061635": {
"id": "62061635",
"name": "Cellphone store"
},
"66856728": {
"id": "66856728",
"name": "El Bambino restaurant"
}
}
}
If a user with a successful login write the following snipped in the developers console:
firebase.database().ref('/businesses/').once('value').then(function(snapshot) {
console.log(snapshot.val());
});
Practically all users could retrieve all the businesses info, that's not so drastic, but if instead of the above code the users use the following code:
var i=0;
while(i++ < 10) {
var id = generateRandomString();
firebase.database().ref('businesses/' + id).set({
id: id,
name: generateRandomString()
});
}
That's something I worry about, I know there are rules for database, but in this case where all users can add and edit the info, how can I prevent the users to run malicious scripts like the ones above?

Related

Can't create cloudsql role for Service Account via api

I have been trying to use the api to create service accounts in GCP.
To create a service account I send the following post request:
base_url = f"https://iam.googleapis.com/v1/projects/{project}/serviceAccounts"
auth = f"?access_token={access_token}"
data = {"accountId": name}
# Create a service Account
r = requests.post(base_url + auth, json=data)
this returns a 200 and creates a service account:
Then, this is the code that I use to create the specific roles:
sa = f"{name}#dotmudus-service.iam.gserviceaccount.com"
sa_url = base_url + f'/{sa}:setIamPolicy' + auth
data = {"policy":
{"bindings": [
{
"role": roles,
"members":
[
f"serviceAccount:{sa}"
]
}
]}
}
If roles is set to one of roles/viewer, roles/editor or roles/owner this approach does work.
However, if I want to use, specifically roles/cloudsql.viewer The api tells me that this option is not supported.
Here are the roles.
https://cloud.google.com/iam/docs/understanding-roles
I don't want to give this service account full viewer rights to my project, it's against the principle of least privilege.
How can I set specific roles from the api?
EDIT:
here is the response using the resource manager api: with roles/cloudsql.admin as the role
POST https://cloudresourcemanager.googleapis.com/v1/projects/{project}:setIamPolicy?key={YOUR_API_KEY}
{
"policy": {
"bindings": [
{
"members": [
"serviceAccount:sa#{project}.iam.gserviceaccount.com"
],
"role": "roles/cloudsql.viewer"
}
]
}
}
{
"error": {
"code": 400,
"message": "Request contains an invalid argument.",
"status": "INVALID_ARGUMENT",
"details": [
{
"#type": "type.googleapis.com/google.cloudresourcemanager.projects.v1beta1.ProjectIamPolicyError",
"type": "SOLO_REQUIRE_TOS_ACCEPTOR",
"role": "roles/owner"
}
]
}
}
With the code provided it appears that you are appending to the first base_url which is not the correct context to modify project roles.
This will try to place the appended path to: https://iam.googleapis.com/v1/projects/{project}/serviceAccount
The POST path for adding roles needs to be: https://cloudresourcemanager.googleapis.com/v1/projects/{project]:setIamPolicy
If you remove /serviceAccounts from the base_url and it should work.
Edited response to add more information due to your edit
OK, I see the issue here, sorry but I had to set up a new project to test this.
cloudresourcemanager.projects.setIamPolicy needs to replace the entire policy. It appears that you can add constraints to what you change but that you have to submit a complete policy in json for the project.
Note that gcloud has a --log-http option that will help you dig through some of these issues. If you run
gcloud projects add-iam-policy-binding $PROJECT --member serviceAccount:$NAME --role roles/cloudsql.viewer --log-http
It will show you how it pulls the existing existing policy, appends the new role and adds it.
I would recommend using the example code provided here to make these changes if you don't want to use gcloud or the console to add the role to the user as this could impact the entire project.
Hopefully they improve the API for this need.

Developing a news feed of a sns with Firebase(NoSQL)

I’m trying to develop an app which is a social network service with firebase. Everything is alright. But, I got stuck when I think about news feed feature. Sure, I can find the posts user by user. But it's not cool and inefficient. Or, there is another idea. Create news feed document for the user, and add someone's posts when user follows or someone writes a post. But it is also not that good.
How could I make news feed feature with Firebase(or NoSQL, whatever)? I really want to know how to make news feed with NoSQL.
Actually Firebase blog explained about this on here.
{
"timeline": {
"user2": {
"-K-zOrtjiCGe7tgRk8DG": {
"text": "I love emojis!",
"uid": "user1"
}
},
"user3": {
"-K-zOrtjiCGe7tgRk8DG": {
"text": "I love emojis!",
"uid": "user1"
}
}
},
"followers": {
"user1": {
"user2": true,
"user3": true
}
}
}
It calls "Fan-out" process. And it's kind broad topic for NoSQL database environment.

Storing User Data Flattened Security

I'd like to create an app that has a lot of user data. Let's say that each user tracks their own time per task. If I were to store it flattened it would look like this:
{
users: {
USER_ID_1: {
name: 'Mat',
tasks: {
TASK_ID_1: true,
TASK_ID_2: true,
...
}
},
},
tasks: {
TASK_ID_1: {
start: 0,
end: 1
},
TASK_ID_2: {
start: 1,
end: 2
}
}
}
Now I'd like to query and get all the task information for the user. Right now the data is small. From their guides: https://www.firebase.com/docs/web/guide/structuring-data.html it says (near the end) "... Until we get into tens of thousands of records..." and then doesn't explain how to handle that.
So my question is as follows. I know we can't do filtering via security, but can I use security to limit what people have access to and then when searching base it off the user id? My structure would then turn to this:
{
users: {
USER_ID_1: {
name: 'Mat'
}
},
tasks: {
TASK_ID_1: {
user: USER_ID_1,
start: 0,
end: 1
},
TASK_ID_2: {
user: USER_ID_1,
start: 1,
end: 2
},
...
}
}
Then I would set up my security rules to only allow each task to be accessed by the user who created it, and my ref query would look like this:
var ref = new Firebase("https://MY_FIREBASE.firebaseio.com/");
$scope.tasks = $firebaseArray(ref.child('tasks/')
.orderByChild('user')
.startAt('USER_ID_1')
.endAt('USER_ID_1'));
Is that how I should structure it? My query works but I'm unsure if it'll work once I introduce security where one user can't see another users tasks.
You've already read that security rules can not be used to filter data. Not even creative data modeling can change that. :-)
To properly secure access to your tasks you'll need something like:
"tasks": {
"$taskid": {
".read": "auth.uid === data.child(user).val()"
}
}
With this each user can only read their own tasks.
But with these rules, your query won't work. At it's most core your query is reading from tasks here:
ref.child('tasks/')...some-filtering...on(...
And since your user does not have read permission on tasks this read operation fails.
If you'd give the user read permission on tasks the read and query would work, but the user could then also read all tasks that you don't want to give them access to.

Firebase permissions based on user's role

In my application I am supposed to have three kinds of roles:
Store: Can do whatever kind of reads and writes on anything bellow their owned key;
Customers: Can create their chat keys only underneath their designated store; Once a chat is created they can only push to the message child, on their own chats;
Attendants: Can only update chats which are designated to them, and insert under their messages tag.
The database is something similar to:
"$store_id": {
"owner": STORE_ID,
"chats": {
...
"$chat_id": {
"owner": COSTUMER,
"attendant": ATTENDANT,
"messages": {
"$message_id": {
"owner": CUSTOMER_ID
}
}
}
...
}
}
I can't figure out how I can achieve this behavior because:
If a permission is applied to a top level node, their children can't override it;
If someone crack into the database with valid credentials (i.e.: customers'), they can assume whatever role they want;
How this kind of issue is managed in Firebase?

How do you delete user accounts in Meteor?

The only way I have found to delete user accounts in meteor (other than emptying the database with mrt reset), is by actually logging into that specific user account, and deleting the account from the console, using:
Meteor.users.remove('the user id');
But like I said, I need to be logged in as that specific user, and have not been able to find a solution which enables me to delete any user from the db. I'm sure it has something to do with permissions or roles, but I am not sure how to proceed / what is the best solution / how to set an administrative role for a particular user, so that I can delete different user accounts.
You could do
meteor mongo
or
meteor mongo myapp.meteor.com for a deployed app
Then
db.users.remove({_id:<user id>});
I wouldn't recommend it but if you want to delete any user without being logged in from meteor you would need to modify the allow rules. But deleting a user is a very unlikely event hence the above might be the best way to do it.
Anyway if you do want, modify the Meteor.users.allow({remove:function() { return true }); property. See http://docs.meteor.com/#allow. You could add in some custom logic there so it'll only let you do so if you're the admin
I was having trouble doing this on nitrous.io because I couldn't open both Meteor and Mongo. I put:
Meteor.users.remove(' the _id of the user ');
in the isServer section to remove the user.
If anyone is still looking for an answer to this question, I have outlined my solution below.
When I create a new user, I add a field called role in my user document. If I want a user to be able to remove other users from the Meteor.users collection, I give him a role of administrator. If not, I give him a role of member. So, my user document looks something like this -
{
"_id" : ...,
"createdAt" : ...,
"services" : {...},
"username" : "test",
"profile" : {
"name" : "Test Name",
"role" : "administrator"
}
}
On the client, I have a list of users (added using a #each template tag) with a remove button next to each user. A user has to login to see this list. I defined an event handler for the remove button -
'click #remove-user-btn': function () {
Meteor.users.remove({ _id: this._id }, function (error, result) {
if (error) {
console.log("Error removing user: ", error);
} else {
console.log("Number of users removed: " + result);
}
})
}
However, Meteor.users does not allow remove operations from the client by default. So, you have to edit the Meteor.users.allow callback in the server as shown below to allow the users to be removed from the client side. But we need to make sure that only a user with an administrator role is allowed this privilege.
Meteor.users.allow({
remove: function (userId, doc) {
var currentUser, userRole;
currentUser = Meteor.users.findOne({ _id: userId }, { fields: { 'profile.role': 1 } });
userRole = currentUser.profile && currentUser.profile.role;
if (userRole === "administrator" && userId !== doc._id) {
console.log("Access granted. You are an administrator and you are not trying to delete your own document.");
return true;
} else {
console.log("Access denied. You are not an administrator or you are trying to delete your own document.");
return false;
}
},
fetch: []
});
This is the general idea. You can build upon this to suit your needs.
Here are the steps to delete user from mongo through console:
step 1: open new console
step 2: change diretory to your app such as (cd myapp)
step 3 : enter command meteor mongo
step 4: make sure there exists a table called users, db.users.find({});
step 5: find the userid of the user you wish to delete and type :
db.users.remove({_id:"nRXJCC9wTx5x6wSP2"}); // id should be within quotes

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