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FAQ Platform — QA, Testing & Security Audit Report

Audited revision: main @ 4254582 (working tree, post-fix) Audit date: 2026-05-30 Auditor role: Senior QA Engineer & Security Auditor Scope: Full MERN monorepo (server/ Express API + client/ React/Vite), all 8 milestones per PLANNING.md / TASK.md.

1. Executive summary

The FAQ Platform is a well-architected, feature-complete MVP. Code quality is high: clean service/controller/route separation, centralized config and constants, consistent error handling, soft-delete + audit logging, a single swappable AI boundary, refresh-token rotation with hashed storage + revocation, bcrypt password hashing, and rate limiting on sensitive endpoints. React's default escaping means there is no DOM-XSS in the SPA (no dangerouslySetInnerHTML anywhere).

The audit nonetheless found 1 Critical, 1 High, 4 Medium, and 10 Low issues. The Critical (well-known JWT secret fallback that silently secures production) and the High (NoSQL operator injection on public list endpoints) were fixed and pinned with regression tests during this audit, along with all Medium items and one Low. Remaining Low items are documented with recommendations; most are accepted MVP trade-offs already noted in PLANNING.md.

Verification baseline (before → after fixes)

Check Command Before After
Lint (server + client) npm run lint 0 errors, 13 warnings 0 errors, 1 warning*
Unit/Integration/API tests npm test 50 passed / 7 suites 55 passed / 8 suites
Client build npm run build ✅ ✅
Dependency scan npm audit 3 moderate (transitive) 3 moderate (transitive)

* The remaining warnings are pre-existing unused eslint-disable directives and one unused import — cosmetic, non-blocking (see §7).

Note on "TypeScript type checks": this project is intentionally pure ESM JavaScript, not TypeScript, so a tsc type-check is not applicable. ESLint (flat config, @eslint/js + React plugins) is the static-analysis gate and is run in its place.

2. Test strategy

A professional test pyramid for this stack. ✅ = present/used, ➕ = added in this audit, ⬜ = recommended (not yet implemented).

Layer Tooling Status Coverage
Unit (pure logic) Jest ✅ gibberish heuristics, cosine similarity, badge thresholds, spam escalation, job handlers
Integration / API Jest + Supertest + mongodb-memory-server ✅ ➕ auth, queries, forum, badges/bans, FAQ, chatbot RAG, admin, maintenance crons, security regressions
Authentication & authorization Jest + Supertest ✅ ➕ token required, admin-only gates, ownership checks, banCheck, chatbot session ownership
Input validation & edge cases Jest + Supertest ✅ ➕ gibberish/duplicate gates, empty bodies, NoSQL injection, upload extension smuggling
AI determinism Mock-mode AI boundary ✅ offline embeddings + canned chat keep CI free and deterministic
Security Jest regression suite (tests/security.test.js) ➕ headers, NoSQL injection, upload hardening, session isolation, ban enforcement
Dependency vuln scan npm audit ✅ run each milestone; see §6
UI/UX validation manual review of components/pages ✅ React auto-escaping verified; focus-visible/responsive CSS present
Client unit/component Vitest + React Testing Library ⬜ recommended — no client tests currently exist
End-to-end (E2E) Playwright / Cypress ⬜ recommended — the TASK.md demo-loop checklist is the manual E2E script today
Performance/load k6 / autocannon ⬜ recommended for the in-memory vector scan ceiling (see PERF-01)

The test suite uses an in-memory MongoDB and the AI mock boundary, so the entire suite is deterministic, offline, and quota-free — exactly right for CI.

3. Findings by milestone

Severity definitions — Critical: remote compromise / auth bypass. High: significant data exposure or integrity loss. Medium: exploitable under conditions / defence-in-depth gap. Low: hardening, minor integrity, or accepted trade-off.

Milestone 1 — Foundation (auth, JWT, middleware, models)

🔴 SEC-01 — Hardcoded JWT secret fallback (Critical) — FIXED

  • Description: config/env.js resolved secrets via a required(key, fallback) helper that always supplied a fallback ('dev-access-secret' / 'dev-refresh-secret'), so it never actually enforced anything. A production deployment with the env vars unset would silently sign and verify JWTs with these well-known values published in this public repo.
  • Reproduction: Start the server without JWT_ACCESS_SECRET. Sign a token with { sub: <any user's _id> } using dev-access-secret. Send it as Authorization: Bearer …. The auth middleware loads that user fresh from the DB → full session as any user, including admins.
  • Impact: Complete authentication bypass / account & admin takeover.
  • Fix applied: Replaced required() with a secret() resolver that throws on startup in production if the secret is missing or still equals the dev default. Dev/test keep the convenient fallback (so CI and local runs are unaffected).

🟠 SEC-04 — Missing HTTP security headers (Medium) — FIXED

  • Description: No helmet or equivalent; responses lacked X-Content-Type-Options, X-Frame-Options, Referrer-Policy, and leaked X-Powered-By: Express.
  • Impact: Clickjacking, MIME-sniffing, framework fingerprinting; compounds SEC-03.
  • Fix applied: Added a dependency-free header middleware in app.js (nosniff, X-Frame-Options: DENY, Referrer-Policy: no-referrer, removes X-Powered-By). Recommendation: adopt helmet + a CSP in production.

🟡 SEC-06 — Stack traces returned to clients outside production (Medium → Low) — OPEN (recommendation)

  • Description: middleware/error.js includes err.stack in the JSON response unless config.isProd. The default NODE_ENV is development, so a deployment that forgets to set NODE_ENV=production leaks internal stack traces.
  • Impact: Information disclosure (paths, dependency internals).
  • Recommendation: Gate stack exposure on an explicit debug flag, or hide it whenever NODE_ENV !== 'development'. Ensure NODE_ENV=production in the deploy workflow.

🟡 SEC-10 — Tokens stored in localStorage (Low) — OPEN (accepted)

  • Access + refresh tokens live in localStorage (client/src/api/client.js), so any XSS could exfiltrate them. Already documented as an MVP trade-off; recommend httpOnly, SameSite cookies for production. React's escaping keeps XSS risk low today.

🟡 SEC-14 — Thin input validation on registration (Low) — OPEN (recommendation)

  • authService.register checks presence + password length ≥ 8 but does not validate email format or bound name length. bcrypt also silently truncates passwords beyond 72 bytes.
  • Recommendation: Add an email regex (or validator), cap name/title/body lengths at the schema, and reject > 72-byte passwords explicitly.

M1 strengths: bcrypt hashing; refresh tokens stored as SHA-256 hashes with TTL index, rotated on use and revoked on logout; auth reloads the user from the DB so a forged/role-tampered token can't elevate (role is read from the DB doc, not the token claim); password_hash is select:false and stripped in toJSON.

Milestone 2 — Ask a Query (gibberish, spam, vector, intake)

🟠 SEC-02 — NoSQL operator injection on list filters (High) — FIXED

  • Description: queryService.listQueries assigned req.query values straight into the Mongo filter (filter.category = opts.category, etc.). Express' qs parser turns ?category[$ne]=x into { $ne: 'x' }, injecting a Mongo operator into the filter. The same pattern existed in faqService.listFaqs (category) and adminService.listModeration (status/type). The /api/queries route is public (optionalAuth).
  • Reproduction: GET /api/queries?category[$ne]=nope returned all queries not in category "nope" (operator honored) instead of treating the value as a literal string.
  • Impact: Filter logic manipulation / unintended data selection; malformed operators can also throw 500s (availability).
  • Fix applied: All user-supplied list filters are now coerced with String() before entering the query (consistent with createQuery, which already did this). Pinned by security.test.js › NoSQL operator injection.

🟠 SEC-03 — Upload extension smuggling → stored XSS (Medium) — FIXED

  • Description: middleware/upload.js validated only file.mimetype (client-controlled, spoofable) but derived the stored extension from originalname (also attacker-controlled). Uploads are served from /uploads via express.static, which sets Content-Type by extension. An attacker could send Content-Type: image/png with filename evil.html → stored as *.html → served as HTML/script on the API origin.
  • Reproduction: Upload a "screenshot" with contentType: image/png, filename: evil.html → previously stored with a .html extension.
  • Impact: Stored XSS in the API origin; content-spoofing.
  • Fix applied: Extension is now derived from a server-side MIME→extension allowlist (never from the filename). The /uploads static handler additionally sets Content-Disposition: attachment and X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff, so a malicious upload can never render inline. Pinned by security.test.js › upload filename.

🟡 PERF-01 — In-memory vector scan ceiling (Low / by design) — OPEN (accepted)

  • vectorService.findSimilarQueries (and the chatbot/cluster/FAQ search) load all embeddings into memory and score them per request — O(n) per create/search. Correct for MVP scale and explicitly called out in PLANNING.md §15. Recommendation: swap vectorService for a dedicated vector index beyond low-thousands of documents (the interface already isolates this).

M2 strengths: two-layer gibberish gate with AI escalation only on borderline scores (quota-aware); embedding cache keyed by content hash (no redundant AI calls); duplicate detection warns + flags into the moderation queue (never auto-rejects, per spec); tags normalized + capped; the Query text index backs $text search.

Milestone 3 — Forum + Solution Engine

🟡 SEC-07 — Report endpoints missing banCheck (Low) — FIXED

  • Banned users could still POST /:id/report (query & answer), letting a banned account flood the moderation queue. Added banCheck to both report routes. Pinned by security.test.js › banned users cannot report.

🟡 SEC-12 — Merge doesn't reconcile accepted answer (Low) — OPEN (recommendation)

  • adminService.mergeQueries reassigns the duplicate's answers to the canonical query but does not clear/recompute is_accepted on moved answers or canonical.accepted_answer_id. A merged thread could display a second "accepted" answer or an inconsistent status.
  • Recommendation: On merge, reset is_accepted=false on moved answers (or re-run finalization for the canonical thread).

🟡 SEC-13 — Like points not reverted on prune (Low) — OPEN (recommendation)

  • When finalizeSolutions soft-deletes pruned answers, the +2 reputation points their likes awarded are not reversed, causing minor reputation drift. Low impact. Recommendation: reconcile points (or accept as historical reward).

🟡 SEC-16 — No report de-duplication (Low) — OPEN (recommendation)

  • A single user can report the same content repeatedly, each creating a ModerationQueue entry. writeLimiter (40/min) caps the rate but not the total. Recommendation: dedupe (reporter_id, target) or collapse in the queue.

M3 strengths: ownership enforced on edit/markSolution/delete; self-like blocked; one-like-per-user via a unique index; awardPoints is the single reputation entry point (badges always stay in sync); Path A vs Path B point logic matches spec; resolution actions are audit-logged.

Milestone 4 — Badges & Bans

🟡 SEC-09 — Public profile exposes moderation status (Low) — OPEN (partly by design)

  • GET /api/users/:id is unauthenticated and returns ban_reason, ban_expires_at, requires_approval, and negative_badges to anyone. PLANNING.md §11/§12 intends negative badges to be visible, but the free-text ban_reason is arguably sensitive.
  • Recommendation: Keep badges public; restrict ban_reason to admins/self.

M4 strengths: self-ban prevented; timed vs permanent bans handled; banCheck lifts expired bans lazily and via cron; suspended → permaban, restricted → approval-required; every governance action is audit-logged and notifies the user; awardPoints floors reputation at 0.

Milestone 5 — FAQ + Chatbot + Notifications

🟠 SEC-05 — Chatbot session not bound to its owner (Medium) — FIXED

  • Description: GET /api/chatbot/session/:token had no auth and returned full chat history for any token. getOrCreateSession reused an existing session purely by token, regardless of which user owned it, and accepted a client-chosen session_token (session-fixation surface). A user holding/guessing another user's token could read their history or append to their session.
  • Impact: Cross-user chat history disclosure; session hijack/fixation.
  • Fix applied:
    • Sessions are now reused only if anonymous or owned by the same authenticated user; a logged-in user may claim an anonymous session, but replaying another user's token yields a fresh session.
    • New sessions always mint a server-side crypto.randomUUID() (client can't fixate the token).
    • getSession now requires ownership for user-bound sessions (route uses optionalAuth; anonymous sessions remain readable by their unguessable token, preserving the existing UX).
    • Pinned by security.test.js › chatbot session ownership.

ℹ️ INFO — Prompt-injection surface (informational)

  • The RAG prompt concatenates the user message with retrieved FAQ/community text. Standard LLM risk; answers are grounded and the system degrades to grounded text on error. In mock mode this is inert. Recommendation for production: keep retrieved content clearly delimited and treat model output as untrusted.

M5 strengths: notification endpoints are correctly scoped by recipient_id (no IDOR); FAQ promotion guards resolved-state and double-promotion; graceful AI fallback on 429/errors; embeddings stripped from all FAQ/notification serializers.

Milestone 6 — Admin dashboard

  • adminRoutes correctly applies router.use(auth, admin) to the entire router — all admin tooling is admin-gated.
  • adminService.listUsers escapes regex before building the search RegExp (no ReDoS / regex injection).
  • setRole validates the role against the ROLES enum.
  • listModeration filter coercion was hardened as part of SEC-02 (admin-only, lower risk, fixed for consistency).

🟡 SEC-11 — Admin can self-demote / last-admin lockout (Low) — OPEN (recommendation)

  • setRole lets an admin change their own role to user, potentially removing the last administrator. Recommendation: block self-demotion and/or refuse to demote the final admin.

M6 strengths: merge/dismiss/resolve all audit-logged; amalgamation clustering is read-only (admin decides); pagination caps (limit ≤ 50) prevent unbounded scans.

Milestone 7 + 8 — Maintenance crons & Polish/Ship

  • Job trigger safety: POST /api/jobs/:name/run is admin-gated and resolves handlers from a static registry map (jobs[name]) — no dynamic require/eval, so no command/handler injection. Unknown names → 404.
  • Idempotency/safety: soft-delete-purge writes an AuditLog before hard-deleting; lru-eviction only flips is_archived; jobs are disabled during tests (scheduling lives in server.js, not app.js).
  • Rate limiting: authLimiter (auth), aiLimiter (AI), writeLimiter (content writes) applied; all disabled under NODE_ENV=test.
  • Seed integrity: the uncommitted seed/seed.js change (using pathToFileURL for the direct-invocation guard) is a correct Windows-compatibility fix — recommend committing it.

🟡 SEC-08 — DELETE lacks banCheck (Low) — OPEN (accepted)

  • DELETE /queries/:id and DELETE /answers/:id use auth but not banCheck (unlike PATCH). Deleting one's own content while banned is low-risk and soft-delete retains the record for moderation, so this is accepted; noted for consistency.

🟡 SEC-15 — Transitive dependency vulnerabilities (Low) — OPEN (monitor)

  • See §6.

4. Fixes applied (this audit)

ID Severity Fix Files
SEC-01 Critical Fail-fast on default/missing JWT secrets in production server/config/env.js
SEC-02 High String-coerce all list filters (kill NoSQL operator injection) server/services/queryService.js, faqService.js, adminService.js
SEC-03 Medium MIME-derived upload extension + Content-Disposition: attachment + nosniff on /uploads server/middleware/upload.js, server/app.js
SEC-04 Medium Baseline security headers; remove X-Powered-By; cap urlencoded body server/app.js
SEC-05 Medium Bind chatbot sessions to owner; server-minted tokens; ownership-checked reads server/services/chatbotService.js, controllers/chatbotController.js, routes/chatbotRoutes.js
SEC-07 Low Add banCheck to query/answer report routes server/routes/queryRoutes.js, routes/answerRoutes.js

All fixes are backward-compatible with the existing API and were verified against the full test suite.

5. Tests added

server/tests/security.test.js — 5 regression tests, each pinning a fixed vulnerability:

  1. Baseline security headers present + X-Powered-By hidden.
  2. NoSQL operator-injection payload on category is neutralized.
  3. image/png upload named evil.html is stored as .png.
  4. Chatbot session isolation: cross-user read → 403; token replay → fresh session; owner read → 200.
  5. Banned user is blocked (403) from reporting content.

Result: npm test → 55 passed / 8 suites (was 50 / 7). Lint 0 errors; client build green.

6. Dependency vulnerability scan

npm audit reports 3 moderate issues, all transitive and not directly reachable by app code:

Package Via Advisory Note
uuid < 11.1.1 node-cron@3 → uuid GHSA-w5hq-g745-h8pq (missing buffer bounds check in v3/v5/v6 when buf provided) The app never calls uuid with a buf argument; node-cron uses it internally for task IDs.
gaxios 6.4.0–6.7.1 @google/genai depends on vulnerable uuid Only loaded in live AI mode; MVP default is mock mode.
node-cron 3.0.2–3.0.3 direct dep depends on vulnerable uuid npm audit fix --force would jump to node-cron@4 (breaking).

Recommendation: Not exploitable in current usage. Evaluate upgrading node-cron to v4 on a branch (verify the cron API), or accept and monitor. Do not run npm audit fix --force unreviewed (breaking major bump).

7. Code-quality notes (non-security)

  • Lint warnings (13 server / 1 client): mostly stale eslint-disable directives that no longer suppress anything, plus two genuinely unused identifiers (faqService.js arg embedding, maintenance.test.js import FaqEntry). Cosmetic — clear with eslint --fix where safe. Not fixed here to keep the audit diff security-focused.
  • Consistency: createQuery coerced inputs to String/Boolean; the list/search paths did not (root cause of SEC-02) — now consistent.
  • Commit the seed fix: seed/seed.js pathToFileURL change is correct; commit it (fix(seed): …).

8. Residual recommendations (prioritized)

  1. (Prod) Set NODE_ENV=production + strong unique JWT_* secrets; adopt helmet + CSP; move tokens to httpOnly cookies. (SEC-04, SEC-06, SEC-10)
  2. (Med) Restrict ban_reason to admins/self. (SEC-09)
  3. (Med) Block admin self-demotion / last-admin removal. (SEC-11)
  4. (Low) Reconcile accepted-answer state on merge; revert like points on prune; dedupe reports. (SEC-12, SEC-13, SEC-16)
  5. (Validation) Email-format + length validation on user input. (SEC-14)
  6. (Testing) Add client component tests (Vitest + RTL) and an E2E suite (Playwright) covering the TASK.md demo loop; add a load test for the vector-scan ceiling.
  7. (Deps) Plan a node-cron@4 upgrade spike. (SEC-15)

Generated as part of a milestone-wise QA & security audit. All Critical/High/Medium findings were remediated and pinned with automated regression tests; remaining Low items are documented above with recommended fixes.