Man In The Middle in Adonisjs with Cockroachdb

A Man In The Middle (MitM) attack against an Adonisjs application using CockroachDB occurs when an attacker intercepts or tampering with network traffic between the application and the database. Because Adonisjs typically communicates with CockroachDB via TCP connections (often over the database wire protocol), unencrypted connections and weak transport-layer configurations allow an attacker on the network path to observe or modify queries, credentials, and result sets.

In this stack, the risk is elevated when TLS is not enforced for CockroachDB connections or when certificate validation is skipped. Adonisjs relies on the underlying driver to enforce encryption; if the configuration points to a CockroachDB node without ssl: true or uses an insecure CA, an attacker can perform passive sniffing or active injection. For example, an attacker who can place themselves between the application pod and a CockroachDB node in a Kubernetes cluster can capture authentication tokens and potentially execute malicious SQL if integrity checks are absent.

Another specific exposure arises from development or staging configurations where Adonisjs uses a self-signed certificate or disables strict hostname verification. The tls options passed to the CockroachDB client determine whether the connection validates the server certificate. If rejectUnauthorized: false is set to bypass errors, an attacker can present any certificate and the driver will accept it, enabling a classic MitM scenario. This is particularly dangerous when combined with unprotected network segments or shared namespaces, where lateral movement is trivial.

Operational practices also matter: logging sensitive query parameters without masking can expose data in transit if logs are intercepted, and weak secrets management for database credentials stored in environment variables can be exfiltrated during a session hijack. Because Adonisjs applications often rely on automated migrations and schema generation, an attacker who compromises the MitM position can alter DDL or DML statements to persist backdoors in CockroachDB system tables or user-defined functions.

To contextualize the risk, consider a typical Adonisjs service connecting to a CockroachDB cluster in the cloud. Without enforced TLS and strict certificate pinning, the confidentiality and integrity guarantees of the database layer are effectively absent. This does not require advanced exploits—only network proximity and a willingness to intercept unencrypted traffic.

Remediation focuses on enforcing encrypted connections and validating server identity. For CockroachDB, this means enabling TLS and providing the correct CA certificate, and ensuring Adonisjs passes strict SSL options to the underlying client.

Secure Adonisjs configuration with CockroachDB

Use the following configuration in database.ts to enforce TLS with certificate validation:

import { DatabaseConfig } from '@ioc:Adonisjs/Lucid'

const dbConfig: DatabaseConfig = {
  connection: 'cockroachdb',
  connections: {
    cockroachdb: {
      client: 'cockroachdb',
      connection: {
        host: process.env.DB_HOST || 'localhost',
        port: Number(process.env.DB_PORT) || 26257,
        user: process.env.DB_USER || 'root',
        password: process.env.DB_PASSWORD || '',
        database: process.env.DB_NAME || 'postgres',
        ssl: {
          rejectUnauthorized: true,
          ca: process.env.COCKRACK_DB_CA_CERT || '', // PEM-encoded CA cert
          key: process.env.COCKRACK_DB_CLIENT_KEY || '',  // optional, mTLS
          cert: process.env.COCKRACK_DB_CLIENT_CERT || '', // optional, mTLS
        },
      },
      debug: false,
    },
  },
}

export default dbConfig

Ensure the CA certificate is the cluster root or intermediate that signed the server certificates. When mutual TLS is required, provide key and cert with proper file permissions.

Example secure connection test script

Verify the TLS handshake programmatically before starting the server:

import { Client } from '@cockroachdb/client'

const client = new Client({
  host: process.env.DB_HOST || 'localhost',
  port: Number(process.env.DB_PORT) || 26257,
  ssl: {
    rejectUnauthorized: true,
    ca: process.env.COCKRACK_DB_CA_CERT,
  },
})

async function verifyConnection() {
  try {
    await client.connect()
    console.log('Secure CockroachDB connection established')
    await client.end()
  } catch (err) {
    console.error('Connection verification failed:', err)
    process.exit(1)
  }
}

verifyConnection()

This ensures that the application will refuse to start if the server certificate cannot be validated, mitigating passive sniffing and active MitM attempts that rely on invalid or missing certificates.

Operational and network hardening

Complement code fixes with network-level protections. Use Kubernetes NetworkPolicies or security groups to restrict access to CockroachDB ports to known IP ranges. Rotate credentials using a secrets manager and avoid storing them in environment variables in plain text when possible. Enable audit logging in CockroachDB to detect anomalous queries that may indicate tampered traffic.

Compliance and mapping

These measures align with OWASP API Security Top 10 controls for authentication and transport security, and they support compliance mappings for frameworks such as PCI-DSS and SOC2. By enforcing strict TLS and certificate validation, the Adonisjs + CockroachDB stack reduces the attack surface available to network-level adversaries.