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Security reference says standard users cannot read any data and unannotated routes default to admin-only

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Assessment

Difficulty
2/5
Estimated time
1-3 hours
Newbie friendliness
82/100
Issue type
Documentation
Clarity
Clearly specified
Activity status
Active
Tech stack
typescript
Domain
authorization, documentation

Research direction

Read docs/en/5-reference/5.1-security.md alongside apps/api/src/auth/ability.factory.ts and apps/api/src/auth/guards/jwt-auth.guard.ts to verify the role permissions and missing-route behavior. Update the stated Standard User access and explain that a route without @RouteAccess fails with a 500; confirm the text also reflects the payload’s lint-rule note. Done when the reference matches those sources.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

Area: Outreach Bug Difficulty: Low Priority: Medium Security

The Security reference misstates what the Standard User role can read and what happens to a route with no @RouteAccess. It says standard users "are not able to access any data" and "are only allowed to administer instruments". AbilityFactory gives the STANDARD role read Subject and read Session in their groups, and read Group too. So a standard user can list every subject in their groups, including the stored names, dates of birth and sex (GET /v1/subjects), and every session there with its subject embedded (GET /v1/sessions). For a route with no route access defined, the page also says "the default is manage and all", so only an admin may call it. JwtAuthGuard instead logs an error and throws a 500 for every caller, including admins. An admin deciding which role to give a research assistant uses this page to judge exposure. As written, it understates what the default role can see.

Where

docs/en/5-reference/5.1-security.md:28, :38 and :50-52:

... If there is no route access explicitly defined for a given route, the default is `manage` and `all`.
...
... If a route does not have any required permission set specified, the user must have permission to manage all resources to have access (i.e., the platform admin). ...
...
#### Standard User

By default, standard users are not able to access any data. They are only allowed to administer instruments, and download the record once complete (as it is stored in memory at that time).

apps/api/src/auth/ability.factory.ts:78-88:

case 'STANDARD':
  ability.can('read', 'Group', { id: { in: groupIds } });
  ability.can('read', 'Instrument');
  ability.can('create', 'InstrumentRecord');
  ability.can('create', 'InstrumentRecordFile', { groupId: { in: groupIds } });
  ability.can('read', 'Session', { groupId: { in: groupIds } });
  ability.can('create', 'Session');
  ability.can('create', 'Subject');
  ability.can('read', 'Subject', { groupIds: { hasSome: groupIds } });
  ability.can('read', 'User', { id: payload.id });

apps/api/src/auth/guards/jwt-auth.guard.ts:31-34:

if (!routeAccess) {
  this.loggingService.error(`Route access is not defined for url: ${request.url}`);
  throw new InternalServerErrorException();
}

Reproduce

  1. Create a user with the Standard User role in a group that has subjects identified by personal information.
  2. Sign in as that user and call GET /v1/subjects?groupId=<group> and GET /v1/sessions?groupId=<group>.

Actual: both return the group's subjects (with firstName, lastName, dateOfBirth, sex) and its sessions.
Expected (per the page): no data is returned.

Tests

docs/ has no test runner (docs/AGENTS.md). Review the corrected text against ability.factory.ts and jwt-auth.guard.ts.

Suggested fix

Rewrite "Standard User" to list what the role holds: it can create subjects, sessions and records, and it can read the subjects, sessions and group of its own groups, but not instrument records. Replace both "default is manage all" sentences with what the guard does: a route without @RouteAccess fails with 500 for everyone, and eslint (REQUIRE_ROUTE_ACCESS) refuses such a route at lint time.

Dominant language
TypeScript
Stars
119
Forks
19
Avg merge
1d 2h
Merged PRs (30d)
56

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