Security Policy

Reporting a Vulnerability

If you discover a security vulnerability in this project, please report it responsibly.

Email: david@balneariodecofrentes.es

Please include:

• Description of the vulnerability
• Steps to reproduce
• Potential impact
• Suggested fix (if any)

We will acknowledge receipt within 48 hours and aim to provide a fix or mitigation within 7 days for critical issues.

Security Considerations

DIMSE-Specific Risks

• Unauthenticated associations: DICOM DIMSE does not include authentication in the base protocol. AE title checking is the only built-in mechanism and is trivially spoofable. Always deploy behind a network firewall or VPN. Consider TLS wrapping (DICOM PS3.15 Annex B) for transport security.

• PDU injection: Malformed PDUs could exploit parsing bugs. The decoder uses strict binary pattern matching with explicit length bounds to mitigate buffer overflows. Property-based testing with StreamData validates parser robustness.

• AE title spoofing: Any client can claim any AE title. Do not rely on AE titles for access control in security-sensitive environments.

• Association flooding (DoS): An attacker could exhaust server resources by opening many associations. Mitigations:

  • max_associations limits concurrent connections via DynamicSupervisor
  • ARTIM timer (PS3.8 Section 9.1.4) closes idle or stalled associations
  • Ranch acceptor pool limits queued connections

• Memory exhaustion: Large DICOM objects in transit consume memory per association. Mitigations:

  • Configurable max_pdu_length (default 16 KB)
  • TCP backpressure via passive socket mode
  • Per-association memory monitoring via :erlang.memory/0

• Patient data (PHI): DICOM data sets transmitted via DIMSE contain Protected Health Information. This library does not provide encryption — use TLS or a VPN for transport security. Users are responsible for HIPAA/GDPR compliance.

TLS / DICOM Secure Transport (v0.6.0+)

v0.6.0 added native TLS support via OTP :ssl and Ranch SSL (PS3.15 Annex B). TLS mitigates plaintext DIMSE traffic exposure and, with mutual TLS (mTLS), client AE title spoofing. See the README for usage examples.

• start_listener/1 accepts :tls option for ranch_ssl transport
• connect/3 accepts :tls option to connect via :ssl
• mTLS: SCP can require client certificates via :verify / :fail_if_no_peer_cert

Supported Versions