maniator / maniator/verticopolis
[Feature]: [P3] Redact player-authored free text (tower names) from $exception messages
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- Dominant language
- TypeScript
- Stars
- 5
- Forks
- 1
- PR merge metrics
- No merged PRs in 30d
Description
Deferred from the cookieless error-tracking bmad-code-review (Acceptance Auditor, soft finding).
analyticsErrors.ts bounds an exception message to 500 chars and the raw stack to 2000 before sending $exception through the relay. Length-bounding caps payload SIZE, not sensitivity: if game code interpolates a player-authored tower name into a thrown error message (uncommon but possible), that free text is forwarded verbatim within the bound.
Why it is acceptable as-is (not a merge blocker): there is no IP (the relay disables GeoIP and forwards none), no persistent id, and no cross-session linkage, so a leaked free-text string is bound to no stable identity and does not de-anonymize. The vector is narrow (only if code throws with an interpolated name).
Follow-up when picked up: scrub known player-authored fields from the outgoing value/stack before send. Options:
- Maintain the tower name(s) currently in play and redact any occurrence from the message/stack (replace with a placeholder like
<tower-name>). - Or, more broadly, allowlist-scrub: only forward the exception type and a fingerprint plus a redacted message, if the residual value of full messages is judged not worth the free-text risk.
Pairs naturally with the other error-tracking follow-up: structured stack-frame parsing plus a source-map upload (so PostHog Error Tracking resolves frames instead of showing the raw string). Both were deferred from the same first version.
Contributor guide
First steps
- Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
- Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
- Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
- Open a pull request that references the issue number.
Research direction
Start in analyticsErrors.ts, where exception values and raw stacks are length-bounded before the $exception relay send. Decide whether to redact active tower names or allowlist the forwarded fields, then verify that player-authored text is absent from both value and stack while the existing size limits remain intact.
Written by the indexing model from the issue text.
Assessment
- Tech stack
- typescript
- Domain
- observability-sre, security
- Issue type
- Feature
- Difficulty
- 4/5
- Estimated time
- 3-5 days
- Activity status
- Quiet
- Clarity
- Mostly clear
- Newbie friendliness
- 55/100