mcp-quickbase/docs/hardening-summary.md

Work with Quickbase via Model Context Protocol

# Security Hardening and Consistency Improvements Summary

## Overview
This document summarizes the security hardening and consistency improvements made to the MCP-Quickbase codebase.

## Critical Security Improvements

### 1. File Operations Security (HIGH PRIORITY)
- **Added path traversal protection** to prevent access outside working directory
- **Implemented file size limits** (10MB) for read/write operations
- **Added path sanitization** with validation before any filesystem access
- **Configurable working directory** via `QUICKBASE_WORKING_DIR` environment variable
- **Security logging** for attempted violations

### 2. Configuration Validation
- **Added bounds checking** for all numeric configuration values:
  - Rate limit: 1-100 requests/second
  - Cache TTL: 0-86400 seconds (24 hours max)
  - Max retries: 0-10
  - Retry delay: 100ms-60s
  - Request timeout: 1s-5 minutes
- **Improved realm hostname redaction** in logs to preserve domain structure

## Consistency Improvements

### 1. Documentation
- **Fixed package naming inconsistency** (was `quickbase-mcp-connector`, now correctly `mcp-quickbase`)
- **Added community project disclaimer** with appropriate language
- **Updated all installation instructions** to use correct package name

### 2. Code Quality
- **TypeScript strict mode** is properly enabled
- **Consistent error handling** across all tools
- **Proper logging** with sensitive data redaction
- **Consistent file naming** (kebab-case) across the project

## Areas of Excellence

### 1. Defensive Programming
- **Circuit breakers** in pagination logic (query_records)
- **Timeout protection** (30s) for long-running operations
- **Rate limiting** with thread-safe implementation
- **Exponential backoff with jitter** in retry logic

### 2. Error Handling
- **Comprehensive API response validation**
- **Proper error propagation** from tools to MCP
- **Graceful shutdown handlers** for SIGTERM/SIGINT
- **Cache cleanup** on shutdown

### 3. Security Features
- **Sensitive data redaction** in logs (tokens, auth headers)
- **Input validation** using Zod schemas
- **Environment variable validation** at startup
- **Memory-efficient file streaming** for large files using streaming APIs (e.g., Node.js `fs.createReadStream`) to handle large files without excessive memory usage

## Remaining Improvements (Lower Priority)

### 1. Type Safety
- 72 ESLint warnings for `any` types in API response handling
- Could be improved but not critical for security

### 2. Test Coverage
- Current coverage: 42.57%
- File operations have low coverage (20%)
- Many tools lack dedicated test files

### 3. Code Duplication
- File upload tool has duplicate path validation
- Could be refactored to use centralized file utilities

### 4. Minor Enhancements
- Could add circuit breaker pattern to retry logic
- User token could be stored more securely (currently in config object)

## Recommendations

1. **Immediate Priority**: The file security improvements are critical and have been implemented
2. **Medium Priority**: Improve test coverage, especially for file operations
3. **Low Priority**: Address TypeScript `any` warnings for better type safety
4. **Future Enhancement**: Consider adding rate limiting per API endpoint

## Testing
All changes have been tested and pass the existing test suite. No regressions were introduced.