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Problem
We currently do not limit the number of submissions per IP per minute. Instead, we only log a message when a threshold is exceeded. This means that in case of a DDoS attempt, there is a risk of downstream systems (particularly those linked via webhook) being affected indirectly.
Solution
Harden the rate-limiting by return HTTP 429.
Some UI issues surfaced as a result of this change. In particular, the
/auth/sendotp
andsubmissions
endpoints return different error message shapes. As a result, it was not clear what shape thelimitRate
message should return, since it is shared between those two endpoints.I decided to change the
/auth/sendotp
endpoint to return an object with amessage
key instead of a plain string since this gives us the flexibility to return more error metadata in future. This was technically a backwards-incompatible change, but the impact is minimal since old clients will simply see the default error message if their OTP emails fail to be sent, which is a rare situation anyway.Screenshots
Tests
limitRate
log message with your IP address.limitRate
log message with your IP address.limitRate
log message with your IP address.