servicecanada / cens

Canada.ca Email Notification Services - Subscription service to send mass mailing via the notification service from CDS.

Canada.ca Email Notification Services

Subscription service to send mass mailing via the notification service from CDS.

How to do the setup

Tests

Load tests

Run bash script "load-run.sh" for load testing. More instructions in the file.

Start the application

node server.js

or

docker-compose up --build

Create topic

A topic could be compared to a mailing list.

Each topic is unilingual. They are created in pair.

For each topic you need:

• Unique Notify API key: "team and safe senders"
• Notify template ID that represent the confirmation email
• Confirmation subscription link
• Confirmation unsubscription link

Topic naming convention

{2-3 letter group name abbreviation}-{short topic name}{2 letter language}

database command sample

db.topics.insertOne( {
    _id: "test2",
    templateId: "<template id available in the template in Notify>",
    notifyKey: "<A valid Notify API key>",
    confirmURL: "https://canada.ca/en.html",
    unsubURL: "https://canada.ca/en.html",
    nTemplateMailingId: "<template ID for sending a corresponding mailing>"
})

Create a topic detail

db.topics_details.insertOne( {
    _id: "test2",
    accessCode: [ "123456" ],
	createdAt: ISODate( "2020-03-21T00:00:00.000-04:00" ),
	lastUpdated: ISODate( "2020-03-21T00:00:00.000-04:00" ),
	groupName: "Department Name",
	description: "Used for this service, related to request #",
	lang: "en",
	langAlt: [ "test" ],
	nServiceId: "test-serviceID-to-be-extracted-from-Notify-API-key"
})

(Optional) Create a topic for an app handling POST volume

You need to add the last three URLs for redirection

db.topics.insertOne( {
    _id: "test2",
    templateId: "<template id available in the template in Notify>",
    notifyKey: "<A valid Notify API key>",
    confirmURL: "https://canada.ca/en.html",
    unsubURL: "https://canada.ca/en.html",
	thankURL: "https://canada.ca/en.html",
    inputErrURL: "https://canada.ca/en.html",
    failURL: "https://canada.ca/en.html"
})

Same, but to update an existing topic

db.topics.updateOne( {
		_id: "test"
	},
	{
		$set: {
			thankURL: "https://canada.ca/en.html",
			inputErrURL: "https://canada.ca/en.html",
			failURL: "https://canada.ca/en.html"
		}
	}
);

To remove it

db.topics.updateOne( {
		_id: "test"
	},
	{
		$unset: {
			thankURL: "",
			inputErrURL: "",
			failURL: ""
		}
	}
);

Going live with a topic

You need to:

• Do sucessfully the journey of a subscribing to a topic.
  1. Subscribe
  2. Subscribe confirmation
  3. Email confirmation
  4. Sending a email message update with a CSV
  5. Unsubscribe
• Report any content anomaly, all subscription process should follow all best practice. At this stage you must let the client know + manager of any potential issue
• Ensure it is paired with another language via "langAlt". Usually it is English + French
• Ask the client to send us a Live Notify API Key via an encrypted communication
• Replace the Notify API key

Updating an existing topic

1. Run the appropriate MongoDB query
2. Flush the cache: /api/v0.1/t-manager/{Private access code 1}/{Private access code 2}/flush-cache

Topic

A topic could be compared to a mailing list.

_id

Raw string identifier for a topic. Could be a keyword.

Updates when: A user fills out the form to subscribe to a topic.

templateId

Notify API key for the specific email template related to this topic confirmation email in a string.

notifyKey

Notify API key for this Service in string. Services in Notify are split by "From" emails amongst other things.

confirmURL

String of the URL to the page to which user is redirected when they confirmed their subscription by clicking the link in the confirmation email.

unsubURL

String of the URL to the page to which user is redirected when they unsubscribe from their subscription by clicking the unsubscribe link in an email.

(Optional) Create a topic for an app handling POST volume

You need to add the last three URLs for redirection

thankURL

String of the URL to the page to which user is redirected when they subscribe successfully with the POST activated

inputErrURL

String of the URL to the page to which user is redirected when they fill out the form with input errors with the POST activated

failURL

String of the URL to the page to which user is redirected when the subscription fails on the server side with the POST activated

Topics Details

Contains details about each topics.

_id

Raw string that matches the according topic ID.

accessCode

Simple string that adds a layer of validation to allow managing users to do restricted things like exporting topic emails list in CSV.

createdAt

Date of when the topic details are created.

lastUpdated

Date of last time a validation against the accessCode has been done.

Updates when: Every time a validation against the accessCode is done e.i. for export to CSV.

groupName

String containing name of a department responsible for the need to create such topic.

description

Description of the topic and its reason to exist, in a string.

lang

String that defines what language this topic is in abbrevation form.

langAlt

Array of pointers to other languages counterparts for the same topic. Needs ID in string of those other topics.

cens's Issues

Add OSS License

Adding an OSS license like MIT would help clarify legal parameters for other jurisdictions interested in replicating the x-notify system.

Email - confirm lands on Canada.ca with no message saying it worked.

Hi @duboisp

I just tested using the live link.

After pressing the confirm link from my email I ended up with a few 302 redirect and than landed on https://www.canada.ca/home.html

There was no message saying if the email was confirmed or anything. What's the "expected" path?

Info Exposure in confirmation link

Hey team,

Just wanted to raise this to your attention as we forgot to mention it yesterday in the check-in.

The code below that generates the confirmation link, is populating the recipients email address into the URL, which will create the potential for these pieces of PII to be registered in logs, browser caches, etc.

https://github.com/ServiceCanada/x-notify/blob/e282fc7752d4f6aa06c34570c81334b88ba54220/controllers/subscriptions.js#L512

I've linked to the relevant OWASP description of the issue below.

https://owasp.org/www-community/vulnerabilities/Information_exposure_through_query_strings_in_url

Proposed Solution:

Generate a UUID and replace email with that token in the url, using the UUID as a query/insertion key accordingly.

Notify API Keys

@duboisp thanks for granting us access

After taking a quick look looks like the Notify API KEY is getting passed around and stored in a few spots:

Example:
https://github.com/ServiceCanada/x-notify/blob/5dea006de3e4d020aacf7a4318096822413050d6/controllers/subscriptions.js#L69

https://github.com/ServiceCanada/x-notify/blob/master/controllers/subscriptions.js#L79

The api key should be kept as secret (environment variable) and not stored. For example we may need to revoke the api key at our level or rotate the keys.

Also here:
https://github.com/ServiceCanada/x-notify/tree/master/test#database-command

I understand this might be used by multiple departs but we'll need to look at other ways of doing that.