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Architecture

This article aims to give the reader an overview of FormSG's architecture, relative to external systems and in terms of how the codebase is organised

Overview

FormSG runs on Amazon Web Services and is built on top of express.js and AngularJS. It relies on MongoDB Atlas and AWS EFS for storage, AWS SES to dispatch e-mails and is deployed on Docker containers running on top of Elastic Beanstalk. Optionally, FormSG can also talk to Government-hosted systems - SingPass/CorpPass/MyInfo to retrieve form-filler identities, and E-mail servers hosted in Government Data Centres.

Backend

The backend for FormSG is bootstrapped using src/app/server.ts and src/app/loaders. It sets up express.js routes defined in src/app/**/*.routes.ts, with business logic defined in src/app/**/*.controller.ts and mongoose models defined in src/app/**/*.model.ts.

Security

The following is a non-exhaustive list of measures and notable points relating to security on FormSG.

Measures

  • One-time passwords (OTPs) are sent to user, then hashed and stored on the corresponding user record for verification when user submits OTP

  • Login sessions for public servants using OTPs are maintained using session cookies

  • There are two types of forms: email mode and storage mode. In email mode, all form submissions are routed directly to specified e-mail recipients. In storage mode, submissions are encrypted end-to-end.

  • SingPass/CorpPass-related security certificates and corresponding private keys are held in EFS, encrypted at rest with AWS' master key

  • Communications with SingPass/CorpPass/MyInfo are signed with digital signatures both ways, with SingPass/CorpPass payloads encrypted using FormSG's public key

  • Login sessions for form-fillers using SingPass/CorpPass are maintained using session cookies

Authorization

  • Management of forms is restricted to form creators. In storage mode, form creators can add other public servants as form editors. In email mode, form creators can specify a whitelist of email addresses which will receive all form responses.

Notable Points

  • One-way hashes of form submissions stored on MongoDB.

  • E-mail recipients are determined by emails values in FormSchema mongoose model, and the values of all e-mail fields if the form is set to send autoreplies.

  • Secrets are injected using environment variables.

Frontend

The frontend is written in React and can be found in frontend/src.

The index file is located at frontend/public/index.html. The frontend is built with CRA.