Vulnerabilities

27 via 40 paths

Dependencies

108

Source

GitHub

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Severity
  • 12
  • 13
  • 2
Status
  • 27
  • 0
  • 0

high severity
new

Uncaught Exception

  • Vulnerable module: body-parser
  • Introduced through: body-parser@1.20.2 and express@4.18.2

Detailed paths

  • Introduced through: todo-api@Moser-ss/node-course-todo-api › body-parser@1.20.2
    Remediation: Upgrade to body-parser@1.20.9.
  • Introduced through: todo-api@Moser-ss/node-course-todo-api › express@4.18.2 › body-parser@1.20.1
    Remediation: Upgrade to express@4.22.0.

Overview

Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Uncaught Exception via the read function in lib/read.js when processing a compressed request body that contains trailing bytes. An attacker can send a compressed body with trailing data, causing the decompression stream to emit an error on an already-finished stream with no error listener attached, which crashes the Node.js process.

Remediation

Upgrade body-parser to version 1.20.9, 2.4.0 or higher.

References

high severity

Improper Neutralization of Special Elements in Data Query Logic

  • Vulnerable module: mongoose
  • Introduced through: mongoose@7.2.4

Detailed paths

  • Introduced through: todo-api@Moser-ss/node-course-todo-api › mongoose@7.2.4
    Remediation: Upgrade to mongoose@7.8.3.

Overview

mongoose is a Mongoose is a MongoDB object modeling tool designed to work in an asynchronous environment.

Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Improper Neutralization of Special Elements in Data Query Logic due to the improper handling of $where in match queries. An attacker can manipulate search queries to inject malicious code.

Remediation

Upgrade mongoose to version 6.13.5, 7.8.3, 8.8.3 or higher.

References

high severity

Improper Neutralization of Special Elements in Data Query Logic

  • Vulnerable module: mongoose
  • Introduced through: mongoose@7.2.4

Detailed paths

  • Introduced through: todo-api@Moser-ss/node-course-todo-api › mongoose@7.2.4
    Remediation: Upgrade to mongoose@7.8.4.

Overview

mongoose is a Mongoose is a MongoDB object modeling tool designed to work in an asynchronous environment.

Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Improper Neutralization of Special Elements in Data Query Logic due to the improper use of a $where filter in conjunction with the populate() match. An attacker can manipulate search queries to retrieve or alter information without proper authorization by injecting malicious input into the query.

Note: This vulnerability derives from an incomplete fix of CVE-2024-53900

Remediation

Upgrade mongoose to version 6.13.6, 7.8.4, 8.9.5 or higher.

References

high severity

Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling

  • Vulnerable module: qs
  • Introduced through: body-parser@1.20.2 and express@4.18.2

Detailed paths

  • Introduced through: todo-api@Moser-ss/node-course-todo-api › body-parser@1.20.2 › qs@6.11.0
    Remediation: Upgrade to body-parser@1.20.4.
  • Introduced through: todo-api@Moser-ss/node-course-todo-api › express@4.18.2 › qs@6.11.0
    Remediation: Upgrade to express@4.22.0.
  • Introduced through: todo-api@Moser-ss/node-course-todo-api › express@4.18.2 › body-parser@1.20.1 › qs@6.11.0
    Remediation: Upgrade to express@4.22.0.

Overview

qs is a querystring parser that supports nesting and arrays, with a depth limit.

Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling via improper enforcement of the arrayLimit option in bracket notation parsing. An attacker can exhaust server memory and cause application unavailability by submitting a large number of bracket notation parameters - like a[]=1&a[]=2 - in a single HTTP request.

PoC


const qs = require('qs');
const attack = 'a[]=' + Array(10000).fill('x').join('&a[]=');
const result = qs.parse(attack, { arrayLimit: 100 });
console.log(result.a.length);  // Output: 10000 (should be max 100)

Remediation

Upgrade qs to version 6.14.1 or higher.

References

high severity

Incomplete Filtering of One or More Instances of Special Elements

  • Vulnerable module: validator
  • Introduced through: validator@13.9.0

Detailed paths

  • Introduced through: todo-api@Moser-ss/node-course-todo-api › validator@13.9.0
    Remediation: Upgrade to validator@13.15.22.

Overview

validator is a library of string validators and sanitizers.

Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Incomplete Filtering of One or More Instances of Special Elements in the isLength() function that does not take into account Unicode variation selectors (\uFE0F, \uFE0E) appearing in a sequence which lead to improper string length calculation. This can lead to an application using isLength for input validation accepting strings significantly longer than intended, resulting in issues like data truncation in databases, buffer overflows in other system components, or denial-of-service.

PoC

Input;

const validator = require('validator');

console.log(`Is "test" (String.length: ${'test'.length}) length less than or equal to 3? ${validator.isLength('test', { max: 3 })}`);
console.log(`Is "test" (String.length: ${'test'.length}) length less than or equal to 4? ${validator.isLength('test', { max: 4 })}`);
console.log(`Is "test\uFE0F\uFE0F\uFE0F\uFE0F" (String.length: ${'test\uFE0F\uFE0F\uFE0F\uFE0F'.length}) length less than or equal to 4? ${validator.isLength('test\uFE0F\uFE0F\uFE0F', { max: 4 })}`);

Output:

Is "test" (String.length: 4) length less than or equal to 3? false
Is "test" (String.length: 4) length less than or equal to 4? true
Is "test️️️️" (String.length: 8) length less than or equal to 4? true

Remediation

Upgrade validator to version 13.15.22 or higher.

References

high severity

Arbitrary Code Injection

  • Vulnerable module: lodash
  • Introduced through: lodash@4.17.21

Detailed paths

  • Introduced through: todo-api@Moser-ss/node-course-todo-api › lodash@4.17.21
    Remediation: Upgrade to lodash@4.18.1.

Overview

lodash is a modern JavaScript utility library delivering modularity, performance, & extras.

Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Arbitrary Code Injection due the improper validation of options.imports key names in _.template. An attacker can execute arbitrary code at template compilation time by injecting malicious expressions. If Object.prototype has been polluted, inherited properties may also be copied into the imports object and executed.

Notes:

  1. Version 4.18.0 was intended to fix this vulnerability but it got deprecated due to introducing a breaking functionality issue.

  2. This issue is due to the incomplete fix for CVE-2021-23337.

Remediation

Upgrade lodash to version 4.18.1 or higher.

References

high severity

Asymmetric Resource Consumption (Amplification)

  • Vulnerable module: body-parser
  • Introduced through: body-parser@1.20.2 and express@4.18.2

Detailed paths

  • Introduced through: todo-api@Moser-ss/node-course-todo-api › body-parser@1.20.2
    Remediation: Upgrade to body-parser@1.20.3.
  • Introduced through: todo-api@Moser-ss/node-course-todo-api › express@4.18.2 › body-parser@1.20.1
    Remediation: Upgrade to express@4.20.0.

Overview

Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Asymmetric Resource Consumption (Amplification) via the extendedparser and urlencoded functions when the URL encoding process is enabled. An attacker can flood the server with a large number of specially crafted requests.

Remediation

Upgrade body-parser to version 1.20.3 or higher.

References

high severity

Improper Neutralization of Special Elements in Output Used by a Downstream Component ('Injection')

  • Vulnerable module: mongoose
  • Introduced through: mongoose@7.2.4

Detailed paths

  • Introduced through: todo-api@Moser-ss/node-course-todo-api › mongoose@7.2.4
    Remediation: Upgrade to mongoose@7.8.9.

Overview

mongoose is a Mongoose is a MongoDB object modeling tool designed to work in an asynchronous environment.

Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Improper Neutralization of Special Elements in Output Used by a Downstream Component ('Injection') in the sanitizeFilter function. An attacker can gain unauthorized access to sensitive data by injecting malicious query operators inside a $nor clause when user-controlled input is passed directly into query methods.

Note: This is only exploitable if the application explicitly enables the sanitization feature and passes unsanitized user input directly into query methods without additional input validation.

Workaround

This vulnerability can be mitigated by deleting $nor keys from user input, using an additional schema validation library, or writing middleware to strip out $nor from query filters.

Remediation

Upgrade mongoose to version 6.13.9, 7.8.9, 8.22.1, 9.1.6 or higher.

References

high severity

Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling

  • Vulnerable module: qs
  • Introduced through: body-parser@1.20.2 and express@4.18.2

Detailed paths

  • Introduced through: todo-api@Moser-ss/node-course-todo-api › body-parser@1.20.2 › qs@6.11.0
    Remediation: Upgrade to body-parser@1.20.4.
  • Introduced through: todo-api@Moser-ss/node-course-todo-api › express@4.18.2 › qs@6.11.0
    Remediation: Upgrade to express@4.22.0.
  • Introduced through: todo-api@Moser-ss/node-course-todo-api › express@4.18.2 › body-parser@1.20.1 › qs@6.11.0
    Remediation: Upgrade to express@4.22.0.

Overview

qs is a querystring parser that supports nesting and arrays, with a depth limit.

Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling via the parseArrayValue function when the comma option is in use. An attacker can exhaust system memory by submitting a parameter containing a large number of comma-separated values, resulting in the allocation of excessively large arrays.

Note: This is only exploitable if the comma option is explicitly set to true. arrayLimit is properly enforced for index and bracket notation.

PoC

const qs = require('qs');

const payload = 'a=' + ','.repeat(25);  // 26 elements after split (bypasses arrayLimit: 5)
const options = { comma: true, arrayLimit: 5, throwOnLimitExceeded: true };

try {
  const result = qs.parse(payload, options);
  console.log(result.a.length);  // Outputs: 26 (bypass successful)
} catch (e) {
  console.log('Limit enforced:', e.message);  // Not thrown
}

Remediation

Upgrade qs to version 6.14.2 or higher.

References

high severity
new

Uncaught Exception

  • Vulnerable module: qs
  • Introduced through: body-parser@1.20.2 and express@4.18.2

Detailed paths

  • Introduced through: todo-api@Moser-ss/node-course-todo-api › body-parser@1.20.2 › qs@6.11.0
    Remediation: Upgrade to body-parser@1.20.8.
  • Introduced through: todo-api@Moser-ss/node-course-todo-api › express@4.18.2 › qs@6.11.0
    Remediation: Upgrade to express@4.22.3.
  • Introduced through: todo-api@Moser-ss/node-course-todo-api › express@4.18.2 › body-parser@1.20.1 › qs@6.11.0
    Remediation: Upgrade to express@4.22.0.

Overview

qs is a querystring parser that supports nesting and arrays, with a depth limit.

Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Uncaught Exception via stringify when arrayFormat: 'comma' is used with array elements that have a non-callable toString property. Such elements - as produced by JSON.parse, or by qs.parse under allowPrototypes or plainObjects (which yields null-prototype objects) - cause Array.prototype.join or utils.encode to throw a TypeError: Cannot convert object to primitive value, crashing the process.

Note: This is only exploitable if the arrayFormat: 'comma' option is explicitly set.

Remediation

Upgrade qs to version 6.16.1 or higher.

References

high severity

Prototype Pollution

  • Vulnerable module: mongoose
  • Introduced through: mongoose@7.2.4

Detailed paths

  • Introduced through: todo-api@Moser-ss/node-course-todo-api › mongoose@7.2.4
    Remediation: Upgrade to mongoose@7.3.4.

Overview

mongoose is a Mongoose is a MongoDB object modeling tool designed to work in an asynchronous environment.

Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Prototype Pollution in document.js, via update functions such as findByIdAndUpdate(). This allows attackers to achieve remote code execution.

Note: Only applications using Express and EJS are vulnerable.

PoC


import { connect, model, Schema } from 'mongoose';

await connect('mongodb://127.0.0.1:27017/exploit');

const Example = model('Example', new Schema({ hello: String }));

const example = await new Example({ hello: 'world!' }).save();
await Example.findByIdAndUpdate(example._id, {
    $rename: {
        hello: '__proto__.polluted'
    }
});

// this is what causes the pollution
await Example.find();

const test = {};
console.log(test.polluted); // world!
console.log(Object.prototype); // [Object: null prototype] { polluted: 'world!' }

process.exit();

Details

Prototype Pollution is a vulnerability affecting JavaScript. Prototype Pollution refers to the ability to inject properties into existing JavaScript language construct prototypes, such as objects. JavaScript allows all Object attributes to be altered, including their magical attributes such as __proto__, constructor and prototype. An attacker manipulates these attributes to overwrite, or pollute, a JavaScript application object prototype of the base object by injecting other values. Properties on the Object.prototype are then inherited by all the JavaScript objects through the prototype chain. When that happens, this leads to either denial of service by triggering JavaScript exceptions, or it tampers with the application source code to force the code path that the attacker injects, thereby leading to remote code execution.

There are two main ways in which the pollution of prototypes occurs:

  • Unsafe Object recursive merge

  • Property definition by path

Unsafe Object recursive merge

The logic of a vulnerable recursive merge function follows the following high-level model:

merge (target, source)

  foreach property of source

    if property exists and is an object on both the target and the source

      merge(target[property], source[property])

    else

      target[property] = source[property]

When the source object contains a property named __proto__ defined with Object.defineProperty() , the condition that checks if the property exists and is an object on both the target and the source passes and the merge recurses with the target, being the prototype of Object and the source of Object as defined by the attacker. Properties are then copied on the Object prototype.

Clone operations are a special sub-class of unsafe recursive merges, which occur when a recursive merge is conducted on an empty object: merge({},source).

lodash and Hoek are examples of libraries susceptible to recursive merge attacks.

Property definition by path

There are a few JavaScript libraries that use an API to define property values on an object based on a given path. The function that is generally affected contains this signature: theFunction(object, path, value)

If the attacker can control the value of “path”, they can set this value to __proto__.myValue. myValue is then assigned to the prototype of the class of the object.

Types of attacks

There are a few methods by which Prototype Pollution can be manipulated:

Type Origin Short description
Denial of service (DoS) Client This is the most likely attack.
DoS occurs when Object holds generic functions that are implicitly called for various operations (for example, toString and valueOf).
The attacker pollutes Object.prototype.someattr and alters its state to an unexpected value such as Int or Object. In this case, the code fails and is likely to cause a denial of service.
For example: if an attacker pollutes Object.prototype.toString by defining it as an integer, if the codebase at any point was reliant on someobject.toString() it would fail.
Remote Code Execution Client Remote code execution is generally only possible in cases where the codebase evaluates a specific attribute of an object, and then executes that evaluation.
For example: eval(someobject.someattr). In this case, if the attacker pollutes Object.prototype.someattr they are likely to be able to leverage this in order to execute code.
Property Injection Client The attacker pollutes properties that the codebase relies on for their informative value, including security properties such as cookies or tokens.
For example: if a codebase checks privileges for someuser.isAdmin, then when the attacker pollutes Object.prototype.isAdmin and sets it to equal true, they can then achieve admin privileges.

Affected environments

The following environments are susceptible to a Prototype Pollution attack:

  • Application server

  • Web server

  • Web browser

How to prevent

  1. Freeze the prototype— use Object.freeze (Object.prototype).

  2. Require schema validation of JSON input.

  3. Avoid using unsafe recursive merge functions.

  4. Consider using objects without prototypes (for example, Object.create(null)), breaking the prototype chain and preventing pollution.

  5. As a best practice use Map instead of Object.

For more information on this vulnerability type:

Arteau, Olivier. “JavaScript prototype pollution attack in NodeJS application.” GitHub, 26 May 2018

Remediation

Upgrade mongoose to version 5.13.20, 6.11.3, 7.3.4 or higher.

References

high severity

Use of Weak Hash

  • Vulnerable module: crypto-js
  • Introduced through: crypto-js@4.1.1

Detailed paths

  • Introduced through: todo-api@Moser-ss/node-course-todo-api › crypto-js@4.1.1
    Remediation: Upgrade to crypto-js@4.2.0.

Overview

crypto-js is a library of crypto standards.

Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Use of Weak Hash due to inadequate security settings in the PBKDF2 configuration, which uses insecure SHA1 and has a low iteration count of 1. These insecure settings allow attackers to perform brute-force attacks when PBKDF2 is used with the default parameters.

No information is directly exposed when a hash is generated, regardless of whether the PBKDF2 function is in the vulnerable configuration or not. However, it may be possible to recover the original data, more or less easily depending on the configured parameters, using a brute force attack. This is a low impact on the confidentiality of the protected data, which are in a different scope than the vulnerable package.

The attacker similarly may be able to modify some data which is meant to be protected by the vulnerable package - most commonly when it is used for signature verification. This would require a subsequent exploitation, such as forcing a hash collision via length extension attack. The integrity of the data is therefore compromised, but the quantity and targeting of that data is not fully in the attacker's control, yielding a low integrity impact.

Notes

  • This vulnerability is related to https://security.snyk.io/vuln/SNYK-JS-CRYPTOES-6032390 in crypto-es.

  • According to the crypto-js maintainer: "Active development of CryptoJS has been discontinued. This library is no longer maintained." It is recommended to use the Node.js native crypto module.

Workaround

This vulnerability can be avoided by setting PBKDF2 to use SHA-256 instead of SHA-1 and increasing the number of iterations to a sufficiently high value depending on the intended use. See, for example, the OWASP PBKDF2 Cheat Sheet for recommendations.

Changelog:

2023-10-24 - Initial publication

2023-10-25 - Added fixed version, updated references, separated crypto-es, description changes, updated CVSS, added CVE ID

2023-11-07 - Re-assessed CVSS following a CVSS publication on NVD. No changes made to CVSS.

2024-01-11 - Revised CVSS and description after additional deeper investigation, to reflect the details of the severity assessment

Remediation

Upgrade crypto-js to version 4.2.0 or higher.

References

medium severity

Prototype Pollution

  • Vulnerable module: lodash
  • Introduced through: lodash@4.17.21

Detailed paths

  • Introduced through: todo-api@Moser-ss/node-course-todo-api › lodash@4.17.21
    Remediation: Upgrade to lodash@4.17.23.

Overview

lodash is a modern JavaScript utility library delivering modularity, performance, & extras.

Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Prototype Pollution via the _.unset and _.omit functions. An attacker can delete methods held in properties of global prototypes but cannot overwrite those properties.

Details

Prototype Pollution is a vulnerability affecting JavaScript. Prototype Pollution refers to the ability to inject properties into existing JavaScript language construct prototypes, such as objects. JavaScript allows all Object attributes to be altered, including their magical attributes such as __proto__, constructor and prototype. An attacker manipulates these attributes to overwrite, or pollute, a JavaScript application object prototype of the base object by injecting other values. Properties on the Object.prototype are then inherited by all the JavaScript objects through the prototype chain. When that happens, this leads to either denial of service by triggering JavaScript exceptions, or it tampers with the application source code to force the code path that the attacker injects, thereby leading to remote code execution.

There are two main ways in which the pollution of prototypes occurs:

  • Unsafe Object recursive merge

  • Property definition by path

Unsafe Object recursive merge

The logic of a vulnerable recursive merge function follows the following high-level model:

merge (target, source)

  foreach property of source

    if property exists and is an object on both the target and the source

      merge(target[property], source[property])

    else

      target[property] = source[property]

When the source object contains a property named __proto__ defined with Object.defineProperty() , the condition that checks if the property exists and is an object on both the target and the source passes and the merge recurses with the target, being the prototype of Object and the source of Object as defined by the attacker. Properties are then copied on the Object prototype.

Clone operations are a special sub-class of unsafe recursive merges, which occur when a recursive merge is conducted on an empty object: merge({},source).

lodash and Hoek are examples of libraries susceptible to recursive merge attacks.

Property definition by path

There are a few JavaScript libraries that use an API to define property values on an object based on a given path. The function that is generally affected contains this signature: theFunction(object, path, value)

If the attacker can control the value of “path”, they can set this value to __proto__.myValue. myValue is then assigned to the prototype of the class of the object.

Types of attacks

There are a few methods by which Prototype Pollution can be manipulated:

Type Origin Short description
Denial of service (DoS) Client This is the most likely attack.
DoS occurs when Object holds generic functions that are implicitly called for various operations (for example, toString and valueOf).
The attacker pollutes Object.prototype.someattr and alters its state to an unexpected value such as Int or Object. In this case, the code fails and is likely to cause a denial of service.
For example: if an attacker pollutes Object.prototype.toString by defining it as an integer, if the codebase at any point was reliant on someobject.toString() it would fail.
Remote Code Execution Client Remote code execution is generally only possible in cases where the codebase evaluates a specific attribute of an object, and then executes that evaluation.
For example: eval(someobject.someattr). In this case, if the attacker pollutes Object.prototype.someattr they are likely to be able to leverage this in order to execute code.
Property Injection Client The attacker pollutes properties that the codebase relies on for their informative value, including security properties such as cookies or tokens.
For example: if a codebase checks privileges for someuser.isAdmin, then when the attacker pollutes Object.prototype.isAdmin and sets it to equal true, they can then achieve admin privileges.

Affected environments

The following environments are susceptible to a Prototype Pollution attack:

  • Application server

  • Web server

  • Web browser

How to prevent

  1. Freeze the prototype— use Object.freeze (Object.prototype).

  2. Require schema validation of JSON input.

  3. Avoid using unsafe recursive merge functions.

  4. Consider using objects without prototypes (for example, Object.create(null)), breaking the prototype chain and preventing pollution.

  5. As a best practice use Map instead of Object.

For more information on this vulnerability type:

Arteau, Olivier. “JavaScript prototype pollution attack in NodeJS application.” GitHub, 26 May 2018

Remediation

Upgrade lodash to version 4.17.23 or higher.

References

medium severity

Prototype Pollution

  • Vulnerable module: lodash
  • Introduced through: lodash@4.17.21

Detailed paths

  • Introduced through: todo-api@Moser-ss/node-course-todo-api › lodash@4.17.21
    Remediation: Upgrade to lodash@4.18.1.

Overview

lodash is a modern JavaScript utility library delivering modularity, performance, & extras.

Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Prototype Pollution via the _.unset and _.omit functions. An attacker can delete properties from built-in prototypes by supplying array-wrapped path segments, potentially impacting application behaviour.

Notes:

  1. Version 4.18.0 was intended to fix this vulnerability but it got deprecated due to introducing a breaking functionality issue.

  2. This issue is due to incomplete fix for CVE-2025-13465 which protects only against string key members.

Details

Prototype Pollution is a vulnerability affecting JavaScript. Prototype Pollution refers to the ability to inject properties into existing JavaScript language construct prototypes, such as objects. JavaScript allows all Object attributes to be altered, including their magical attributes such as __proto__, constructor and prototype. An attacker manipulates these attributes to overwrite, or pollute, a JavaScript application object prototype of the base object by injecting other values. Properties on the Object.prototype are then inherited by all the JavaScript objects through the prototype chain. When that happens, this leads to either denial of service by triggering JavaScript exceptions, or it tampers with the application source code to force the code path that the attacker injects, thereby leading to remote code execution.

There are two main ways in which the pollution of prototypes occurs:

  • Unsafe Object recursive merge

  • Property definition by path

Unsafe Object recursive merge

The logic of a vulnerable recursive merge function follows the following high-level model:

merge (target, source)

  foreach property of source

    if property exists and is an object on both the target and the source

      merge(target[property], source[property])

    else

      target[property] = source[property]

When the source object contains a property named __proto__ defined with Object.defineProperty() , the condition that checks if the property exists and is an object on both the target and the source passes and the merge recurses with the target, being the prototype of Object and the source of Object as defined by the attacker. Properties are then copied on the Object prototype.

Clone operations are a special sub-class of unsafe recursive merges, which occur when a recursive merge is conducted on an empty object: merge({},source).

lodash and Hoek are examples of libraries susceptible to recursive merge attacks.

Property definition by path

There are a few JavaScript libraries that use an API to define property values on an object based on a given path. The function that is generally affected contains this signature: theFunction(object, path, value)

If the attacker can control the value of “path”, they can set this value to __proto__.myValue. myValue is then assigned to the prototype of the class of the object.

Types of attacks

There are a few methods by which Prototype Pollution can be manipulated:

Type Origin Short description
Denial of service (DoS) Client This is the most likely attack.
DoS occurs when Object holds generic functions that are implicitly called for various operations (for example, toString and valueOf).
The attacker pollutes Object.prototype.someattr and alters its state to an unexpected value such as Int or Object. In this case, the code fails and is likely to cause a denial of service.
For example: if an attacker pollutes Object.prototype.toString by defining it as an integer, if the codebase at any point was reliant on someobject.toString() it would fail.
Remote Code Execution Client Remote code execution is generally only possible in cases where the codebase evaluates a specific attribute of an object, and then executes that evaluation.
For example: eval(someobject.someattr). In this case, if the attacker pollutes Object.prototype.someattr they are likely to be able to leverage this in order to execute code.
Property Injection Client The attacker pollutes properties that the codebase relies on for their informative value, including security properties such as cookies or tokens.
For example: if a codebase checks privileges for someuser.isAdmin, then when the attacker pollutes Object.prototype.isAdmin and sets it to equal true, they can then achieve admin privileges.

Affected environments

The following environments are susceptible to a Prototype Pollution attack:

  • Application server

  • Web server

  • Web browser

How to prevent

  1. Freeze the prototype— use Object.freeze (Object.prototype).

  2. Require schema validation of JSON input.

  3. Avoid using unsafe recursive merge functions.

  4. Consider using objects without prototypes (for example, Object.create(null)), breaking the prototype chain and preventing pollution.

  5. As a best practice use Map instead of Object.

For more information on this vulnerability type:

Arteau, Olivier. “JavaScript prototype pollution attack in NodeJS application.” GitHub, 26 May 2018

Remediation

Upgrade lodash to version 4.18.1 or higher.

References

medium severity

Prototype Pollution

  • Vulnerable module: mongoose
  • Introduced through: mongoose@7.2.4

Detailed paths

  • Introduced through: todo-api@Moser-ss/node-course-todo-api › mongoose@7.2.4
    Remediation: Upgrade to mongoose@7.8.10.

Overview

mongoose is a Mongoose is a MongoDB object modeling tool designed to work in an asynchronous environment.

Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Prototype Pollution in the schema path getter (Schema._getSchema) during update casting, which follows a __proto__-prefixed dotted path present in the update object. An attacker can pollute Object.prototype, setting properties such as $fullPath and $parentSchemaDocArray on it, by passing an update object with a __proto__-prefixed dotted path to a Mongoose update method such as updateOne(). Exploitation requires the application to pass user-controlled data directly as the update argument to a Mongoose update method.

Details

Prototype Pollution is a vulnerability affecting JavaScript. Prototype Pollution refers to the ability to inject properties into existing JavaScript language construct prototypes, such as objects. JavaScript allows all Object attributes to be altered, including their magical attributes such as __proto__, constructor and prototype. An attacker manipulates these attributes to overwrite, or pollute, a JavaScript application object prototype of the base object by injecting other values. Properties on the Object.prototype are then inherited by all the JavaScript objects through the prototype chain. When that happens, this leads to either denial of service by triggering JavaScript exceptions, or it tampers with the application source code to force the code path that the attacker injects, thereby leading to remote code execution.

There are two main ways in which the pollution of prototypes occurs:

  • Unsafe Object recursive merge

  • Property definition by path

Unsafe Object recursive merge

The logic of a vulnerable recursive merge function follows the following high-level model:

merge (target, source)

  foreach property of source

    if property exists and is an object on both the target and the source

      merge(target[property], source[property])

    else

      target[property] = source[property]

When the source object contains a property named __proto__ defined with Object.defineProperty() , the condition that checks if the property exists and is an object on both the target and the source passes and the merge recurses with the target, being the prototype of Object and the source of Object as defined by the attacker. Properties are then copied on the Object prototype.

Clone operations are a special sub-class of unsafe recursive merges, which occur when a recursive merge is conducted on an empty object: merge({},source).

lodash and Hoek are examples of libraries susceptible to recursive merge attacks.

Property definition by path

There are a few JavaScript libraries that use an API to define property values on an object based on a given path. The function that is generally affected contains this signature: theFunction(object, path, value)

If the attacker can control the value of “path”, they can set this value to __proto__.myValue. myValue is then assigned to the prototype of the class of the object.

Types of attacks

There are a few methods by which Prototype Pollution can be manipulated:

Type Origin Short description
Denial of service (DoS) Client This is the most likely attack.
DoS occurs when Object holds generic functions that are implicitly called for various operations (for example, toString and valueOf).
The attacker pollutes Object.prototype.someattr and alters its state to an unexpected value such as Int or Object. In this case, the code fails and is likely to cause a denial of service.
For example: if an attacker pollutes Object.prototype.toString by defining it as an integer, if the codebase at any point was reliant on someobject.toString() it would fail.
Remote Code Execution Client Remote code execution is generally only possible in cases where the codebase evaluates a specific attribute of an object, and then executes that evaluation.
For example: eval(someobject.someattr). In this case, if the attacker pollutes Object.prototype.someattr they are likely to be able to leverage this in order to execute code.
Property Injection Client The attacker pollutes properties that the codebase relies on for their informative value, including security properties such as cookies or tokens.
For example: if a codebase checks privileges for someuser.isAdmin, then when the attacker pollutes Object.prototype.isAdmin and sets it to equal true, they can then achieve admin privileges.

Affected environments

The following environments are susceptible to a Prototype Pollution attack:

  • Application server

  • Web server

  • Web browser

How to prevent

  1. Freeze the prototype— use Object.freeze (Object.prototype).

  2. Require schema validation of JSON input.

  3. Avoid using unsafe recursive merge functions.

  4. Consider using objects without prototypes (for example, Object.create(null)), breaking the prototype chain and preventing pollution.

  5. As a best practice use Map instead of Object.

For more information on this vulnerability type:

Arteau, Olivier. “JavaScript prototype pollution attack in NodeJS application.” GitHub, 26 May 2018

Remediation

Upgrade mongoose to version 6.13.10, 7.8.10, 8.24.1, 9.7.2 or higher.

References

medium severity

Regular Expression Denial of Service (ReDoS)

  • Vulnerable module: path-to-regexp
  • Introduced through: express@4.18.2

Detailed paths

  • Introduced through: todo-api@Moser-ss/node-course-todo-api › express@4.18.2 › path-to-regexp@0.1.7
    Remediation: Upgrade to express@4.22.0.

Overview

Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Regular Expression Denial of Service (ReDoS) when including multiple regular expression parameters in a single segment, separated by something that is not a period (.). Poor performance will block the event loop and can lead to a DoS.

Note:

This is caused by an incomplete fix for CVE-2024-45296 as it only prevents ambiguity for two parameters. With three or more, the generated lookahead does not block single separator characters, so capture groups overlap and cause catastrophic backtracking.

Details

Denial of Service (DoS) describes a family of attacks, all aimed at making a system inaccessible to its original and legitimate users. There are many types of DoS attacks, ranging from trying to clog the network pipes to the system by generating a large volume of traffic from many machines (a Distributed Denial of Service - DDoS - attack) to sending crafted requests that cause a system to crash or take a disproportional amount of time to process.

The Regular expression Denial of Service (ReDoS) is a type of Denial of Service attack. Regular expressions are incredibly powerful, but they aren't very intuitive and can ultimately end up making it easy for attackers to take your site down.

Let’s take the following regular expression as an example:

regex = /A(B|C+)+D/

This regular expression accomplishes the following:

  • A The string must start with the letter 'A'
  • (B|C+)+ The string must then follow the letter A with either the letter 'B' or some number of occurrences of the letter 'C' (the + matches one or more times). The + at the end of this section states that we can look for one or more matches of this section.
  • D Finally, we ensure this section of the string ends with a 'D'

The expression would match inputs such as ABBD, ABCCCCD, ABCBCCCD and ACCCCCD

It most cases, it doesn't take very long for a regex engine to find a match:

$ time node -e '/A(B|C+)+D/.test("ACCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCD")'
0.04s user 0.01s system 95% cpu 0.052 total

$ time node -e '/A(B|C+)+D/.test("ACCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCX")'
1.79s user 0.02s system 99% cpu 1.812 total

The entire process of testing it against a 30 characters long string takes around ~52ms. But when given an invalid string, it takes nearly two seconds to complete the test, over ten times as long as it took to test a valid string. The dramatic difference is due to the way regular expressions get evaluated.

Most Regex engines will work very similarly (with minor differences). The engine will match the first possible way to accept the current character and proceed to the next one. If it then fails to match the next one, it will backtrack and see if there was another way to digest the previous character. If it goes too far down the rabbit hole only to find out the string doesn’t match in the end, and if many characters have multiple valid regex paths, the number of backtracking steps can become very large, resulting in what is known as catastrophic backtracking.

Let's look at how our expression runs into this problem, using a shorter string: "ACCCX". While it seems fairly straightforward, there are still four different ways that the engine could match those three C's:

  1. CCC
  2. CC+C
  3. C+CC
  4. C+C+C.

The engine has to try each of those combinations to see if any of them potentially match against the expression. When you combine that with the other steps the engine must take, we can use RegEx 101 debugger to see the engine has to take a total of 38 steps before it can determine the string doesn't match.

From there, the number of steps the engine must use to validate a string just continues to grow.

String Number of C's Number of steps
ACCCX 3 38
ACCCCX 4 71
ACCCCCX 5 136
ACCCCCCCCCCCCCCX 14 65,553

By the time the string includes 14 C's, the engine has to take over 65,000 steps just to see if the string is valid. These extreme situations can cause them to work very slowly (exponentially related to input size, as shown above), allowing an attacker to exploit this and can cause the service to excessively consume CPU, resulting in a Denial of Service.

Remediation

Upgrade path-to-regexp to version 0.1.13 or higher.

References

medium severity

Regular Expression Denial of Service (ReDoS)

  • Vulnerable module: path-to-regexp
  • Introduced through: express@4.18.2

Detailed paths

  • Introduced through: todo-api@Moser-ss/node-course-todo-api › express@4.18.2 › path-to-regexp@0.1.7
    Remediation: Upgrade to express@4.20.0.

Overview

Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Regular Expression Denial of Service (ReDoS) when including multiple regular expression parameters in a single segment, which will produce the regular expression /^\/([^\/]+?)-([^\/]+?)\/?$/, if two parameters within a single segment are separated by a character other than a / or .. Poor performance will block the event loop and can lead to a DoS.

Note: While the 8.0.0 release has completely eliminated the vulnerable functionality, prior versions that have received the patch to mitigate backtracking may still be vulnerable if custom regular expressions are used. So it is strongly recommended for regular expression input to be controlled to avoid malicious performance degradation in those versions. This behavior is enforced as of version 7.1.0 via the strict option, which returns an error if a dangerous regular expression is detected.

Workaround

This vulnerability can be avoided by using a custom regular expression for parameters after the first in a segment, which excludes - and /.

PoC

/a${'-a'.repeat(8_000)}/a

Details

Denial of Service (DoS) describes a family of attacks, all aimed at making a system inaccessible to its original and legitimate users. There are many types of DoS attacks, ranging from trying to clog the network pipes to the system by generating a large volume of traffic from many machines (a Distributed Denial of Service - DDoS - attack) to sending crafted requests that cause a system to crash or take a disproportional amount of time to process.

The Regular expression Denial of Service (ReDoS) is a type of Denial of Service attack. Regular expressions are incredibly powerful, but they aren't very intuitive and can ultimately end up making it easy for attackers to take your site down.

Let’s take the following regular expression as an example:

regex = /A(B|C+)+D/

This regular expression accomplishes the following:

  • A The string must start with the letter 'A'
  • (B|C+)+ The string must then follow the letter A with either the letter 'B' or some number of occurrences of the letter 'C' (the + matches one or more times). The + at the end of this section states that we can look for one or more matches of this section.
  • D Finally, we ensure this section of the string ends with a 'D'

The expression would match inputs such as ABBD, ABCCCCD, ABCBCCCD and ACCCCCD

It most cases, it doesn't take very long for a regex engine to find a match:

$ time node -e '/A(B|C+)+D/.test("ACCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCD")'
0.04s user 0.01s system 95% cpu 0.052 total

$ time node -e '/A(B|C+)+D/.test("ACCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCX")'
1.79s user 0.02s system 99% cpu 1.812 total

The entire process of testing it against a 30 characters long string takes around ~52ms. But when given an invalid string, it takes nearly two seconds to complete the test, over ten times as long as it took to test a valid string. The dramatic difference is due to the way regular expressions get evaluated.

Most Regex engines will work very similarly (with minor differences). The engine will match the first possible way to accept the current character and proceed to the next one. If it then fails to match the next one, it will backtrack and see if there was another way to digest the previous character. If it goes too far down the rabbit hole only to find out the string doesn’t match in the end, and if many characters have multiple valid regex paths, the number of backtracking steps can become very large, resulting in what is known as catastrophic backtracking.

Let's look at how our expression runs into this problem, using a shorter string: "ACCCX". While it seems fairly straightforward, there are still four different ways that the engine could match those three C's:

  1. CCC
  2. CC+C
  3. C+CC
  4. C+C+C.

The engine has to try each of those combinations to see if any of them potentially match against the expression. When you combine that with the other steps the engine must take, we can use RegEx 101 debugger to see the engine has to take a total of 38 steps before it can determine the string doesn't match.

From there, the number of steps the engine must use to validate a string just continues to grow.

String Number of C's Number of steps
ACCCX 3 38
ACCCCX 4 71
ACCCCCX 5 136
ACCCCCCCCCCCCCCX 14 65,553

By the time the string includes 14 C's, the engine has to take over 65,000 steps just to see if the string is valid. These extreme situations can cause them to work very slowly (exponentially related to input size, as shown above), allowing an attacker to exploit this and can cause the service to excessively consume CPU, resulting in a Denial of Service.

Remediation

Upgrade path-to-regexp to version 0.1.10, 1.9.0, 3.3.0, 6.3.0, 8.0.0 or higher.

References

medium severity

Regular Expression Denial of Service (ReDoS)

  • Vulnerable module: path-to-regexp
  • Introduced through: express@4.18.2

Detailed paths

  • Introduced through: todo-api@Moser-ss/node-course-todo-api › express@4.18.2 › path-to-regexp@0.1.7
    Remediation: Upgrade to express@4.21.2.

Overview

Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Regular Expression Denial of Service (ReDoS) when including multiple regular expression parameters in a single segment, when the separator is not . (e.g. no /:a-:b). Poor performance will block the event loop and can lead to a DoS.

Note:

This issue is caused due to an incomplete fix for CVE-2024-45296.

Workarounds

This can be mitigated by avoiding using two parameters within a single path segment, when the separator is not . (e.g. no /:a-:b). Alternatively, the regex used for both parameters can be defined to ensure they do not overlap to allow backtracking.

PoC

/a${'-a'.repeat(8_000)}/a

Details

Denial of Service (DoS) describes a family of attacks, all aimed at making a system inaccessible to its original and legitimate users. There are many types of DoS attacks, ranging from trying to clog the network pipes to the system by generating a large volume of traffic from many machines (a Distributed Denial of Service - DDoS - attack) to sending crafted requests that cause a system to crash or take a disproportional amount of time to process.

The Regular expression Denial of Service (ReDoS) is a type of Denial of Service attack. Regular expressions are incredibly powerful, but they aren't very intuitive and can ultimately end up making it easy for attackers to take your site down.

Let’s take the following regular expression as an example:

regex = /A(B|C+)+D/

This regular expression accomplishes the following:

  • A The string must start with the letter 'A'
  • (B|C+)+ The string must then follow the letter A with either the letter 'B' or some number of occurrences of the letter 'C' (the + matches one or more times). The + at the end of this section states that we can look for one or more matches of this section.
  • D Finally, we ensure this section of the string ends with a 'D'

The expression would match inputs such as ABBD, ABCCCCD, ABCBCCCD and ACCCCCD

It most cases, it doesn't take very long for a regex engine to find a match:

$ time node -e '/A(B|C+)+D/.test("ACCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCD")'
0.04s user 0.01s system 95% cpu 0.052 total

$ time node -e '/A(B|C+)+D/.test("ACCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCX")'
1.79s user 0.02s system 99% cpu 1.812 total

The entire process of testing it against a 30 characters long string takes around ~52ms. But when given an invalid string, it takes nearly two seconds to complete the test, over ten times as long as it took to test a valid string. The dramatic difference is due to the way regular expressions get evaluated.

Most Regex engines will work very similarly (with minor differences). The engine will match the first possible way to accept the current character and proceed to the next one. If it then fails to match the next one, it will backtrack and see if there was another way to digest the previous character. If it goes too far down the rabbit hole only to find out the string doesn’t match in the end, and if many characters have multiple valid regex paths, the number of backtracking steps can become very large, resulting in what is known as catastrophic backtracking.

Let's look at how our expression runs into this problem, using a shorter string: "ACCCX". While it seems fairly straightforward, there are still four different ways that the engine could match those three C's:

  1. CCC
  2. CC+C
  3. C+CC
  4. C+C+C.

The engine has to try each of those combinations to see if any of them potentially match against the expression. When you combine that with the other steps the engine must take, we can use RegEx 101 debugger to see the engine has to take a total of 38 steps before it can determine the string doesn't match.

From there, the number of steps the engine must use to validate a string just continues to grow.

String Number of C's Number of steps
ACCCX 3 38
ACCCCX 4 71
ACCCCCX 5 136
ACCCCCCCCCCCCCCX 14 65,553

By the time the string includes 14 C's, the engine has to take over 65,000 steps just to see if the string is valid. These extreme situations can cause them to work very slowly (exponentially related to input size, as shown above), allowing an attacker to exploit this and can cause the service to excessively consume CPU, resulting in a Denial of Service.

Remediation

Upgrade path-to-regexp to version 0.1.12 or higher.

References

medium severity

Uncaught Exception

  • Vulnerable module: qs
  • Introduced through: body-parser@1.20.2 and express@4.18.2

Detailed paths

  • Introduced through: todo-api@Moser-ss/node-course-todo-api › body-parser@1.20.2 › qs@6.11.0
    Remediation: Upgrade to body-parser@1.20.8.
  • Introduced through: todo-api@Moser-ss/node-course-todo-api › express@4.18.2 › qs@6.11.0
    Remediation: Upgrade to express@4.22.3.
  • Introduced through: todo-api@Moser-ss/node-course-todo-api › express@4.18.2 › body-parser@1.20.1 › qs@6.11.0
    Remediation: Upgrade to express@4.22.0.

Overview

qs is a querystring parser that supports nesting and arrays, with a depth limit.

Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Uncaught Exception in the isBuffer() function in lib/utils.js, which calls obj.constructor.isBuffer(obj) without checking that it is callable, reached from stringify() at lib/stringify.js:127. An attacker can throw an uncaught TypeError that fails each request with HTTP 500, and terminates the worker process when stringify() runs in an unguarded async context, by supplying a query string such as x[constructor][isBuffer]=y that sets constructor.isBuffer to a non-function value. This requires the application to call qs.parse() with plainObjects: true or allowPrototypes: true, which preserves the constructor own property, and to then pass the parsed result to qs.stringify().

Details

Denial of Service (DoS) describes a family of attacks, all aimed at making a system inaccessible to its intended and legitimate users.

Unlike other vulnerabilities, DoS attacks usually do not aim at breaching security. Rather, they are focused on making websites and services unavailable to genuine users resulting in downtime.

One popular Denial of Service vulnerability is DDoS (a Distributed Denial of Service), an attack that attempts to clog network pipes to the system by generating a large volume of traffic from many machines.

When it comes to open source libraries, DoS vulnerabilities allow attackers to trigger such a crash or crippling of the service by using a flaw either in the application code or from the use of open source libraries.

Two common types of DoS vulnerabilities:

  • High CPU/Memory Consumption- An attacker sending crafted requests that could cause the system to take a disproportionate amount of time to process. For example, commons-fileupload:commons-fileupload.

  • Crash - An attacker sending crafted requests that could cause the system to crash. For Example, npm ws package

Remediation

Upgrade qs to version 6.16.0 or higher.

References

medium severity

Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling

  • Vulnerable module: body-parser
  • Introduced through: body-parser@1.20.2 and express@4.18.2

Detailed paths

  • Introduced through: todo-api@Moser-ss/node-course-todo-api › body-parser@1.20.2
    Remediation: Upgrade to body-parser@1.20.6.
  • Introduced through: todo-api@Moser-ss/node-course-todo-api › express@4.18.2 › body-parser@1.20.1
    Remediation: Upgrade to express@4.22.0.

Overview

Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling due to invalid limit option handling in normalizeOptions in lib/utils.js. An attacker can force oversized request bodies through by supplying an application configuration value for limit that parses to null, such as an unparseable string or NaN. When an app relies on limit to cap body size, the parser skips enforcement and accepts arbitrarily large payloads, driving excessive memory and CPU usage and degrading or crashing the service.

Remediation

Upgrade body-parser to version 1.20.6, 2.3.0 or higher.

References

medium severity

  • Vulnerable module: cookie
  • Introduced through: express@4.18.2

Detailed paths

  • Introduced through: todo-api@Moser-ss/node-course-todo-api › express@4.18.2 › cookie@0.5.0
    Remediation: Upgrade to express@4.21.1.

Overview

Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Cross-site Scripting (XSS) via the cookie name, path, or domain, which can be used to set unexpected values to other cookie fields.

Workaround

Users who are not able to upgrade to the fixed version should avoid passing untrusted or arbitrary values for the cookie fields and ensure they are set by the application instead of user input.

Details

Cross-site scripting (or XSS) is a code vulnerability that occurs when an attacker “injects” a malicious script into an otherwise trusted website. The injected script gets downloaded and executed by the end user’s browser when the user interacts with the compromised website.

This is done by escaping the context of the web application; the web application then delivers that data to its users along with other trusted dynamic content, without validating it. The browser unknowingly executes malicious script on the client side (through client-side languages; usually JavaScript or HTML) in order to perform actions that are otherwise typically blocked by the browser’s Same Origin Policy.

Injecting malicious code is the most prevalent manner by which XSS is exploited; for this reason, escaping characters in order to prevent this manipulation is the top method for securing code against this vulnerability.

Escaping means that the application is coded to mark key characters, and particularly key characters included in user input, to prevent those characters from being interpreted in a dangerous context. For example, in HTML, < can be coded as &lt; and > can be coded as &gt; in order to be interpreted and displayed as themselves in text, while within the code itself, they are used for HTML tags. If malicious content is injected into an application that escapes special characters and that malicious content uses < and > as HTML tags, those characters are nonetheless not interpreted as HTML tags by the browser if they’ve been correctly escaped in the application code and in this way the attempted attack is diverted.

The most prominent use of XSS is to steal cookies (source: OWASP HttpOnly) and hijack user sessions, but XSS exploits have been used to expose sensitive information, enable access to privileged services and functionality and deliver malware.

Types of attacks

There are a few methods by which XSS can be manipulated:

Type Origin Description
Stored Server The malicious code is inserted in the application (usually as a link) by the attacker. The code is activated every time a user clicks the link.
Reflected Server The attacker delivers a malicious link externally from the vulnerable web site application to a user. When clicked, malicious code is sent to the vulnerable web site, which reflects the attack back to the user’s browser.
DOM-based Client The attacker forces the user’s browser to render a malicious page. The data in the page itself delivers the cross-site scripting data.
Mutated The attacker injects code that appears safe, but is then rewritten and modified by the browser, while parsing the markup. An example is rebalancing unclosed quotation marks or even adding quotation marks to unquoted parameters.

Affected environments

The following environments are susceptible to an XSS attack:

  • Web servers
  • Application servers
  • Web application environments

How to prevent

This section describes the top best practices designed to specifically protect your code:

  • Sanitize data input in an HTTP request before reflecting it back, ensuring all data is validated, filtered or escaped before echoing anything back to the user, such as the values of query parameters during searches.
  • Convert special characters such as ?, &, /, <, > and spaces to their respective HTML or URL encoded equivalents.
  • Give users the option to disable client-side scripts.
  • Redirect invalid requests.
  • Detect simultaneous logins, including those from two separate IP addresses, and invalidate those sessions.
  • Use and enforce a Content Security Policy (source: Wikipedia) to disable any features that might be manipulated for an XSS attack.
  • Read the documentation for any of the libraries referenced in your code to understand which elements allow for embedded HTML.

Remediation

Upgrade cookie to version 0.7.0 or higher.

References

medium severity

Open Redirect

  • Vulnerable module: express
  • Introduced through: express@4.18.2

Detailed paths

  • Introduced through: todo-api@Moser-ss/node-course-todo-api › express@4.18.2
    Remediation: Upgrade to express@4.19.2.

Overview

express is a minimalist web framework.

Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Open Redirect due to the implementation of URL encoding using encodeurl before passing it to the location header. This can lead to unexpected evaluations of malformed URLs by common redirect allow list implementations in applications, allowing an attacker to bypass a properly implemented allow list and redirect users to malicious sites.

Remediation

Upgrade express to version 4.19.2, 5.0.0-beta.3 or higher.

References

medium severity

Improper Validation of Specified Type of Input

  • Vulnerable module: validator
  • Introduced through: validator@13.9.0

Detailed paths

  • Introduced through: todo-api@Moser-ss/node-course-todo-api › validator@13.9.0
    Remediation: Upgrade to validator@13.15.20.

Overview

validator is a library of string validators and sanitizers.

Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Improper Validation of Specified Type of Input in the isURL() function which does not take into account : as the delimiter in browsers. An attackers can bypass protocol and domain validation by crafting URLs that exploit the discrepancy in protocol parsing that can lead to Cross-Site Scripting and Open Redirect attacks.

Remediation

Upgrade validator to version 13.15.20 or higher.

References

medium severity

Cross-site Scripting

  • Vulnerable module: express
  • Introduced through: express@4.18.2

Detailed paths

  • Introduced through: todo-api@Moser-ss/node-course-todo-api › express@4.18.2
    Remediation: Upgrade to express@4.20.0.

Overview

express is a minimalist web framework.

Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Cross-site Scripting due to improper handling of user input in the response.redirect method. An attacker can execute arbitrary code by passing malicious input to this method.

Note

To exploit this vulnerability, the following conditions are required:

  1. The attacker should be able to control the input to response.redirect()

  2. express must not redirect before the template appears

  3. the browser must not complete redirection before:

  4. the user must click on the link in the template

Remediation

Upgrade express to version 4.20.0, 5.0.0 or higher.

References

medium severity

Information Exposure

  • Vulnerable module: mongodb
  • Introduced through: mongodb@5.6.0 and mongoose@7.2.4

Detailed paths

  • Introduced through: todo-api@Moser-ss/node-course-todo-api › mongodb@5.6.0
    Remediation: Upgrade to mongodb@5.8.0.
  • Introduced through: todo-api@Moser-ss/node-course-todo-api › mongoose@7.2.4 › mongodb@5.5.0
    Remediation: Upgrade to mongoose@7.5.0.

Overview

mongodb is an official MongoDB driver for Node.js.

Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Information Exposure via the command listener feature. When it is enabled (not the default setting), some drivers may inadvertently publish events containing sensitive authentication-related data. An attacker can gain access to this sensitive information by monitoring these published events.

Remediation

Upgrade mongodb to version 3.6.10, 4.17.0, 5.8.0 or higher.

References

low severity

Cross-site Scripting

  • Vulnerable module: send
  • Introduced through: express@4.18.2

Detailed paths

  • Introduced through: todo-api@Moser-ss/node-course-todo-api › express@4.18.2 › send@0.18.0
    Remediation: Upgrade to express@4.20.0.
  • Introduced through: todo-api@Moser-ss/node-course-todo-api › express@4.18.2 › serve-static@1.15.0 › send@0.18.0
    Remediation: Upgrade to express@4.21.0.

Overview

send is a Better streaming static file server with Range and conditional-GET support

Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Cross-site Scripting due to improper user input sanitization passed to the SendStream.redirect() function, which executes untrusted code. An attacker can execute arbitrary code by manipulating the input parameters to this method.

Note:

Exploiting this vulnerability requires the following:

  1. The attacker needs to control the input to response.redirect()

  2. Express MUST NOT redirect before the template appears

  3. The browser MUST NOT complete redirection before

  4. The user MUST click on the link in the template

Details

Cross-site scripting (or XSS) is a code vulnerability that occurs when an attacker “injects” a malicious script into an otherwise trusted website. The injected script gets downloaded and executed by the end user’s browser when the user interacts with the compromised website.

This is done by escaping the context of the web application; the web application then delivers that data to its users along with other trusted dynamic content, without validating it. The browser unknowingly executes malicious script on the client side (through client-side languages; usually JavaScript or HTML) in order to perform actions that are otherwise typically blocked by the browser’s Same Origin Policy.

Injecting malicious code is the most prevalent manner by which XSS is exploited; for this reason, escaping characters in order to prevent this manipulation is the top method for securing code against this vulnerability.

Escaping means that the application is coded to mark key characters, and particularly key characters included in user input, to prevent those characters from being interpreted in a dangerous context. For example, in HTML, < can be coded as &lt; and > can be coded as &gt; in order to be interpreted and displayed as themselves in text, while within the code itself, they are used for HTML tags. If malicious content is injected into an application that escapes special characters and that malicious content uses < and > as HTML tags, those characters are nonetheless not interpreted as HTML tags by the browser if they’ve been correctly escaped in the application code and in this way the attempted attack is diverted.

The most prominent use of XSS is to steal cookies (source: OWASP HttpOnly) and hijack user sessions, but XSS exploits have been used to expose sensitive information, enable access to privileged services and functionality and deliver malware.

Types of attacks

There are a few methods by which XSS can be manipulated:

Type Origin Description
Stored Server The malicious code is inserted in the application (usually as a link) by the attacker. The code is activated every time a user clicks the link.
Reflected Server The attacker delivers a malicious link externally from the vulnerable web site application to a user. When clicked, malicious code is sent to the vulnerable web site, which reflects the attack back to the user’s browser.
DOM-based Client The attacker forces the user’s browser to render a malicious page. The data in the page itself delivers the cross-site scripting data.
Mutated The attacker injects code that appears safe, but is then rewritten and modified by the browser, while parsing the markup. An example is rebalancing unclosed quotation marks or even adding quotation marks to unquoted parameters.

Affected environments

The following environments are susceptible to an XSS attack:

  • Web servers
  • Application servers
  • Web application environments

How to prevent

This section describes the top best practices designed to specifically protect your code:

  • Sanitize data input in an HTTP request before reflecting it back, ensuring all data is validated, filtered or escaped before echoing anything back to the user, such as the values of query parameters during searches.
  • Convert special characters such as ?, &, /, <, > and spaces to their respective HTML or URL encoded equivalents.
  • Give users the option to disable client-side scripts.
  • Redirect invalid requests.
  • Detect simultaneous logins, including those from two separate IP addresses, and invalidate those sessions.
  • Use and enforce a Content Security Policy (source: Wikipedia) to disable any features that might be manipulated for an XSS attack.
  • Read the documentation for any of the libraries referenced in your code to understand which elements allow for embedded HTML.

Remediation

Upgrade send to version 0.19.0, 1.1.0 or higher.

References

low severity

Cross-site Scripting

  • Vulnerable module: serve-static
  • Introduced through: express@4.18.2

Detailed paths

  • Introduced through: todo-api@Moser-ss/node-course-todo-api › express@4.18.2 › serve-static@1.15.0
    Remediation: Upgrade to express@4.20.0.

Overview

serve-static is a server.

Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Cross-site Scripting due to improper sanitization of user input in the redirect function. An attacker can manipulate the redirection process by injecting malicious code into the input.

Note

To exploit this vulnerability, the following conditions are required:

  1. The attacker should be able to control the input to response.redirect()

  2. express must not redirect before the template appears

  3. the browser must not complete redirection before:

  4. the user must click on the link in the template

Details

Cross-site scripting (or XSS) is a code vulnerability that occurs when an attacker “injects” a malicious script into an otherwise trusted website. The injected script gets downloaded and executed by the end user’s browser when the user interacts with the compromised website.

This is done by escaping the context of the web application; the web application then delivers that data to its users along with other trusted dynamic content, without validating it. The browser unknowingly executes malicious script on the client side (through client-side languages; usually JavaScript or HTML) in order to perform actions that are otherwise typically blocked by the browser’s Same Origin Policy.

Injecting malicious code is the most prevalent manner by which XSS is exploited; for this reason, escaping characters in order to prevent this manipulation is the top method for securing code against this vulnerability.

Escaping means that the application is coded to mark key characters, and particularly key characters included in user input, to prevent those characters from being interpreted in a dangerous context. For example, in HTML, < can be coded as &lt; and > can be coded as &gt; in order to be interpreted and displayed as themselves in text, while within the code itself, they are used for HTML tags. If malicious content is injected into an application that escapes special characters and that malicious content uses < and > as HTML tags, those characters are nonetheless not interpreted as HTML tags by the browser if they’ve been correctly escaped in the application code and in this way the attempted attack is diverted.

The most prominent use of XSS is to steal cookies (source: OWASP HttpOnly) and hijack user sessions, but XSS exploits have been used to expose sensitive information, enable access to privileged services and functionality and deliver malware.

Types of attacks

There are a few methods by which XSS can be manipulated:

Type Origin Description
Stored Server The malicious code is inserted in the application (usually as a link) by the attacker. The code is activated every time a user clicks the link.
Reflected Server The attacker delivers a malicious link externally from the vulnerable web site application to a user. When clicked, malicious code is sent to the vulnerable web site, which reflects the attack back to the user’s browser.
DOM-based Client The attacker forces the user’s browser to render a malicious page. The data in the page itself delivers the cross-site scripting data.
Mutated The attacker injects code that appears safe, but is then rewritten and modified by the browser, while parsing the markup. An example is rebalancing unclosed quotation marks or even adding quotation marks to unquoted parameters.

Affected environments

The following environments are susceptible to an XSS attack:

  • Web servers
  • Application servers
  • Web application environments

How to prevent

This section describes the top best practices designed to specifically protect your code:

  • Sanitize data input in an HTTP request before reflecting it back, ensuring all data is validated, filtered or escaped before echoing anything back to the user, such as the values of query parameters during searches.
  • Convert special characters such as ?, &, /, <, > and spaces to their respective HTML or URL encoded equivalents.
  • Give users the option to disable client-side scripts.
  • Redirect invalid requests.
  • Detect simultaneous logins, including those from two separate IP addresses, and invalidate those sessions.
  • Use and enforce a Content Security Policy (source: Wikipedia) to disable any features that might be manipulated for an XSS attack.
  • Read the documentation for any of the libraries referenced in your code to understand which elements allow for embedded HTML.

Remediation

Upgrade serve-static to version 1.16.0, 2.1.0 or higher.

References