Find, fix and prevent vulnerabilities in your code.
high severity
- Vulnerable module: moment
- Introduced through: modern-logger@1.5.86
Detailed paths
-
Introduced through: watch-rtp-play@hfreire/watch-rtp-play#6caec3db36f1f5203b3ea3d15e13711ff62e4fc5 › modern-logger@1.5.86 › moment@2.29.1
Overview
moment is a lightweight JavaScript date library for parsing, validating, manipulating, and formatting dates.
Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Directory Traversal when a user provides a locale string which is directly used to switch moment locale.
Details
A Directory Traversal attack (also known as path traversal) aims to access files and directories that are stored outside the intended folder. By manipulating files with "dot-dot-slash (../)" sequences and its variations, or by using absolute file paths, it may be possible to access arbitrary files and directories stored on file system, including application source code, configuration, and other critical system files.
Directory Traversal vulnerabilities can be generally divided into two types:
- Information Disclosure: Allows the attacker to gain information about the folder structure or read the contents of sensitive files on the system.
st
is a module for serving static files on web pages, and contains a vulnerability of this type. In our example, we will serve files from the public
route.
If an attacker requests the following URL from our server, it will in turn leak the sensitive private key of the root user.
curl http://localhost:8080/public/%2e%2e/%2e%2e/%2e%2e/%2e%2e/%2e%2e/root/.ssh/id_rsa
Note %2e
is the URL encoded version of .
(dot).
- Writing arbitrary files: Allows the attacker to create or replace existing files. This type of vulnerability is also known as
Zip-Slip
.
One way to achieve this is by using a malicious zip
archive that holds path traversal filenames. When each filename in the zip archive gets concatenated to the target extraction folder, without validation, the final path ends up outside of the target folder. If an executable or a configuration file is overwritten with a file containing malicious code, the problem can turn into an arbitrary code execution issue quite easily.
The following is an example of a zip
archive with one benign file and one malicious file. Extracting the malicious file will result in traversing out of the target folder, ending up in /root/.ssh/
overwriting the authorized_keys
file:
2018-04-15 22:04:29 ..... 19 19 good.txt
2018-04-15 22:04:42 ..... 20 20 ../../../../../../root/.ssh/authorized_keys
Remediation
Upgrade moment
to version 2.29.2 or higher.
References
high severity
- Vulnerable module: moment
- Introduced through: modern-logger@1.5.86
Detailed paths
-
Introduced through: watch-rtp-play@hfreire/watch-rtp-play#6caec3db36f1f5203b3ea3d15e13711ff62e4fc5 › modern-logger@1.5.86 › moment@2.29.1
Overview
moment is a lightweight JavaScript date library for parsing, validating, manipulating, and formatting dates.
Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Regular Expression Denial of Service (ReDoS) via the preprocessRFC2822()
function in from-string.js
, when processing a very long crafted string (over 10k characters).
PoC:
moment("(".repeat(500000))
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:
- CCC
- CC+C
- C+CC
- 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 moment
to version 2.29.4 or higher.
References
medium severity
- Vulnerable module: request
- Introduced through: request-on-steroids@1.1.110
Detailed paths
-
Introduced through: watch-rtp-play@hfreire/watch-rtp-play#6caec3db36f1f5203b3ea3d15e13711ff62e4fc5 › request-on-steroids@1.1.110 › request@2.88.2
Overview
request is a simplified http request client.
Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Server-side Request Forgery (SSRF) due to insufficient checks in the lib/redirect.js
file by allowing insecure redirects in the default configuration, via an attacker-controller server that does a cross-protocol redirect (HTTP to HTTPS, or HTTPS to HTTP).
NOTE: request
package has been deprecated, so a fix is not expected. See https://github.com/request/request/issues/3142.
Remediation
A fix was pushed into the master
branch but not yet published.
References
medium severity
- Vulnerable module: tough-cookie
- Introduced through: request-on-steroids@1.1.110
Detailed paths
-
Introduced through: watch-rtp-play@hfreire/watch-rtp-play#6caec3db36f1f5203b3ea3d15e13711ff62e4fc5 › request-on-steroids@1.1.110 › request@2.88.2 › tough-cookie@2.5.0
Overview
tough-cookie is a RFC6265 Cookies and CookieJar module for Node.js.
Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Prototype Pollution due to improper handling of Cookies when using CookieJar in rejectPublicSuffixes=false
mode. Due to an issue with the manner in which the objects are initialized, an attacker can expose or modify a limited amount of property information on those objects. There is no impact to availability.
PoC
// PoC.js
async function main(){
var tough = require("tough-cookie");
var cookiejar = new tough.CookieJar(undefined,{rejectPublicSuffixes:false});
// Exploit cookie
await cookiejar.setCookie(
"Slonser=polluted; Domain=__proto__; Path=/notauth",
"https://__proto__/admin"
);
// normal cookie
var cookie = await cookiejar.setCookie(
"Auth=Lol; Domain=google.com; Path=/notauth",
"https://google.com/"
);
//Exploit cookie
var a = {};
console.log(a["/notauth"]["Slonser"])
}
main();
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 mergeProperty 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
Freeze the prototype— use
Object.freeze (Object.prototype)
.Require schema validation of JSON input.
Avoid using unsafe recursive merge functions.
Consider using objects without prototypes (for example,
Object.create(null)
), breaking the prototype chain and preventing pollution.As a best practice use
Map
instead ofObject
.
For more information on this vulnerability type:
Arteau, Oliver. “JavaScript prototype pollution attack in NodeJS application.” GitHub, 26 May 2018
Remediation
Upgrade tough-cookie
to version 4.1.3 or higher.
References
medium severity
- Vulnerable module: swagger-ui-dist
- Introduced through: serverful@1.4.90
Detailed paths
-
Introduced through: watch-rtp-play@hfreire/watch-rtp-play#6caec3db36f1f5203b3ea3d15e13711ff62e4fc5 › serverful@1.4.90 › hapi-swagger@13.1.0 › swagger-ui-dist@3.52.5
Overview
swagger-ui-dist is a module that exposes Swagger-UI's entire dist folder as a dependency-free npm module. Use swagger-ui instead, if you'd like to have npm install dependencies for you.
Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Server-side Request Forgery (SSRF) via the ?url
parameter, which was intended to allow displaying remote OpenAPI definitions. This functionality may pose a risk for users who host their own SwaggerUI instances. In particular, including remote OpenAPI definitions opens a vector for phishing attacks by abusing the trusted names/domains of self-hosted instances.
NOTE: This vulnerability has also been identified as: CVE-2021-46708
Remediation
Upgrade swagger-ui-dist
to version 4.1.3 or higher.
References
medium severity
- Vulnerable module: swagger-ui-dist
- Introduced through: serverful@1.4.90
Detailed paths
-
Introduced through: watch-rtp-play@hfreire/watch-rtp-play#6caec3db36f1f5203b3ea3d15e13711ff62e4fc5 › serverful@1.4.90 › hapi-swagger@13.1.0 › swagger-ui-dist@3.52.5
Overview
swagger-ui-dist is a module that exposes Swagger-UI's entire dist folder as a dependency-free npm module. Use swagger-ui instead, if you'd like to have npm install dependencies for you.
Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Server-side Request Forgery (SSRF) via the ?url
parameter, which was intended to allow displaying remote OpenAPI definitions. This functionality may pose a risk for users who host their own SwaggerUI instances. In particular, including remote OpenAPI definitions opens a vector for phishing attacks by abusing the trusted names/domains of self-hosted instances.
NOTE: This vulnerability has also been identified as: CVE-2018-25031
Remediation
Upgrade swagger-ui-dist
to version 4.1.3 or higher.
References
medium severity
- Vulnerable module: validator
- Introduced through: serverful@1.4.90
Detailed paths
-
Introduced through: watch-rtp-play@hfreire/watch-rtp-play#6caec3db36f1f5203b3ea3d15e13711ff62e4fc5 › serverful@1.4.90 › hapi-swagger@13.1.0 › swagger-parser@4.0.2 › z-schema@3.25.1 › validator@10.11.0
Overview
validator is a library of string validators and sanitizers.
Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Regular Expression Denial of Service (ReDoS) via the isSlug
function
PoC
var validator = require("validator")
function build_attack(n) {
var ret = "111"
for (var i = 0; i < n; i++) {
ret += "a"
}
return ret+"_";
}
for(var i = 1; i <= 50000; i++) {
if (i % 10000 == 0) {
var time = Date.now();
var attack_str = build_attack(i)
validator.isSlug(attack_str)
var time_cost = Date.now() - time;
console.log("attack_str.length: " + attack_str.length + ": " + time_cost+" ms")
}
}
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:
- CCC
- CC+C
- C+CC
- 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 validator
to version 13.6.0 or higher.
References
medium severity
- Vulnerable module: validator
- Introduced through: serverful@1.4.90
Detailed paths
-
Introduced through: watch-rtp-play@hfreire/watch-rtp-play#6caec3db36f1f5203b3ea3d15e13711ff62e4fc5 › serverful@1.4.90 › hapi-swagger@13.1.0 › swagger-parser@4.0.2 › z-schema@3.25.1 › validator@10.11.0
Overview
validator is a library of string validators and sanitizers.
Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Regular Expression Denial of Service (ReDoS) via the isHSL
function.
PoC
var validator = require("validator")
function build_attack(n) {
var ret = "hsla(0"
for (var i = 0; i < n; i++) {
ret += " "
}
return ret+"◎";
}
for(var i = 1; i <= 50000; i++) {
if (i % 1000 == 0) {
var time = Date.now();
var attack_str = build_attack(i)
validator.isHSL(attack_str)
var time_cost = Date.now() - time;
console.log("attack_str.length: " + attack_str.length + ": " + time_cost+" ms")
}
}
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:
- CCC
- CC+C
- C+CC
- 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 validator
to version 13.6.0 or higher.
References
medium severity
- Vulnerable module: validator
- Introduced through: serverful@1.4.90
Detailed paths
-
Introduced through: watch-rtp-play@hfreire/watch-rtp-play#6caec3db36f1f5203b3ea3d15e13711ff62e4fc5 › serverful@1.4.90 › hapi-swagger@13.1.0 › swagger-parser@4.0.2 › z-schema@3.25.1 › validator@10.11.0
Overview
validator is a library of string validators and sanitizers.
Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Regular Expression Denial of Service (ReDoS) via the isEmail
function.
PoC
var validator = require("validator")
function build_attack(n) {
var ret = ""
for (var i = 0; i < n; i++) {
ret += "<"
}
return ret+"";
}
for(var i = 1; i <= 50000; i++) {
if (i % 10000 == 0) {
var time = Date.now();
var attack_str = build_attack(i)
validator.isEmail(attack_str,{ allow_display_name: true })
var time_cost = Date.now() - time;
console.log("attack_str.length: " + attack_str.length + ": " + time_cost+" ms")
}
}
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:
- CCC
- CC+C
- C+CC
- 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 validator
to version 13.6.0 or higher.