Find, fix and prevent vulnerabilities in your code.

Overview

convict is a package that expands on the standard pattern of configuring node.js applications in a way that is more robust and accessible to collaborators, who may have less interest in digging through imperative code in order to inspect or modify settings. By introducing a configuration schema, convict gives project collaborators more context on each setting and enables validation and early failures for when configuration goes wrong.

Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Prototype Pollution via the startsWith function. An attacker can modify the prototype of built-in objects by supplying crafted input, potentially leading to authentication bypass, denial of service, or execution of arbitrary code if polluted properties are used in sensitive operations.

PoC

String.prototype.startsWith = () => false; 
const convict = require('convict');
let obj = {};
const config = convict(obj);
console.log({}.polluted);
config.set('constructor.prototype.polluted', 'yes');
console.log({}.polluted);    // prints yes -> the patch is bypassed and prototype pollution occurred

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:

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 convict to version 6.2.3 or higher.

References

• GitHub Advisory
• GitHub Commit
• GitHub Commit
• GitHub Commit
• GitHub Gist

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

• GitHub Commit
• GitHub Commit
• Nuclei Templates

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

• GitHub Commit
• GitHub Release
• GitHub Release
• GitHub Release
• Nuclei Templates

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

• GitHub Gist
• GitHub PR

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

• GitHub Advisory
• GitHub Commit
• GitHub Issue
• OpenJS Security Advisory

Overview

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

Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Prototype Pollution. The function zipObjectDeep can be tricked into adding or modifying properties of the Object prototype. These properties will be present on all objects.

PoC

const _ = require('lodash');

_.zipObjectDeep(['__proto__.z'],[123]);

console.log(z); // 123

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:

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 4.17.20 or higher.

References

• GitHub Commit
• GitHub PR

Overview

bson is a BSON Parser for node and browser.

Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Internal Property Tampering. The package will ignore an unknown value for an object's _bsotype, leading to cases where an object is serialized as a document rather than the intended BSON type.

NOTE: This vulnerability has also been identified as: CVE-2019-2391

Remediation

Upgrade bson to version 1.1.4 or higher.

References

• GitHub Commit
• Release Note

Overview

bson is a BSON Parser for node and browser.

Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Internal Property Tampering. The package will ignore an unknown value for an object's _bsotype, leading to cases where an object is serialized as a document rather than the intended BSON type.

NOTE: This vulnerability has also been identified as: CVE-2020-7610

Remediation

Upgrade bson to version 1.1.4 or higher.

References

• GitHub Commit
• Release Note

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:

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

• GitHub Commit
• GitHub Commit

Overview

Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Prototype Pollution via the mapValues() method, due to improper check in createObjectIterator function.

PoC

//when objects are parsed, all properties are created as own (the objects can come from outside sources (http requests/ file))
const hasOwn = JSON.parse('{"__proto__": {"isAdmin": true}}');

//does not have the property,  because it's inside object's own "__proto__"
console.log(hasOwn.isAdmin);

async.mapValues(hasOwn, (val, key, cb) => cb(null, val), (error, result) => {
  // after the method executes, hasOwn.__proto__ value (isAdmin: true) replaces the prototype of the newly created object, leading to potential exploits.
  console.log(result.isAdmin);
});

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:

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 async to version 2.6.4, 3.2.2 or higher.

References

• GitHub Backport PR
• GitHub Commit
• GitHub Commit
• PoC

Overview

convict is a package that expands on the standard pattern of configuring node.js applications in a way that is more robust and accessible to collaborators, who may have less interest in digging through imperative code in order to inspect or modify settings. By introducing a configuration schema, convict gives project collaborators more context on each setting and enables validation and early failures for when configuration goes wrong.

Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Prototype Pollution via the convict() function as parentKey is not validated.

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:

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 convict to version 6.0.1 or higher.

References

• GitHub Additional Information
• GitHub PR

Overview

convict is a package that expands on the standard pattern of configuring node.js applications in a way that is more robust and accessible to collaborators, who may have less interest in digging through imperative code in order to inspect or modify settings. By introducing a configuration schema, convict gives project collaborators more context on each setting and enables validation and early failures for when configuration goes wrong.

Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Prototype Pollution via the convict function due to missing validation of parentKey.

Note: This vulnerability derives from an incomplete fix of another vulnerability

PoC:

const convict = require("convict");
let obj = {};
const config = convict(obj);
config.set("this.constructor.prototype.polluted", "polluted");
console.log({}.polluted)

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:

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 convict to version 6.2.2 or higher.

References

• Fix Commit
• Vulnerable Code

Overview

convict is a package that expands on the standard pattern of configuring node.js applications in a way that is more robust and accessible to collaborators, who may have less interest in digging through imperative code in order to inspect or modify settings. By introducing a configuration schema, convict gives project collaborators more context on each setting and enables validation and early failures for when configuration goes wrong.

Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Prototype Pollution. This is a bypass of CVE-2022-22143. The fix introduced, relies on the startsWith method and does not prevent the vulnerability: before splitting the path, it checks if it starts with __proto__ or this.constructor.prototype. To bypass this check it's possible to prepend the dangerous paths with any string value followed by a dot, like for example foo.__proto__ or foo.this.constructor.prototype.

PoC:

const convict = require("convict");
let obj = {};
const config = convict(obj);

config.set("this.constructor.prototype.polluted", "polluted");
console.log({}.polluted) // undefined

config.set("this.this.constructor.prototype.polluted1", "polluted1");
console.log({}.polluted1) // polluted1

config.set("foo.this.constructor.prototype.polluted2", "polluted2");
console.log({}.polluted2) // polluted2

config.set("this.__proto__.polluted3", "polluted3");
console.log({}.polluted3) // polluted3

config.set("foo.__proto__.polluted4", "polluted4");
console.log({}.polluted4) // polluted4

config.set("foo.__proto__.foo.__proto__.polluted5", "polluted5");
console.log({}.polluted5) // polluted5

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:

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 convict to version 6.2.3 or higher.

References

• Git Commit
• Github ChangeLog
• GitHub Gist
• Vulnerable Code

Overview

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

Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Prototype Pollution through the zipObjectDeep function due to improper user input sanitization in the baseZipObject function.

PoC

lodash.zipobjectdeep:

const zipObjectDeep = require("lodash.zipobjectdeep");

let emptyObject = {};


console.log(`[+] Before prototype pollution : ${emptyObject.polluted}`);
//[+] Before prototype pollution : undefined

zipObjectDeep(["constructor.prototype.polluted"], [true]);
//we inject our malicious attributes in the vulnerable function

console.log(`[+] After prototype pollution : ${emptyObject.polluted}`);
//[+] After prototype pollution : true

lodash:

const test = require("lodash");

let emptyObject = {};


console.log(`[+] Before prototype pollution : ${emptyObject.polluted}`);
//[+] Before prototype pollution : undefined

test.zipObjectDeep(["constructor.prototype.polluted"], [true]);
//we inject our malicious attributes in the vulnerable function

console.log(`[+] After prototype pollution : ${emptyObject.polluted}`);
//[+] After prototype pollution : true

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:

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 4.17.17 or higher.

References

• GitHub Gist
• Vulnerable Code

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

• GitHub Commit

Overview

mongodb is an official MongoDB driver for Node.js.

Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Denial of Service (DoS). The package fails to properly catch an exception when a collection name is invalid and the DB does not exist, crashing the application.

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.

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 mongodb to version 3.1.13 or higher.

References

• NPM Security Advisory

Overview

mquery is an Expressive query building for MongoDB

Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Prototype Pollution via the mergeClone() function.

PoC by zhou, peng

mquery = require('mquery');
var malicious_payload = '{"__proto__":{"polluted":"HACKED"}}';
console.log('Before:', {}.polluted); // undefined
mquery.utils.mergeClone({}, JSON.parse(malicious_payload));
console.log('After:', {}.polluted); // HACKED

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:

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 mquery to version 3.2.5 or higher.

References

• GitHub Commit
• GitHub PR

Overview

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

Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Prototype Pollution. The function defaultsDeep could be tricked into adding or modifying properties of Object.prototype using a constructor payload.

PoC by Snyk

const mergeFn = require('lodash').defaultsDeep;
const payload = '{"constructor": {"prototype": {"a0": true}}}'

function check() {
    mergeFn({}, JSON.parse(payload));
    if (({})[`a0`] === true) {
        console.log(`Vulnerable to Prototype Pollution via ${payload}`);
    }
  }

check();

For more information, check out our blog post

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:

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 4.17.12 or higher.

References

• GitHub Issue
• GitHub PR
• GitHub PR
• GitHub PR
• Node Security Advisory
• Snyk Blog

Overview

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

Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Prototype Pollution via the set and setwith functions due to improper user input sanitization.

PoC

lod = require('lodash')
lod.set({}, "__proto__[test2]", "456")
console.log(Object.prototype)

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:

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 4.17.17 or higher.

References

• HackerOne Report

Overview

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

Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Prototype Pollution. The functions merge, mergeWith, and defaultsDeep could be tricked into adding or modifying properties of Object.prototype. This is due to an incomplete fix to CVE-2018-3721.

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:

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 4.17.11 or higher.

References

• GitHub Commit
• GitHub PR
• NPM Security Advisory
• NPM Security Advisory
• NPM Security Advisory
• NPM Security Advisory
• POC: HackerOne Report

Overview

mquery is an Expressive query building for MongoDB

Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Prototype Pollution via the merge function within lib/utils.js. Depending on if user input is provided, an attacker can overwrite and pollute the object prototype of a program.

PoC

   require('./env').getCollection(function(err, collection) {
      assert.ifError(err);
      col = collection;
      done();
    });
    var payload = JSON.parse('{"__proto__": {"polluted": "vulnerable"}}');
    var m = mquery(payload);
    console.log({}.polluted);
// The empty object {} will have a property called polluted which will print vulnerable

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:

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 mquery to version 3.2.3 or higher.

References

• mquery GitHub Commit
• rxdb GitHub Commit

Overview

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

Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Code Injection due the improper validation of options.variable 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.

PoC

var _ = require('lodash');

_.template('', { variable: '){console.log(process.env)}; with(obj' })()

Remediation

Upgrade lodash to version 4.17.21 or higher.

References

• GitHub Commit
• Vulnerable Code

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() function.

Note: CVE-2022-24304 is a duplicate of CVE-2022-2564.

PoC:

const mongoose = require('mongoose');
const schema = new mongoose.Schema();

malicious_payload = '__proto__.toString'

schema.path(malicious_payload, [String])

x = {}
console.log(x.toString())

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:

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 5.13.15, 6.4.6 or higher.

References

• Github Commit
• GitHub Commit
• GitHub Issue