Find, fix and prevent vulnerabilities in your code.

Overview

Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Regular Expression Denial of Service (ReDoS) due to improper input sanitization. An attacker can increase the CPU usage and crash the program by crafting a very large and well crafted string.

PoC

const { argument } = require('cross-spawn/lib/util/escape');
var str = "";
for (var i = 0; i < 1000000; i++) {
  str += "\\";
}
str += "◎";

console.log("start")
argument(str)
console.log("end")

// run `npm install cross-spawn` and `node attack.js` 
// then the program will stuck forever with high CPU usage

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 cross-spawn to version 7.0.5 or higher.

References

• GitHub Commit
• GitHub Commit
• GitHub PR

Overview

elliptic is a fast elliptic-curve cryptography implementation in plain javascript.

Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Improper Verification of Cryptographic Signature due to an anomaly in the _truncateToN function. An attacker can cause legitimate transactions or communications to be incorrectly flagged as invalid by exploiting the signature verification process when the hash contains at least four leading 0 bytes and the order of the elliptic curve's base point is smaller than the hash.

PoC

var elliptic = require('elliptic'); // tested with version 6.5.7
var hash = require('hash.js');
var BN = require('bn.js');
var toArray = elliptic.utils.toArray;

var ec = new elliptic.ec('p192');
var msg = '343236343739373234';
var sig = '303502186f20676c0d04fc40ea55d5702f798355787363a91e97a7e50219009d1c8c171b2b02e7d791c204c17cea4cf556a2034288885b';
// Same public key just in different formats
var pk = '04cd35a0b18eeb8fcd87ff019780012828745f046e785deba28150de1be6cb4376523006beff30ff09b4049125ced29723';
var pkPem = '-----BEGIN PUBLIC KEY-----\nMEkwEwYHKoZIzj0CAQYIKoZIzj0DAQEDMgAEzTWgsY7rj82H/wGXgAEoKHRfBG54\nXeuigVDeG+bLQ3ZSMAa+/zD/CbQEkSXO0pcj\n-----END PUBLIC KEY-----\n';

// Create hash
var hashArray = hash.sha256().update(toArray(msg, 'hex')).digest();
// Convert array to string (just for showcase of the leading zeros)
var hashStr = Array.from(hashArray, function(byte) {
  return ('0' + (byte & 0xFF).toString(16)).slice(-2);
}).join('');
var hMsg = new BN(hashArray, 'hex');
// Hashed message contains 4 leading zeros bytes
console.log('sha256 hash(str): ' + hashStr);
// Due to using BN bitLength lib it does not calculate the bit length correctly (should be 32 since it is a sha256 hash)
console.log('Byte len of sha256 hash: ' + hMsg.byteLength());
console.log('sha256 hash(BN): ' + hMsg.toString(16));

// Due to the shift of the message to be within the order of the curve the delta computation is invalid
var pubKey = ec.keyFromPublic(toArray(pk, 'hex'));
console.log('Valid signature: ' + pubKey.verify(hashStr, sig));

// You can check that this hash should validate by consolidating openssl
const fs = require('fs');
fs.writeFile('msg.bin', new BN(msg, 16).toBuffer(), (err) => {
  if (err) throw err;
});
fs.writeFile('sig.bin', new BN(sig, 16).toBuffer(), (err) => {
  if (err) throw err;
});
fs.writeFile('cert.pem', pkPem, (err) => {
  if (err) throw err;
});

// To verify the correctness of the message signature and key one can run:
// openssl dgst -sha256 -verify cert.pem -signature sig.bin msg.bin
// Or run this python script
/*
from cryptography.hazmat.primitives import hashes
from cryptography.hazmat.primitives.asymmetric import ec


msg = '343236343739373234'
sig = '303502186f20676c0d04fc40ea55d5702f798355787363a91e97a7e50219009d1c8c171b2b02e7d791c204c17cea4cf556a2034288885b'
pk = '04cd35a0b18eeb8fcd87ff019780012828745f046e785deba28150de1be6cb4376523006beff30ff09b4049125ced29723'

p192 = ec.SECP192R1()
pk = ec.EllipticCurvePublicKey.from_encoded_point(p192, bytes.fromhex(pk))
pk.verify(bytes.fromhex(sig), bytes.fromhex(msg), ec.ECDSA(hashes.SHA256()))
*/

Remediation

Upgrade elliptic to version 6.6.0 or higher.

References

• GitHub Commit
• GitHub Issue
• GitHub PR

Overview

knex is a query builder for PostgreSQL, MySQL and SQLite3

Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to SQL Injection due to missing escape of field objects, which allows ignoring the WHERE clause of a SQL query.

Note: Exploiting this vulnerability is possible when using MySQL DB.

PoC

const knex = require('knex')({
    client: 'mysql2',
    connection: {
        host: '127.0.0.1',
        user: 'root',
        password: 'supersecurepassword',
        database: 'poc',
        charset: 'utf8'
    }
})

knex.schema.hasTable('users').then((exists) => {
    if (!exists) {
        knex.schema.createTable('users', (table) => {
            table.increments('id').primary()
            table.string('name').notNullable()
            table.string('secret').notNullable()
        }).then()
        knex('users').insert({
            name: "admin",
            secret: "you should not be able to return this!"
        }).then()
        knex('users').insert({
            name: "guest",
            secret: "hello world"
        }).then()
    }
})

attackerControlled = {
    "name": "admin"
}

knex('users')
    .select()
    .where({secret: attackerControlled})
    .then((userSecret) => console.log(userSecret))

Remediation

Upgrade knex to version 2.4.0 or higher.

References

• Blog
• GitHub Commit
• GitHub Issue
• GitHub PR

Overview

elliptic is a fast elliptic-curve cryptography implementation in plain javascript.

Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Improper Verification of Cryptographic Signature due to improper range validation of the S value in the verify function, allowing the usage of an invalid signature.

Note:

This vulnerability could have a security-relevant impact if an application relies on the uniqueness of a signature.

Remediation

Upgrade elliptic to version 6.5.6 or higher.

References

• GitHub Commit
• Vulnerable Code

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, Oliver. “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

elliptic is a fast elliptic-curve cryptography implementation in plain javascript.

Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Cryptographic Issues. Elliptic allows ECDSA signature malleability via variations in encoding, leading \0 bytes, or integer overflows. This could conceivably have a security-relevant impact if an application relied on a single canonical signature.

PoC

var crypto = require('crypto')
var EC = require('elliptic').ec;
var ec = new EC('secp256k1');

var obj = require("./poc_ecdsa_secp256k1_sha256_test.json");

for (let testGroup of obj.testGroups) {

    var key = ec.keyFromPublic(testGroup.key.uncompressed, 'hex');
    
    for(let test of testGroup.tests) {
     console.log("[*] Test " + test.tcId + " result: " + test.result)

     msgHash = crypto.createHash('sha256').update(Buffer.from(test.msg, 'hex')).digest();
     
     try {
      result = key.verify(msgHash, Buffer.from(test.sig, 'hex'));

     if (result == true) {
      if (test.result == "valid" || test.result == "acceptable")
       console.log("Result: PASS");
      else
       console.log("Result: FAIL")     
     }

     if (result == false) {
      if (test.result == "valid" || test.result == "acceptable")
       console.log("Result: FAIL");
      else
       console.log("Result: PASS")     
     }



     } catch (e) {
      console.log("ERROR - VERIFY: " + e)

      if (test.result == "valid" || test.result == "acceptable")
       console.log("Result: FAIL");
      else
       console.log("Result: PASS")     



     }


    }

}

Remediation

Upgrade elliptic to version 6.5.3 or higher.

References

• Elliptic NPM Package
• GitHub Issue
• How Not To Use ECDSA
• Malleability Attack

Overview

braces is a Bash-like brace expansion, implemented in JavaScript.

Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Uncontrolled resource consumption due improper limitation of the number of characters it can handle, through the parse function. An attacker can cause the application to allocate excessive memory and potentially crash by sending imbalanced braces as input.

PoC

const { braces } = require('micromatch');

console.log("Executing payloads...");

const maxRepeats = 10;

for (let repeats = 1; repeats <= maxRepeats; repeats += 1) {
  const payload = '{'.repeat(repeats*90000);

  console.log(`Testing with ${repeats} repeats...`);
  const startTime = Date.now();
  braces(payload);
  const endTime = Date.now();
  const executionTime = endTime - startTime;
  console.log(`Regex executed in ${executionTime / 1000}s.\n`);
} 

Remediation

Upgrade braces to version 3.0.3 or higher.

References

• GitHub Commit
• GitHub Issue
• GitHub PR
• 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, Oliver. “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

Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Inefficient Regular Expression Complexity due to the use of unsafe pattern configurations that allow greedy matching through the micromatch.braces() function. An attacker can cause the application to hang or slow down by passing a malicious payload that triggers extensive backtracking in regular expression processing.

Remediation

Upgrade micromatch to version 4.0.8 or higher.

References

• GitHub Commit
• GitHub Issue
• GitHub PR
• Vulnerable Code

Overview

Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Prototype Pollution via the unset function in index.js, because it allows access to object prototype properties.

Details

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

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

• Unsafe Object recursive merge

• Property definition by path

Unsafe Object recursive merge

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

merge (target, source)

  foreach property of source

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

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

    else

      target[property] = source[property]

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

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

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

Property definition by path

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

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

Types of attacks

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

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

Remediation

Upgrade unset-value to version 2.0.1 or higher.

References

• GitHub Commit
• GitHub Issue
• GitHub PR
• GitHub Release

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, Oliver. “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, Oliver. “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, Oliver. “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

crypto-js is a library of crypto standards.

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

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

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

Notes

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

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

Workaround

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

Changelog:

2023-10-24 - Initial publication

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

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

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

Remediation

Upgrade crypto-js to version 4.2.0 or higher.

References

• CryptoJS Vulnerable Code
• GitHub Advisory
• GitHub Issue
• Snyk Blog Post
• X Thread

Overview

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

Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Code Injection via template.

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

GPL-2.0 license