Find, fix and prevent vulnerabilities in your code.

Overview

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

Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Prototype Override Protection Bypass. By default qs protects against attacks that attempt to overwrite an object's existing prototype properties, such as toString(), hasOwnProperty(),etc.

From qs documentation:

By default parameters that would overwrite properties on the object prototype are ignored, if you wish to keep the data from those fields either use plainObjects as mentioned above, or set allowPrototypes to true which will allow user input to overwrite those properties. WARNING It is generally a bad idea to enable this option as it can cause problems when attempting to use the properties that have been overwritten. Always be careful with this option.

Overwriting these properties can impact application logic, potentially allowing attackers to work around security controls, modify data, make the application unstable and more.

In versions of the package affected by this vulnerability, it is possible to circumvent this protection and overwrite prototype properties and functions by prefixing the name of the parameter with [ or ]. e.g. qs.parse("]=toString") will return {toString = true}, as a result, calling toString() on the object will throw an exception.

Example:

qs.parse('toString=foo', { allowPrototypes: false })
// {}

qs.parse("]=toString", { allowPrototypes: false })
// {toString = true} <== prototype overwritten

For more information, you can check out our blog.

Disclosure Timeline

• February 13th, 2017 - Reported the issue to package owner.
• February 13th, 2017 - Issue acknowledged by package owner.
• February 16th, 2017 - Partial fix released in versions 6.0.3, 6.1.1, 6.2.2, 6.3.1.
• March 6th, 2017 - Final fix released in versions 6.4.0,6.3.2, 6.2.3, 6.1.2 and 6.0.4

Remediation

Upgrade qs to version 6.0.4, 6.1.2, 6.2.3, 6.3.2 or higher.

References

• GitHub Commit
• GitHub Issue

Overview

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

Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Prototype Poisoning which allows attackers to cause a Node process to hang, processing an Array object whose prototype has been replaced by one with an excessive length value.

Note: In many typical Express use cases, an unauthenticated remote attacker can place the attack payload in the query string of the URL that is used to visit the application, such as a[__proto__]=b&a[__proto__]&a[length]=100000000.

Details

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

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

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

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

Two common types of DoS vulnerabilities:

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

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

Remediation

Upgrade qs to version 6.2.4, 6.3.3, 6.4.1, 6.5.3, 6.6.1, 6.7.3, 6.8.3, 6.9.7, 6.10.3 or higher.

References

• GitHub PR
• RedHat Bugzilla Bug
• Researcher Advisory