Denial of Service (DoS) Affecting xlsx package, versions <0.17.0


0.0
high

Snyk CVSS

    Attack Complexity Low
    Availability High

    Threat Intelligence

    Exploit Maturity Proof of concept
    EPSS 0.06% (24th percentile)
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NVD
5.5 medium

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  • Snyk ID SNYK-JS-XLSX-1311141
  • published 17 Jun 2021
  • disclosed 17 Jun 2021
  • credit Jeremy Mill

How to fix?

Upgrade xlsx to version 0.17.0 or higher.

Overview

xlsx is a Parser and writer for various spreadsheet formats.

Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Denial of Service (DoS). An attacker who can send a malicious excel file parsed by this library can crash the Node.JS process.

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