It’s that time of the week again folks. Meterian has two new Node.Js vulnerabilities to inform you on. Both are ranked a severity score of 7.5 and therefore considered to be of urgent attention. The first vulnerability concerns the bson-objectid package and the second the csv-parse module. Act fast and don’t let these vulnerabilities sit within your software/networks, or you could be at serious risk of a cyber attack. 

• CVE-2019-19729: There is an issue discovered in the bson-objectid package version 1.3.0 for Node.js. Hackers could generate a malformed objectid, resulting in objects in arbitrary forms to bypass formatting if they have a valid bsontype.

• CVE-2019-17592: The csv-parse module before version 4.4.6 for Node.js is vulnerable to Regular Expression Denial of Service. An attacker can cause a program to spend an unnecessary amount of time processing.

CVE-2019-19729

Vulnerability Score: 7.5 /HIGH

Platform: Node.js

Component: bson-objectid

Affected Versions: up to 1.3.0

Read up Node.js users you’ll want to know about this vulnerability! This was discovered on the 12th December 2019 by user Xiaofen9 on Github who noticed that ObjectID() allows an attacker to generate a malformed objectid by inserting an additional property to his user-input.

What is bson-objectid? This component allows you to create and parse ObjectIDs without using bigger components, such as other fully-fledged bson libraries.

The problem is that in certain conditions the input object will not be checked and will be returned early. This means that objects in arbitrary (potentially malicious) forms can completely bypass formatting and validation.

https://github.com/williamkapke/bson-objectid/issues/30

So what can hackers do? The manipulation with an unknown input leads to a privilege escalation vulnerability and could lead to an impact on confidentiality, integrity, and availability.

But what does a privilege escalation vulnerability actually entail? It is when a malicious user gains access to the privileges of another user account in a target system. This allows hackers to use these privileges to steal confidential data, run administrative demands or deploy malware.

What can you do to fix this? Unfortunately, at this time of writing there is still no remedy to this vulnerability. However, we recommend to cease using this component or switch to a full bson library like bson.

CVE-2019-17592

Vulnerability Score: 7.5/ HIGH

Platform: Node.js

Component: csv-parse module

Affected Versions: up to 4.4.5

Oh yes…we are not done yet. Here is another Node.js vulnerability for you all! This was discovered on the 14th of October and given a high score of 7.5 by NVD. The affected module is csv-parse which is a CSV module. This project is a parser which converts CSV text inputs into objects. It uses the Node.js stream.Transform API and provides a simple callback-based API. Released for the first time in 2010, it is very easy to use and helps the big community that uses it with large data sets. 

The problem is that before version 4.4.6 for Node.js is vulnerable to Regular Expression Denial of Service. A cast option is available in the module, it defines multiple functions to transform values based on their type. When such option is active and an integer cast is required, the corresponding __isInt() function uses a malformed regular expression that processes large inputs extremely slowly.

Why is Regular Expression Denial Service a backdoor for hackers? The attacker will insert in the file a malicious string which they know would take a very long time to evaluate. This means the attacker can make the user spend an excessive amount of time processing, resulting in the user’s executed commands to slow down or become unresponsive. Thus,  the availability of the system degrades. To make things worse, the exploit can be easily and remotely executed depicting clearly why this vulnerability is classified as problematic.

The best thing to do to avoid getting caught out by such exploit, is to upgrade to version 4.4.6 and above. 

That is it from us…for now! Make sure to spread the word on these critically-rated Node.js vulnerabilities in order to help protect your apps/the apps you develop. But as you all know, open-source vulnerabilities are discovered daily, so you can expect us to be back with new vulnerabilities very soon!

Knowing is half the battle. The other half is doing. Let Meterian help your dev team stay in the know and on top of the latest updates to secure your apps continuously.  Sign up here to download the Meterian client today.  You’ll get an instant analysis of your first project for free.  See the risks immediately and know which components to remove or upgrade to secure your app.