Welcome back to Meterian’s next Vulnerability Focus report edition. This week we are talking about Javascript vulnerabilities which need to be addressed. Both have been published in recent months and have a medium severity threat. The first vulnerability could result in a cross-site scripting attack whilst the second is to do with a cryptographic issue. There are over 1.6 billion websites in the world, and JavaScript is used on 95% of them, be sure to check if you could be affected.

• CVE-2019-12043: there is a vulnerability in remarkable 1.7.1 affecting the unknown processing in the library lib/parser_inline.js of the component URL Handler. Manipulation of this component can lead to cross-site-scripting.

• CVE-2019-9155: OpenPGP.js has a cryptographic issue which could allow attackers to conduct an invalid curve attack and gain the victim’s ECDH private key

CVE-2019-12043

Vulnerability Score: 6.1

Platform: Javascript

Components: remarkable version 1.7.1

Read up Javascript users! This vulnerability was posted last year in 2019, yet because of the significant amount of people using Javascript for their web apps, we thought it would be useful to inform people who might not have had time to address the issue. 

This vulnerability has been found in remarkable 1.7.1 and is considered problematic. The component mishandles URL filtering, which allows attackers to trigger an XSS attack via unprintable characters.

Cross site scripting is an injection of malicious code into a trusted web app. As described above, this happens when the user input is not sufficiently validated either on the client or server side. The scripts injected will have malware which then allows the hacker to do a series of exploits. What is more concerning is that the attack could then alter the appearance of the web app and also commence attacks on users visiting that site.

The solution for this vulnerability is to replace remarkable 1.7.1 with versions 1.7.4 to 2.0.0.

CVE-2019-9155

Vulnerability Score: 5.9

Platform: Javascript openpgp

Components: openpgp versions up to 4.2.0 included

This Javascript vulnerability was published in September 2019 and has a medium severity score of 5.9. 

The vulnerability is a cryptographic issue in OpenPGP.js up to and including 4.2.0. This is a library in Javascript and therefore can be used on nearly any device. Users do not have to install a gpg on their machines in order to use this library, and therefore it can be reused in other projects that have browser extensions or server apps. Its main function is to sign, encrypt, decrypt and verify any kind of text, specifically emails. 

The problem allows hackers, who can provide forged messages and get feedback on whether decryption of these messages succeeded, to eventually figure out and extract the victim’s private key.

To avoid this type of attack in the future, developers should identify sensitive data and encrypt them, even if stored on a hard drive. There should also be an effort to ensure the data cannot be overwritten by overwriting sensitive memory locations straight after the data is no longer needed in memory. 

In regards to this specific vulnerability, it is suggested to upgrade openpgp to version 4.3.0 or above. 

That is it from us…for now! Make sure to spread the word on these Javascript vulnerabilities in order to help protect your apps or the apps you develop. Read also our post about javascript vulnerabilities and remote code execution. 

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.