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GHSA-hmgw-9jrg-hf2m CVE-2023-45820

Directus crashes on invalid WebSocket message

Medium npm
Severity
7.5 / 10
Medium · CVSS 3.1
Exploit chance (EPSS)
0.83%
Chance of exploitation in the next 30 days. Higher than 57.69% of scored vulnerabilities.
Known exploited
No
Not in CISA's catalog
Weakness
CWE-755 Improper Handling of Exceptional Conditions
Fix
10.6.2
Upgrade directus to this version or later

Description

Summary

It seems that any Directus installation that has websockets enabled can be crashed if the websocket server receives an invalid frame. This could probably be posted as an issue and I might even be able to put together a pull request for a fix (if only I had some extra time...), but I decided to instead post as a vulnerability just for the maintainers, since this seemingly can be used to crash any live Directus server if websockets are enabled, so public disclosure is not a good idea until the issue is fixed.

Details

The fix for this seems quite simple; the websocket server just needs to properly catch the error instead of crashing the server. See for example: https://github.com/websockets/ws/issues/2098

PoC

  • Start a fresh Directus server (using for example the compose file here: https://docs.directus.io/self-hosted/docker-guide.html). Enable websockets by setting WEBSOCKETS_ENABLED: 'true' environment variable.
  • run a separate node app somewhere else to send an invalid frame to the server:
const WebSocket = require("ws");
const websocket = new WebSocket("ws://0.0.0.0:8055/websocket");
websocket.on("open", function () {
  const chunk = Buffer.from("a180", "hex");
  websocket._socket.write(chunk);
});

Impact

The server crashes with an error: RangeError: Invalid WebSocket frame: RSV2 and RSV3 must be clear. Server needs to be manually restarted to get back online (if there's no recovery mechanism in place, as there often isn't with simple node servers). This was confirmed on a local server, and additionally I was able to crash our staging server with the same code, just pointing to our staging Directus server running at fly.io. It seems to also crash servers running in the directus.cloud service. I created https://websocket-test.directus.app/, pointed the above script to the websocket url of that instance and the server does crash for a while. It seems that in there there's a mechanism for bringing the server back up quite fast, but it would be quite trivial for anyone to DoS any server running in directus.cloud by just spamming these invalid frames to the server.

Affected versions

npm

PackageVulnerableFixed in
directus
>= 10.4.0, < 10.6.2
10.6.2

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.

directus npm → 10.6.2

npm
npm install directus@10.6.2
yarn
yarn add directus@10.6.2
pnpm
pnpm add directus@10.6.2

Severity breakdown

CVSS 3.1 7.5

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

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

Weakness

CWE-755: Improper Handling of Exceptional Conditions

The product does not handle or incorrectly handles an exceptional condition.

References

Timeline

  1. Published
  2. Last updated by the source
  3. Latest EPSS score
AdvisorySeverityWhy it's related
GHSA-c6w9-5g5j-jh2p
Directus: Authorization-dependent response served from unsegmented cache key
High Also affects directus
GHSA-j5h6-vqc3-phqh
Directus: SSRF Protection Bypass via 0.0.0.0 in File Import
High Also affects directus
GHSA-38hg-ww64-rrwc
Directus: Authenticated Users Can Extract Concealed Fields via Aggregate Queries
High Also affects directus
GHSA-6q22-g298-grjh
Directus: Unauthenticated Denial of Service via GraphQL Alias Amplification of Expensive Health Check Resolver
High Also affects directus
GHSA-ph52-67fq-75wj
Directus: GraphQL Alias Amplification Denial of Service Due to Missing Query Cost/Complexity Limits
Medium Also affects directus
GHSA-mvv8-v4jj-g47j
Directus: Sensitive fields exposed in revision history
Medium Also affects directus
GHSA-qqmv-5p3g-px89
Directus: TUS Upload Authorization Bypass Allows Arbitrary File Overwrite
High Also affects directus
GHSA-wv3h-5fx7-966h
Directus: SSRF Protection Bypass via IPv4-Mapped IPv6 Addresses in File Import
High Also affects directus
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