GHSA-hmgw-9jrg-hf2m CVE-2023-45820
Directus crashes on invalid WebSocket message
- 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
| Package | Vulnerable | Fixed 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
Advisories
Packages
Other links
Timeline
- Published
- Last updated by the source
- Latest EPSS score
Related advisories
| Advisory | Severity | Why 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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