ip-address: Address4 decodes leading-zero octets as decimal while resolvers decode them as octal, allowing SSRF and trust-boundary bypass

Summary

Address4 accepts an octet written with a leading zero and decodes it as decimal, while the WHATWG URL host parser, inet_aton, and getaddrinfo all decode a leading zero as octal. The library and the network stack therefore disagree about which host a string names. new Address4('012.0.0.1') reports correctForm() of 12.0.0.1 and isPrivate() of false, but fetch('http://012.0.0.1/') connects to 10.0.0.1.

An application that builds a network trust-boundary decision on these checks (for example a filter intended to block Server-Side Request Forgery, or SSRF) will classify an internal target as external and allow the request. SSRF is an attack in which a user-supplied address coaxes the server into making a request to an internal destination the user could not otherwise reach, such as a loopback service or a cloud metadata endpoint.

Details

Address4.parse gates untrusted input on RE_ADDRESS (src/v4/constants.ts:5), whose per-octet alternative is:

(25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|[01]?[0-9][0-9]?)

The [01]?[0-9][0-9]? branch matches a leading zero, so 012 passes validation. Every downstream decode then reads the octet with parseInt(part, 10) (src/common.ts:87), yielding 12. A resolver reading the same string treats the leading 0 as base 8 and yields 10.

The defect is in the parse gate rather than in any one classifier, so every consumer of Address4 inherits it: isPrivate(), isLoopback(), isLinkLocal(), isCGNAT(), isInSubnet(), isHostInSubnet(), and correctForm() are all computed from the mis-decoded octets.

Address6 already rejects this notation on its IPv4-in-IPv6 path, throwing "IPv4 addresses can't have leading zeroes." (src/ipv6.ts:751-762), so Address4 is the outlier within the library.

Affected versions

<= 10.3.0. Unlike GHSA-22jq-vg5j-6vgg and GHSA-4xrf-jv44-h6hh, which were bounded below by the is* classification API introduced in 10.1.1, this defect is in parse and reaches every release: a guard built on isInSubnet() against the RFC 1918 ranges is affected in versions predating that API.

Impact

The disagreement runs in both directions. Under-blocking is the security-relevant case; over-blocking is a correctness and availability problem.

Reachable targets are those whose leading octet is expressible as a three-character octal literal, which covers the whole of 10.0.0.0/8 and 0.0.0.0/8. A four-character octet such as 0177 for 127 is rejected by the regex, so loopback is not reachable through this path; see the note on rejection below for why rejection is not the same as safety.

Reachability

A leading-zero address is a legal URL host, so this is reachable through the ordinary URL path with no unusual application shape required:

new URL('http://012.0.0.1/').hostname   // '10.0.0.1'

This distinguishes it from GHSA-4xrf-jv44-h6hh, where the /0 CIDR suffix could not survive URL parsing and exploitation therefore required an application that accepted a bare suffix-bearing string. Here the attack rides the same code path a normal user-supplied URL takes.

Proof of concept

npm i ip-address@10.3.0, then:

const { Address4 } = require('ip-address');

// A guard of the shape the library documents.
function isBlocked(host) {
  return Address4.isValid(host) && new Address4(host).isPrivate();
}

for (const h of ['10.0.0.1', '012.0.0.1', '012.012.012.012']) {
  console.log(isBlocked(h) ? 'BLOCK' : 'ALLOW', h,
              '-> resolver reaches', new URL('http://' + h + '/').hostname);
}

On affected versions:

BLOCK 10.0.0.1 -> resolver reaches 10.0.0.1
ALLOW 012.0.0.1 -> resolver reaches 10.0.0.1
ALLOW 012.012.012.012 -> resolver reaches 10.10.10.10

The literal RFC 1918 address is blocked as expected; the octal-ambiguous spellings of the same destinations are allowed through.

Remediation

Upgrade to the patched release. In the fix, Address4.parse rejects any octet with a leading zero followed by further digits, mirroring the check Address6 already applies at src/ipv6.ts:751, and RE_ADDRESS is tightened so those forms no longer appear in the valid corpus. After upgrading, Address4.isValid('012.0.0.1') returns false and the constructor throws AddressError.

This rejects input that previous releases accepted. An application that deliberately feeds zero-padded addresses such as 010.010.010.010 from a legacy system must strip the padding before parsing.

If you cannot upgrade immediately, reject any host whose octets carry a leading zero before you parse it:

if (host.split('.').some((octet) => /^0\d/.test(octet))) throw new Error('ambiguous address');

A note on SSRF defense

These methods are address classifiers, not a complete SSRF defense. Regardless of this fix, a robust SSRF guard must resolve the hostname and validate the resolved IP against the socket it connects to, and account for DNS rebinding and redirects. Treat these checks as one layer, not the only one.

One specific pitfall is worth naming, because the fix above does not remove it. Address4.isValid() returning false means "this is not a dotted-quad IPv4 literal"; it does not mean "this is not an address that will reach an internal host". Every one of the following is rejected by isValid() and still resolves to loopback:

0177.0.0.1    0x7f.0.0.1    0x7f000001    2130706433
127.1         127.0.1       127.0.0.1.    １２７.0.0.1

A guard shaped if (Address4.isValid(h)) { check() } else { treatAsHostname() } therefore routes all of them past the IP check. Rejecting these is correct behavior for an IPv4 parser and is not changed by this advisory, but a guard must treat "not a valid literal" as a case to resolve and re-check, never as a case to allow.