GHSA-mxq6-vrrr-ppmg
Duplicate Advisory: tree-kill vulnerable to remote code execution
Critical
Withdrawn Nov 8, 2023
npm
- Severity
- 9.8 / 10
- Critical · CVSS 3.1
- Exploit chance (EPSS)
- —
- No score published
- Known exploited
- No
- Not in CISA's catalog
- Weakness
- CWE-94 Improper Control of Generation of Code ('Code Injection')
- Fix
- None yet
- No fixed version published
Description
Duplicate Advisory
This advisory has been withdrawn because it is a duplicate of GHSA-884p-74jh-xrg2. Ths link is maintained to preserve external references.
Original Description
A Code Injection exists in tree-kill on Windows which allows a remote code execution when an attacker is able to control the input into the command, which is executed without any check. The issue arises here: https://github.com/pkrumins/node-tree-kill/blob/master/index.js#L20 . While the Linux part is sanitized, the Windows on simply uses the + operand to concatenate the input into exec()
Steps To Reproduce:
Create the following PoC file:
// poc.js
var kill = require('tree-kill');
kill('3333332 & echo "HACKED" > HACKED.txt & ');
Execute the following commands in another terminal:
npm i tree-kill # Install affected module
dir # Check *HACKED.txt* doesn't exist
node poc.js # Run the PoC
dir # Now *HACKED.txt* exists :)
A new file called HACKED.txt will be created, containing the HACKED string.
Affected versions
npm
| Package | Vulnerable | Fixed in |
|---|---|---|
| tree-kill | <= 1.2.1 |
No fix yet |
How to fix
No fixed version has been published yet. Until one is, remove or replace the package, or turn off or isolate the affected feature. This page updates when a fix ships.
Severity breakdown
CVSS 3.1 9.8
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
- Attack vector
- Network
- Attack complexity
- Low
- Privileges required
- None
- User interaction
- None
- Scope
- Unchanged
- Confidentiality
- High
- Integrity
- High
- Availability
- High
Weakness
CWE-94: Improper Control of Generation of Code ('Code Injection')
The product constructs all or part of a code segment using externally-influenced input from an upstream component, but it does not neutralize or incorrectly neutralizes special elements that could modify the syntax or behavior of the intended code segment.
How to prevent it
- Architecture and Design: Refactor your program so that you do not have to dynamically generate code.
- Architecture and Design: Run your code in a "jail" or similar sandbox environment that enforces strict boundaries between the process and the operating system. This may effectively restrict which code can be executed by your product. Examples include the Unix chroot jail and AppArmor. In general, managed code may provide some protection. This may not be a feasible solution, and it only limits the impact to the operating system; the rest of your application may still be subject to compromise. Be careful to avoid CWE-243 and other weaknesses related to jails.
- 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. To reduce the likelihood of code injection, use stringent allowlists that limit which constructs are allowed. If you are dynamically constructing code that invokes a function, then verifying that the input is alphanumeric might be insufficient. An attacker might still be able to reference a dangerous function that you did not intend to allow, such as system(), exec(), or exit().
- Testing: Use dynamic tools and techniques that interact with the product using large test suites with many diverse inputs, such as fuzz testing (fuzzing), robustness testing, and fault injection. The product's operation may slow down, but it should not become unstable, crash, or generate incorrect results.
- Operation: Run the code in an environment that performs automatic taint propagation and prevents any command execution that uses tainted variables, such as Perl's "-T" switch. This will force the program to perform validation steps that remove the taint, although you must be careful to correctly validate your inputs so that you do not accidentally mark dangerous inputs as untainted (see CWE-183 and CWE-184).
- Operation: Run the code in an environment that performs automatic taint propagation and prevents any command execution that uses tainted variables, such as Perl's "-T" switch. This will force the program to perform validation steps that remove the taint, although you must be careful to correctly validate your inputs so that you do not accidentally mark dangerous inputs as untainted (see CWE-183 and CWE-184).
- Implementation: For Python programs, it is frequently encouraged to use the ast.literal_eval() function instead of eval, since it is intentionally designed to avoid executing code. However, an adversary could still cause excessive memory or stack consumption via deeply nested structures [REF-1372], so the python documentation discourages use of ast.literal_eval() on untrusted data [REF-1373].
References
Advisories
Packages
Other links
Timeline
- Published
- Withdrawn
- Last updated by the source
Related advisories
| Advisory | Severity | Why it's related |
|---|---|---|
| GHSA-j7fq-p9q7-5wfv Treekill Enables OS Command Injection | Critical | Also affects tree-kill |
| GHSA-884p-74jh-xrg2 Command Injection in tree-kill | High | Also affects tree-kill |
| GHSA-26p8-2jq9-3vq9 MLflow vulnerable to remote code execution on unauthenticated servers via third-party scorer deserialization importing caller-placed artifact modules | Critical | Same weakness, CWE-94 |
| GHSA-h3rc-6mm3-gc2m vLLM: Request-controlled mm_processor_kwargs.code_revision allows remote code execution | Critical | Same weakness, CWE-94 |
| GHSA-qxg6-89mg-rqv8 Vitest: Code injection via unauthenticated manual mock registration | Medium | Same weakness, CWE-94 |
| CVE-2026-0322 A remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability in the management interface of Palo Alto Networks PAN-OS® software enables an authenticated attacker with network… | High Known exploited | Same weakness, CWE-94 |
| GHSA-p393-cf76-4jmr Nginx UI: Authenticated Remote Code Execution via Backup Restore App Config Overwrite | High | Same weakness, CWE-94 |
| GHSA-8r5x-fm3f-whwj Handlebars: JavaScript Injection via AST Type Confusion in compile (bypass of CVE-2026-33937) | Critical | Same weakness, CWE-94 |
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