Symlink Following Affecting nodejs package, versions <14.17.6-r0


Severity

Recommended
0.0
high
0
10

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Threat Intelligence

EPSS
0.09% (41st percentile)

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  • Snyk IDSNYK-ALPINE320-NODEJS-7010439
  • published23 May 2024
  • disclosed31 Aug 2021

Introduced: 31 Aug 2021

CVE-2021-39135  (opens in a new tab)
CWE-61  (opens in a new tab)

How to fix?

Upgrade Alpine:3.20 nodejs to version 14.17.6-r0 or higher.

NVD Description

Note: Versions mentioned in the description apply only to the upstream nodejs package and not the nodejs package as distributed by Alpine. See How to fix? for Alpine:3.20 relevant fixed versions and status.

@npmcli/arborist, the library that calculates dependency trees and manages the node_modules folder hierarchy for the npm command line interface, aims to guarantee that package dependency contracts will be met, and the extraction of package contents will always be performed into the expected folder. This is accomplished by extracting package contents into a project's node_modules folder. If the node_modules folder of the root project or any of its dependencies is somehow replaced with a symbolic link, it could allow Arborist to write package dependencies to any arbitrary location on the file system. Note that symbolic links contained within package artifact contents are filtered out, so another means of creating a node_modules symbolic link would have to be employed. 1. A preinstall script could replace node_modules with a symlink. (This is prevented by using --ignore-scripts.) 2. An attacker could supply the target with a git repository, instructing them to run npm install --ignore-scripts in the root. This may be successful, because npm install --ignore-scripts is typically not capable of making changes outside of the project directory, so it may be deemed safe. This is patched in @npmcli/arborist 2.8.2 which is included in npm v7.20.7 and above. For more information including workarounds please see the referenced GHSA-gmw6-94gg-2rc2.

CVSS Scores

version 3.1