Directory Traversal The advisory has been revoked - it doesn't affect any version of package source-map-support  (opens in a new tab)


Threat Intelligence

Exploit Maturity
Proof of concept
EPSS
0.04% (11th percentile)

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  • Snyk IDSNYK-JS-SOURCEMAPSUPPORT-6112477
  • published12 Nov 2024
  • disclosed7 Dec 2023
  • creditMiguel Coimbra

Introduced: 7 Dec 2023

CVE-2024-21540  (opens in a new tab)
CWE-22  (opens in a new tab)
First added by Snyk

Amendment

This was deemed not a vulnerability.

Overview

Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Directory Traversal in the retrieveSourceMap function.

Note: This issue is not a vulnerability because no real attack scenario can happen in the context of the package, where the developer controls the input to the library options, and the attacker can’t influence this. The CVE has been rejected.

PoC

const path = require('path');
const fs = require('fs');
const pkg = require('source-map-support');

/*
 * Using 'options' to override internal functions of the package.
 * For example, to retrieve contents of a file that is two directories above the current one.
 */
const options = {
    overrideRetrieveSourceMap: true,
    retrieveSourceMap: function (src) { 
        return { map: fs.readFileSync('/etc/passwd', 'utf-8'), url: null }; 
    },
    overrideRetrieveFile: true,
    retrieveFile: function (src) { 
        return fs.readFileSync('/etc/passwd', 'utf-8'); 
    }
};

pkg.install(options);

const targetPath = path.join(__dirname, '..', '..', 'exploited.txt');
const retData = pkg.retrieveSourceMap(targetPath);

/*
 * This will output the contents of the file.
 */
console.log(retData);

Details

A Directory Traversal attack (also known as path traversal) aims to access files and directories that are stored outside the intended folder. By manipulating files with "dot-dot-slash (../)" sequences and its variations, or by using absolute file paths, it may be possible to access arbitrary files and directories stored on file system, including application source code, configuration, and other critical system files.

Directory Traversal vulnerabilities can be generally divided into two types:

  • Information Disclosure: Allows the attacker to gain information about the folder structure or read the contents of sensitive files on the system.

st is a module for serving static files on web pages, and contains a vulnerability of this type. In our example, we will serve files from the public route.

If an attacker requests the following URL from our server, it will in turn leak the sensitive private key of the root user.

curl http://localhost:8080/public/%2e%2e/%2e%2e/%2e%2e/%2e%2e/%2e%2e/root/.ssh/id_rsa

Note %2e is the URL encoded version of . (dot).

  • Writing arbitrary files: Allows the attacker to create or replace existing files. This type of vulnerability is also known as Zip-Slip.

One way to achieve this is by using a malicious zip archive that holds path traversal filenames. When each filename in the zip archive gets concatenated to the target extraction folder, without validation, the final path ends up outside of the target folder. If an executable or a configuration file is overwritten with a file containing malicious code, the problem can turn into an arbitrary code execution issue quite easily.

The following is an example of a zip archive with one benign file and one malicious file. Extracting the malicious file will result in traversing out of the target folder, ending up in /root/.ssh/ overwriting the authorized_keys file:

2018-04-15 22:04:29 .....           19           19  good.txt
2018-04-15 22:04:42 .....           20           20  ../../../../../../root/.ssh/authorized_keys

References