Non-Constant Time String Comparison Affecting cookie-signature package, versions <1.0.4


Severity

Recommended
0.0
medium
0
10

CVSS assessment made by Snyk's Security Team. Learn more

Threat Intelligence

EPSS
0.21% (61st percentile)

Do your applications use this vulnerable package?

In a few clicks we can analyze your entire application and see what components are vulnerable in your application, and suggest you quick fixes.

Test your applications
  • Snyk IDnpm:cookie-signature:20160804
  • published29 Aug 2016
  • disclosed28 Jan 2014
  • credittenbits

Introduced: 28 Jan 2014

CVE-2016-1000236  (opens in a new tab)
CWE-208  (opens in a new tab)

How to fix?

Upgrade to 1.0.4 or greater.

Overview

'cookie-signature' is a library for signing cookies.

Versions before 1.0.4 of the library use the built-in string comparison mechanism, ===, and not a time constant string comparison. As a result, the comparison will fail faster when the first characters in the token are incorrect. An attacker can use this difference to perform a timing attack, essentially allowing them to guess the secret one character at a time.

You can read more about timing attacks in Node.js on the Snyk blog: https://snyk.io/blog/node-js-timing-attack-ccc-ctf/

CVSS Scores

version 3.1