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Arbitrary File Creation/Overwrite via insufficient symlink protection due to directory cache poisoning using symbolic links

High severity GitHub Reviewed Published Aug 31, 2021 in isaacs/node-tar • Updated Feb 2, 2024

Package

npm tar (npm)

Affected versions

>= 5.0.0, < 5.0.8
>= 6.0.0, < 6.1.7
>= 3.0.0, < 4.4.16

Patched versions

5.0.8
6.1.7
4.4.16

Description

Impact

Arbitrary File Creation, Arbitrary File Overwrite, Arbitrary Code Execution

node-tar aims to guarantee that any file whose location would be modified by a symbolic link is not extracted. This is, in part, achieved by ensuring that extracted directories are not symlinks. Additionally, in order to prevent unnecessary stat calls to determine whether a given path is a directory, paths are cached when directories are created.

This logic was insufficient when extracting tar files that contained both a directory and a symlink with the same name as the directory, where the symlink and directory names in the archive entry used backslashes as a path separator on posix systems. The cache checking logic used both \ and / characters as path separators, however \ is a valid filename character on posix systems.

By first creating a directory, and then replacing that directory with a symlink, it was thus possible to bypass node-tar symlink checks on directories, essentially allowing an untrusted tar file to symlink into an arbitrary location and subsequently extracting arbitrary files into that location, thus allowing arbitrary file creation and overwrite.

Additionally, a similar confusion could arise on case-insensitive filesystems. If a tar archive contained a directory at FOO, followed by a symbolic link named foo, then on case-insensitive file systems, the creation of the symbolic link would remove the directory from the filesystem, but not from the internal directory cache, as it would not be treated as a cache hit. A subsequent file entry within the FOO directory would then be placed in the target of the symbolic link, thinking that the directory had already been created.

These issues were addressed in releases 4.4.16, 5.0.8 and 6.1.7.

The v3 branch of node-tar has been deprecated and did not receive patches for these issues. If you are still using a v3 release we recommend you update to a more recent version of node-tar. If this is not possible, a workaround is available below.

Patches

4.4.16 || 5.0.8 || 6.1.7

Workarounds

Users may work around this vulnerability without upgrading by creating a custom filter method which prevents the extraction of symbolic links.

const tar = require('tar')

tar.x({
  file: 'archive.tgz',
  filter: (file, entry) => {
    if (entry.type === 'SymbolicLink') {
      return false
    } else {
      return true
    }
  }
})

Users are encouraged to upgrade to the latest patched versions, rather than attempt to sanitize tar input themselves.

Fix

The problem is addressed in the following ways:

  1. All paths are normalized to use / as a path separator, replacing \ with / on Windows systems, and leaving \ intact in the path on posix systems. This is performed in depth, at every level of the program where paths are consumed.
  2. Directory cache pruning is performed case-insensitively. This may result in undue cache misses on case-sensitive file systems, but the performance impact is negligible.

Caveat

Note that this means that the entry objects exposed in various parts of tar's API will now always use / as a path separator, even on Windows systems. This is not expected to cause problems, as / is a valid path separator on Windows systems, but may result in issues if entry.path is compared against a path string coming from some other API such as fs.realpath() or path.resolve().

Users are encouraged to always normalize paths using a well-tested method such as path.resolve() before comparing paths to one another.

References

@isaacs isaacs published to isaacs/node-tar Aug 31, 2021
Reviewed Aug 31, 2021
Published to the GitHub Advisory Database Aug 31, 2021
Published by the National Vulnerability Database Aug 31, 2021
Last updated Feb 2, 2024

Severity

High

CVSS overall score

This score calculates overall vulnerability severity from 0 to 10 and is based on the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS).
/ 10

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector
Local
Attack complexity
Low
Privileges required
None
User interaction
Required
Scope
Changed
Confidentiality
High
Integrity
High
Availability
None

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector: More severe the more the remote (logically and physically) an attacker can be in order to exploit the vulnerability.
Attack complexity: More severe for the least complex attacks.
Privileges required: More severe if no privileges are required.
User interaction: More severe when no user interaction is required.
Scope: More severe when a scope change occurs, e.g. one vulnerable component impacts resources in components beyond its security scope.
Confidentiality: More severe when loss of data confidentiality is highest, measuring the level of data access available to an unauthorized user.
Integrity: More severe when loss of data integrity is the highest, measuring the consequence of data modification possible by an unauthorized user.
Availability: More severe when the loss of impacted component availability is highest.
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:N

EPSS score

0.130%
(49th percentile)

CVE ID

CVE-2021-37701

GHSA ID

GHSA-9r2w-394v-53qc

Source code

Credits

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