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Regular Expression Denial-of-Service in npm schema-inspector

High severity GitHub Reviewed Published Mar 14, 2021 in schema-inspector/schema-inspector • Updated Jan 27, 2023

Package

npm schema-inspector (npm)

Affected versions

< 2.0.0

Patched versions

2.0.0

Description

Impact

What kind of vulnerability is it? Who is impacted?
Email address validation is vulnerable to a denial-of-service attack where some input (for example a@0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.) will freeze the program or web browser page executing the code. This affects any current schema-inspector users using any version to validate email addresses. Users who do not do email validation, and instead do other types of validation (like string min or max length, etc), are not affected.

Patches

Has the problem been patched? What versions should users upgrade to?
Users should upgrade to version 2.0.0, which uses a regex expression that isn't vulnerable to ReDoS. The new regex expression is more limited in what it can check, so it is more flexible than the one used before. Therefore, this was a new major version instead of a new patch version to warn people upgrading that they should make sure the email validation still works for their use case.

Workarounds

Is there a way for users to fix or remediate the vulnerability without upgrading?
If a user chooses to not upgrade, the only known workaround would be to stop using the email validation feature in the library. The user could, for example, accept the email address into their system but save it in a "not yet validated" state in their system until a verification email is sent to it (to determine whether the email is valid and belongs to the form submitter). Note that this is the preferred way of validating email addresses anyways.

References

Are there any links users can visit to find out more?
https://gist.github.com/mattwelke/b7f42424680a57b8161794ad1737cd8f

For more information

If you have any questions or comments about this advisory, you can create an issue in this repository.

References

Reviewed Mar 19, 2021
Published to the GitHub Advisory Database Mar 19, 2021
Published by the National Vulnerability Database Mar 19, 2021
Last updated Jan 27, 2023

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
Network
Attack complexity
Low
Privileges required
None
User interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
None
Availability
High

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:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

EPSS score

0.653%
(80th percentile)

CVE ID

CVE-2021-21267

GHSA ID

GHSA-f38p-c2gq-4pmr

Source code

No known source code

Credits

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