Skip to content

[Security] Bump ws from 7.4.3 to 7.4.6

Dependabot requested to merge dependabot-npm_and_yarn-ws-7.4.6 into master

Bumps ws from 7.4.3 to 7.4.6. This update includes a security fix.

Vulnerabilities fixed

ReDoS in Sec-Websocket-Protocol header

Impact

A specially crafted value of the Sec-Websocket-Protocol header can be used to significantly slow down a ws server.

Proof of concept

for (const length of [1000, 2000, 4000, 8000, 16000, 32000]) {
  const value = 'b' + ' '.repeat(length) + 'x';
  const start = process.hrtime.bigint();
value.trim().split(/ *, */);
const end = process.hrtime.bigint();
console.log('length = %d, time = %f ns', length, end - start);
}

Patches

... (truncated)

Patched versions: 7.4.6 Affected versions: >= 7.0.0, < 7.4.6

Release notes

Sourced from ws's releases.

7.4.6

Bug fixes

  • Fixed a ReDoS vulnerability (00c425ec).

A specially crafted value of the Sec-Websocket-Protocol header could be used to significantly slow down a ws server.

for (const length of [1000, 2000, 4000, 8000, 16000, 32000]) {
  const value = 'b' + ' '.repeat(length) + 'x';
  const start = process.hrtime.bigint();
value.trim().split(/ *, */);
const end = process.hrtime.bigint();
console.log('length = %d, time = %f ns', length, end - start);
}

The vulnerability was responsibly disclosed along with a fix in private by Robert McLaughlin from University of California, Santa Barbara.

In vulnerable versions of ws, the issue can be mitigated by reducing the maximum allowed length of the request headers using the --max-http-header-size=size and/or the maxHeaderSize options.

7.4.5

Bug fixes

  • UTF-8 validation is now done even if utf-8-validate is not installed (23ba6b29).
  • Fixed an edge case where websocket.close() and websocket.terminate() did not close the connection (67e25ff5).

7.4.4

Bug fixes

  • Fixed a bug that could cause the process to crash when using the permessage-deflate extension (92774377).
Commits
  • f5297f7 [dist] 7.4.6
  • 00c425e [security] Fix ReDoS vulnerability
  • 990306d [lint] Fix prettier error
  • 32e3a84 [security] Remove reference to Node Security Project
  • 8c914d1 [minor] Fix nits
  • fc7e27d [ci] Test on node 16
  • 587c201 [ci] Do not test on node 15
  • f672710 [dist] 7.4.5
  • 67e25ff [fix] Fix case where abortHandshake() does not close the connection
  • 23ba6b2 [fix] Make UTF-8 validation work even if utf-8-validate is not installed
  • Additional commits viewable in compare view

Dependabot commands
You can trigger Dependabot actions by commenting on this MR
  • $dependabot rebase will rebase this MR
  • $dependabot recreate will recreate this MR rewriting all the manual changes and resolving conflicts

Merge request reports