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Deno permission escalation vulnerability via open of privileged files with missing `--deny` flag

High severity GitHub Reviewed Published May 7, 2024 in denoland/deno

Package

cargo deno (Rust)

Affected versions

< 1.43.1

Patched versions

1.43.1

Description

The Deno sandbox may be unexpectedly weakened by allowing file read/write access to privileged files in various locations on Unix and Windows platforms. For example, reading /proc/self/environ may provide access equivalent to --allow-env, and writing /proc/self/mem may provide access equivalent to --allow-all.

Users who grant read and write access to the entire filesystem may not realize that these access to these files may have additional, unintended consequences. The documentation did not reflect that this practice should be undertaken to increase the strength of the security sandbox.

Impact

Users who run code with --allow-read or --allow-write may unexpectedly end up granting additional permissions via file-system operations.

Patches

Deno 1.43 and above require explicit --allow-all access to read or write /etc, /dev on unix platform (as well as /proc and /sys on linux platforms), and any path starting with \\ on Windows.

Workarounds

The security sandbox in previous versions of Deno allows for denial of access to these files, but it requires an explicit addition of deny flags: --deny-read=/dev --deny-read=/sys --deny-read=/proc --deny-read=/etc --deny-write=/dev --deny-write=/sys --deny-write=/proc --deny-write=/etc. Note that symlinks in allowed locations may defeat this protection in earlier versions of Deno.

Reporters

This vulnerability was reported by a number of analysts. Thanks to [email protected], [email protected], @leesh3288, and @cristianstaicu for their reports and analysis.

References

@mmastrac mmastrac published to denoland/deno May 7, 2024
Published by the National Vulnerability Database May 7, 2024
Published to the GitHub Advisory Database May 8, 2024
Reviewed May 8, 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
Adjacent
Attack complexity
Low
Privileges required
High
User interaction
None
Scope
Changed
Confidentiality
High
Integrity
High
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:A/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H

EPSS score

0.043%
(10th percentile)

Weaknesses

CVE ID

CVE-2024-34346

GHSA ID

GHSA-23rx-c3g5-hv9w

Source code

Credits

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