Attacker Value
Unknown
(0 users assessed)
Exploitability
Unknown
(0 users assessed)
User Interaction
Required
Privileges Required
None
Attack Vector
Local
0

CVE-2021-37701

Disclosure Date: August 31, 2021
Add MITRE ATT&CK tactics and techniques that apply to this CVE.

Description

The npm package “tar” (aka node-tar) before versions 4.4.16, 5.0.8, and 6.1.7 has an arbitrary file creation/overwrite and arbitrary code execution vulnerability. 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 in the referenced GHSA-9r2w-394v-53qc.

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CVSS V3 Severity and Metrics
Base Score:
8.6 High
Impact Score:
6
Exploitability Score:
1.8
Vector:
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H
Attack Vector (AV):
Local
Attack Complexity (AC):
Low
Privileges Required (PR):
None
User Interaction (UI):
Required
Scope (S):
Changed
Confidentiality (C):
High
Integrity (I):
High
Availability (A):
High

General Information

Vendors

  • debian,
  • npmjs,
  • oracle,
  • siemens

Products

  • debian linux 10.0,
  • debian linux 11.0,
  • graalvm 20.3.3,
  • graalvm 21.2.0,
  • sinec infrastructure network services,
  • tar

Additional Info

Technical Analysis