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Fencer Intel
medium —

GHSA-7wwv-vh3v-89cq json

ReDOS vulnerabities: multiple grammars

published 5y ago modified 2mo ago

cvss
—
not scored
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
—
no score, EPSS covers CVEs only
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

### Impact: Potential ReDOS vulnerabilities (exponential and polynomial RegEx backtracking)

[oswasp](https://owasp.org/www-community/attacks/Regular_expression_Denial_of_Service_-_ReDoS):

> The Regular expression Denial of Service (ReDoS) is a Denial of Service attack, that exploits the fact that most Regular Expression implementations may reach extreme situations that cause them to work very slowly (exponentially related to input size). An attacker can then cause a program using a Regular Expression to enter these extreme situations and then hang for a very long time.

If are you are using Highlight.js to highlight user-provided data you are possibly vulnerable. On the client-side (in a browser or Electron environment) risks could include lengthy freezes or crashes... On the server-side infinite freezes could occur... effectively preventing users from accessing your app or service (ie, Denial of Service).

This is an issue with grammars shipped with the parser (and potentially 3rd party grammars also), not the parser itself. If you are using Highlight.js with any of the following grammars you are vulnerable. If you are using `highlightAuto` to detect the language (and have any of these grammars registered) you are vulnerable. Exponential grammars (C, Perl, JavaScript) are auto-registered when using the common grammar subset/library `require('highlight.js/lib/common')` as of 10.4.0 - see https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/highlightjs/cdn-release@10.4.0/build/highlight.js

All versions prior to 10.4.1 are vulnerable, including version 9.18.5.

**Grammars with exponential backtracking issues:**

- c-like (c, cpp, arduino) - handlebars (htmlbars) - gams - perl - jboss-cli - r - erlang-repl - powershell - routeros - livescript (10.4.0 and 9.18.5 included this fix) - javascript & typescript (10.4.0 included partial fixes)

And of course any aliases of those languages have the same issue. ie: `hpp` is no safer than `cpp`.

**Grammars with polynomial backtracking issues:**

- kotlin - gcode - d - aspectj - moonscript - coffeescript/livescript - csharp - scilab - crystal - elixir - basic - ebnf - ruby - fortran/irpf90 - livecodeserver - yaml - x86asm - dsconfig - markdown - ruleslanguage - xquery - sqf

And again: any aliases of those languages have the same issue. ie: `ruby` and `rb` share the same ruby issues.

### Patches

- Version 10.4.1 resolves these vulnerabilities. Please upgrade.

### Workarounds / Mitigations

- Discontinue use the affected grammars. (or perhaps use only those with poly vs exponential issues) - Attempt cherry-picking the grammar fixes into older versions... - Attempt using newer CDN versions of any affected languages. (ie using an older CDN version of the library with newer CDN grammars). Your mileage may vary.

### References

- https://owasp.org/www-community/attacks/Regular_expression_Denial_of_Service_-_ReDoS

### For more information

If you have any questions or comments about this advisory: * Open an issue: https://github.com/highlightjs/highlight.js/issues * Email us at [security@highlightjs.com](mailto:security@highlightjs.com)

Patch / fix

  • npm highlight.js 10.4.1
  • npm @highlightjs/cdn-assets 10.4.1

Is GHSA-7wwv-vh3v-89cq in your dependencies? Fencer shows which of your repositories are affected as soon as an advisory lands, and opens the fix as a pull request.

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Affected packages

ecosystem package affected fixed in
npm highlight.js
>=9.0.0, <10.4.1
10.4.1
npm @highlightjs/cdn-assets
<10.4.1
10.4.1

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-20 Improper Input Validation
  • CWE-400 Uncontrolled Resource Consumption

References

Sources

Fencer Intel keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.