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Nokogiri::XML::Schema trusts input by default, exposing risk of XXE vulnerability

Moderate severity GitHub Reviewed Published Dec 29, 2020 in sparklemotion/nokogiri • Updated May 4, 2023

Package

bundler nokogiri (RubyGems)

Affected versions

<= 1.10.10

Patched versions

1.11.0

Description

Severity

Nokogiri maintainers have evaluated this as Low Severity (CVSS3 2.6).

Description

In Nokogiri versions <= 1.11.0.rc3, XML Schemas parsed by Nokogiri::XML::Schema are trusted by default, allowing external resources to be accessed over the network, potentially enabling XXE or SSRF attacks.

This behavior is counter to the security policy followed by Nokogiri maintainers, which is to treat all input as untrusted by default whenever possible.

Please note that this security fix was pushed into a new minor version, 1.11.x, rather than a patch release to the 1.10.x branch, because it is a breaking change for some schemas and the risk was assessed to be "Low Severity".

Affected Versions

Nokogiri <= 1.10.10 as well as prereleases 1.11.0.rc1, 1.11.0.rc2, and 1.11.0.rc3

Mitigation

There are no known workarounds for affected versions. Upgrade to Nokogiri 1.11.0.rc4 or later.

If, after upgrading to 1.11.0.rc4 or later, you wish to re-enable network access for resolution of external resources (i.e., return to the previous behavior):

  1. Ensure the input is trusted. Do not enable this option for untrusted input.
  2. When invoking the Nokogiri::XML::Schema constructor, pass as the second parameter an instance of Nokogiri::XML::ParseOptions with the NONET flag turned off.

So if your previous code was:

# in v1.11.0.rc3 and earlier, this call allows resources to be accessed over the network
# but in v1.11.0.rc4 and later, this call will disallow network access for external resources
schema = Nokogiri::XML::Schema.new(schema)

# in v1.11.0.rc4 and later, the following is equivalent to the code above
# (the second parameter is optional, and this demonstrates its default value)
schema = Nokogiri::XML::Schema.new(schema, Nokogiri::XML::ParseOptions::DEFAULT_SCHEMA)

Then you can add the second parameter to indicate that the input is trusted by changing it to:

# in v1.11.0.rc3 and earlier, this would raise an ArgumentError 
# but in v1.11.0.rc4 and later, this allows resources to be accessed over the network
schema = Nokogiri::XML::Schema.new(trusted_schema, Nokogiri::XML::ParseOptions.new.nononet)

References

Credit

This vulnerability was independently reported by @eric-therond and @gucki.

The Nokogiri maintainers would like to thank HackerOne for providing a secure, responsible mechanism for reporting, and for providing their fantastic service to us.

References

@flavorjones flavorjones published to sparklemotion/nokogiri Dec 29, 2020
Reviewed Dec 30, 2020
Published to the GitHub Advisory Database Dec 30, 2020
Published by the National Vulnerability Database Dec 30, 2020
Last updated May 4, 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
Low
User interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
Low
Integrity
None
Availability
None

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:L/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:N/A:N

EPSS score

0.162%
(54th percentile)

Weaknesses

CVE ID

CVE-2020-26247

GHSA ID

GHSA-vr8q-g5c7-m54m

Credits

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