Affected corporations alerted to bug whose potential influence is heightened by vm2’s use in manufacturing environments
A bug in vm2, a well-liked JavaScript sandbox surroundings, might permit malicious actors to bypass sandbox protections and stage distant code execution (RCE) on the host machine.
Vm2, which has greater than 4 million downloads per week, creates a safe context in Node.js servers to run untrusted code with out compromising the server.
The potential influence of the vulnerability, which was given a most doable CVSS rating of 10, was elevated by the truth that vm2 is utilized in manufacturing in addition to developer environments.
‘Attention-grabbing method’
The security flaw was found by Oxeye Safety researchers Gal Goldshtein and Yuval Ostrovsky. “Our standard method when evaluating a given software program’s safety is first to research the earlier safety lapses found in the identical software program,” the Oxeye safety group informed The Day by day Swig.
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“This helps us higher grasp the out there assault floor and may additionally result in low-hanging bugs stemming from incomplete fixes.
“Whereas reviewing the earlier bugs disclosed to the vm2 maintainers, we seen an fascinating method: the bug reporter abused the error mechanism in Node.js to flee the sandbox.”
Channels between sandbox and host
Like a number of earlier bugs present in vm2, the brand new bug depends on the channels the sandbox makes use of to speak with the host machine. On this case, the bug was brought on by improper exception dealing with.
“The bug we discovered depends on a method that’s fairly widespread within the VM bypass world, which is to seek out components throughout the sandbox that may cooperate with components outdoors of it,” the researchers mentioned.
“This connection, when discovered, provides the attacker the chance to work together with the internet hosting course of.”
This channel permits the attacker to run arbitrary code on the Node.js server, together with invoking capabilities that run system instructions.
The group goals to launch a technical evaluate of the bug with extra particulars quickly. The one option to stop exploits is to improve to the latest model of vm2.
‘Meant to run untrusted code’
“We weren’t shocked by the truth that this library is utilized in manufacturing environments, primarily attributable to the truth that it has over 16 million downloads per 30 days,” the researchers mentioned. “We’re within the strategy of accountable disclosure with a number of corporations the place we discovered this vulnerability in.”
In a separate advisory, RedHat has launched a listing of its providers which might be affected by the vm2 flaw.
That is not the first time that vm2 has patched a sandbox bypass, which solely highlights the difficulties of securing sandbox environments.
“Sandboxes normally are supposed to run untrusted code inside an utility. Which means you shouldn’t robotically assume that they’re secure,” the researchers mentioned.
“If using a sandbox is unavoidable, we advocate separating the logical, delicate a part of the applying from the microservice that runs the sandbox code so if a risk actor efficiently breaks out from the sandbox, the assault floor is restricted to the remoted microservice.”
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