NodeJS/electron/17.0.1

AutoUpdater module fails to validate certain nested components of the bundle

Impact

This vulnerability allows attackers who have control over a given apps update server / update storage to serve maliciously crafted update packages that pass the code signing validation check but contain malicious code in some components.

Please note that this kind of attack would require significant privileges in your own auto updating infrastructure and the ease of that attack entirely depends on your infrastructure security.

Patches

This has been patched and the following Electron versions contain the fix:

• 18.0.0-beta.6
• 17.2.0
• 16.2.0
• 15.5.0

Workarounds

There are no workarounds for this issue, please update to a patched version of Electron.

For more information

If you have any questions or comments about this advisory, email us at security@electronjs.org

ASAR Integrity bypass via filetype confusion in electron

Impact

This only impacts apps that have the embeddedAsarIntegrityValidation and onlyLoadAppFromAsar fuses enabled. Apps without these fuses enabled are not impacted. This issue is specific to macOS as these fuses are only currently supported on macOS.

Specifically this issue can only be exploited if your app is launched from a filesystem the attacker has write access too. i.e. the ability to edit files inside the resources folder in your app installation on Windows which these fuses are supposed to protect against.

Workarounds

There are no app side workarounds, you must update to a patched version of Electron.

Fixed Versions

• 27.0.0-alpha.7
• 26.2.1
• 25.8.1
• 24.8.3
• 22.3.24

For more information

If you have any questions or comments about this advisory, email us at security@electronjs.org

Electron vulnerable to out-of-package code execution when launched with arbitrary cwd

Impact

Apps that are launched as command line executables are impacted. E.g. if your app exposes itself in the path as myapp --help

Specifically this issue can only be exploited if the following conditions are met: * Your app is launched with an attacker-controlled working directory * The attacker has the ability to write files to that working directory

This makes the risk quite low, in fact normally issues of this kind are considered outside of our threat model as similar to Chromium we exclude Physically Local Attacks but given the ability for this issue to bypass certain protections like ASAR Integrity it is being treated with higher importance. Please bear this in mind when reporting similar issues in the future.

Workarounds

There are no app side workarounds, you must update to a patched version of Electron.

Fixed Versions

• 26.0.0-beta.13
• 25.5.0
• 24.7.1
• 23.3.13
• 22.3.19

For more information

If you have any questions or comments about this advisory, email us at security@electronjs.org

Compromised child renderer processes could obtain IPC access without nodeIntegrationInSubFrames being enabled

Impact

This vulnerability allows a renderer with JS execution to obtain access to a new renderer process with nodeIntegrationInSubFrames enabled which in turn allows effective access to ipcRenderer.

Please note the misleadingly named nodeIntegrationInSubFrames option does not implicitly grant Node.js access rather it depends on the existing sandbox setting. If your application is sandboxed then nodeIntegrationInSubFrames just gives access to the sandboxed renderer APIs (which includes ipcRenderer).

If your application then additionally exposes IPC messages without IPC senderFrame validation that perform privileged actions or return confidential data this access to ipcRenderer can in turn compromise your application / user even with the sandbox enabled.

Patches

This has been patched and the following Electron versions contain the fix:

• 18.0.0-beta.6
• 17.2.0
• 16.2.6
• 15.5.5

Workarounds

Ensure that all IPC message handlers appropriately validate senderFrame as per our security tutorial here.

For more information

If you have any questions or comments about this advisory, email us at security@electronjs.org.

Exfiltration of hashed SMB credentials on Windows via file:// redirect

Impact

When following a redirect, Electron delays a check for redirecting to file:// URLs from other schemes. The contents of the file is not available to the renderer following the redirect, but if the redirect target is a SMB URL such as file://some.website.com/, then in some cases, Windows will connect to that server and attempt NTLM authentication, which can include sending hashed credentials.

Patches

This issue has been fixed in all current stable versions of Electron. Specifically, these versions contain the fixes:

• 21.0.0-beta.1
• 20.0.1
• 19.0.11
• 18.3.7

We recommend all apps upgrade to the latest stable version of Electron.

Workarounds

If upgrading isn't possible, this issue can be addressed without upgrading by preventing redirects to file:// URLs in the WebContents.on('will-redirect') event, for all WebContents:

app.on('web-contents-created', (e, webContents) => {
  webContents.on('will-redirect', (e, url) => {
    if (/^file:/.test(url)) e.preventDefault()
  })
})

For more information

If you have any questions or comments about this advisory, email us at security@electronjs.org.

Credit

Thanks to user @coolcoolnoworries for reporting this issue.

Electron context isolation bypass via nested unserializable return value

Impact

Apps using contextIsolation and contextBridge are affected.

This is a context isolation bypass, meaning that code running in the main world context in the renderer can reach into the isolated Electron context and perform privileged actions.

Workarounds

This issue is exploitable under either of two conditions: * If an API exposed to the main world via contextBridge can return an object or array that contains a JS object which cannot be serialized, for instance, a canvas rendering context. This would normally result in an exception being thrown Error: object could not be cloned. * If an API exposed to the main world via contextBridge has a return value that throws a user-generated exception while being sent over the bridge, for instance a dynamic getter property on an object that throws an error when being computed.

The app side workaround is to ensure that such a case is not possible. Ensure all values returned from a function exposed over the context bridge are supported and that any objects returned from functions do not have dynamic getters that can throw exceptions.

Auditing your exposed API is likely to be quite difficult so we strongly recommend you update to a patched version of Electron.

Fixed Versions

• 25.0.0-alpha.2
• 24.0.1
• 23.2.3
• 22.3.6

For more information

If you have any questions or comments about this advisory, email us at security@electronjs.org

Electron affected by libvpx's heap buffer overflow in vp8 encoding

Heap buffer overflow in vp8 encoding in libvpx in Google Chrome prior to 117.0.5938.132 and libvpx 1.13.1 allowed a remote attacker to potentially exploit heap corruption via a crafted HTML page.