Multiple vulnerabilities in NPM Tar

Published: 2021-11-17

Risk	Medium
Patch available	YES
Number of vulnerabilities	2
CVE-ID	CVE-2021-37713 CVE-2021-37712
CWE-ID	CWE-22
Exploitation vector	Network
Public exploit	N/A
Vulnerable software Subscribe	tar Web applications / JS libraries
Vendor	npm Inc.

Security Bulletin

This security bulletin contains information about 2 vulnerabilities.

1) Path traversal

EUVDB-ID: #VU58204

Risk: Medium

CVSSv3.1: 6.5 [CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N/E:U/RL:O/RC:C]

CVE-ID: CVE-2021-37713

CWE-ID: CWE-22 - Improper Limitation of a Pathname to a Restricted Directory ('Path Traversal')

Exploit availability: No

Description

The vulnerability allows a remote attacker to overwrite arbitrary files on the system.

The vulnerability exists due insufficient logic on Windows systems when extracting tar files that contained a path that was not an absolute path, but specified a drive letter different from the extraction target, such as C:some\path. If the drive letter does not match the extraction target, for example D:\extraction\dir, then the result of path.resolve(extractionDirectory, entryPath) would resolve against the current working directory on the C: drive, rather than the extraction target directory.

Mitigation

Install update from vendor's website.

Vulnerable software versions

tar: 4.0.0 - 6.1.8

External links

http://github.com/npm/node-tar/security/advisories/GHSA-5955-9wpr-37jh

Q & A

Can this vulnerability be exploited remotely?

Yes. This vulnerability can be exploited by a remote non-authenticated attacker via the Internet.

Is there known malware, which exploits this vulnerability?

No. We are not aware of malware exploiting this vulnerability.

2) Path traversal

EUVDB-ID: #VU58203