Ubuntu 20.04 LTS / 22.04 LTS / 23.10 : Node.js vulnerabilities (USN-6672-1)

medium Nessus Plugin ID 191501

Synopsis

The remote Ubuntu host is missing one or more security updates.

Description

The remote Ubuntu 20.04 LTS / 22.04 LTS / 23.10 host has packages installed that are affected by multiple vulnerabilities as referenced in the USN-6672-1 advisory.

- A cryptographic vulnerability exists in Node.js <19.2.0, <18.14.1, <16.19.1, <14.21.3 that in some cases did does not clear the OpenSSL error stack after operations that may set it. This may lead to false positive errors during subsequent cryptographic operations that happen to be on the same thread. This in turn could be used to cause a denial of service. (CVE-2023-23919)

- An untrusted search path vulnerability exists in Node.js. <19.6.1, <18.14.1, <16.19.1, and <14.21.3 that could allow an attacker to search and potentially load ICU data when running with elevated privileges.
(CVE-2023-23920)

- Issue summary: Processing some specially crafted ASN.1 object identifiers or data containing them may be very slow. Impact summary: Applications that use OBJ_obj2txt() directly, or use any of the OpenSSL subsystems OCSP, PKCS7/SMIME, CMS, CMP/CRMF or TS with no message size limit may experience notable to very long delays when processing those messages, which may lead to a Denial of Service. An OBJECT IDENTIFIER is composed of a series of numbers - sub-identifiers - most of which have no size limit.
OBJ_obj2txt() may be used to translate an ASN.1 OBJECT IDENTIFIER given in DER encoding form (using the OpenSSL type ASN1_OBJECT) to its canonical numeric text form, which are the sub-identifiers of the OBJECT IDENTIFIER in decimal form, separated by periods. When one of the sub-identifiers in the OBJECT IDENTIFIER is very large (these are sizes that are seen as absurdly large, taking up tens or hundreds of KiBs), the translation to a decimal number in text may take a very long time. The time complexity is O(n^2) with 'n' being the size of the sub-identifiers in bytes (*). With OpenSSL 3.0, support to fetch cryptographic algorithms using names / identifiers in string form was introduced. This includes using OBJECT IDENTIFIERs in canonical numeric text form as identifiers for fetching algorithms. Such OBJECT IDENTIFIERs may be received through the ASN.1 structure AlgorithmIdentifier, which is commonly used in multiple protocols to specify what cryptographic algorithm should be used to sign or verify, encrypt or decrypt, or digest passed data. Applications that call OBJ_obj2txt() directly with untrusted data are affected, with any version of OpenSSL. If the use is for the mere purpose of display, the severity is considered low. In OpenSSL 3.0 and newer, this affects the subsystems OCSP, PKCS7/SMIME, CMS, CMP/CRMF or TS. It also impacts anything that processes X.509 certificates, including simple things like verifying its signature. The impact on TLS is relatively low, because all versions of OpenSSL have a 100KiB limit on the peer's certificate chain. Additionally, this only impacts clients, or servers that have explicitly enabled client authentication. In OpenSSL 1.1.1 and 1.0.2, this only affects displaying diverse objects, such as X.509 certificates. This is assumed to not happen in such a way that it would cause a Denial of Service, so these versions are considered not affected by this issue in such a way that it would be cause for concern, and the severity is therefore considered low. (CVE-2023-2650)

Note that Nessus has not tested for these issues but has instead relied only on the application's self-reported version number.

Solution

Update the affected packages.

See Also

https://ubuntu.com/security/notices/USN-6672-1

Plugin Details

Severity: Medium

ID: 191501

File Name: ubuntu_USN-6672-1.nasl

Version: 1.1

Type: local

Agent: unix

Published: 3/5/2024

Updated: 3/6/2024

Supported Sensors: Frictionless Assessment AWS, Frictionless Assessment Azure, Frictionless Assessment Agent, Nessus Agent, Agentless Assessment, Nessus

Risk Information

VPR

Risk Factor: Medium

Score: 4.4

CVSS v2

Risk Factor: Medium

Base Score: 4.3

Temporal Score: 3.4

Vector: CVSS2#AV:L/AC:L/Au:M/C:N/I:C/A:N

CVSS Score Source: CVE-2023-23920

CVSS v3

Risk Factor: Medium

Base Score: 4.2

Temporal Score: 3.8

Vector: CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:H/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N

Temporal Vector: CVSS:3.0/E:P/RL:O/RC:C

Vulnerability Information

CPE: cpe:/o:canonical:ubuntu_linux:20.04:-:lts, cpe:/o:canonical:ubuntu_linux:22.04:-:lts, cpe:/o:canonical:ubuntu_linux:23.10, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:libnode-dev, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:libnode108, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:libnode64, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:libnode72, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:nodejs

Required KB Items: Host/cpu, Host/Debian/dpkg-l, Host/Ubuntu, Host/Ubuntu/release

Exploit Available: true

Exploit Ease: Exploits are available

Patch Publication Date: 3/4/2024

Vulnerability Publication Date: 3/4/2024

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2023-23919, CVE-2023-23920, CVE-2023-2650

USN: 6672-1