CVE-2024-28863: node-tar vulnerable to denial of service while parsing a tar file due to lack of folders count validation

Published Mar 21, 2024
·
Updated

## Description: During some analysis today on npm's `node-tar` package I came across the folder creation process, Basicly if you provide node-tar with a path like this `./a/b/c/foo.txt` it would create every folder and sub-folder here a, b and c until it reaches the last folder to create `foo.txt`, In-this case I noticed that there's no validation at all on the amount of folders being created, that said we're actually able to CPU and memory consume the system running node-tar and even crash the nodejs client within few seconds of running it using a path with too many sub-folders inside ## Steps To Reproduce: You can reproduce this issue by downloading the tar file I provided in the resources and using node-tar to extract it, you should get the same behavior as the video ## Proof Of Concept: Here's a [video](https://hackerone-us-west-2-production-attachments.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/3i7uojw8s52psar6pg8zkdo4h9io?response-content-disposition=attachment%3B%20filename%3D%22tar-dos-poc.webm%22%3B%20filename%2A%3DUTF-8%27%27tar-dos-poc.webm&response-content-type=video%2Fwebm&X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Credential=ASIAQGK6FURQSWWGDXHA%2F20240312%2Fus-west-2%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20240312T080103Z&X-Amz-Expires=3600&X-Amz-Security-Token=IQoJb3JpZ2luX2VjEDcaCXVzLXdlc3QtMiJHMEUCID3xYDc6emXVPOg8iVR5dVk0u3gguTPIDJ0OIE%2BKxj17AiEAi%2BGiay1gGMWhH%2F031fvMYnSsa8U7CnpZpxvFAYqNRwgqsQUIQBADGgwwMTM2MTkyNzQ4NDkiDAaj6OgUL3gg4hhLLCqOBUUrOgWSqaK%2FmxN6nKRvB4Who3LIyzswFKm9LV94GiSVFP3zXYA480voCmAHTg7eBL7%2BrYgV2RtXbhF4aCFMCN3qu7GeXkIdH7xwVMi9zXHkekviSKZ%2FsZtVVjn7RFqOCKhJl%2FCoiLQJuDuju%2FtfdTGZbEbGsPgKHoILYbRp81K51zeRL21okjsOehmypkZzq%2BoGrXIX0ynPOKujxw27uqdF4T%2BF9ynodq01vGgwgVBEjHojc4OKOfr1oW5b%2FtGVV59%2BOBVI1hqIKHRG0Ed4SWmp%2BLd1hazGuZPvp52szmegnOj5qr3ubppnKL242bX%2FuAnQKzKK0HpwolqXjsuEeFeM85lxhqHV%2B1BJqaqSHHDa0HUMLZistMRshRlntuchcFQCR6HBa2c8PSnhpVC31zMzvYMfKsI12h4HB6l%2FudrmNrvmH4LmNpi4dZFcio21DzKj%2FRjWmxjH7l8egDyG%2FIgPMY6Ls4IiN7aR1jijYTrBCgPUUHets3BFvqLzHtPFnG3B7%2FYRPnhCLu%2FgzvKN3F8l38KqeTNMHJaxkuhCvEjpFB2SJbi2QZqZZbLj3xASqXoogzbsyPp0Tzp0tH7EKDhPA7H6wwiZukXfFhhlYzP8on9fO2Ajz%2F%2BTDkDjbfWw4KNJ0cFeDsGrUspqQZb5TAKlUge7iOZEc2TZ5uagatSy9Mg08E4nImBSE5QUHDc7Daya1gyqrETMDZBBUHH2RFkGA9qMpEtNrtJ9G%2BPedz%2FpPY1hh9OCp9Pg1BrX97l3SfVzlAMRfNibhywq6qnE35rVnZi%2BEQ1UgBjs9jD%2FQrW49%2FaD0oUDojVeuFFryzRnQxDbKtYgonRcItTvLT5Y0xaK9P0u6H1197%2FMk3XxmjD9%2Fb%2BvBjqxAQWWkKiIxpC1oHEWK9Jt8UdJ39xszDBGpBqjB6Tvt5ePAXSyX8np%2FrBi%2BAPx06O0%2Ba7pU4NmH800EVXxxhgfj9nMw3CeoUIdxorVKtU2Mxw%2FLaAiPgxPS4rqkt65NF7eQYfegcSYDTm2Z%2BHPbz9HfCaVZ28Zqeko6sR%2F29ML4bguqVvHAM4mWPLNDXH33mjG%2BuzLi8e1BF7tNveg2X9G%2FRdcMkojwKYbu6xN3M6aX2alQg%3D%3D&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Signature=1e8235d885f1d61529b7d6b23ea3a0780c300c91d86e925dd8310d5b661ddbe2) show-casing the exploit: ## Impact Denial of service by crashing the nodejs client when attempting to parse a tar archive, make it run out of heap memory and consuming server CPU and memory resources ## Report resources [payload.txt](https://hackerone-us-west-2-production-attachments.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/1e83ayb5dd3350fvj3gst0mqixwk?response-content-disposition=attachment%3B%20filename%3D%22payload.txt%22%3B%20filename%2A%3DUTF-8%27%27payload.txt&response-content-type=text%2Fplain&X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Credential=ASIAQGK6FURQSWWGDXHA%2F20240312%2Fus-west-2%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20240312T080103Z&X-Amz-Expires=3600&X-Amz-Security-Token=IQoJb3JpZ2luX2VjEDcaCXVzLXdlc3QtMiJHMEUCID3xYDc6emXVPOg8iVR5dVk0u3gguTPIDJ0OIE%2BKxj17AiEAi%2BGiay1gGMWhH%2F031fvMYnSsa8U7CnpZpxvFAYqNRwgqsQUIQBADGgwwMTM2MTkyNzQ4NDkiDAaj6OgUL3gg4hhLLCqOBUUrOgWSqaK%2FmxN6nKRvB4Who3LIyzswFKm9LV94GiSVFP3zXYA480voCmAHTg7eBL7%2BrYgV2RtXbhF4aCFMCN3qu7GeXkIdH7xwVMi9zXHkekviSKZ%2FsZtVVjn7RFqOCKhJl%2FCoiLQJuDuju%2FtfdTGZbEbGsPgKHoILYbRp81K51zeRL21okjsOehmypkZzq%2BoGrXIX0ynPOKujxw27uqdF4T%2BF9ynodq01vGgwgVBEjHojc4OKOfr1oW5b%2FtGVV59%2BOBVI1hqIKHRG0Ed4SWmp%2BLd1hazGuZPvp52szmegnOj5qr3ubppnKL242bX%2FuAnQKzKK0HpwolqXjsuEeFeM85lxhqHV%2B1BJqaqSHHDa0HUMLZistMRshRlntuchcFQCR6HBa2c8PSnhpVC31zMzvYMfKsI12h4HB6l%2FudrmNrvmH4LmNpi4dZFcio21DzKj%2FRjWmxjH7l8egDyG%2FIgPMY6Ls4IiN7aR1jijYTrBCgPUUHets3BFvqLzHtPFnG3B7%2FYRPnhCLu%2FgzvKN3F8l38KqeTNMHJaxkuhCvEjpFB2SJbi2QZqZZbLj3xASqXoogzbsyPp0Tzp0tH7EKDhPA7H6wwiZukXfFhhlYzP8on9fO2Ajz%2F%2BTDkDjbfWw4KNJ0cFeDsGrUspqQZb5TAKlUge7iOZEc2TZ5uagatSy9Mg08E4nImBSE5QUHDc7Daya1gyqrETMDZBBUHH2RFkGA9qMpEtNrtJ9G%2BPedz%2FpPY1hh9OCp9Pg1BrX97l3SfVzlAMRfNibhywq6qnE35rVnZi%2BEQ1UgBjs9jD%2FQrW49%2FaD0oUDojVeuFFryzRnQxDbKtYgonRcItTvLT5Y0xaK9P0u6H1197%2FMk3XxmjD9%2Fb%2BvBjqxAQWWkKiIxpC1oHEWK9Jt8UdJ39xszDBGpBqjB6Tvt5ePAXSyX8np%2FrBi%2BAPx06O0%2Ba7pU4NmH800EVXxxhgfj9nMw3CeoUIdxorVKtU2Mxw%2FLaAiPgxPS4rqkt65NF7eQYfegcSYDTm2Z%2BHPbz9HfCaVZ28Zqeko6sR%2F29ML4bguqVvHAM4mWPLNDXH33mjG%2BuzLi8e1BF7tNveg2X9G%2FRdcMkojwKYbu6xN3M6aX2alQg%3D%3D&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Signature=bad9fe731f05a63a950f99828125653a8c1254750fe0ca7be882e89ecdd449ae) [archeive.tar.gz](https://hackerone-us-west-2-production-attachments.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/ymkuh4xnfdcf1soeyi7jc2x4yt2i?response-content-disposition=attachment%3B%20filename%3D%22archive.tar.gz%22%3B%20filename%2A%3DUTF-8%27%27archive.tar.gz&response-content-type=application%2Fx-tar&X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Credential=ASIAQGK6FURQSWWGDXHA%2F20240312%2Fus-west-2%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20240312T080103Z&X-Amz-Expires=3600&X-Amz-Security-Token=IQoJb3JpZ2luX2VjEDcaCXVzLXdlc3QtMiJHMEUCID3xYDc6emXVPOg8iVR5dVk0u3gguTPIDJ0OIE%2BKxj17AiEAi%2BGiay1gGMWhH%2F031fvMYnSsa8U7CnpZpxvFAYqNRwgqsQUIQBADGgwwMTM2MTkyNzQ4NDkiDAaj6OgUL3gg4hhLLCqOBUUrOgWSqaK%2FmxN6nKRvB4Who3LIyzswFKm9LV94GiSVFP3zXYA480voCmAHTg7eBL7%2BrYgV2RtXbhF4aCFMCN3qu7GeXkIdH7xwVMi9zXHkekviSKZ%2FsZtVVjn7RFqOCKhJl%2FCoiLQJuDuju%2FtfdTGZbEbGsPgKHoILYbRp81K51zeRL21okjsOehmypkZzq%2BoGrXIX0ynPOKujxw27uqdF4T%2BF9ynodq01vGgwgVBEjHojc4OKOfr1oW5b%2FtGVV59%2BOBVI1hqIKHRG0Ed4SWmp%2BLd1hazGuZPvp52szmegnOj5qr3ubppnKL242bX%2FuAnQKzKK0HpwolqXjsuEeFeM85lxhqHV%2B1BJqaqSHHDa0HUMLZistMRshRlntuchcFQCR6HBa2c8PSnhpVC31zMzvYMfKsI12h4HB6l%2FudrmNrvmH4LmNpi4dZFcio21DzKj%2FRjWmxjH7l8egDyG%2FIgPMY6Ls4IiN7aR1jijYTrBCgPUUHets3BFvqLzHtPFnG3B7%2FYRPnhCLu%2FgzvKN3F8l38KqeTNMHJaxkuhCvEjpFB2SJbi2QZqZZbLj3xASqXoogzbsyPp0Tzp0tH7EKDhPA7H6wwiZukXfFhhlYzP8on9fO2Ajz%2F%2BTDkDjbfWw4KNJ0cFeDsGrUspqQZb5TAKlUge7iOZEc2TZ5uagatSy9Mg08E4nImBSE5QUHDc7Daya1gyqrETMDZBBUHH2RFkGA9qMpEtNrtJ9G%2BPedz%2FpPY1hh9OCp9Pg1BrX97l3SfVzlAMRfNibhywq6qnE35rVnZi%2BEQ1UgBjs9jD%2FQrW49%2FaD0oUDojVeuFFryzRnQxDbKtYgonRcItTvLT5Y0xaK9P0u6H1197%2FMk3XxmjD9%2Fb%2BvBjqxAQWWkKiIxpC1oHEWK9Jt8UdJ39xszDBGpBqjB6Tvt5ePAXSyX8np%2FrBi%2BAPx06O0%2Ba7pU4NmH800EVXxxhgfj9nMw3CeoUIdxorVKtU2Mxw%2FLaAiPgxPS4rqkt65NF7eQYfegcSYDTm2Z%2BHPbz9HfCaVZ28Zqeko6sR%2F29ML4bguqVvHAM4mWPLNDXH33mjG%2BuzLi8e1BF7tNveg2X9G%2FRdcMkojwKYbu6xN3M6aX2alQg%3D%3D&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Signature=5e2c0d4b4de40373ac0fe91908c2659141a6dd4ab850271cc26042a3885c82ea) ## Note This report was originally reported to GitHub bug bounty program, they asked me to report it to you a month ago

Affected Software

17 affected componentsFixes available
npm/tar<6.2.1
6.2.1
npm/node-tar<6.2.1
6.2.1
F5 BIG-IP (iRulesLX/iAppsLX)>=17.1.0<=17.1.1
F5 BIG-IP (iRulesLX/iAppsLX)>=16.1.0<=16.1.4
F5 BIG-IP (iRulesLX/iAppsLX)>=15.1.0<=15.1.10
isaacs Tar Node.js<6.2.1
Microsoft cbl2 tar 1.34-3
Microsoft azl3 tar 1.35-2
Microsoft cbl2 nodejs18 18.20.2-2
Microsoft cbl2 nodejs18 18.20.2-2
Microsoft azl3 nodejs 20.10.0-2
Microsoft cbl2 reaper 3.1.1-18
Microsoft cbl2 nodejs18 18.20.3-1
Microsoft azl3 nodejs 20.14.0-1
Microsoft cbl2 reaper 3.1.1-17
redhat/node-tar<6.2.1
6.2.1
IBM Concert Software<=1.0.0-2.2.0

Event History

Mar 21, 2024
CVE Published
via MITRE·10:10 PM
Data Sourced
via MITRE·10:10 PM
DescriptionSeverityWeakness
Data Sourced
via NVD·11:15 PM
DescriptionSeverityWeakness
Data Sourced
via NVD·11:15 PM
RemedyAffected Software
Mar 22, 2024
Advisory Published
via GitHub·04:57 PM
May 16, 2024
Advisory Published
via F5·04:21 AM
Jun 20, 2024
Data Sourced
via Red Hat·09:18 AM
DescriptionSeverityAffected Software
Jun 30, 2024
Data Sourced
via Microsoft·07:00 AM
DescriptionSeverityWeaknessAffected Software
Updated
via Microsoft·07:00 AM
Affected Software
Updated
via Microsoft·02:00 PM
Affected Software
Updated
via Microsoft·02:00 PM
SeverityAffected Software
Updated
via Microsoft·02:00 PM
DescriptionSeverity
Mar 23, 2026
Data Sourced
via IBM·12:00 AM
DescriptionAffected Software
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Frequently Asked Questions

1

What is the severity of CVE-2024-28863?

CVE-2024-28863 has been classified with a significant risk due to its impact on folder creation and potential for unauthorized file manipulation.

2

How do I fix CVE-2024-28863?

To mitigate CVE-2024-28863, ensure you update to node-tar version 6.2.1 or later.

3

What products are affected by CVE-2024-28863?

CVE-2024-28863 affects F5 BIG-IP (iRulesLX/iAppsLX) versions 15.1.0 to 15.1.10, 16.1.0 to 16.1.4, and 17.1.0 to 17.1.1, alongside specific npm packages like node-tar.

4

What vulnerabilities does CVE-2024-28863 relate to in npm's node-tar?

CVE-2024-28863 is related to the folder creation process in the npm package node-tar, which allows for incorrect path manipulations.

5

Is there a patch available for CVE-2024-28863?

Yes, there are patches available for IBM Cognos Analytics and a specific update for node-tar to address CVE-2024-28863.

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