Information disclosure in Node.js

Published: 2017-12-11 | Updated: 2020-08-04

Risk	Low
Patch available	YES
Number of vulnerabilities	1
CVE-ID	CVE-2017-15897
CWE-ID	CWE-200
Exploitation vector	Network
Public exploit	N/A
Vulnerable software Subscribe	Node.js Server applications / Web servers
Vendor	Node.js Foundation

Security Bulletin

This security bulletin contains one low risk vulnerability.

1) Information disclosure

EUVDB-ID: #VU33508

Risk: Low

CVSSv3.1: 2.7 [CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:N/A:N/E:U/RL:O/RC:C]

CVE-ID: CVE-2017-15897

CWE-ID: CWE-200 - Information exposure

Exploit availability: No

Description

The vulnerability allows a remote authenticated user to gain access to sensitive information.

Node.js had a bug in versions 8.X and 9.X which caused buffers to not be initialized when the encoding for the fill value did not match the encoding specified. For example, 'Buffer.alloc(0x100, "This is not correctly encoded", "hex");' The buffer implementation was updated such that the buffer will be initialized to all zeros in these cases.

Mitigation

Install update from vendor's website.

Vulnerable software versions

Node.js: 8.0.0 - 9.3.0

CPE2.3

External links

http://nodejs.org/en/blog/vulnerability/december-2017-security-releases/

Q & A

Can this vulnerability be exploited remotely?

Yes. This vulnerability can be exploited by a remote authenticated user via the Internet.

How the attacker can exploit this vulnerability?

The attacker would have to send a specially crafted request to the affected application in order to exploit this vulnerability.

Is there known malware, which exploits this vulnerability?

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