There is a regular expression denial of service (ReDoS) vulnerability in
the parser we use to process the `Sec-WebSocket-Extensions` header. It
can be exploited by sending an opening WebSocket handshake to a server
containing a header of the form:
Sec-WebSocket-Extensions: a;b="\c\c\c\c\c\c\c\c\c\c ...
i.e. a header containing an unclosed string parameter value whose
content is a repeating two-byte sequence of a backslash and some other
character. The parser takes exponential time to reject this header as
invalid, and this can be used to exhaust the server's capacity to
process requests.
This vulnerability has been assigned the identifier CVE-2020-7663.
We believe this flaw stems from the grammar specified for this header.
[RFC 6455][1] defines the grammar for the header as:
Sec-WebSocket-Extensions = extension-list
extension-list = 1#extension
extension = extension-token *( ";" extension-param )
extension-token = registered-token
registered-token = token
extension-param = token [ "=" (token | quoted-string) ]
It refers to [RFC 2616][2] for the definitions of `token` and
`quoted-string`, which are:
token = 1*<any CHAR except CTLs or separators>
separators = "(" | ")" | "<" | ">" | "@"
| "," | ";" | ":" | "\" | <">
| "/" | "[" | "]" | "?" | "="
| "{" | "}" | SP | HT
quoted-string = ( <"> *(qdtext | quoted-pair ) <"> )
qdtext = <any TEXT except <">>
quoted-pair = "\" CHAR
These rely on the `CHAR`, `CTL` and `TEXT` grammars, which are:
CHAR = <any US-ASCII character (octets 0 - 127)>
CTL = <any US-ASCII control character (octets 0 - 31) and DEL (127)>
TEXT = <any OCTET except CTLs, but including LWS>
Other relevant definitions to support these:
OCTET = <any 8-bit sequence of data>
LWS = [CRLF] 1*( SP | HT )
CRLF = CR LF
HT = <US-ASCII HT, horizontal-tab (9)>
LF = <US-ASCII LF, linefeed (10)>
CR = <US-ASCII CR, carriage return (13)>
SP = <US-ASCII SP, space (32)>
To expand some of these terms out and write them as regular expressions:
OCTET = [\x00-\xFF]
CHAR = [\x00-\x7F]
TEXT = [\t \x21-\x7E\x80-\xFF]
The allowable bytes for `token` are [\x00-\x7F], except [\x00-\x1F\x7F]
(leaving [\x20-\x7E]) and `separators`, which leaves the following set
of allowed chars:
! # $ % & ' * + - . ^ _ ` | ~ [0-9] [A-Z] [a-z]
`quoted-string` contains a repeated pattern of either `qdtext` or
`quoted-pair`. `qdtext` is any `TEXT` byte except <">, and the <">
character is ASCII 34, or 0x22. The <!> character is 0x21. So `qdtext`
can be written either positively as:
qdtext = [\t !\x23-\x7E\x80-\xFF]
or negatively, as:
qdtext = [^\x00-\x08\x0A-\x1F\x7F"]
We use the negative definition here. The other alternative in the
`quoted-string` pattern is:
quoted-pair = \\[\x00-\x7F]
The problem is that the set of bytes matched by `qdtext` includes <\>,
and intersects with the second element of `quoted-pair`. That means the
sequence \c can be matched as either two `qdtext` bytes, or as a single
`quoted-pair`. When the regex engine fails to find a trailing <"> to
close the string, it back-tracks and tries every alternate parse for the
string, which doubles with each pair of bytes in the input.
To fix the ReDoS flaw we need to rewrite the repeating pattern so that
none of its alternate branches can match the same text. For example, we
could try dividing the set of bytes [\x00-\xFF] into those that must not
follow a <\>, those that may follow a <\>, and those that must be
preceded by <\>, and thereby construct a pattern of the form:
(A|\?B|\C)*
where A, B and C have no characters in common. In our case the three
branch patterns would be:
A = qdtext - CHAR = [\x80-\xFF]
B = qdtext & CHAR = [\t !\x23-\x7E]
C = CHAR - qdtext = [\x00-\x08\x0A-\x1F\x7F"]
These sets do not intersect, and notice <"> appears in set C so must be
preceded by <\>. But we still have a problem: <\> (0x5C) and all the
alphabetic characters are in set B, so the pattern \?B can match all
these:
c
\
\c
So the sequence \c\c\c... still produces exponential back-tracking. It
also fails to parse input like this correctly:
Sec-WebSocket-Extensions: a; b="c\", d"
Because the grammar allows a single backslash to appear by itself, this
is arguably a syntax error where the parameter `b` has value `c\` and
then a new extension `d` begins with a <"> appearing where it should
not.
So the core problem is with the grammar itself: `qdtext` matches a
single backslash <\>, and `quoted-pair` matches a pair <\\>. So given a
sequence of backslashes there's no canonical parse and the grammar is
ambiguous.
[RFC 7230][3] remedies this problem and makes the grammar clearer.
First, it defines `token` explicitly rather than implicitly:
token = 1*tchar
tchar = "!" / "#" / "$" / "%" / "&" / "'" / "*"
/ "+" / "-" / "." / "^" / "_" / "`" / "|" / "~"
/ DIGIT / ALPHA
And second, it defines `quoted-string` so that backslashes cannot appear
on their own:
quoted-string = DQUOTE *( qdtext / quoted-pair ) DQUOTE
qdtext = HTAB / SP /%x21 / %x23-5B / %x5D-7E / obs-text
obs-text = %x80-FF
quoted-pair = "\" ( HTAB / SP / VCHAR / obs-text )
where VCHAR is any printing ASCII character 0x21-0x7E. Notice `qdtext`
is just our previous definition but with 5C excluded, so it cannot
accept a single backslash.
This commit makes this modification to our matching patterns, and
thereby removes the ReDoS vector. Technically this means it does not
match the grammar of RFC 6455, but we expect this to have little or no
practical impact, especially since the one main protocol extension,
`permessage-deflate` ([RFC 7692][4]), does not have any string-valued
parameters.
[1]: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6455#section-9.1
[2]: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2616#section-2.2
[3]: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7230#section-3.2.6
[4]: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7692
With the code as it was, it will generate a warning like such:
.../websocket-extensions-0.1.3/lib/websocket/extensions/parser.rb:41:
warning: deprecated Object#=~ is called on TrueClass; it always returns
nil
So we will avoid if the variable is TrueClass.
James Coglan
timcraft
wilkie
Edward Betts
Jun Aruga
Juan M. Cuello