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Sending verification requests (magic link) to unwanted emails

Critical
balazsorban44 published GHSA-xv97-c62v-4587 Aug 2, 2022

Package

npm next-auth (npm)

Affected versions

<4.10.3, <3.29.10

Patched versions

4.10.3, 3.29.10

Description

Impact

next-auth users who are using the EmailProvider either in versions before 4.10.3 or 3.29.10 are affected.

If an attacker could forge a request that sent a comma-separated list of emails (eg.: [email protected],[email protected]) to the sign-in endpoint, NextAuth.js would send emails to both the attacker and the victim's e-mail addresses. The attacker could then login as a newly created user with the email being [email protected],[email protected]. This means that basic authorization like email.endsWith("@victim.com") in the signIn callback would fail to communicate a threat to the developer and would let the attacker bypass authorization, even with an @attacker.com address.

Patches

We patched this vulnerability in v4.10.3 and v3.29.10 by normalizing the email value that is sent to the sign-in endpoint before accessing it anywhere else. We also added a normalizeIdentifier callback on the EmailProvider configuration, where you can further tweak your requirements for what your system considers a valid e-mail address. (E.g.: strict RFC2821 compliance)

To upgrade, run one of the following:

npm i next-auth@latest
yarn add next-auth@latest
pnpm add next-auth@latest

(This will update to the latest v4 version, but you can change latest to 3 if you want to stay on v3. This is not recommended. v3 is unmaintained.)

Workarounds

If for some reason you cannot upgrade, you can normalize the incoming request like the following, using Advanced Initialization:

// pages/api/auth/[...nextauth].ts

function normalize(identifier) {
  // Get the first two elements only,
  // separated by `@` from user input.
  let [local, domain] = identifier.toLowerCase().trim().split("@")
  // The part before "@" can contain a ","
  // but we remove it on the domain part
  domain = domain.split(",")[0]
  return `${local}@${domain}`
}

export default async function handler(req, res) {
  if (req.body.email) req.body.email = normalize(req.body.email)
  return await NextAuth(req, res, {/* your options */ })
}

References

For more information

If you have any concerns, we request responsible disclosure, outlined here: https://next-auth.js.org/security#reporting-a-vulnerability

Timeline

The issue was reported 26th of July, a response was sent out in less than 1 hour and after identifying the issue a patch was published within 5 working days.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Socket for disclosing this vulnerability in a responsible manner and following up until it got published.

Severity

Critical

CVSS overall score

This score calculates overall vulnerability severity from 0 to 10 and is based on the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS).
/ 10

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector
Network
Attack complexity
Low
Privileges required
None
User interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
High
Integrity
High
Availability
None

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector: More severe the more the remote (logically and physically) an attacker can be in order to exploit the vulnerability.
Attack complexity: More severe for the least complex attacks.
Privileges required: More severe if no privileges are required.
User interaction: More severe when no user interaction is required.
Scope: More severe when a scope change occurs, e.g. one vulnerable component impacts resources in components beyond its security scope.
Confidentiality: More severe when loss of data confidentiality is highest, measuring the level of data access available to an unauthorized user.
Integrity: More severe when loss of data integrity is the highest, measuring the consequence of data modification possible by an unauthorized user.
Availability: More severe when the loss of impacted component availability is highest.
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:N

CVE ID

CVE-2022-35924

Weaknesses

Credits