GHSA-qjrq-hm79-49ww

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Source
https://github.com/advisories/GHSA-qjrq-hm79-49ww
Import Source
https://github.com/github/advisory-database/blob/main/advisories/github-reviewed/2023/05/GHSA-qjrq-hm79-49ww/GHSA-qjrq-hm79-49ww.json
JSON Data
https://api.test.osv.dev/v1/vulns/GHSA-qjrq-hm79-49ww
Aliases
Published
2023-05-22T19:47:15Z
Modified
2023-11-01T05:02:05.766101Z
Severity
  • 5.9 (Medium) CVSS_V3 - CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:L/A:N CVSS Calculator
Summary
ginuerzh/gost vulnerable to Timing Attack
Details

Timing attacks occur when an attacker can guess a secret by observing a difference in processing time for valid and invalid inputs. Sensitive secrets such as passwords, token and API keys should be compared only using a constant-time comparision function. More information on this attack type can be found in this blog post.

Root Cause Analysis

In this case, the vulnerability occurs due to the following code.

https://github.com/ginuerzh/gost/blob/1c62376e0880e4094bd3731e06bd4f7842638f6a/auth.go#L46-L46

Here, a untrusted input, sourced from a HTTP header, is compared directly with a secret. Since, this comparision is not secure, an attacker can mount a side-channel timing attack to guess the password.

Remediation

This can be easily fixed using a constant time comparing function such as crypto/subtle's ConstantTimeCompare. An example fix can be found in https://github.com/runatlantis/atlantis/commit/48870911974adddaa4c99c8089e79b7d787fa820 Alternatively, one can apply the patch below

From d18cff85e1a565f688f717fd8f2cacea62ff9dbf Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Porcupiney Hairs <porcupiney.hairs@protonmail.com>
Date: Sun, 7 May 2023 01:03:33 +0530
Subject: [PATCH] Fix : Timing attack

---
 auth.go | 4 +++-
 1 file changed, 3 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/auth.go b/auth.go
index 1be96e9..be13f23 100644
--- a/auth.go
+++ b/auth.go
@@ -2,6 +2,7 @@ package gost

 import (
    "bufio"
+   "crypto/subtle"
    "io"
    "strings"
    "sync"
@@ -43,7 +44,8 @@ func (au *LocalAuthenticator) Authenticate(user, password string) bool {
    }

    v, ok := au.kvs[user]
-   return ok && (v == "" || password == v)
+   passOk := subtle.ConstantTimeCompare([]byte(password), []byte(v)) == 0
+   return ok && (v == "" || passOk)
 }

 // Add adds a key-value pair to the Authenticator.
-- 
2.25.1

Database specific
{
    "nvd_published_at": "2023-05-30T04:15:09Z",
    "cwe_ids": [
        "CWE-203"
    ],
    "severity": "MODERATE",
    "github_reviewed": true,
    "github_reviewed_at": "2023-05-22T19:47:15Z"
}
References

Affected packages

Go / github.com/ginuerzh/gost

Package

Name
github.com/ginuerzh/gost
View open source insights on deps.dev
Purl
pkg:golang/github.com/ginuerzh/gost

Affected ranges

Type
SEMVER
Events
Introduced
0Unknown introduced version / All previous versions are affected
Last affected
2.11.5