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Electron's Content-Secrity-Policy disabling eval not applied consistently in renderers with sandbox disabled

High severity GitHub Reviewed Published Sep 6, 2023 in electron/electron • Updated Nov 29, 2023

Package

npm electron (npm)

Affected versions

>= 22.0.0-beta.1, < 22.0.1
>= 23.0.0-alpha.1, < 23.0.0-alpha.2

Patched versions

22.0.1
23.0.0-alpha.2

Description

Impact

A Content-Security-Policy that disables eval, specifically setting a script-src directive and not providing unsafe-eval in that directive, is not respected in renderers that have sandbox and contextIsolation disabled. i.e. sandbox: false and contextIsolation: false in the webPreferences object.

This resulted in incorrectly allowing usage of methods like eval() and new Function, which can result in an expanded attack surface.

Patches

This issue only ever affected the 22 and 23 major versions of Electron and has been fixed in the latest versions of those release lines. Specifically, these versions contain the fixes:

  • 22.0.1
  • 23.0.0-alpha.2

We recommend all apps upgrade to the latest stable version of Electron, especially if they use sandbox: false or contextIsolation: false.

Workarounds

If upgrading isn't possible, this issue can be addressed without upgrading by enabling at least one of sandbox: true or contextIsolation: true on all renderers.

const mainWindow = new BrowserWindow({
  webPreferences: {
    sandbox: true,
  }
});

For more information

If you have any questions or comments about this advisory, email us at security@electronjs.org.

Credit

Thanks to user @andreasdj for reporting this issue.

References

@MarshallOfSound MarshallOfSound published to electron/electron Sep 6, 2023
Published to the GitHub Advisory Database Sep 6, 2023
Reviewed Sep 6, 2023
Published by the National Vulnerability Database Sep 6, 2023
Last updated Nov 29, 2023

Severity

High

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
High
Privileges required
Low
User interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
High
Integrity
High
Availability
High

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:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

EPSS score

0.170%
(55th percentile)

Weaknesses

CVE ID

CVE-2023-23623

GHSA ID

GHSA-gxh7-wv9q-fwfr

Source code

Credits

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