GHSA-hq37-853p-g5cf
Regular Expression Denial of Service in CairoSVG
Packages
Details
As written in the advisory (Markdown source, shown as plain text).
# Doyensec Vulnerability Advisory
* Regular Expression Denial of Service (REDoS) in cairosvg
* Affected Product: CairoSVG v2.0.0+
* Vendor: https://github.com/Kozea
* Severity: Medium
* Vulnerability Class: Denial of Service
* Author(s): Ben Caller ([Doyensec](https://doyensec.com))
## Summary
When processing SVG files, the python package CairoSVG uses two regular expressions which are vulnerable to Regular Expression Denial of Service (REDoS).
If an attacker provides a malicious SVG, it can make cairosvg get stuck processing the file for a very long time.
## Technical description
The vulnerable regular expressions are
https://github.com/Kozea/CairoSVG/blob/9c4a982b9a021280ad90e89707eacc1d114e4ac4/cairosvg/colors.py#L190-L191
The section between 'rgb(' and the final ')' contains multiple overlapping groups.
Since all three infinitely repeating groups accept spaces, a long string of spaces causes catastrophic backtracking when it is not followed by a closing parenthesis.
The complexity is cubic, so doubling the length of the malicious string of spaces makes processing take 8 times as long.
## Reproduction steps
Create a malicious SVG of the form:
<svg width="1" height="1"><rect fill="rgb( ;"/></svg>
with the following code:
'<svg width="1" height="1"><rect fill="rgb(' + (' ' * 3456) + ';"/></svg>'
Note that there is no closing parenthesis before the semi-colon.
Run cairosvg e.g.:
cairosvg cairo-redos.svg -o x.png
and notice that it hangs at 100% CPU. Increasing the number of spaces increases the processing time with cubic complexity.
## Remediation
Fix the regexes to avoid overlapping parts. Perhaps remove the [ \n\r\t]* groups from the regex, and use .strip() on the returned capture group.
## Disclosure timeline
- 2020-12-30: Vulnerability disclosed via email to CourtBouillon
References
External links from the advisory. They lead to third-party sites.
- https://github.com/Kozea/CairoSVG/security/advisories/GHSA-hq37-853p-g5cf
- https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2021-21236
- https://github.com/Kozea/CairoSVG/commit/cfc9175e590531d90384aa88845052de53d94bf3
- https://github.com/Kozea/CairoSVG
- https://github.com/Kozea/CairoSVG/releases/tag/2.5.1
- https://github.com/pypa/advisory-database/tree/main/vulns/cairosvg/PYSEC-2021-5.yaml
- https://pypi.org/project/CairoSVG