Version Details and Security Vulnerabilities

Impact

A specially crafted Socket.IO packet can trigger an uncaught exception on the Socket.IO server, thus killing the Node.js process.

node:events:502
    throw err; // Unhandled 'error' event
    ^

Error [ERR_UNHANDLED_ERROR]: Unhandled error. (undefined)
    at new NodeError (node:internal/errors:405:5)
    at Socket.emit (node:events:500:17)
    at /myapp/node_modules/socket.io/lib/socket.js:531:14
    at process.processTicksAndRejections (node:internal/process/task_queues:77:11) {
  code: 'ERR_UNHANDLED_ERROR',
  context: undefined
}

Affected versions

| Version range | Needs minor update? | |------------------|------------------------------------------------| | 4.6.2...latest | Nothing to do | | 3.0.0...4.6.1 | Please upgrade to socket.io@4.6.2 (at least) | | 2.3.0...2.5.0 | Please upgrade to socket.io@2.5.1 |

Patches

This issue is fixed by https://github.com/socketio/socket.io/commit/15af22fc22bc6030fcead322c106f07640336115, included in socket.io@4.6.2 (released in May 2023).

The fix was backported in the 2.x branch today: https://github.com/socketio/socket.io/commit/d30630ba10562bf987f4d2b42440fc41a828119c

Workarounds

As a workaround for the affected versions of the socket.io package, you can attach a listener for the "error" event:

io.on("connection", (socket) => {
  socket.on("error", () => {
    // ...
  });
});

For more information

If you have any questions or comments about this advisory:

• Open a discussion here

Thanks a lot to Paul Taylor for the responsible disclosure.

References

• https://github.com/socketio/socket.io/commit/15af22fc22bc6030fcead322c106f07640336115
• https://github.com/socketio/socket.io/commit/d30630ba10562bf987f4d2b42440fc41a828119c

The package socket.io before 2.4.0 are vulnerable to Insecure Defaults due to CORS Misconfiguration. All domains are whitelisted by default.

Affected versions of socket.io depend on Math.random() to create socket IDs, and therefore the IDs are predictable. With enough information on prior IDs, an attacker may be able to guess the socket ID and gain access to socket.io servers without authorization.

Recommendation

Update to v0.9.7 or later.

Affected versions of node-uuid consistently fall back to using Math.random as an entropy source instead of crypto, which may result in guessable UUID's.

Recommendation

Update to version 1.4.4 or later.