Leading white space bypasses protocol validation

Description

Impact

Whitespace characters are not removed from the beginning of the protocol, so URLs are not parsed properly and protocol validation mechanisms may fail.

Patches

Patched in 1.19.9

Workarounds

Remove leading whitespace from values before passing them to URI.parse (e.g. via .href(value) or new URI(value)), e.g. by using

function remove_whitespace(url){
     const whitespace = /^[\x00-\x20\u00a0\u1680\u2000-\u200a\u2028\u2029\u202f\u205f\u3000\ufeff]+/;
     url = url.replace(whitespace, '')
     return url
}

References

  • https://huntr.dev/bounties/82ef23b8-7025-49c9-b5fc-1bb9885788e5/

For more information

If you have any questions or comments about this advisory:
* Open an issue in medialize/URI.js

Basic information

Type
reviewed
Severity
medium
Advisory on GitHub
Open advisory ↗
Repository advisory
Open repository advisory ↗
Source code
Browse source ↗
Published (advisory)
2022-03-03 19:23:36 UTC
Updated
2023-02-03 05:06:21 UTC
GitHub reviewed
2022-03-03 19:23:36 UTC
NVD published
2022-03-03

EPSS Score

Score Percentile
0.49% 65.52%

CVSS Scores

Base score Version Severity Vector
5.3 3.1
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:N Click to expand
Attack vector (AV:N)
Could be attacked over the internet or any normal routed network—not just someone sitting at the machine.
Attack complexity (AC:L)
Once they can reach the bug, pulling it off is straightforward—no weird race conditions or rare setup.
Privileges required (PR:N)
No account or special rights needed—anonymous or random user is enough.
User interaction (UI:N)
Nobody has to click “OK” or open a trap file; it can work without a victim helping.
Scope (S:U)
Damage stays in the same “trust bubble” as the broken component—no big spill into unrelated systems.
Confidentiality (C:N)
Doesn’t really leak secrets in a meaningful way.
Integrity (I:L)
Attackers could change some data, but it’s limited—not everything goes.
Availability (A:N)
Service keeps running; no real outage angle.

Identifiers

CWEs

CWE id Name
CWE-20 Improper Input Validation

Credits

  • P0cas (analyst)

Affected packages (1)

Vulnerable version ranges and first patched releases as published by GitHub.

Ecosystem Package Vulnerable range First patched Vulnerable functions
npm urijs < 1.19.9 1.19.9

References

cvelogic Threat Intelligence