Skip to content

The Altair Desktop Client Does Not Sanitize External URLs before passing them to the underlying system

Moderate
imolorhe published GHSA-9m5v-vrf6-fmvm Oct 2, 2023

Package

actions Altair desktop clients (macOS, linux, windows) (GitHub Actions)

Affected versions

< 5.2.5

Patched versions

5.2.5

Description

Summary:

The Altair GraphQL Client Desktop Application does not sanitize external URLs before passing them to the underlying system. Moreover, Altair GraphQL Client also does not isolate the context of the renderer process.

Platform(s) Affected:

MacOS, Windows, Linux

Steps To Reproduce:

  1. Open the Altair GraphQL Client Desktop Application.

  2. Open the developer tools using shortcuts or remote devtools.

  3. [Open External Site] Within the console, attempt to open a new window with a malformed URL, window.open('https://google%20.com'). The application does not sanitize this URL before passing it to the system.

  4. [Open an executable file] Within the developer tools console, execute window.open('file:///Applications/Emacs.app') – observe that, if installed on the system, the Emacs app opens. Essentially, any malicious code that runs in the renderer process can compromise the user’s underlying system.

Credit Information

Mir Masood Ali, PhD student, University of Illinois at Chicago
Mohammad Ghasemisharif, PhD Candidate, University of Illinois at Chicago
Chris Kanich, Associate Professor, University of Illinois at Chicago
Jason Polakis, Associate Professor, University of Illinois at Chicago

Severity

Moderate

CVSS overall score

This score calculates overall vulnerability severity from 0 to 10 and is based on the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS).
/ 10

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector
Local
Attack complexity
Low
Privileges required
Low
User interaction
Required
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
High
Integrity
None
Availability
None

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector: More severe the more the remote (logically and physically) an attacker can be in order to exploit the vulnerability.
Attack complexity: More severe for the least complex attacks.
Privileges required: More severe if no privileges are required.
User interaction: More severe when no user interaction is required.
Scope: More severe when a scope change occurs, e.g. one vulnerable component impacts resources in components beyond its security scope.
Confidentiality: More severe when loss of data confidentiality is highest, measuring the level of data access available to an unauthorized user.
Integrity: More severe when loss of data integrity is the highest, measuring the consequence of data modification possible by an unauthorized user.
Availability: More severe when the loss of impacted component availability is highest.
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N

CVE ID

CVE-2023-43799

Weaknesses

No CWEs

Credits