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Missing proper state, nonce and PKCE checks for OAuth authentication

High
balazsorban44 published GHSA-7r7x-4c4q-c4qf Mar 9, 2023

Package

npm next-auth (npm)

Affected versions

<4.20.1

Patched versions

4.20.1

Description

Impact

next-auth applications using OAuth provider versions before v4.20.1 are affected.

A bad actor who can spy on the victim's network or able to social engineer the victim to click a manipulated login link could intercept and tamper with the authorization URL to log in as the victim, bypassing the CSRF protection.

As an example, an attack can happen in the following scenario.

TL;DR: The attacker steals the victim's authenticated callback by intercepting and tampering with the authorization URL created by next-auth.

  1. The victim attempts to log in to the next-auth site. For example https://next-auth-example.vercel.app/
  2. next-auth sets the checks cookies according to how the OAuth provider is configured. In this case, state and pkce are set by default for the Google Provider.

Screen Shot 2023-03-03 at 09 54 26

  1. The attacker intercepts the returned authorization URL, strips away the OAuth check (nonce, state, pkce), and returns the URL without the check to the victim's browser. For example:
    From
    https://accounts.google.com/o/oauth2/v2/auth/oauthchooseaccount?client_id=client_id&scope=openid%20email%20profile&response_type=code&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fnext-auth-example.vercel.app%2Fapi%2Fauth%2Fcallback%2Fgoogle&state=state&code_challenge=code_challenge&code_challenge_method=S256&service=lso&o2v=2&flowName=GeneralOAuthFlow
    to
    https://accounts.google.com/o/oauth2/v2/auth/oauthchooseaccount?client_id=client_id&scope=openid%20email%20profile&response_type=code&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fnext-auth-example.vercel.app%2Fapi%2Fauth%2Fcallback%2Fgoogle&service=lso&o2v=2&flowName=GeneralOAuthFlow.
    Notice the parameters state, code_challenge and code_verifier are removed from the victim's address bar.

  2. The victim attempts to log in using their OAuth account.

  3. The Authorization Server logs the victim in and calls back to the next-auth api/auth/callback/:providerIdendpoint.
    5.1. The attacker intercepts and logs this callback URL for later use.
    5.2. next-auth checks the callback call from OAuth Authorization Server (doesn't have checks) and compares the checks with the cookies set (has checks) at step 2. This check will fail, resulting in the victim isn't logged in. However, at this step, the Authorization Server has already accepted the victim's request to log in and generated/sent a code in the URL.

  4. The attacker now has an authorization URL with the code that the AS will exchange for valid access_token/id_token and can log in as the victim automatically. They can open a new browser window and paste in the URL logged at step 5.1 and log in as the victim.

Patches

We patched the vulnerability in next-auth v4.20.1
To upgrade, run one of the following:

npm i next-auth@latest
yarn add next-auth@latest
pnpm add next-auth@latest

Workarounds

Upgrading to latest is the recommended way to fix this issue. However, using Advanced Initialization, developers can manually check the callback request for state, pkce, and nonce against the provider configuration, and abort the sign-in process if there is a mismatch. Check out the source code for help.

References

Severity

High

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
Network
Attack complexity
Low
Privileges required
None
User interaction
Required
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
High
Integrity
High
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:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:N

CVE ID

CVE-2023-27490

Credits