Junglewise Threat Intelligence

CVE-2021-32013: SheetJS Pro denial of service via crafted XLSX

CVE-2021-32013 · Severity: low · CVSS 3.1 · Published 2021-07-22

Technologies: xlsx (npm), org.webjars.npm:xlsx (Maven). Vendors: npm, Maven.

Executive brief

SheetJS Pro is a JavaScript library used to read and write Excel files. A crafted XLSX file can cause the library to consume excessive memory, causing the application to become unresponsive or crash. This can impact any service or application that processes user-supplied Excel files without validation.

Technical details

This vulnerability is a denial of service caused by improper handling of crafted XLSX documents in SheetJS Pro's xlsx.js library. The root cause is uncontrolled memory consumption (CWE-400) when parsing malicious Excel files. An attacker can craft a specially formatted .xlsx file that, when processed by the library, triggers excessive memory allocation leading to application crash or hang. User interaction is required (the file must be opened/read by the application). The vulnerability affects all versions through 0.16.9 and is fixed in version 0.17.0 or later.

Affected products

  • SheetJS xlsx through 0.16.9

Timeline

  • 2021-07-22: disclosed
  • 2021-07-22: patched: Fixed in version 0.17.0

References

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