Junglewise Threat Intelligence

sshpk SSH key parsing denial of service

Severity: info · Published 2020-08-03

Executive brief

This vulnerability affects sshpk, a Node.js library used for parsing and manipulating SSH keys. The advisory has been withdrawn as it is a duplicate of another report, but the underlying issue involved improper parsing of SSH public key formats that could lead to a denial of service condition.

Technical details

The sshpk library contains a vulnerability in its SSH public key parsing logic (ssh.js format handler). The vulnerability relates to improper handling of malformed SSH key input, specifically in the regex-based parsing of SSH public keys. Attack preconditions include providing a specially crafted SSH key to an application using the vulnerable sshpk library for key parsing. An attacker could exploit this to cause a denial of service. The issue was patched in versions 1.13.2 and 1.14.1. This advisory is marked as withdrawn and superseded by GHSA-2m39-62fm-q8r3.

Affected products

  • Joyent sshpk 0 to 1.13.1, 1.14.0

Timeline

  • 2020-08-03: disclosed
  • 2020-08-03: advisory: Advisory withdrawn as duplicate of GHSA-2m39-62fm-q8r3

References