Description
A vulnerability was found in the ping functionality of the ws module before 1.0.0 which allowed clients to allocate memory by sending a ping frame. The ping functionality by default responds with a pong frame and the previously given payload of the ping frame. This is exactly what you expect, but internally ws always transforms all data that we need to send to a Buffer instance and that is where the vulnerability existed. ws didn't do any checks for the type of data it was sending. With buffers in node when you allocate it when a number instead of a string it will allocate the amount of bytes.
References (3)
Core 3
Core References
Release Notes, Third Party Advisory x_refsource_misc
https://github.com/websockets/ws/releases/tag/1.0.1
Third Party Advisory x_refsource_misc
https://nodesecurity.io/advisories/67
Patch, Third Party Advisory x_refsource_misc
https://gist.github.com/c0nrad/e92005446c480707a74a
Scores
CVSS v3
7.5
EPSS
0.0202
EPSS Percentile
78.3%
Attack Vector
NETWORK
CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N
Details
CWE
CWE-201
CWE-119
Status
published
Products (2)
npm/ws
0 - 1.0.1npm
ws_project/ws
< 1.0.1
Published
May 31, 2018
Tracked Since
Feb 18, 2026