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zlib: gracefully set windowBits from 8 to 9
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On 4 April 2017, Node.js versions v4.8.2 and v6.10.2 were
released. These versions bumped the vendored zlib library from
v1.2.8 to v1.2.11 in response to what it describes as low-severity
CVEs. In zlib v1.2.9, a change was made that causes an error to be
raised when a raw deflate stream is initialised with windowBits set
to 8.

In zlib v1.2.9, 8 become an invalid value for this parameter, and Node's zlib
module will crash if you call this:

```
zlib.createDeflateRaw({windowBits: 8})
```

On some versions this crashes Node and you cannot recover from it, while on some
versions it throws an exception. The permessage-deflate library up to
version v0.1.5 does make such a call with no try/catch

This commit reverts to the original behavior of zlib by gracefully changed
windowBits: 8 to windowBits: 9 for raw deflate streams.

PR-URL: https://github.com/nodejs-private/node-private/pull/95
Reviewed-By: Anna Henningsen <anna@addaleax.net>
Reviewed-By: Evan Lucas <evanlucas@me.com>
Reviewed-By: Michael Dawson <michael_dawson@ca.ibm.com>
Reviewed-By: Sam Roberts <vieuxtech@gmail.com>
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MylesBorins committed Oct 24, 2017
1 parent d3a40c5 commit f5defa2
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8 changes: 8 additions & 0 deletions doc/api/zlib.md
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Expand Up @@ -373,6 +373,14 @@ added: v0.5.8

Returns a new [DeflateRaw][] object with an [options][].

*Note*: An upgrade of zlib from 1.2.8 to 1.2.11 changed behavior when windowBits
is set to 8 for raw deflate streams. zlib does not have a working implementation
of an 8-bit Window for raw deflate streams and would automatically set windowBit
to 9 if initially set to 8. Newer versions of zlib will throw an exception.
This creates a potential DOS vector, and as such the behavior ahs been reverted
in Node.js 8, 6, and 4. Node.js version 9 and higher will throw when windowBits
is set to 8.

## zlib.createGunzip([options])
<!-- YAML
added: v0.5.8
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1 change: 1 addition & 0 deletions lib/zlib.js
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Expand Up @@ -266,6 +266,7 @@ function Gunzip(opts) {

// raw - no header
function DeflateRaw(opts) {
if (opts && opts.windowBits === 8) opts.windowBits = 9;
if (!(this instanceof DeflateRaw)) return new DeflateRaw(opts);
Zlib.call(this, opts, binding.DEFLATERAW);
}
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22 changes: 22 additions & 0 deletions test/parallel/test-zlib.js
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Expand Up @@ -131,6 +131,28 @@ SlowStream.prototype.end = function(chunk) {
return this.ended;
};

// windowBits: 8 shouldn't throw
assert.doesNotThrow(() => {
zlib.createDeflateRaw({ windowBits: 8 });
}, 'windowsBits set to 8 should follow legacy zlib behavior');

{
const node = fs.createReadStream(process.execPath);
const raw = [];
const reinflated = [];
node.on('data', (chunk) => raw.push(chunk));

// Usually, the inflate windowBits parameter needs to be at least the
// value of the matching deflate’s windowBits. However, inflate raw with
// windowBits = 8 should be able to handle compressed data from a source
// that does not know about the silent 8-to-9 upgrade of windowBits
// that older versions of zlib/Node perform.
node.pipe(zlib.createDeflateRaw({ windowBits: 9 }))
.pipe(zlib.createInflateRaw({ windowBits: 8 }))
.on('data', (chunk) => reinflated.push(chunk))
.on('end', common.mustCall(
() => assert(Buffer.concat(raw).equals(Buffer.concat(reinflated)))));
}

// for each of the files, make sure that compressing and
// decompressing results in the same data, for every combination
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